Internet Explorer 7 has been available for download for about a fortnight, but it wasn’t until today that I received my first task-bar prompt to update from IE6 to IE7 via Microsoft Update / Windows Update. As Don mentioned in an earlier post folks who develop and test web pages would be wise to run both IE6 and IE7 (on different PCs) until IE6 usage drops away, and this High Priority Update is the first step towards that goal.

In the interests of dumping the dud that is IE6, my guess is that this High Priority Update will see most personal Windows users migrate over the next few weeks via Microsoft Update. This would leave corporate and small business users at the mercy of system administrators to update SOEs in their own sweet time. And with IE7 only able to run on Windows XP (or higher) and many businesses still running Windows 2000, this will be “a journey” for many. Point in case is my employer, who only recently rolled out XP nearly 5 years after I first started running it on my home PCs. The other group of users, unable to update from IE6 at all, will be those people running an ancient version of Windows or one that fails the “genuine Microsoft product” test.

After all of this, the next round of IE7 converts will probably come from people buying new PCs or otherwise upgrading to Windows Vista from early 2007.

As a fan of Firefox and Opera I only run Internet Explorer (6 & 7 now) as a tool to check web pages as I develop them. But I’m certainly looking forward to the day when IE6 usage statistics reflect those of IE5 and earlier versions, and then I can trash it forever!