IE 8 Not A ‘Must’ In Windows 7
EU charges prompted by antitrust case filed by Opera and then joined by Mozilla and Google, finally made MS to rethink its ‘must having’ attitude about the Internet Explorer, the Redmond based Company is now to add IE in the list of optional programs called Windows Features in the upcoming Windows 7, a step not had taken in the version’s Beta.
By clicking on the check box next to the listed feature, the feature could be turned on or off. With IE 8 also, it will only be disabled and not totally uninstalled from the system, only the executable file iexplore.exe is deleted. 
This is the best compromise as there are components shared commonly by IE and other applications, also one might want to enable the IE some time later, it will be facilitating for him to just select to enable the IE 8 from the On-Off panel without having to look for installation disks.
The bundling of IE with the OS till now has not been fruitful for a competitive environment, it has been like imposing users with something either they want it or not. The step that MS has planned to take will definitely result in better user experience and will hopefully satisfy the European Commission.
It is not an easy step by Microsoft which is taking place at a time when it is continuously losing its popularity to its competitors.
