Interesting post on TechWeb :

Microsoft's decision to push Internet Explorer 7 to users with its Auto Updates mechanism will mean "inevitable" problems for Web sites during the critical holiday selling season, the chief executive of a Web services firm said Friday.
"I applaud what Microsoft's done with IE 7, and the browser works very well," said Richard Litofsky of Rockville, Md.-based cyScape. "But even the best software needs time to work out things once it's in the wild."

The automatic updating of most browsers -- Internet Explorer controls 83 percent of the world's browser market according to the most recent data from Net Applications -- will stress Web sites' help desks like nothing before, Litofsky claimed.

"Virtually overnight all these sites are going to be running a whole new platform."

I don't think that Internet Explorer 7 should be delayed because the betas have been out for long enough and web vendors have had plenty of time to get their act together.  I predict that we're going to see an unprecedented increase in the number of phishing attacks and spoof emails over the Holidays this year and IE7 is going to play a vital part in protecting users from these threats (and protecting them from themselves). 

From the perspective of the end user, IE7 looks and feels very much like IE6 and I don't see the change putting people off using online retailers.  If they can't get along with IE7 then I have to wonder how they got along with IE6.

This entry was posted by the PC Doctor on Friday, September 29th, 2006 at 21:43 and is filed under PC Doctor's Thoughts. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.