Microsoft admits users will be able to turn off IE 8 in Windows 7

Microsoft admits users will be able to turn off IE 8 in Windows 7

After a couple of days of “no comments,” Microsoft has acknowledged the findings of a pair of bloggers who discovered that starting with the next major test release of Windows 7, Internet Explorer 8 will be able to be removed.

Microsoft officials made this public acknowledgment via the Engineering Windows 7 blog. In a posting, dated March 6, Jack Mayo, the Group Program Manager for the Documents and Printing team, listed a set of Windows 7 features that will be able to be turned on and off by users after the initial Windows set-up.

The new blog post made no mention of the Opera antitrust case against Microsoft — a factor which many consider to be the impetus for Microsoft’s decision to make IE 8 an optional, as opposed to a required, user feature.

The ability to turn off IE 8 is part of Windows 7 test build 7048, but that build isn’t available to the majority of testers. Most Windows 7 testers will have to wait another month or so for the public Release Candidate test build of Windows 7 to check out this option.

In addition to the set of Windows Vista features that users already may opt to “deselect,” Microsoft is planning to add a bunch of new ones ( including IE 8 ) with Windows 7: