Now my initial reaction to Microsoft’s course of action to stop incorporating internet explorer as part of the operating system install was, ok thats fair enough. Then it hit me, if you install windows or buy a computer with no web browser installed how on earth are you going to browse the web to download any other browser software?!? I’m sorry but this is like saying to me ‘Oh here have a television but you can’t have an aerial or dvd player’

Microsoft what on earth are you thinking??? It is beginning to become apparent to me that this behemoth software company just takes one step forward (Windows 7) and four steps back!!! Now we all understand that you don’t want to continue spending millions on lawsuits but there are other ways to avoid this rather than once again making life hell for the end user of your products.

What would have been wrong with simply leaving the web browser on their but not making it so entrenched in the system, or after install show a software update style page that allows you to choose from the most commonly used web browsers, the consumer can then make their choice and go on. It makes no sense to me for Microsoft to leave it out all together or provide it as additional software in the form of a CD. Compact Disks are slowly but surely becoming something that we will not need, I don’t know the last time I used a CD to install software simply because I download it all off the internet. Computer manufactures that are ahead of the game are aware of this, take Apple for example. When designing and releasing their MacBook Air they left out the optical drive altogether as they are aware that when you have a secondary computer you don’t need the drive.

I’m not saying that CD’s are obsolete or don’t serve their purpose, but why bother wasting more of the worlds resources stamping thousands or millions of CD’s with something that could simply be included with the operating system?

Besides anybody who is a user of the web is aware that Internet Explorer is an out of date, obsolete and slow web browser. Microsoft have failed to keep up with emerging web standards with their latest release of this browsers software, my solution for them is simple if your going to do a half baked job at something (i.e IE8) then don’t even bother trying, leave it up to the people who do know what web browsing is all about Mozilla with their Firefox, Apple’s Safari and Google Chrome. These companies know the web and are designing browsers for the future. Once again Microsoft you are behind the eight ball before you even start.

Keep in mind that as to my knowledge this will not affect anybody outside of Europe, but the way Microsoft seems to be handling this just goes to show they feel they have a monopoly and can do what they feel like with no regard for the end user. If you want to keep up with the best of them Microsoft you will have to do better than this.