Microsoft Pushes Users to Upgrade to IE8 and One Day to Windows 7

Lately, there has been a lot of chatter about Microsoft and its products. Last month the big news was the release of the latest version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer Web browser, IE8.

While the latest edition was released on March 19th, 2009, a lot of people have yet to upgrade from IE6 or IE7.  Microsoft announced they would start sending notifications via Auto Update to their entire user base beginning in the third week of April. They have already pushed auto-updates to anyone who previously downloaded the beta version. Now, Microsoft is sending out notification to those users still running IE6 or IE7 on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, or Windows Server 2008.

I just received an email notifying me of the update with a link to download Internet Explorer 8 today (see image below).  You don’t have to upgrade to IE 8, but it will be much more secure than IE6 and possibly IE7. The notifications do not auto-install the software on anyone’s computer,  so don’t worry. You must opt-in to install the update so you can wait if you would like to.

Download Internet Explorer 8

Additionally, Microsoft is working on their new Operating System, Windows 7. There are many people in the industry that believe the final version will be completed soon. They believe this because versions of Windows 7 have leaked on the internet and it appears to be almost complete. Windows 7’s performance is promoted to be far superior than XP and Vista’s performance.

Hopefully this holds true, but we will not see until later this year when it is released. If you are looking for laptops, I would personally choose from one of the operating systems out on the market and currently loaded on laptops today. Even if the OS is releases this year, you will want to wait until they have worked out the kinks and improved upon it – unless you enjoy being in the test group. If you have XP you can upgrade your software now. If you would prefer not to upgrade now you do have some time, but eventually Microsoft plans on killing XP, so you will need an exit strategy in the foreseeable future.