If you’re interested in using Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 7, head over to this Microsoft Downloads page.
Windows 7 users with autoupdate enabled will be upgraded to IE10 in the coming weeks. Currently, the new version doesn’t appear in Windows Update, but that will also change in the near future.
IE10 is much the same as IE9, but includes Javascript performance improvements, integrated spell-checking/correcting and better adherence to web standards like CSS3.
If you’re running Windows 7, and you haven’t already installed Service Pack 1, you should do so before April 9, 2013. After that date, Microsoft will no longer provide patches for Windows 7 without SP1. That includes security patches.
Microsoft will continue to supply patches for Windows 7 with SP1 until January 14, 2020.
The details are laid out in a related post on Microsoft’s Springboard blog.
Lifehacker has an interesting post that points to information from Microsoft on downgrading Windows 8 to Windows 7.
The downgrade option is not available for all new PCs and license types. The Microsoft page linked above goes over the details.
There are a lot of legitimate reasons one might want to downgrade.
It’s no longer possible to purchase a PC with Windows 7, so anyone buying a new PC will get Windows 8 by default. Being forced to switch operating systems by a big corporation is annoying for many people. You know, people who prefer to have a choice.
If you’re not interested in learning the new O/S, or setting the computer up for someone who is comfortable in Windows 7 (say your grandmother) and doesn’t want to change, this is a useful option.
I’ve personally downgraded a set of Windows computers like this, when software required for a business just didn’t run with the delivered O/S. Sure, it’s the developers’ fault, but waiting for a fix wasn’t an option.
You may use hardware and/or drivers that don’t work on the new O/S, in which case, again, you don’t have much choice until you buy new hardware or (if you’re very lucky), the hardware maker produces new drivers.
Corporate IT providers use the downgrade option more than anyone. There’s a constant need to replace aging PC hardware, but upgrading operating systems involves an enormous amount of re-training that most companies would prefer to do on their own schedule, instead of Microsoft’s.
And so on.
Suprisingly, a lot of the comments on the Lifehacker story are negative. “just learn the new O/S” is a common refrain. Unpaid (or possibly paid) marketing drones, all of them.
The Flash vulnerability reported on December 11 has finally been fixed in Internet Explorer 10.
Microsoft chose not to use the regular Flash plugin in Internet Explorer 10, deciding instead to integrate the player into the IE10 code. As a result, any time the Flash player is updated, Microsoft must make corresponding changes to IE10. Hence the delay in producing the patch for IE10. Google now does the same thing with their Chrome browser, but they tend to make the required changes much more quickly.
At one point it looked like Microsoft might not produce a version of Internet Explorer 10 that would run on any version of Windows earlier than Windows 8. Thankfully, for those of you still using Microsoft’s web browser, a Windows 7 compatible version of IE10 is now available. Please note that this version is categorized as a ‘Release Preview’, so it is probably somewhat buggy.
You can find more information regarding this development at Ars Technica and The Verge.
With the pile of post-SP1 updates for Windows 7 growing and no end in sight (at least until 2020), Microsoft has decided to forsake IT workers by cancelling plans for SP2. This means that installing Windows 7 is going to become increasingly tedious: install Windows 7, install SP1, then install 100+ (and growing) patches.
Is this yet another attempt by Microsoft to get IT administrators to throw in the towel and upgrade to Windows 8? Maybe. Luckily, IT workers have plenty of tools available to create new, slipstreamed installation media for Windows 7. That means one unattended install for Windows 7, SP1 and all the updates available at the time the media was created. Microsoft stopped officially supporting slipstreaming in Vista and Windows 7, so the process is a bit more difficult, but it’s both possible and worth the effort.
I’ve been saying for a while that corporate/business/enterprise customers are going to avoid Windows 8. IT departments have no interest in helping countless users re-learn Windows basics because of an ill-conceived and unavoidable user interface decision by Microsoft.
Enterprise IT folks are not interested in performing Windows upgrades on thousands of PCs unless there is a good reason to do so. When Microsoft stops developing security patches for Windows XP in April 2014, that will be a good reason to upgrade machines still running XP. Thankfully, there are alternatives to Windows 8.
After a lot of early problems with networking, compatibility and drivers with Windows 7, that O/S has emerged as the next go-to O/S for Windows-based PCs. Moving a user from Windows XP to Windows 7 will not involve a lot of re-training, drivers have matured, and software compatibility issues have mostly been resolved. Windows 7 sales are likely to exceed Windows 8 sales in the coming months, no matter what Microsoft does to encourage people to skip Windows 7.
Apparently, the attendees of a recent TechMentor conference held at Microsoft’s headquarters agree. According to those folks, Windows 7 is going to be the next Windows XP, with 7 assuming the mantle of ‘most solid and reliable Windows O/S’ for enterprise users.
My own plans are to evaluate Windows 8 on a test PC, but switch my Windows XP machines to Linux if possible, and Windows 7 if not. Windows 8 has a lot to prove before I will even consider using it on any of my main PCs.
Since I originally posted this, I learned that Adobe released version 11.3.300.268 to address this problem. It remains to be seen whether the problem has actually been resolved.
The latest version (11.3.300.265) of the ubiquitous Flash plugin found in most web browsers seems to be causing web browsers running on Windows 7 and Vista to crash. A quick search of Google shows that there are reports of this happening in Firefox, Chrome and Opera. Internet Explorer seems unaffected so far, possibly due to the fact that IE uses a separate (ActiveX) version of the Flash player.
Reports indicate that Mozilla is working with Adobe to resolve this problem, and presumably the other browser developers are doing the same. Meanwhile, if you’re running Windows 7 and you watch video on the web, you may run into this problem. As awful as it sounds, the only useful workaround at this point is to switch – temporarily – to Internet Explorer.
Update 2012Jul31:
I’ve been digging through reports from all over the web, and it looks like this problem has actually been going on since as far back as 2009 and Flash 10.0.42.34. Internet Explorer may also be affected, although recent reports seem to exclude IE. Some reports imply that only 64 bit versions of Windows are affected. There are even reports that Windows XP and Mac OSX are affected. But it seems clear that something happened to Flash in version 10 that made it unstable in web browsers on Windows 7 and Vista, and the problem still exists in the most recent version of Flash, 11.3.300.265. It’s possible we’re looking at more than one problem, or one that has morphed somewhat as the Adobe developers try to fix it. An old problem that was previously fixed may have reappeared when Adobe changed something in a later version. Clearly, not all Windows 7 users are affected; if everyone who uses Youtube (the highest-profile Flash video source) on Windows 7 was having this problem, we would have heard more about it by now.
The problem seems to take slightly different forms: it may crash the browser; the plugin itself may crash, leaving the browser running; and in some cases Windows may crash. The web browser may freeze for a few minutes before any crash occurs, and Windows may become unresponsive. In most cases, the problem occurs after two or three minutes of Flash video, but it make take up to fifteen minutes. The most common scenarios involve long Youtube videos and Facebook games (both use Flash).
Here are some of the more interesting problem reports I’ve found:
Possible solutions:
Prediction: if Adobe doesn’t figure this out, and Google has heard enough complaints about it, Google might be inclined to switch Youtube from Flash to HTML5. Everyone else in the world will follow Youtube, and then Flash will disappear forever and not be missed.
Update 2012Aug03: Adobe snuck a Flash update past me on July 26. Version 11.3.300.268 attempts to address crashing problems that occur on Windows and Mac computers when playing Flash content. Adobe doesn’t seem to be convinced that the problem is resolved, however: in the version announcement, they ask users for assistance in troubleshooting the problem.
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