Internet Explorer 9 before Win7? Don't Wait, Says MS

Microsoft has urged business users not to let the wait for the next edition of Internet Explorer 9 put them off upgrading to the latest edition of Windows. The company insists that waiting won't make the process any easier.

3 Reasons Why Businesses Are Waiting for IE9

While reviews of Windows 7 have been positive, it's clear businesses are taking their time to upgrade for a variety of reasons.

Reasons for not upgrading to Windows 7 include: keeping spending under control because of financial concerns during the present economic crisis, cautiousness resulting from bad experiences with Windows Vista, and the 'rule of thumb' that corporate buyers should wait for the first Service Pack (SP) for a new operating system or application to make sure any major bugs are properly ironed out. (Source: theregister.co.uk)

Now, it appears there might be something else holding back would-be buyers: the release of the next edition of Internet Explorer 9 (IE9), due some time early next year. That's because businesses planning to use Internet Explorer 9 may consider it easier to upgrade both the operating system and browser at once.

XP Users Face IE9 Browser Barrier

It's also possible that those businesses still running Windows XP for the last few years and have chosen to skip the Windows Vista upgrade path are also refusing to upgrade to Windows 7 until the new Internet Explorer 9 browser is formally available.

That said, this will unlikely affect many businesses: several studies have shown that a large proportion of those running older versions of Windows are also still running outdated editions of Internet Explorer, despite significant security risks.

Still, it's enough of a concern that Microsoft has made a point of stressing that switching to both Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 8 immediately will bring businesses the benefits of the latest editions right away, regardless of the fact that the browser will soon be outdated.

Microsoft's Rich Reynolds told businesses, "thanks to the high degree of application compatibility between the two browser versions, any investments today in deploying Internet Explorer 8 will put you on the best path to transitioning to Internet Explorer 9 in the future." (Source: windowsteamblog.com)