Gadgetopia

That was my initial reaction too, but then I actually took the time to RTFA:

"Although IE 7 will be pushed out over Automatic Updates, people will be able to choose whether they want to install it or not, Schare said."

Considering this, I don't think it's entirely unreasonable.

It's things like this that make me glad I disabled Automatic Updates.

On a somewhat related note, I found a very cool plug-in for Firefox that allows you to open an IE window as a new browser tab. So you can have all your web pages displayed in one browser window but have some open using IE. It even lets you set which rendering engine to use as default for certain sites, and if you open a page that doesn't like Firefox, you can just click the 'switch rendering engine' button and it'll seamlessly swap the tab over to IE.

Other than that, I never use IE at all.

Isn't running the IE's rendering Engine inside a FireFox tab just as dangerous as running IE by it self?

Yeah, probably. I'm not saying it makes the IE experience any better. Just a little more convenient than having two seperate browsers running.

FYI, the extension is called IE Tab.

Matt-

Yes- that disable feature will be useful for say...and IT staff and an organization. But how about the home user? I don't think it's too far of a stretch to imagine the user will find a little bubble in the lower right with a message that says "Internet Explorer Version 7 is available! Click here to download..."

and off they go. It's coming via Windows Update, which the user has used for all Windows updates, and it's trusted etc.

I think the biggest issue is not the forced update, but the force user interface change.