IE7 will do a lot of great things for Windows XP, but it won't remove the IE subsystem from the OS. Doing that would require almost a complete rewrite of XP (which is what Vista is moving towards) as everything from the aforementioned file manager to the built-in help file viewer relies on the IE subsystem to render to the screen. What IE7 DOES do for XP is basically implement a lot of the security bonus of using FF, like blocking activeX controls, etc. from automatically running, fixing the stupid BHO (browser helper objects) model, attempt to prevent phising and so on and so forth.
The true power of the new approach will be evident when Vista comes out. In Vista, IE7 will now run only in user mode (seperate from the kernel), only allow file access to the temporary internet files folder, and more (which can be found easily by googling for IE7 info). It will truely be a godsend to people who have to deal with the consequences of the stupid way IE is now (read: spyware whore).
I've had the beta version of IE7 installed on my XP machine for over a month now and it's actually very nice, of course it is still not as secure as using FF, but it doesn't have the FF memory leak feature, and in terms of functionality it has most of the features you use FF for. It just doesn't have the theme/extension architecture that FF does, which sucks, but will probably change (well the extension part, MS seems to have a penchant for denying user customizable UIs).
And yes, you can rollback to IE6 just fine whenever you want.
The people at flex beta neglected to realize that most of the differences in the Flock options panel have to do with Flock being based on the Firefox 1.5b2 release, not the 1.0.7 version. Obviously someone is not as diehard a fox fan as they would like us to think.
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IE7 will do a lot of great things for Windows XP, but it won't remove the IE subsystem from the OS. Doing that would require almost a complete rewrite of XP (which is what Vista is moving towards) as everything from the aforementioned file manager to the built-in help file viewer relies on the IE subsystem to render to the screen. What IE7 DOES do for XP is basically implement a lot of the security bonus of using FF, like blocking activeX controls, etc. from automatically running, fixing the stupid BHO (browser helper objects) model, attempt to prevent phising and so on and so forth. The true power of the new approach will be evident when Vista comes out. In Vista, IE7 will now run only in user mode (seperate from the kernel), only allow file access to the temporary internet files folder, and more (which can be found easily by googling for IE7 info). It will truely be a godsend to people who have to deal with the consequences of the stupid way IE is now (read: spyware whore). I've had the beta version of IE7 installed on my XP machine for over a month now and it's actually very nice, of course it is still not as secure as using FF, but it doesn't have the FF memory leak feature, and in terms of functionality it has most of the features you use FF for. It just doesn't have the theme/extension architecture that FF does, which sucks, but will probably change (well the extension part, MS seems to have a penchant for denying user customizable UIs). And yes, you can rollback to IE6 just fine whenever you want.
The people at flex beta neglected to realize that most of the differences in the Flock options panel have to do with Flock being based on the Firefox 1.5b2 release, not the 1.0.7 version. Obviously someone is not as diehard a fox fan as they would like us to think.