I really don't see how the release of IE 7 would cause any great changes in numbers. Most people probably don't even know it exists, and it was released sometime mid-October, wasn't it?

MS is alerting people the update is available through windows update. But i think alot of people are only gonna upgrade just because MS may make it mandatory to access their website for updates. i for one, on my PC, use FF, and only use IE when i need to do an update since FF, or whatever, will NOT work with windows update

the numbers may change slightly once the news of IE 7's release starts getting out to the masses, but I don't think it will change by much. I suspect many of those who will update to IE 7 are already using previous versions of IE as their primary browser. It's unlikely to recapture many FF converts, and it will do 0 for Mac/Safari users, since there is no IE 7 for the Mac.

MS is alerting people the update is available through windows update.

I hadn't seen that, so I didn't know they were putting that on Windows Update. However, the Automatic Updates shouldn't be downloading that (as its not critical, which is what that's for - for example, I never saw WMP10 get updated on my machine automatically or through a prompt, only if I went to the web-site).

I was actually glad to get IE 7 on my work machine. Sure, it looks sucky, and they did stupid things like remove the menu and all, but there's some sites I need to go to that look good only in IE (if they work at all in other browsers), and for some reason, for over a year with IE 6, pop-up windows refused to appear, regardless of the pop-up blocker setting.

I just wish Safari on OS X had some of the abilities with pop-up windows, cookies, and the like that Firefox and IE have. Blocking all pop-ups without so much as a warning just causes problems.