Windows 7 Applications can be switched off

Bloggers reported that Microsoft is allowing users to remove Internet Explorer 8 and other applications from Windows 7.

Microsoft refused to discuss the Windows 7 “kill switch”, saying only that it could not comment on unreleased products but the next day with a post on its Engineering Window 7 blog listed the applications that can be switched off. These include Internet Explorer 8, Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center and Windows Search.

Hanging over Microsoft’s decision is a January filing by the European Union’s antitrust stating that Microsoft protects Internet Explorer from head-to-head completion by bundling it with Windows. Microsoft wrote in a filing with the SEC that it may become “a requirement that OEMs distribute multiple browsers on new Windows-based PC’s”.
Analysts say that Microsoft may be extending an olive branch to the EU by enabling the removal of IE8. Microsoft has made no official comment on whether there is a connection between shutting off IE8 and the EU charges.

Rob Enderle, president of research firm The Enderle Group, says that Microsoft should be credited for giving users more choice, but “it also serves to get EU regulators off their back … and there’s no indication that Microsoft would have gone down this path had this not been part of the EU requests.”

Columnists and Microsoft bloggers are calling the option to remove applications in Windows 7 a long-overdue compromise from Microsoft, regardless of its true motivations.

A blogger wrote that although the permission to remove more applications is a reaction to the EU charges, it’s also keeping with Microsoft’s vow to keep Windows 7 more flexible.

The only downfall - by giving users more flexibility to remove applications you are adding complexity and the chance for problems that cause the PC to misbehave.