Microsoft browser ballot to arrive next week
The 'web browser choice screen' won't just offer alternative ways to surf the web, it will also automatically remove IE from the taskbar.


Microsoft will start offering its web browser choice screen to UK users from next week.
Following a deal with the European Commission as the result of an anti-trust case around the bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows, Microsoft agreed to show a screen advising users that there are other browsers on the market - and showing where to go to download them.
Users in the UK, Belgium and France will be able to download the screen to test it from next week, and it will be rolled out via Windows Update starting on 1 March across Europe to anyone with IE installed as their default browser.
Once the browser ballot is downloaded and installed, Windows will pop up a first screen explaining what is going on.
Under each browser icon, there is the option to install it or find out more - or defer the decision to later.
The browser choice system will also automatically unpin Internet Explorer from the taskbar, so if that's where you'd like it to be, you'll have to go back and add it again. IE won't be uninstalled, however.
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Freelance journalist Nicole Kobie first started writing for ITPro in 2007, with bylines in New Scientist, Wired, PC Pro and many more.
Nicole the author of a book about the history of technology, The Long History of the Future.
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