Internet Explorer 7.0 Leaves One Microsoft Way, Yahoo Follows

The wait is over. Microsoft has officially released the final version of IE 7.0 for Windows XP SP2.

Mozilla is also expected to released Firefox 2 Final anytime this month.

Though IE 7 will be pushed via Automatic Windows Updates, you can easily disable IE 7 from auto-installing by downloading this small registry setting.

Microsoft will require you to validate Windows before passing the link to download Internet Explorer. Incase you like to skip the mandatory WGA check, here's the direct link to download IE 7 that requires no authentication.

The IE 7 installer is around 15 MB.

Yahoo has also released a customized version of IE 7 that has the Yahoo! Homepage and Yahoo! News set as default pages. This Yahoo-branded IE version also has Yahoo! Search set as the default search engine and the Yahoo! toolbar is also factory-installed.

Download Yahoo! IE 7.0 here.