Microsoft today released a final version of Internet Explorer 10 (IE10) for Windows 7, nearly two years after it introduced the browser at a company conference.
Customers who had earlier installed the IE10 preview will be the first to receive the upgrade through Windows Update. Others running IE9 on Windows 7 will be automatically upgraded "in the weeks ahead," according to the company, which did not get more specific than that about a timetable.
That day can't come too soon for many Windows 7 users, who have taken almost every opportunity to ask Microsoft -- most often in comments on company blogs -- when the new browser would reach them.
But IE10's debut was later than some analysts had once expected.
In April 2011, when Microsoft announced IE10 just weeks after the launch of IE9, analysts concluded that the company was moving to an annual release cycle. That did not happen -- IE10's debut came about two years after IE9, which appeared two years after IE8 -- although rumors of accelerated development have again surfaced.