Windows Browser Ballot, What really happens

So the rollout has begun and every PC user in Europe running XP, Vista or Windows 7 will shortly see the new browser ballot screen, if they’ve not seen it already.  Last night I got my update and along with it, a few surprises.

The first surprise was the apparent optionality of the update.  In Windows update Microsoft Browser Choice Screen Update for EEA Users of Windows was unticked.  Presumably this would only remain so for a short period of time before it becomes mandatory.

Upon restarting my PC, which wasn’t required, I was faced with both a notice about the ballot screen and a new icon on my desktop.

In addition, and as expected, the IE icon in my taskbar had disappeared.

The ballot doesn’t deactivate Internet Explorer, so simply closing this window won’t do any harm, you’ll still be able to get online and indeed Internet Explorer was still in my Start Menu and could be both run and repinned to the taskbar.

What I was interested in was that would happen if you did exactly that and just closed the window.  Well closing the information window will pop up the ballot whether you like it or not, ironically in Internet Explorer, but that too can either be happily closed or you can press a Select Later button, in which case you’ll be prompted the next time you start your PC.

The purpose of wanting to find this out was because a great many, indeed hundreds of thousands of people around Europe will wonder what this thing is that’s just popped up, not bother to read it and close it straight away.  They will then, should they have IE in their taskbar or Quick Launch area, wonder where it’s gone.

At least the Browser Choice icon will help in this regard, the the program remains in your \Windows\System 32\ folder as browserchoice.exe should you ever want to run it again.

It’s good that European users will get this browser choice and, in a way, a shame that people outside of the EU and also people who don’t currently have IE set as their default browser, are being denied it.  It’s a shame though that it’s not being used more forcibly against people running the notoriously buggy IE6 to force them to upgrade.  On the flip-side it’s an annoyance we could all well do without and is bound to cause a lot of confusion regardless.