Windows 7 In Europe

The European Commission has raised concerns that the "bundling" of Internet Explorer in the Windows operating system violates European competition law. Thus, to comply with with European law, Microsoft announced on June 9, 2009 that it will remove Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) from Windows 7 for all countries in the European Economic Area (EEA), Croatia and Switzerland (the "European territory").

As a result, OEMs distributing systems into the European territory will only have the option of preinstalling:

• E versions of Windows 7, which do not include Internet Explorer; and/or
• N versions of Windows 7, which do not include Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player.

These E and N versions of Windows 7 will be exclusively distributed within the European territory and Microsoft will not offer any version of Windows 7 within the European territory, whether via OEM channels or in the retail market.

In the E and N versions, the end user functionality associated with web browsing will not be included. It will not be cached or otherwise available on the hard drive. Applications will still be able to use Windows 7 platform functionality, but OEMs and end-users will need to add software to enable Internet browsing. 

Microsoft will offer IE8 separately and free of charge and will make it easy and convenient for PC manufacturers to preinstall IE8 on Windows 7 machines in Europe if they decide to do so. PC manufacturers will be allowed to install an alternative browser instead of IE8, and they may install multiple browsers if they wish. Microsoft will also offer a free Windows 7 Internet Pack, which will include both Internet Explorer 8 as well as Windows Live Essentials.

Of the planned 36 base language versions offered for Windows 7 products, only 23 base languages will be available in E and N versions - Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, and Swedish.

For each such language version, the E and N versions will be released at the same time as versions available to the rest of the world. For more details on the release schedule and the language wave details, please take a look at The Latest Microsoft Windows 7 Roadmap.

Windows 7 SKUs In Europe

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