If you are thinking to upgrade your Windows XP to Service Pack 3, you should hold on a moment there and think twice, because once Service Pack 3 is installed you are unable to downgrade from Internet Explorer 7 to the older IE6.

According to ComputerWorld, Microsoft Corp warns Windows users that once Service Pack 3 is installed, the option to uninstall IE7 will be grayed out in the Control Panel and apparently this is done on purpose. Here’s the reason explained by IE program manager:

If Microsoft had allowed users to revert back to the pre-SP3 version of IE6 — the one saved on users’ PCs when they upgraded to IE7, and what was used until now to back out of the newer browser — Windows would have ended up in a “mixed file state

This looks like a measurement taken to move users towards IE7? How long can you stay with Windows XP SP2 and below. According to W3School, IE6 (30.1%) is still the biggest market after Firefox (37%) with IE7(21.9%) about 10% away. The peak of IE6 days were somewhere around November 2006, where it dominates about 70% of the browser market. It has been greatly reduced over the years. Anyway if you really want to avoid all these SP3 un-downgradable to IE6 thing, why not just stick with Firefox?

via computerworld