Microsoft last week announced that Windows 7 would go .

"In order to meet that release date, we needed to start telling computer manufacturers this week exactly what to expect in Windows 7 so they can begin ... work necessary to have PCs available in stores in October," Dave Helner, Microsoft's deputy counsel, said in a Thursday afternoon.

"We're committed to making Windows 7 available in Europe at the same time that it launches in the rest of the world, but we also must comply with European competition law as we launch the product," he said. "Given the pending legal proceeding, we've decided that instead of including Internet Explorer in Windows 7 in Europe, we will offer it separately and on an easy-to-install basis to both computer manufacturers and users."

The company took a page out of its history books, and will add the letter "E" to the end of each Windows 7 edition's name to denote the omission of IE8. In 2006, after it lost the initial round of an earlier EU antitrust case, Microsoft shipped minus Windows Media Player.

"The E versions of Windows 7 will include all the features and functionality of Windows 7 in the rest of the world, other than browsing with Internet Explorer," promised Helner.