In fact, according to a posting on the IE Blog, IE 7 is "coming later this month."

Microsoft officials have said for a while now to expect IE 7 for WIndows XP and WIndows Server 2003 to ship around the time that Vista — which embeds a slightly souped-up version of IE 7 — goes live. So it looks like the team is planning to make good on its promise.

Earlier this summer, Microsoft also said that it planned to push IE 7 to users via its Automatic Update patching mechanism. Microsoft officials said they believed that move was warranted because IE 7 will include so many important security updates. Users who do not want IE 7 automatically delivered to their systems have the option of installing a Microsoft-developed blocking tool.