Ed Bott, writing at ZDNet, posts about problems he has been having with Windows Update.

Me too.

It's bad enough that you can't use Windows Update manually via Firefox. And it's bad enough that both Zone Alarm and Norton Antivirus (last year's model for the reasons stated here, which is soon to be uninstalled forever as I move to the stupidly named but generally well received Windows Live OneCare) can trip up the Windows installer program and make it hard to install updates.

But now it seems the Windows Update servers are having problems of their own. I have had a constant yellow updates available icon in my system tray for the past week- and updates often either don't work or seem to work, only to be followed by the immediate reappearance of the yellow update icon.

This problem, while a mild annoyance for desktops that are always connected to the internet, is a royal pain for laptops that are updated periodically. I haven't been able to successfully install any updates on my Thinkpad in over a week.

I hope this causes Microsoft to rethink its decision to semi-push installs of Internet Explorer 7. My hunch is that Microsoft will still want to get IE 7 out there to stem the flow to the superior Firefox.

One of the many ways Firefox is eating IE 7's lunch is in update ease. It's simple as pie in Firefox.

Not so for IE 7- at least not at the moment.