New IE8 RTW Releases Scheduled for September 22nd via WSUS

Microsoft is not yet done with the delivery of Internet Explorer 8 RTW to business users. The company started offering the gold version of IE8 via Windows Server Update Services on August 25th, 2009, as I told you yesterday. However, the will be an additional wave of downloads for WSUS admins to deal with on September 22nd. This because, on August 25th, Microsoft did not release all the localized versions of IE8 for Windows XP.

In this regard, on September 22nd, WSUS administrators will be able to see IE8 for XP in the following languages: Bosnian (Cyrillic); Bosnian (Latin); Bulgarian; Catalan; Croatian; Estonian; Hindi; Latvian; Lithuanian; Macedonian; Romanian; Serbian (Cyrillic); Serbian (Latin); Slovenian; Slovakian; Thai; Ukranian; Vietnamese; Albanian; Assamese; Basque; Bengali (Bangladesh); Bengali (India); Gujarati; Indonesian; Kannada; Kazakh; Konkani; Malay (Malaysia); Malayalam; Marathi; Punjabi; Tamil; and Telugu.

So far, business users have access to IE8 for XP localized in English; Arabic; Chinese (Traditional); Chinese (Simplified); Czech; Danish; Dutch; Finnish; French; German; Greek; Hebrew; Hungarian; Italian; Japanese; Korean; Norwegian; Polish; Portuguese (Portugal); Portuguese (Brazil); Russian; Spanish; Swedish; Turkish.

On August 25th, IE8 RTW was released via WSUS for Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2003 in all supported languages, unlike the browser flavor reserved for XP. In addition, Microsoft also started serving the IE8 Language Packs for Vista and Windows Server 2008 on WSUS. On top of the IE8 language Packs, WSUS admins will also be able to serve the latest cumulative security updates for the browser and the IE8 Compatibility View List updates.

“Internet Explorer 8 is available in the “Update rollup” category, and will appear in your WSUS administration console,” explained Eric Hebenstreit, IE lead program manager. “Note that even if Auto-Approve for the “Update Rollup” category is on, Internet Explorer 8 will not automatically be deployed – you must approve the Internet Explorer 8 EULA before Internet Explorer 8 is deployed to your downstream clients. As the Internet Explorer 8 EULA is shared between all Internet Explorer 8 WSUS items, once you accept the EULA for any of the items, the remaining items may be approved without accepting the EULA.”

Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) RTW is available for download here (for 32-bit and 64-bit flavors of Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008).