The first and most problematic issue involved in the IE7 (non-WGA) installation was its removal of (or failure to replace) the normaliz.dll file from the %SYSTEMROOT\SYSTEM32\ directory. Regardless of how it happened, I inevitably had to fix it... The easiest work-around was to launch Mozilla Firefox (or an equivalent alternative browser) from the Task Manager and locate a duplicate copy of normaliz.dll. Saving this file directly to the system32 directory repaired Windows Explorer errors encountered after log-on, but the trouble wasn't worth the browsing experience.

IE 7 knowingly mimics many of the features already implemented by Firefox... Live Bookmarks, improved CSS support, improved PNG transparency support, tabbed browsing, and additional spyware/phising filters were the only [added] features noticed, all of which (other than the included filters) were already available in the Mozilla Firefox browser.

With today's (official) release of Mozilla Firefox v2.0, I'm content with dropping further IE 7 experimentation and returning to my reliable, open-source browsing solution. I'd recommend that other curious users stick with the proven solutions, rather than trying another half-ass Micro$oft alternative.