Update (February 29, 2004):

Microsoft has announced that they've put on hold any immediate plans to hobble Internet Explorer as a workaround on the Eolas problem. This may prove a shortlived reprieve should the appeal or the patent review turn out not in Microsoft's favor, but there are many months before this will become important again. Insiders all believe that Eolas will lose any appeal and that its patent will be rescinded.

Original story (February 1, 2004):

It's been months since the first warnings, and not one of the major active content companies has provided any of the promised object tools to make fixing code an automatic process. The few pay-for solutions only work under very specific conditions or OS and need serious avoidance. This leaves surfers unsure when their favorite sites might go haywire and webdevelopers unsure how fast to predeploy code fixes. What's odd is that if the pay-for solutions could be bammed out in a weekend in C++ or Delphi, how come a proper and professional solution with a support team can't be written in a few weeks. The hysteria and need to change are great enough to warrant a NOW NOW NOW approach.

About the best that can be suggested is that if a site has large pools of webdevelopment talent and isn't afraid to do a lot of midnight coding, then wait and see if the tools really are delivered before Microsoft unveils the first versions of Internet Explorer that are purposefully crippled to avoid the Eolas problems. For the rest of the 'Net, it might be best to make January and February 2004 be the months were the coding all gets fixed. The tools can always be applied later, if they're ever actually made available.