Well you can uninstall IE9 as win7 came with IE8, so you would be reverting to IE8 which you can’t only remove the selection of the browser element (outside the US were browser choice is selectable) as you mention not its integration.

Looks like we will see something different in windows 8 where IE 10 or whatever won’t be tightly integrated into the OS. Which is what I really don’t like about it (along with activeX and BHOs), as essentially even if you don’t use IE you still have to get the updates.