I've read that MS may initiate update of IE from 7 to 8 this week . ??

I have also seen it in a reputable place that industry is being advised to turn off Auto update and only download IE8 manually

Yeah, thankfully I turn off auto-updates on any PC I use, as I can't stand being reminded I should download updates every 5 minutes.
Even when work decided it would be a 'good' idea to force updates via the domain policy settings, I just disabled the Windows Update service

I hope not, I tried the beta and it was awful, constant crahses and lockups on webpages had to remove it after 4 days.

I booted a little-used Vista (business) test system today for the first time in a while and IE8 RC1 came whizzing in!