7 ms·
Microsoft says: IE6 is like 9 year old milk
- tibbon 16y agoSo they are saying that we should use nightly builds? I wouldn't use milk older than a week.
- poops 16y agoit would help if microsoft allowed browser upgrading without checking for a valid installation of windows. i don't know if things changed, as i'm on a mac now, but when i had XP, i was stuck with an older version of IE cause i bought a computer with an invalid copy of the OS
- DrJokepu 16y agoI don't see why should any software company provide support and updates to illegal copies of their software.
- JoachimSchipper 16y agoThey aren't really obligated to do anything, but I'm happier when the botnets are smaller.
- daleharvey 16y agoconsidering its about impossible to buy a pc without paying for a windows license bundled, I would be surprised if the percentage of illegal copies was larger that 0.X%
- perokreco 16y agoOnly if you buy a laptop. There is no need to pay for Windows in a desktop.
- snprbob86 16y agoYou are incorrect and you shouldn't be surprised: 1) Computer repair shops very frequently format computers and re-install pirated copies of Windows. Considering the spyware problem of not too long ago, this is incredibly common. 2) Many parts of the world don't have stores like Best Buy and Dell might not ship there. Many computers are sold as brand new with a pirated copy of Windows. 3) In some nations, pirated Windows copies are sold by street vendors right next to pirated movies and video games. If you don't understand or respect intellectual property rights, you might as well upgrade from XP to Win 7 for next to nothing. Microsoft estimates that 1 in 5 computers has an illegal copy of Windows: http://www.computeractive.co.uk/computeractive/news/2173265/five-pcs-uses-illegal-windows http://www.computeractive.co.uk/computeractive/news/2173265/... Even if you adjust for source-bias, that's a pretty bug number.
- eli 16y agoI was under the impression that they did drop that requirement. (Also, FYI, if you do buy a computer and it came with an illegal copy of Windows, you should contact Microsoft to trade it in for a legit copy. It's usually free to do so provided you rat on the sketchy vendor)
- rythie 16y agoTheir browser is too tied to the OS. Why can't you have IE7+ on Windows 2000 or IE9 on Windows XP? the latest version of Firefox (3.6) works on both. And, why can't you install multiple versions of IE on a computer? I think these things are holding a number of the remaining people back from upgrading.
- arethuza 16y agohttp://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- ck2 16y agoIE Tester is significantly better than Multiple IE http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage Runs IE 5.5, 6.0, 7.0, 8.0 and even 9.0 in tabs. Plus Multiple IE is quite a bit broken these days.
- eam 16y agoOr there's also, http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage
- eli 16y agoI really like IE Tester, but it crashes every 10 minutes or so.
- ck2 16y agoHey even Firefox 3 won't work on Windows ME (grandma uses it). Firefox 2 is becoming too big of a security risk.
- rythie 16y agoThere is something call KernelEx apparently: http://sourceforge.net/projects/kernelex/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/kernelex/ which can fix that. Or you could use Opera, that even supports Windows 95! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_browsers#Historical_web_browsers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_browsers#Hist...
- Vivtek 16y agoNow that is effective user education! Simple, amusing, to the point, and the text draws you right into understanding why upgrades are important. Somebody earned their money on that one.
- stanleydrew 16y agoCan someone describe this "socially engineered malware" test that IE8 performs so well on?
- DrJokepu 16y agohttp://nsslabs.com/browser-security http://nsslabs.com/browser-security Full report (PDF): http://nsslabs.com/test-reports/NSSLabs_Q12010_GTRBrowserSEM_FINAL.pdf http://nsslabs.com/test-reports/NSSLabs_Q12010_GTRBrowserSEM...
- thorax 16y agoHere's the "socially engineered malware" test (PDF) from last year, too, with IE7: http://nsslabs.com/test-reports/NSS%20Labs%20Browser%20Security%20Test%20-%20Socially%20Engineered%20Malware.pdf http://nsslabs.com/test-reports/NSS%20Labs%20Browser%20Secur...
- stanleydrew 16y agoJust read the whole thing and I'm not at all impressed. It turns out socially engineered malware is just regular malware. The report is very low on content. The methodology isn't described at anywhere near the level of detail required to actually reproduce this. The report just throws around a few percentages and repeatedly refers to increases in protection from 8% to 17% as 9% improvement, one of my pet peeves. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but for some reason I expected more.
- gjm11 16y agoIn 2009 and 2008, NSS Labs did very similar reports with very similar results. They were paid for by Microsoft. I don't know whether this one was also paid for by Microsoft (it doesn't seem to say anywhere in its text, though I didn't look very hard). Obviously there's reason to be a bit more skeptical about a paid-for study than a truly independent one.
- jwess 16y agoThe report describes an "in-the-cloud reputation-based system" for identifying URLs leading to malicious downloads (called "socially-engineered malware" in the report). "From an initial list of 12,000 new suspicious sites, 1,756 potentially-malicious URLs were pre-screened for inclusion in the test ... Of the initial 1,756 URLs, ultimately 562 URLs passed our post-validation process and are included in the final results" Since they don't describe their pre-screening or "post-validation" process anywhere in the report, you can't assume it's a completely random set of malicious URLs. In fact, the URLs they tested might have been cherry-picked to give IE8 a higher score.
- w1ntermute 16y agoIn a study by NSS Labs, Internet Explorer 8 caught socially engineered malware 85% of the time compared to Firefox 3's 29%, Safari 4's 29% and Chrome's 17%1. Does anyone know if this is true, or is Microsoft twisting the facts as usual?
- invisible 16y agoIt looks like the source they show says that and IE8's other report on there is actually better than Firefox's results (for phishing). I'm not sure if there are other independent studies out there that suggest IE8 is less secure. (E.g. NSS Labs may only do two tests and those just so happen to make IE8 look good.)
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- hackermom 16y agoAs by a coincidence, I have the same opinion about IE7 and even IE8!
- st3fan 16y agoSo sad that MS can only sell IE8 through 'security features' instead of standards compliance.
- robryan 16y agoWell, the target audience is people on IE6. Standards obviously mean nothing to these people, the majority probably wouldn't get it even if the whole thing was devoted to standards, hell, the average firefox user probably doesn't care about standards. Focusing on how someone could come to financial loss by using a certain browser is a great angle. Money means something to everyone no matter how much they know about the internet.
- lkjhghjk 16y agoIE 6 was deliberately non-standard so people would be locked into the MS platform. A lot of companies developed internal apps and sites on this basis, so telling them that they have to spend money with MS again to upgrade it all because they were ripped off the first time - might be a tricky proposition.
- zach 16y agoUsing IE6 is more like drinking 9-year-old antifreeze. It was never wholesome in the first place.
- natrius 16y agoIf my memory serves me correctly, IE 6 was actually the fastest browser when it came out, and it correctly rendered more sites than Netscape since people often only tested their sites in IE. In 2001, running IE 6 was relatively pleasant.
- zach 16y agoAntifreeze tastes sweet. It's the long-term effects that are the problem.
- thwarted 16y agoI'm so glad we've moved toward a more objective definition of "correct". I remember trying to tell people that IE didn't do things the way it should, and they would just respond with that it was "correct" because they only ever used IE.
- lotharbot 16y agoThe analogy I have always used: surfing the web with IE is like eating food you find in the dumpster. If you're very, very careful you can stay healthy for a long time, but eventually, you're going to catch something. Surfing with IE6 is like drinking 9-year-old milk you found in the dumpster. It wasn't a good idea when it was just-expired milk, but now it's even worse.
- jackfoxy 16y agoI hope we see more of a campaign by MS to retire IE6. It's very difficult to get most people (and I'm not talking about people who post here) to switch browsers, except when they change machines. Anything MS does that gets people off of IE6 before that event is a public service.
- Hovertruck 16y agoYou may be interested in this: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/358276/microsoft-man-my-job-is-to-destroy-ie6 http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/358276/microsoft-man-my-job-is-t...
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- Alleyfield 16y agoSomehow I just don't see the point in comparing an internet browser to consumer goods (which are bought to be consumed) such as milk - things which are fast one time purchases. What was the marketing department thinking?
- techiferous 16y ago"What was the marketing department thinking?" About marketing. It's a metaphor that's hard to forget. And it makes the point that browsers can "go bad" after a time period because the rest of the industry has moved on. I think the goal was not to find a perfect metaphor but to get IE6 users to upgrade their browsers.
- Alleyfield 16y agoI do understand that but please, analyze it more carefully. You're marketing a version of your product which is compared against a carton of milk. I tend to think that when you're marketing a browser you should regard them as valuable cars, as you wan't to build up some goodwill among your customer base. If your customers regard your browser as a carton of milk which basically is just a carton of milk - a product that's fastly consumed - then what makes them to connect to your product (in this case, an internet browser)? Will it build goodwill? What if mercedes benz announced that their old products are just tin cans - and that you probably wouldn't want to keep old tin cans laying around - what kind of a message would the company be conveying to the customer in view of their product? If microsoft itself views the explorer product family as cartons of milk and also conveys a clear message of it through its own marketing - then, in my opinion, as brutal as it sounds, it's time to rebrand the product. Even when you're publishing a new version of the product, essentially, you'll just be publishing a prettier carton of milk.
- daleharvey 16y agothe products arent supposed to be compared in the slightest, they just want people to realise that when it comes to browsers old = bad, new = good. that is most certainly true for milk, its not so clear with cars (vintage cars are popular, if cars are looked after they can last a long long time)
- lenni 16y agoI for one am glad that Microsoft is marketing their browser a little more and I liked the little presentation. I hate IE as much as the next guy but IE8 is much better than IE6 and if it takes Microsoft to say that having a modern browser is important so that people believe it, then so be it.
- jk8 16y agoThere was a time when MS used to say that IE6 is not the problem
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- ananthrk 16y agoIt is a very impressive analogy to convey the message and neatly done as well. However, the biggest bummer for me was when I finally clicked on the "Download IE8" link. The page contained a "Install SilverLight" link on the premier portion of the page (and I was thrown off thinking why I need SilverLight for IE8) and the link to download IE8 was way below after a scroll.
- papachito 16y agoIf they really believed that they would stop supporting IE6.
- dlsspy 16y agoIE8 is over a year old. You wouldn't drink year-old milk would you?
- nopassrecover 16y agoHow's 9 week old milk then
- angstrom 16y agoAre these dares or MPAA advertisements?
- dirkstoop 16y agoSo that makes IE8 14.5 month old milk. yum.