

IE to Start Automatic Upgrades across Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 - robin_reala
http://windowsteamblog.com/ie/b/ie/archive/2011/12/15/ie-to-start-automatic-upgrades-across-windows-xp-windows-vista-and-windows-7.aspx

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mrweasel
Microsoft should just start to bundle IE with new solitaire games, so that
people would be forced to upgrade IE to get the new games. That should kill
IE6 in a few hours.

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dazbradbury
Perhaps I'm being overly optimistic, but this has just made my christmas and
new year. If this has a genuine impact, and means people are running IE8 in
the _worst case_ , then I will be a very a happy dev.

Patiently waits to see browser usage trends once this rolls out...

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devonrt
I was thinking the same thing. On government contracts we're still required to
support IE6 even though we can't seem to find an actual computer running IE6.

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polshaw
This move.. which as far as i can tell would be to make IE upgrades opt-out
instead of opt-in, could be a seriously great one. It just might go a long way
to killing off IE6 and IE7, leaving IE 8 as the only non-current version
requiring support.

It's great to fantasize about no IE or the latest IE on XP, but in the real
world this is a very positive move.

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markokocic
Does this mean that IE9 will be available on Win XP?

It would be great, but I doubt that Microsoft will do something like that.
Most likely Win XP users will get "only" security updates an service packs for
IE7, Vista users for IE8 and only Win7 users will get the latest IE.

That being said, I can't see this as a big leap forward, since large majority
of users will not get the latest browser update.

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fleitz
No it doesn't nor does it mean that safari 5 will be available for OSX 10.1
(another OS released around the same time).

What large majority of users still use XP? I'd be surprised if winxp was 50%
let alone 80%. It's official there are more 7 installs than Xp so no majority
let alone a large one.

If you want updates upgrade to win7, xp is over 10 years old. Ie8 already runs
fine on xp.

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sixbrx
I'm in FDA and XP is currently the requirement for us. Anything newer takes a
request for exemption which is a lot of paperwork that will quite possibly be
denied.

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damncabbage
What about 'pirated' copies of Windows? I presume they're not getting updates
at the moment.

(All the same, this is still a good thing.)

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edvinasbartkus
So IE9 runs on Windows XP?

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josefresco
"Today we are sharing our plan to automatically upgrade Windows customers to
the latest version of Internet Explorer available for their PC." First
sentence of the article seems pretty clear to me, the latest IE that your PC
can run will be installed. Not sure why the confusion.

~~~
lambda
I wonder why they decided to be so non-specific in this article. It would have
been more clear to say "Users on XP will be upgraded to IE 8, users on Vista
and 7 will be upgraded to IE 9 and later as new versions are released" or
something of the sort. Instead, they spent a lot of time talking about why
what they're doing is so great, and a lot less time talking about exactly what
they are doing.

~~~
robwgibbons
Because it's a press release. Users will be upgraded to the latest version
available on their system. What more do you want?

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billpatrianakos
First off, IE9 doesn't run on XP. So what does this really mean? Does it mean
we'll be writing hacks for 5 browsers instead of 10 now? Not good enough. This
sounds real good but I get the feeling they'll make updating so convoluted or
the opt-out process _too_ easy to the point where it barely has any effect.
Lame sauce.

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bsenftner
Sounds like the signal to hundreds of millions of Windows users to turn off
automatic updates.

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lreeves
What? Why? What would their motivation be for clinging to IE6 or 7? I can see
large corporations with awful, unsupported "enterprise" applications that only
work with a specific browser not upgrading but end-users shouldn't care at
this point.

~~~
code_duck
Many of them think they care, and believe they have some reason to not
upgrade. When you're running IE 6 or 7 MS frequently directs you to a 'time to
upgrade, here's IE 8/9' page so they've been reminded plenty already.

The reasons I've heard from users include that they:

\- fear it will make their computer unstable

\- believe their hardware can't handle it

\- are comfortable with IE 6/7 and fear change

\- don't understand the extent to which the newer versions are faster/more
secure/more capable

\- 'son/daughter/hubby/wife/computer tech told me not to change anything'

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Florin_Andrei
> _'son/daughter/hubby/wife/computer tech told me not to change anything'_

It's a lot better when they do follow that advice, than when they don't.

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code_duck
Sometimes the person dispensing the advice isn't right. I've heard this from
people who were running IE 7, after all. Using IE 7 is a big enough problem in
itself.

