

Microsoft says: IE6 is like 9 year old milk - cacaolat
http://www.microsoft.com/australia/technet/ie8milk/Default.aspx

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rythie
Their 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
<http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE>

~~~
eam
Or there's also, <http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage>

~~~
eli
I _really_ like IE Tester, but it crashes every 10 minutes or so.

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Vivtek
Now _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.

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ananthrk
It 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.

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dlsspy
IE8 is over a year old. You wouldn't drink year-old milk would you?

~~~
angstrom
Are these dares or MPAA advertisements?

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poops
it 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
I don't see why should any software company provide support and updates to
illegal copies of their software.

~~~
daleharvey
considering 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%

~~~
snprbob86
You 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/...](http://www.computeractive.co.uk/computeractive/news/2173265/five-
pcs-uses-illegal-windows)

Even if you adjust for source-bias, that's a pretty bug number.

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lenni
I 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.

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jackfoxy
I 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
You may be interested in this: [http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/358276/microsoft-
man-my-job-is-t...](http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/358276/microsoft-man-my-job-
is-to-destroy-ie6)

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stanleydrew
Can someone describe this "socially engineered malware" test that IE8 performs
so well on?

~~~
DrJokepu
<http://nsslabs.com/browser-security>

Full report (PDF): [http://nsslabs.com/test-
reports/NSSLabs_Q12010_GTRBrowserSEM...](http://nsslabs.com/test-
reports/NSSLabs_Q12010_GTRBrowserSEM_FINAL.pdf)

~~~
stanleydrew
Just 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.

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Alleyfield
Somehow 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
"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
I 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
the 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)

~~~
Alleyfield
I do understand that the point they're trying to make and I am not arguing for
that. Nor am I arguing that vintage cars might be popular - you're going into
too much detail (the point was that in our modern world, in regard of products
produced, "newer" usually translates to "better").

But what I do believe, is that they're asking the customer to think the
analogy behind the idea of not drinking 9 year old milk and connecting that to
the idea of not using a 9 yo browser (old = bad, new = good as you said).
Wouldn't you agree that for that analogy to work with the message they're
trying to convey, you need to make a connection of putting the IE Browser into
the milk's place in that analogy?

I mean look at that page: half of your screen is filled with a carton of milk
- the other half tells about why you wouldn't use a browser (IE 6) which also
is 9 yo. So wouldn't you agree that somewhere in there lies the notion of IE 6
being as good as 9 yo milk?

Probably?

And remember that most people are bad at remembering numbers. Names, on the
other hand, are something that most people do remember better.

Therefore, imho, I don't understand what the marketing department was
thinking, as in my opinion, the advert connects your thoughts about 9yo milk
to an internet browser (of which we already have created our own views) - and
in the long run people will most probably only remember 9 yo milk & Internet
Explorer (and bear in mind that this advert comes from microsoft).

Therefore, the question of what was the marketing department thinking rose
into my mind. I believe that the point of viewing and "comparing" IE & a
carton of milk screams for some serious rebranding for the product called
"internet explorer" - because nerds can really relate to that message or what?

And in the end of the day, they are the people who power the revolutions of
switching browsers.

tl;dr I don't believe that the advert works in advantage for Microsoft & IE

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I'm going to wade in here: the point the parent was making is that the analogy
is bad on purpose. It's not supposed to make sense. They don't want to say IE6
is like 9yo milk except in that old-age means things have deteriorated. They
want it to appear that IE6 was an excellent browser but that it has somehow
decayed.

Clearly they couldn't think of anything really good to say about IE8 except
that it's not [that] old.

Perhaps they should have compared IE6 to MS Windows ME or something else from
that time that was really really bad.

Maybe "you've ditched Billy Bass, you've moved on from The Sims, you're not
wearing those capri pants anymore; no more monotonic ring-tones, ugg boots are
out; you've served your time as Apprentice and made and lost your million on
the 'net; you're not going to stand for no more snakes on no more planes; so,
isn't it time you upgraded your broswer for what's left of this new millenium?
- IE8 get it in FTW".

Bit formulaic, but that's my pitch - did I win?

~~~
Alleyfield
Your post & pitch is almost exactly the thing I was after for!

I couldn't have come up with a pitch like yours, which imo would be so much
better for Microsoft than the current "carton of milk" -analogy.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Thanks consider me for your next international advertising promo!

;0)

------
zach
Using IE6 is more like drinking 9-year-old antifreeze. It was never wholesome
in the first place.

~~~
natrius
If 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
Antifreeze tastes sweet. It's the long-term effects that are the problem.

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tibbon
So they are saying that we should use nightly builds? I wouldn't use milk
older than a week.

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w1ntermute
_In 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
It 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.)

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dirkstoop
So that makes IE8 14.5 month old milk.

yum.

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jk8
There was a time when MS used to say that IE6 is not the problem

~~~
msg
Just let them change their mind already!

Signed, every web developer in the world

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papachito
If they really believed that they would stop supporting IE6.

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hackermom
As by a coincidence, I have the same opinion about IE7 and even IE8!

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st3fan
So sad that MS can only sell IE8 through 'security features' instead of
standards compliance.

~~~
robryan
Well, 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.

