Isn't IE 6 still around because many companies still standardize on it for their intranets? I would think the answer is Yes as evidenced by MSFT's recent life extension to 2014.
Let me put it like this: Microsoft is only supporting (issuing security updates to, etc) IE6 because it was shipped with XP and Microsoft is still supporting XP. XP can't enter into the legacy version phase due to the large number of customers refusing to upgrade. If Microsoft could phase out XP, it could phase out IE6 as well. If Microsoft phased out IE6, companies would be forced to phase out IE6 as well. Hence, everyone who's refusing to upgrade to Vista (or Windows 7 soon) is helping keeping IE6 alive.
How did you come to this conclusion? IE4 and IE5 were swiftly phased out by the "new, improved, IE6!" if I remember rightly, and I think ActiveX was seriously improved and overhauled with IE6 which many companies use(d) in their intranet.
I don't mind Vista any longer, and this was written on Vista, but I don't like it. If you want to talk about refusing to upgrade... I still like Windows 98 better than all "improvements" upon it, because it never crashed on me.
last week i booted an old box with ie6 as the only browser around, windows update was pushing ie8 as a critical update. i didn't apply it, because a real install of ie6 (not the stand alone collection) is what that system is used for...but it is nice to know that msft is pushing users to upgrade with a bit more emphasis than in the past (an optional upgrade, though critical upgrades are optional)
Jsm, you might be happy to know, but any Windows system with IE can go back to IE6. I just found IETester recently, and it's been an awesome pack to test compatibility with IE5.5 - IE8!
But MSFT suggests later versions of IE via software updates, even on XP. No? So wouldn't most consumers be on versions newer than IE6 and thus the majority of IE6 users are those from within organizations that don't upgrade?
