Microsoft says: IE6 is like 9 year old milk

http://www.microsoft.com/australia/technet/ie8milk/Default.aspx

by cacaolat • 16 years ago

116 67 16 years ago

poops• 16 years ago

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

DrJokepu2• 16 years ago

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

JoachimSchipper• 16 years ago

They aren't really obligated to do anything, but I'm happier when the botnets are smaller.

daleharvey2• 16 years ago

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%

eli2• 16 years ago

I 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)

rythie6• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE

eam• 16 years ago

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

ck2• 16 years ago

Hey even Firefox 3 won't work on Windows ME (grandma uses it).

Firefox 2 is becoming too big of a security risk.

rythie6• 16 years ago

There is something call KernelEx apparently: 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#Hist...

est• 16 years ago

I remember there was a HTML4.01 upgrade pack for IE back in Win95 or something. Why don't they do the same for IE6? A HTML5 upgrade pack for all IE.

steve19• 16 years ago

No way! The last thing we need to support IE6+HTML5 as well as IE6. IE6 needs to die.

nfnaaron2• 16 years ago

"Their browser is too tied to the OS."

During the debates surrounding the anti-trust trial MS argued that that, browser tied to the OS, is a feature. They were close to saying that the browser is the OS.

rythie6• 16 years ago

Only because Microsoft made that stupid design choice, there is no reason it needed to be part of the OS. The numerous alternative browsers that work perfectly well illustrates that.

kprobst• 16 years ago

Funny how Google went and did the same thing.

Vivtek• 16 years ago

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.

stanleydrew2• 16 years ago

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

DrJokepu2• 16 years ago

http://nsslabs.com/browser-security

Full report (PDF): http://nsslabs.com/test-reports/NSSLabs_Q12010_GTRBrowserSEM...

thorax• 16 years ago

Here's the "socially engineered malware" test (PDF) from last year, too, with IE7:

http://nsslabs.com/test-reports/NSS%20Labs%20Browser%20Secur...

stanleydrew2• 16 years ago

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.

gjm11• 16 years ago

In 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• 16 years ago

The 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• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

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.)

hackermom• 16 years ago

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

st3fan• 16 years ago

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

robryan• 16 years ago

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.

zach2• 16 years ago

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

natrius• 16 years ago

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.

zach2• 16 years ago

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

thwarted• 16 years ago

I'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• 16 years ago

The 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• 16 years ago

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• 16 years ago

You may be interested in this: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/358276/microsoft-man-my-job-is-t...

Alleyfield5• 16 years ago

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• 16 years 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.

Alleyfield5• 16 years ago

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.

pmccool• 16 years ago

I think the marketing department did just fine. Browsers do indeed have a shelf life. The blame rests with those who created the situation, not those who pointed it out.

lenni• 16 years ago

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.

jk8• 16 years ago

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

rythie6• 16 years ago

Isn't that the point of the milk analogy? Milk is good when it's fresh, but not so much when it's old.

msg• 16 years ago

Just let them change their mind already!

Signed, every web developer in the world

ananthrk• 16 years ago

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.

papachito• 16 years ago

If they really believed that they would stop supporting IE6.

tibbon• 16 years ago

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

dlsspy• 16 years ago

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

nopassrecover• 16 years ago

How's 9 week old milk then

angstrom• 16 years ago

Are these dares or MPAA advertisements?

dirkstoop• 16 years ago

So that makes IE8 14.5 month old milk.

yum.

Microsoft says: IE6 is like 9 year old milk

Related Stories