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Internet Users Not Updating Browser

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the but-it's-just-so-hard dept.

Jackson writes "Security researchers from ETH Zurich, Google, and IBM Internet Security Systems have shown that more than 600 million Internet users don't use the latest version of their browser. The researchers' paper, shows that as of June 2008, only 59.1 percent of Internet users worldwide use the latest major version of their preferred web browser. Suggestions have also been made to inform users that their browser is out of date."

10 of 409 comments (clear)

  1. How many of those users CAN upgrade? by gravyface · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you're running Win9x/2000, you can't upgrade to the latest version of Internet Explorer.

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    body massage!
    1. Re:How many of those users CAN upgrade? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Windows 9x users cannot use the latest version of Firefox either.

    2. Re:How many of those users CAN upgrade? by badpazzword · · Score: 5, Informative

      They can still upgrade to Opera, which supports down to Windows 95.

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      When ideas fail, words become very handy.
    3. Re:How many of those users CAN upgrade? by amnezick · · Score: 5, Funny

      that was very subtle: "upgrade TO opera"

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      mov ax,4c00h
      int 21h
  2. Yeah, but by krkhan · · Score: 5, Funny

    I can't upgrade to the latest version. It makes my tabs crash and causes me to lose m

  3. Re:No point in updating IE6 by ErikZ · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Please, for the love of all that's holy, upgrade to IE7.

    Once IE6 installations get down below a certain point, we won't have to spend crazy amounts of time rewriting web pages so they *also* work in IE6.

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    Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
  4. A good chuck of that 52% is corporate policy. by 1shooter · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The IT drones at my employer rigidly demand that all company machines must run IE6. They've coded all their intranet applications solely for that version and by god they will not budge. Firefox is forbidden as a "security risk" and no where to be seen is IE7. Fortunately for me I work on Linux based projects and and run what I please.

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    6F 9E A9 1E 96 9F 74 27 ED B8 81 6D 0C 4E 1E 78
    My other Sig is a 229.
  5. Re:How many are IE6? by badpazzword · · Score: 5, Informative

    Even if you do not explicitly use Internet Explorer for browsing, you should upgrade it as it is a core part of the Windows Kernel.

    Internet Explorer it is used behind the scenes in many places; the eye-candy interfaces of most Norton products, for example, runs on the IE engine.

    Not that I recommend Norton products, still...

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    When ideas fail, words become very handy.
  6. hmm, let's see... by CaptainPatent · · Score: 5, Funny

    Lynx 2.8.6... yep, I'm up-to-date...

    in a manner of speaking.

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    Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
  7. Re:Firefox vs. IE by gfxguy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Noscript is ridiculous... I mean, it's not like ad-block where advertisers find new ways to annoy you and ad-block has to find a way to counter it; nocscript simply disallows running scripts... is it that bad that there's three new versions a week?

    The answer is no... from what I read elsewhere, noscript updates take advantage of a flaw in computing the popularity of plug-ins by continuously updating so that they always get ranked at or near the top.

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    Stupid sexy Flanders.