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IE6 Addiction Inhibits Windows 7 Migrations

Posted by Soulskill on from the second-verse-same-as-the-first dept.

eldavojohn writes "As anyone in the industry will tell you, a lot of money went into developing web applications specific to IE6. And corporations can't leave Windows XP for Windows 7 until IE6 runs (in some way) on Windows 7. Microsoft wants to leave that non-standard browser mess behind them, but as the article notes, 'Organizations running IE6 have told Gartner that 40% of their custom-built browser-dependent applications won't run on IE8, the version packaged with Windows 7. Thus, many companies face a tough decision: Either spend time and money to upgrade those applications so that they work in newer browsers, or stick with Windows XP.' Support for XP is going to end in April 2014. In order to deal with this, companies are looking at virtualizing IE6 only (instead of a full operating system) so that it can run on Windows 7 — even though Microsoft says this violates licensing agreements. IE6 is estimated to have roughly 16% of browser market share, and due to mistakes in the past it may never truly die."

6 of 470 comments (clear)

  1. XP Mode Anyone? by klwood911 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Its called XP Mode, microsoft ships it with IE6 installed and can be legally run on any Windows 7 Professional PC. Just download and install for free. When the sites are upgraded, swap back over to IE8 and uninstall. Plus it has the added benefit of running all your old software that won't run under 7.

  2. Addiction this, addiction that by noidentity · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Nice, yet another "addiction". Maybe we can misuse the word into meaninglessness in a few years.

  3. Re:What do you expect? by Tim+C · · Score: 0, Redundant

    You forget that this is Slashdot, where anything even vaguely critical of Micro$oft is very much a story...

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    It's official. Most of you are morons.
  4. Re:What do you expect? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Redundant

    We'd still be running the same applications on 7 that we run on XP, so why upgrade?

    Ding ding ding! We have a winner!

    Blah blah updates blah... nobody cares.

  5. Wine? by MMC+Monster · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Anyone know if IE 6 will run on wine? If so, it should be (relatively) simple to run on a compilation of wine that runs on Windows 7.

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    Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
  6. start WINEing by oliverthered · · Score: 0, Redundant

    I expect I can run IE6 via WINE on linux with little or no problems.

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    thank God the internet isn't a human right.