Internet Explorer 10 Drops Vista Support

Pigskin-Referee writes "This week at Microsoft's MIX11 Web developer conference, the company surprised many by making a pre-release version of Internet Explorer 10 available — less than a month after IE9 came out in its final form. But another surprise was uncovered by Computerworld's Gregg Keizer: the next IE won't run on any OS before Windows 7, including Vista. Microsoft took some heat when it came out that Internet Explorer 9 would leave millions of Windows XP users in the lurch, as the new browser would only run on Windows 7 and Vista. But the company confirmed that IE10 won't even run on Vista."

Comments

This is the best thing they can do.

[Mage Powers]

Great marketing for alternative browsers :^)

Wow

[dmomo]

If this browser is unable to run on even Windows XP, all it says to me is "Hi, I have to interact with your computer in a way no browser should need to."

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in the times of Netscape, they wanted the browser to replace the OS (the user-visible parts of it, of course, not the kernel/drivers/etc.). The company failed to achieve it, but its brainchild -- Firefox -- managed to push Microsoft and Google close to that point.

The more `rich content' (3D graphics and whatnot) runs in browser, the closer it needs to be to extra hardware (3D accelerator) and OS software (security provider, data store etc.)

Fixed that for you....

[ZosX]

"Windows Vista customers have a great browsing experience with IE9, but in building IE10 we are focused on continuing to drive the kind of innovation that only happens when you take advantage of screwing customers into buying modern operating systems and modern hardware for no good reason other than greed.""

I fail to see why IE 10 would not run on vista which is like 98% the same as Windows 7. What could there possibly be in Windows 7 that Vista lacks? It even has DX11. So hardware acceleration is not the issue.... I mean seriously. There is probably some mere flag in the installer that forces it to only work on Windows 7 and that is likely the only thing preventing it from running on Vista.

I mean google chrome runs on ancient P4s running XP. Give me a break.

Internet Explorer? I think I've heard of it...

[MasterOfGoingFaster]

Uh... Internet Explorer? Oh yeah - that thing I use to load Chrome, Firefox and Opera on a new PC?

Why? Does it do something else i'm unaware of?

Re:Slashdot's Microsoft Icon

[erroneus]

I'd vote for a chair flying through a broken window!

Um, it's just a web browser ya know....

[rsilvergun]

If Opera, Mozilla and Google can all make their browsers run just fine on Windows XP/Vista, why the heck can't Microsoft? Or did you really buy into that 'native HTML5' stuff?