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IE6 Still Going Strong In China
RackNine writes "Net Applications estimates that IE6 has a share of 33.8% in China, StatCounter estimates about 40.2%. Consider the fact that there are currently about 477 million Internet users in China and you get 160 to 192 million IE6 users. That is potentially more than all Internet users in Africa and the Middle East combined (187 million)."
I'm waiting for NetCraft to confirm it.
...and StatCounter also reports that Windows XP - the most frequently pirated OS in existence - is still powering along at 81% Coincidence? Nay, I think not: http://www.troyhunt.com/2010/08/aye-pirates-be-reason-ie6-just-wont-die.html
Microsoft MVP - Developer Security
doesn't need more explaining than that. also these stats are nothing new, the last time there was blabla confirms it browser blablychro has a blabla marketshare, the stats included these as well.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
http://isie6deadyet.com/
Is it any wonder why so many botnets command zombie legions in China?
Is it also any wonder why so much high-profile hacking originates from inside China? (undoubtedly a lot of it does come from Chinese efforts, but anybody that's interested in hacking high-profile targets can just route themselves through China, too)
But couldn't they be running a somewhat modern version of Firefox? I know recent versions don't run on XP, but certainly there's something more capable than IE6 that will run on XP. IE7? IE8? Opera? Chrome? Are the Chinese really so lazy as Americans that they can't be bothered to upgrade beyond the default browser?
That's kind of funny in comparison to my little corner of the US. On a gardening site I run (so non-techie) I'm currently seeing IE with a 42% market share total. This is down from 51% a year ago, and somewhere around 65% the year before that.
#DeleteChrome
They may just be too lazy to figure out how to activate which can be pretty complex if you're not willing to pay. Which means they may be stuck with SP1 or even worse no service pack. I can't remember if Firefox 3+ requires a service pack or not but I know a lot of applications require Windows XP SP2.
China is going through the same thing we more or less fixed about... six or seven years ago. Websites are coded to IE6 because everyone uses IE6, and everyone uses IE6 because that's the only thing that will render these websites "correctly".
Between that and the Great Firewall, China might as well be considered as having its own version of the Internet.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Not lazy. I bet most are probably not aware. They may also not see the need for a better browser? Compatibility of websites they visit, HTML files they receive, etc... could be an issue. Not to mention that there are tons of IE derived shells that claim to be a different browser to the user but reports itself as IE to websites. Most users can't see the diff between those and other browsers.
The recent and future versions of Firefox do run on XP. I think you mixed that up with Win98/Me which is not supported since Firefox 3
(I can't access my Bank of China account on anything but IE; BOC requires a browser plugin for "security" that won't run on anything but IE. Guess I'll be doing all of my online banking at work, because I run Macs and Linux at the house.)
Chinese don't need anything but IE to access their internet, because their internet is damned ugly with no sense of design or aesthetics. The entire Chinese internet is like visiting MySpace. The few sites that cater to us expats usually have non-Chinese designers.
--Jim (me)
"...about the size of two football fields, or your average restraining order". -- Adam Savage
Why always comparing numbers to the size or anything else? In all media there is always the "it's about the size of ..." quote that always seems it does not mean anything related to the subject discussed.
I know, completely unrelated subject. I missed it by about that much.
--- Bouh !!! ---
It's only IE8+ that doesn't run on XP.
All the others run on XP and several of them will still run on 2000 and even 95/98.
The problem is that activeX seems to be very popular in Chinese websites.
Firefox 3's still a pretty decent browser though, especially compared to IE6. No HTML5 support, but hell, IE didn't get it until this year.
I'm not sure why you'd care, unless it's that there's that many zombied botnet computers in China already pwned by IE6 vulnerabilities.
Those users are useless as far as users/views go to anyone but the Chinese government and websites inside China. If Microsoft thinks they can benefit by grovelling and playing nice they'll just get their Google-chasing asses kicked harder later.
IE9+ actually.
Chinese websites don't support Firefox, so that's where it ends. E.g. to make payments with Alipay/Taobao you need IE specific ActiveX plugins.
(Actually they will have unofficial firefox and even linux plugins, but it's hard to find and troublesome to install.)
In countries with a lower average income, the lifetime of computers is significantly longer. And the chinese i worked with usually have an extreme habit of "never touch a running system". And they dont declare a possible virus infection to be a problem.
So basically they are still in the Geocities era of perpetual under construction gifs.
But couldn't they be running a somewhat modern version of Firefox? I know recent versions don't run on XP, but certainly there's something more capable than IE6 that will run on XP. IE7? IE8? Opera? Chrome? Are the Chinese really so lazy as Americans that they can't be bothered to upgrade beyond the default browser?
i like XP
The next 10 versions of FireFox will still support XP. That should cover us till the end of next week.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
During the 4 short months I was in China, most of the computers I saw were old and running XP. It is no wonder they use IE6. Yes. I believe the statistics from having witnessed it. However, most people visit Chinese sites. Those people in China that surf to western sites and purchase western products on them most likely have better/newer computers running pirated versions of Windows 7. My conclusion is the IE6 users in China are NOT potential customers and therefore irrelevant. So I refuse to develop IE6 compatible sites.
Still using alot of IE6 even pre SP1 so SSL v2 doesn't work and they are wanting to use more and more 'cloud' solutions in their IT strategy #fail
XP may be officially "unsupported" in 2014, but China, and corporate users in other countries will keep it going for decades to come. Too bad Ubuntu/Gnome didn't "get the hint" and create a usable interface like XP instead of Unity/Gnome-Shell or they could of got some of the market share. IE6/XP is this centuries' COBOL.
North Korea even still uses Windows 95.
In short, I don't think the "alternative browser" revolution ever happened in China. About 86% still use IE, the Chinese web is built for IE. They're really in a class of their own here, compare it to say India which is another country that is big and will be ridiculously huge as everybody gets online (July estimates):
IE: 33.48%
FF: 32.86%
Chrome: 29.78%
It's pretty much the same with search engines, everywhere but China Google has about 90%. In China it's 65% Baidu, 31% Google. They are on the Internet in the sense that they have an IP address but most Chinese are practically on their own net using their own tools and don't know or care what goes on in the "outside" world. Even if you call the US navel gazing, at least there's a helluva lot of foreigners that speak English and surf English-language sites that'll give you the international opinion. There's not a lot of non-Chinese that browse Chinese sites and the expat Chinese would like to visit or go back and still be on good terms with the government. Not saying it's perfect everywhere else either but it's still a fairly closed society, Internet or not.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Many of the non-technical people who are still on dialup connections(which is still a lot of people), don't want to spend an hour downloading something that isn't broken. My parents don't update Firefox(or any other software) very often, because it takes a long time to over a 24kbps connection to get the updates and while that is going on, their single phone line is tied up.
Banks and most e-commerce websites require ActiveX controls thanks to export bans on encryption back in the 1990s. SSL is not preferred as it was only 64 bit until a few years ago. This was also way Apple gave up on Korea a few years back, as Macs were useless due to every site that needed SSL simply required ActiveX a decade ago and most still do today.
Requiring genuine copies of XP prevents Windows Update to upgrade these users to IE 8 which is much better than IE 6 and at least considered a modern 2009/2010 era browser. IE 8 is popular in China too but most versions of cracked XP still ship with IE 6 and are impossible to upgrade.
http://saveie6.com/
Okay, you'd done your duty to the Microsoft propaganda dept.
Of course, one of the major reasons that the "Tomato OS" is so popular is Microsoft lockin. If you're using a MIcrosoft web server (like Bank of China does ... did?) you really have to use the Microsoft browser for it to work properly but that's far too expensive for the working Chinese. Add to that the fact of the political decision to force the browser into the OS 'shell', ie explorer.exe. and Microsoft have effectively bazookered their feet.
So they have a "super popular" OS bonded to a "super unpopular" web browser. Well Microsoft standard practice is to use the upgrade treadmill and force some upgrades, make the new version incompatible with the old version to force the network effect to work for you.
Problem is that doesn't work very well with pirated copies.
Still it gives the propaganda dept. a nice "poor Microsoft" sound-bite.
What are you smoking? My windows XP has a more recent version of Firefox than my Ubuntu.
Just a thought, but isn't this because China mainly uses the Maxthon browser, which uses IE6 as its engine (or at least used to, for a looong time)? They built a browser on top of IE6 that has tabs and other modern things, so the user experience isn't as completely shit as plain old IE6.
Your post sounds more like propaganda than his post...
I know, I'm not very good at propaganda. But like the best propaganda everything I said is true, however, I've tried to be 'complete', ie not take anything out of context.
If they do not compare it to the thickness of a human hair then it is pointless ! (As if all hair in humans had the same thickness)
IE 6 is the best browser ever built! Maybe if more of us signed the petition to save IE 6 and have W3C change it's standards to mimick IE 6 then all the web developers could live in absolute paradise.
Okay, I guess that means Microsoft aren't as annoying as I thought they were.
Never mind :-)
Me too!
But then again, I work in IT security and make a living fighting malware, so my view might be skewed...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I thought that China was the one complaining the most about IPv4 exhaustion, and thereby putting extra efforts in accelerating IPv6 introduction. But if they're going to stick to IE6, that's just going to defeat that objective, since IE6 is the one major browser left that doesn't support the new protocol.
What's w/ them? Since they pirate most of their software anyway, why can't they just pirate Windows 7 or Lion and just keep going? It's not like it'll be costing them money. But they'll get all the IPv6 addresses they need - APNIC doesn't have any more IPv4 addresses to give them.
Lots of mainland Internet users don't have access at home, but will use it in Internet cafés instead. I wouldn't be surprised if many of them are still running XP (if a computer ain't broke, don't fix it - that costs too much), with the default IE6.
Many mainlanders have connection at home or at work as well of course, yet those are used far less intensive than shared computers.
(I can't access my Bank of China account on anything but IE; BOC requires a browser plugin for "security" that won't run on anything but IE. Guess I'll be doing all of my online banking at work, because I run Macs and Linux at the house.)
Chinese don't need anything but IE to access their internet, because their internet is damned ugly with no sense of design or aesthetics. The entire Chinese internet is like visiting MySpace. The few sites that cater to us expats usually have non-Chinese designers.
ActiveX for security, yep, that's smart.
As for Chinese website design, I think it's partly linguistic. Chinese can fit a whole sales pitch on two square inches. So their websites look like lots of little boxes, all crammed together. It's a weird aesthetic. Japan has it too. Other websites (especially official ones) are just badly designed, by someone with more "connections" than skill.
I've tried to be 'complete'.
If you mean a 'complete dick', then yes, good job.
Banks and most e-commerce websites require ActiveX controls thanks to export bans on encryption back in the 1990s. SSL is not preferred as it was only 64 bit until a few years ago. This was also way Apple gave up on Korea a few years back, as Macs were useless due to every site that needed SSL simply required ActiveX a decade ago and most still do today.
Requiring genuine copies of XP prevents Windows Update to upgrade these users to IE 8 which is much better than IE 6 and at least considered a modern 2009/2010 era browser. IE 8 is popular in China too but most versions of cracked XP still ship with IE 6 and are impossible to upgrade.
It is very possible to upgrade even the unlicensed versions - IE upgrade does not require validation (as most upgrades). Just let upgrades on automatic or its other settings - the upgrades will come along by themselves.
Microsoft even quietly acknowledged the fact that they let everyone do most upgrades because of fears of mass malware outbreaks.
BTW Firefox/Chrome/Opera all work on XP and later Windows versions (most work on 2000 too) - they have everything they need bundled so they dont rely on specific version system dlls. Only IE 9 is limited to post XP versions.
Rendering is not the issue, the main problem is custom activex which is pushed even from government web sites.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
Maxthon and other popular chinese browsers happily identify themselves as IE6
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
Funny you should mention that as Windows 7 is easier to pirate than XP ever was. In fact not only is Windows 7 easier to pirate ( the hacked version floating around doesn't even need a code, and has all versions from Starter to Ultimate on the disc) but if you look up "Tiny7 Rev 09" you'll find a version of Windows 7 that uses less memory than XP while keeping most of the bling except the see through taskbar. How the hell those guys did it I don't know, but I decided to give it a spin on an old off lease office box I was gonna have to wipe anyway. We're talking about a 1.6Ghz with 512Mb of old SDRAM and damned if the OS isn't fricking peppy!
As for TFA maybe someone in China can answer this next question: Is your banking tied to IE 6 like Korea? I know Korea has been stuck on IE 6 for awhile due to using ActiveX to get around the crypto export rules. Maybe China has the same problem?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
But do they support XP before any service packs are installed? Many software packages don't officially support XP "pure" or XP with just service pack 1. If FF needs SP2 and most of the pirate copies over there are still running "pure" or SP1 due to activation issues stopping the service packs installing then FF is not an option.
Though I think a lot of web based apps like online banking facilities use ActiveX for stuff over there (and in other countries, such as South Korea, too), which locks users into IE of some sort to an extent. IE6 is probably common (if the piracy is as big an issue as I'm lead to believe) because IIRC IE7 and IE8 won't install without an "activated" copy of XP with SP2 or later applied.
Finally, Chrome and Firefox can jump in numbers by ignoring just one country!
Well as a PC repairman I can't comment on the Chinese but I CAN comment on why there is all these "WinXP Razr1911 SP2 corp edition" with no patches...WGA. The pirates KNOW how to update without getting WGA'ed. The people they sell the boxes to? So don't have a clue. So the pirates simply disable all the updates and there ya go. The user thinks their PC is getting slower because it is getting older when in reality it is getting ever increasing piles of malware.
The current record for malware on a single box at the shop was a Compaq desktop which had 2836 pieces of malware and took over an hour and a half to boot. Yeah I could have just wiped it but I wanted to see if I beat my old boss' record of 1931 bugs on a single box, which I did. It was a whitebox that had Razr1911 SP2 on it and this was last year, not a single update since SP2 was released.
So I wouldn't be surprised that the locals are getting Razr'd and are simply clicking on "The big blue E" which they believe means Internet. I actually had an argument once with a girl who wanted to know why she couldn't check her email because the machine I sold her "had the Internet in it!" and when I asked WTF she was talking about she actually thought the big blue E would magically give her the Internet without needing anything else.
As my old boss used to say "Boy you may think you've seen the dumbest computer user but trust me, every time you think the stupidity couldn't get any deeper someone will happily come and prove you wrong" and no truer words have been spoken. Expecting these folks who haven't even updated IE to know about alternative browsers? Yeah and pull this leg it plays jingle bells.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
As for TFA maybe someone in China can answer this next question: Is your banking tied to IE 6 like Korea?
For most banks that matter, yes. For odd reasons the password field uses ActiveX.
IIRC IE7 and IE8 won't run without SP2 or SP3 installed, which may pose a problem to those with pirate copies who can't be bothered to jump through the hoops to get them installed without a properly activated copy of XP (and are therefore running SP1 or "pure" XP).
are they viewing? Do any sites still support IE6?
http://www.awfullybigmoustache.com
China has a lot of people using IE6 because they are using Windows 2000 which does not have activation. However, Windows XP, Vista, and 7 do require activation.
because Baidu, the most popular search engine over there, is working on a browser of its own which guessing by the screenshots is based on Chrom{-e, -ium}.
"Slashdot - the one place on the internet where guys brag about how small it is." - that IT girl
That's because they're built on it. Basically they're just adding their own UI or extensions to IE 6.
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
if you look up "Tiny7 Rev 09" you'll find a version of Windows 7 that uses less memory than XP
Compare like with like. I'll bet it uses more memory than comparable minimal repacks of windows XP, of which there are plenty.
I am trolling
Installing a pirate version of windows has never been hard (you could integrate the key with XP too). The problem is keeping it up to date without the risk of running into WGA and/or activation. So while machines sold with legitimate windows strongly encourage (in the first run setup) users to turn on automatic updates machines sold with pirate windows (which probablly won't bother with the first run setup) are likely to have them disabled.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
The better to snoop you with, my dear.
Seriously? If you can pirate XPSP1 you can pirate XPSP2. SP3 is a free download from MS.com.
Not sure whether the Ling's Cars website is representative of the weird aesthetic you refer to, but it's a hoot nevertheless.
A must see for aspiring web designers everywhere. ;-)
If you're using a MIcrosoft web server (like Bank of China does ... did?) you really have to use the Microsoft browser for it to work properly
When I ran Apache HTTP Server on Windows Server 2003 inside my employer's intranet, clients running Firefox on Ubuntu had no problem accessing it. Nor have I had a problem reaching public web servers running IIS from my Ubuntu laptop. I've never used IIS in any of my own deployments, but I've been told it still runs PHP applications. So to what extent does any popular Microsoft web server technology require Internet Explorer?
For odd reasons the password field uses ActiveX.
Might it have something to do with historical limits on the strength of encryption that can be exported from the United States to China?
All the damned Security digital video recorders still use fricking Active X for their web control. Every single one of those things are complete crap because that are all China made and they don't put any effort into making the interface work with any browser.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The entire Chinese internet is like visiting MySpace. The few sites that cater to us expats usually have non-Chinese designers.
Oh, so that's where GeoCities went!
What I remember is that Maxthon was pretty popular in china - and Maxthon is (used to be?) just IE6 with a nicer UI (Tabs, mouse gestures, skins, ad-blocking, search, ...)
Seeing that most people I know that switched away from IE6 did so because of lacking support for tabs and no built-in ad-blocker (but not because of security or engine issues) there simply might never have been a good reason to switch away from Trident in China.
besides all of the |337 p1r4735 have copies of sp3 now anyway
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Except for this:
If you're using a MIcrosoft web server [...] you really have to use the Microsoft browser for it to work properly
...which is completely not true. If you serve up ActiveX controls, then yes, you need IE; however, there's nothing inherent in IIS or ASP.NET that requires IE on the client side.
The Freelance Wizard
What? I've had no problems accessing BOC. Here, tell ya what... just send me your login info and I'll figure it out for you.
when I read First... I see "Trolled First"
as a programmer, I stuck to XP because .NET 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 3.0, 3.5, and 4.0 all worked well enough on it. only reason to upgrade to win7 was to switch off 32 bit machines and thus avoiding the y2k38 bug and to access certain programming tools only offered on 64 bit machines (from a programming point of view). Security is another reason, but I am not talking about that.
well, when you have a crap house, you build upon that crap house with crap sites. It is easier to build security on crap that you currently know than crap that you are unfamiliar with. IE 7,8,9 isn't as upgradable because it may break their security and their sites.
well, you prebuild for the base that needs prebuilds the most. Can you obtain the source for the same version in your linux flavor?
Oh, Dear Lord!
Is that site an actual business or a parody?
I shoot car fuel costs in the ass!
I know recent versions don't run on XP
Running v5 on my XP SP3 work PC right now.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Newer versions of IE do run on XP but if you have a pirated XP you can access windows update to download and install them.
Maxthon id's as IE6 because it is IE6 with some plugins attached. A wolf in sheep's clothing.
LOL awesome website! XD
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I think I can speak from experience on this subject. I haven't been to the China mainland for a while, but I did live in 4 countries in SE Asia for 3 years up until last year, and in Taiwan a few years before that. Things in Taiwan and China are somewhat different, but I suspect a lot of what I'm about to describe is happening there too. I saw what was on dozens, maybe hundreds of PCs. Most had pirate / hacked / volume license versions of XP SP2 installed with Windows Update turned off. And mostly people just used them like that. They often wouldn't install or use other browsers. This setup is apparently copied endless throughout the less developed countries in Asia, mostly I think because the ridiculously high cost of genuine software compared to what people earn. It's hard enough for many even to buy a computer, let alone pay the hefty extra percentage for genuine software. Would you buy Windows when you didn't have to, if it cost you a month's salary? Or two months or three months, depending on the country? It's just not going to happen. Food and accommodation have to come first. A lot of people are struggling just to pay those costs, for very basic accommodation and with little or nothing to spare. If they do have any extra, family, a motorbike, TV etc are going to get priority over something expensive which they don't actually *have* to buy. But many people don't have that choice, not when they're earning $100 / month and spending all of it just to survive. Also many users won't know or understand or care much about the technical issues or esoterics such as intellectual property. They'll just use what ever comes from the computer shop. Even if a genuine licence comes with the computer, as with laptops in particular, they may get offered a discount if they have pirate software installed instead. Some people will choose that option without really understanding the consequences. I don't know for sure, but I guess the computer shop then sells the license somehow. All of this is utterly routine, utterly normal. Anyway, with the XP SP2 installation and no updates, WGA never gets installed so the computers continue to work indefinitely. Sort of. Except of course having such an old version of XP means they have endless problems with reliability and malware. But people often don't understand why, or they have a partial understanding, but still cannot justify paying so much for genuine software. The standard way of coping is to struggle on until the computer becomes unusable, then call in a more technical friend or visit the computer shop... to reinstall exactly the same again. They would usually have to pay the computer shop, but that's much cheaper than buying the software. I suspect this also means the computer shop probably has little incentive to do anything differently, so people may not even be told why they're having problems or given any other options. The shop gets a regular income from such "repairs". Even if the repair doesn't even last a few days, something I saw a lot in hotels. So IE6 isn't going to go away until something changes this. And yes, I know, the above is a generalisation, there are plenty of exceptions, especially among better educated and richer people. But what I've described is what I saw just about all the time, everywhere, so at the very least it's very common. If China is anything like this, I think that alone would explain the IE6 prevalence. In fact I'm surprised it's not higher. Probably in some of those other countries it is...
I once repaired a computer with no fewer than 250,000 copies of a particular virus (don't recall which) installed. With each virus .exe weighing in at 12KB, that was 3GB of virus code on the laptop (given that this was about 6 years ago, that was a substantial amount of space).
The machine was a new laptop with XP SP1 installed (so no firewall). On its first day, it was connected to a university LAN for 8 hours non-stop, while a virus was running around the network. The virus did not have code to detect an existing infection, so it simply reinfected the machine many times.
It ran fine until the owner shut it down. Upon restarting, every virus .exe tried to start, resulting in a hung system on boot. It took a commercial antivirus program over 10 hours to finish clearing the machine.
You're absolutely right on the money here. I've been living in China for 6 years now. My job back home was for some time in PC repair and later server admin so when I got here people naturally asked me to fix their PC's. When I encounter a freshly installed XP box here I run my AV on it instantly before connecting to the web because the pirated XP comes with malware and backdoors pre installed. The People making the pirated disks are getting thousands of ready to use zombie machines that they can then use to hack into your bank and servers back in the USA or send you all that spam that fills you inbox.
When my girlfriend inherited my old laptop last year, she wanted the Chinese language version of windows on it. She first went and got XP. After a few months it croaked and died so I wiped it and went to the shop with her to get a new install. The guy in the shop wanted to put on XP again. I insisted on win7. He said the laptop was too old and slow for win7 and it wouldn't work as well as XP. I told him I had used win7 on that laptop, in English, since the first beta and that win7 was faster than XP even on old systems and so on and so on. He didn't believe me but eventually installed win7 - which he clearly had never used before. When I looked at it, he had installed a hacked version of win7 beta - not the full version.
China is still 5 or more years behind us in many aspects of computing. It is a compulsory part of every university student to learn some basic computing skills. They are taught MS World/Excel, Dreamweaver, Flash and Visual Basic. The students find it boring and generally hate the class. There's no impetus to advance. They just want there computers to remain in 2001 status.
The banking is tied to IE but any version will work. My GF uses the banking online here in China as well as buying on Taobao and such like. I have her using win7 with the latest IE version installed.
Who cares? They work hard to isolate themselves from everyone else, and they have no problems with software piracy. Why should anyone else care about what crappy old software they're using? Maybe one day the great firewall will go up in smoke and they'll have access to the wider internet and realize just how far behind their browsers are. Other than that, it doesn't make a single bit of difference to me what browser they use. The only Chinese people who would be accessing my sites or servers are working for the government.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
So, that's how chinese botnets are created? infecting IE6? :D
Buanzo Consulting - 15 Years of GNU/Linux experience, for you.
The problem is that activeX seems to be very popular in Chinese websites.
And IE8 supports ActiveX, same as IE6.
My 2c. I run a pirated copy of XP exclusively for running Team Fortress 2 on Steam. Later I'm going to buy Portal 2 and Crysis and I have another legal instalation I only use to run XBMC, Firefox and a few windfows games.
My point being. I don't like Windows, I never want to run Windows. I want to run programs that by all means should run on stuff other than windows.
As soon as React OS hits stable I'll switch. I couldn't care less for the Windows desktop, explorer and windows utilities.
Having said so, I guess people in China wouldn't switch unless there was legal pressure.
Unfortunately I am lacking pre-SP3 images and install media to back this up, but i don't think either of the service packs are required for Firefox. At least a quick google search didn't come up with anything relevant. I assume it's a different story with Adobe Flash and other plugins, though.
TBH I am surprised China hasn't yet developed it's own government controlled browser. That might give them just the control over their people they were looking for.
If you're using a MIcrosoft web server (like Bank of China does ... did?) you really have to use the Microsoft browser for it to work properly
That is BS. IIS, like any other web server, just serves whatever you tell it to serve. If you write valid standard HTML, any browser will be able to handle it, regardless of the server.
Add to that the fact of the political decision to force the browser into the OS 'shell', ie explorer.exe.
That's more BS. explorer.exe has nothing whatsoever to do with Internet Explorer - the binary for the latter is iexplore.exe. Furthermore, explorer.exe does not even load IE's rendering engine (mshtml.dll) - this is trivially checked by Process Explorer or any other similar app that shows DLLs loaded in a process.
I have been running pirated Windows XP for years and still am. A simple WGA crack has been my solution for years with a proper keygened key. I am able to receive windows updates easily with no issues. Currently IE8 is on my system, but I never use it I favor firefox or chome.
Windows.Genuine.Advantage.Validation.v1.9.0040.0.CRACKED.REPACK-DS9
MSKey v1.0 (keygen) using Windows XP Pro. VLK keys.
Not lazy. I bet most are probably not aware. They may also not see the need for a better browser?
You don't need to see the "need" for a better browser to want to abandon IE6. You just have to see that it's a part of a 10-year-old operating system that's no longer sold, and that the latest version of Windows, 7, comes with a much newer version of IE. It shouldn't take a genius to figure out that if you're stuck on an ancient web browser, sooner or later you're going to have some problems. And sure, XP may be freely pirated there, but surely so is Win7. Who'd want some 10-year-old piece of junk when they can get the latest and greatest?
There's only two rational reasons to be using IE6 these days:
1) You have a 10-year-old computer that you got with WinXP/IE6, and you're too lazy or don't care about upgrading just yet, and haven't yet encountered enough problems with this ancient software to make you want to upgrade.
2) You CAN'T change because some sites you access require IE6.
Over here in the USA, from what I've seen, many people (such as corporate users) who require IE6 for shitty ActiveX intranet sites use it from a virtualized XP instance, not as their primary browser. Home users have mostly abandoned it because they've all bought new computers in the last 3 years, and those came with Vista or 7, and those who haven't have switched to Firefox. There's no public websites in the English-speaking world now that still require IE6, in fact IE6 renders very poorly with many websites these days due to its lack of standards compliance. And even with XP, IE7 (and maybe 8?) is a free download.
So their websites look like lots of little boxes, all crammed together. It's a weird aesthetic. Japan has it too.
Yes, but most of the Japanese websites I've seen definitely have a real sense of aesthetics to them. It's unique and very different from western aesthetics, of course, but just as present; it certainly doesn't look like something someone threw together with no attention to detail.
That's for a car leasing business in the UK, near Newcastle in northern England. Is this representative of British aesthetics?
That's weird, because it's trivial to download a copy of XP SP3 on BitTorrent. The pirate copies are usually the corporate versions too, which don't (to my knowledge) require any activation.
I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned already: many automated crawlers, scrapers and spambots (in other words: obnoxious programs which automatically access websites) set a user-agent string which claims to be IE6. Since China is a very frequent country of origin for these automated agents, couldn't this be distorting the numbers to some extent?
I never used IE6 (or any other version for that matter) because I always felt that Netscape/Mozilla was simply infinitely better. I find it absolutely ludicrious that millions and millions of people still use it today, when I couldn't even stand it when it came out. And I remember it didn't take very long before researchers established that it was basically swiss cheese with respect to security, and that it basically ignored web standards (yes, even those of the day). That this browser is utter crap is news a decade old. Where the hell has China been all this time?
Why would anyone choose that browser over alternatives that existed even in those days, I have no clue. Ignorance of alternatives is the only reason I see. But today, free browsers are even more visible than they were before, so what gives?
Can someone tell me why IE6 is so big in China? And can someone else tell me why we should care? If you're seriously going to commit to that piece of shit for 10 years, you deserve all the problems that will inevitably come with it.
Upgrading would force a host applications to be updated and a whole ton of crap would break. The people that implemented the stuff have left. Why am I here?
AFAIK the only case I know of is that XP SP1 installer bans the FCKGW keys that was leaked soon after XP RTMed. Stronger detection was considered for SP2, but it was not worth it to make pirates insecure.
Funny you should mention that, as for shits and giggles I decided to run my own little test, since I was bored and a gamer customer handed me a pair of discs, one is called "Windows Ultra DVD eXperience" which has the in order of memory requirements micro/tiny/full/loaded versions of Win2K/XP/2K3 and along with that the Tiny Vista disc and the Tiny7 disc which I already had. Now since Micro is IMHO TOO stripped, as in many programs won't run as well as many drivers, I stuck with Tiny for my tests...here are my findings and the tests were all done on Athlon 1.6Ghz machines with 512Mb of RAM and 40Gb HDDs.
First up Tiny2K which after 3 minutes after the desktop loaded was using 48Mb of RAM, 0% CPU. TinyXP...65Mb of RAM, 0-1% CPU. Tiny2K3 68Mb of RAM, 1-2% CPU, Tiny Vista 268Mb of RAM, 3-4% CPU and finally Tiny7 126Mb of RAM, 1-2% CPU.
But I would point out that out of all the tests Win 7 was the ONLY one that still had fast search, as well as having the latest features like libraries and breadcrumbs. As I said the ONLY new feature I could find disabled was AeroGlass. UAC, Low Rights Mode, all was there. And of course Vista even stripped was a bloated pig, surprise surprise.
Now while I wouldn't condone piracy since Windows can have the key changed I would say the Tiny versions are a great way to use your existing key to get a premade ultra light environment for gaming or older machines without all the hassle of DIY.
Oh and as for the other poster and the worry of WGA? I have actually run across boxes coming into my shop that had WSUS Offline on a hidden partition with an update script, not a bad trick that pirate had come up with, and of course there is also Autopatcher. Personally even though my boxes are all legal I uses WSUS Offline as it keeps me from dealing with WGA crap running in the background and it is easy peasy for me to show customers how to use WSUS offline to update all the machines in their house by simply keeping it on a $10 thumbstick.
With an 8Gb thumbstick one could keep an entire household full of Windows 7 boxes up to date for the life of Win 7 by simply running WSUS Offline once a month and then passing the stick to the machines. When much of my area has either slow ass DSL or caps on the cable being able to update multiple machines with only a single download is a good thing to have!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Friend if that laptop is more than 2 years old I would look at Tiny7. It is virus free and for shits and giggles I tested it on some 1.6Ghz Athlon boxes I had given to me and we are talking barely 128Mb on the desktop and that is with everything except AeroGlass and WinFlip. It has the full search, UAC, breadcrumbs, you name it, and the thing actually ran faster than original XP did on these old boxes.
Oh and I would note some of what gets listed as "malware" on scans of those hacked discs is actually false positives. You see to rip crap out of a Windows install they will often use CMD based scripting tools and both MSE and Avira list scripting tools as "hacker tools" and thus they have a shitfit. But it wouldn't surprise me if shops there are putting pre-rooted Windows on boxes, hell I once knew a perv repair guy that worked one of the big chain stores that if a pretty girl brought her box in he would put a backdoor so the perv could look for pics later.
But look at Tin7 dude. Just use your key instead of theirs (which actually passes WGA, I don't know how they did that but it was a neat trick) and you have just about the perfect modern laptop OS. MSFT really ought to hire the Tiny guy, as his builds make both WinFLP and Embedded look like bloated hogs.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
If it's using the IE6 engine and claiming to be IE6, isn't it more like a sheep in sheep's clothing?
Actually - that page makes me think of two things. 1970's used car dealer commercials were pretty damned corny. This guy would have fit right into Youngstown, Cleveland, or Pittsburgh in that time.
But, the FIRST thing I though of when I saw the guy's pic was, "Oh no, Chinese Junior Samples!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeDX6ESys10
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Chinks do not have the internet. They have the censored Microsoftnet. Don't even try getting on a Chinese website with a non-Microsoft browser, NOTHING WORKS. Bunch of fags.
If you're going to use "are", make sure your subject is plural. The Microsofts are, but Microsoft is.
I am not devoid of humor.