Microsoft Upgrading Windows Users To Latest Version of MSIE

helix2301 writes "Microsoft will be upgrading all Windows XP, Vista and 7 users to the latest IE silently. They are doing this because they have found a large number of non-patched systems. Microsoft pointed out that Chrome and Firefox do this regularly. They will start with Australia and Brazil in January, then go world-wide after they have assured there are no issues."

Comments

And why are those systems unpatched ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they are not running Windows updates. at all. And therefore this is not going to have an effect.

Wow, this is going to be interesting...

[JMZero]

after they have assured there are no issues

IE 6 is a very, very different browser from IE 9. We've had plenty of clients who can't move off IE 6 (or are in the middle of a large project to do so) because it's the only one that will run their Intranet site correctly. I've seen MS make this type of mistake before - they don't see many public-facing sites using a technology, so they feel safe getting rid of it. Well, yes, very few public-facing sites are going to use crazy IE specific stuff, and most are (by now) going to be making reasonable efforts to work between browsers.

Intranet sites are a whole other kettle of fish; corporate programmers often target a single browser - and for many of them, that was IE for a long time. They got away with that from IE 4 to IE 6 because MS just added stuff. With IE 7 and, particularly, Vista, they started fixing insecure and non-standard behaviors - and that's part of why so many companies are still on XP and IE 6.

If MS does this, there will be a lot of pissed off people and gnashing of teeth. I'm not saying it's the wrong choice but "once they've assured there's no issues" sounds pretty silly.

Re:For your own good

[DeathFromSomewhere]

Link for the opt-out tool: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=179