I find it hysterical... well maybe not for you and I send my condolences.
But I find it funny the whole push for intranet apps was to leave old x3270 terminals and legacy mini computer and mainframe software behind. Now you had something that would work regardless of the OS in a web browser. No more tie in!... 10 years later and we are setting up Citrix and terminal software to run a supposedly non tied in browser based solution that only works with a single OS on a single version from a single vendor. Shakes head
Shit one of my old Core2 desktops I retired just over a year ago still had an option for OS/2 Palete snopping and some Eisa settings. Keep in mind this was a 100% PCI board with just that and AGP 8x?
XP as much as we hate it (some may love it) is not going away and the secure boot feature will be there to turn off for a very very long time for these reasons.
I look forward to EFI and secureBoot. We can finally kill the 30 year old BIOS and get a less buggy system that can work in Linux and resume and hibernate better. I just wish there was a way to get other operating sytems like Linux to support it? Once the keys are let loose it becomes useless anyway. Perhaps a network way to get a PKI key?
Rootkits are a HUGE problem and with secureboot I will finally not have to wipe my whole system in case I get an infection.:-)
No the bugs in MS will not finalized in W3C. The box model was invented by MS and the W3C implemented differently.
The pixel differences? Well is it stored as a double or float? That was not finalized either in 2001.
The lockin was not enginered at all. Its just old and new. Netscape was so bad no web developer would dare use CSS unless it is for backgrounds or fonts or something very simple. Netscape was too flakey and IE did wonders.
Go read slashdots hall of fame why do you still use Windows? Many readers who bash IE today say they use Windows becaue IE 6 is such a great browser! lol
When IE 7 came out slashdot then bashed it for not supporting more standards. After IE 6 MS decided to wait until all standards were finalized first.
Today Chrome is making the same mistakes at a record pace and so is Firefox! If W3C decides to have a different implemention for CSS 3 animations you will see a lot of pissed off webmasters and broken pages in all but IE. Corporate America is sticking with IE 9 for the reason its only updated once a year to avoid that mess.
IE 6 is still a POS and a security nightmare. I am not defending it and IE 6 needed to die many many years ago. But it was a new technology and I hated the fact Netscape screwed up as I hated MS but started using IE 6 more and more until 2005 when Firefox started maturing. MS should not have been shit on because all the things that are old and non standard were experimental and bleeding edge back when mindspring.net and sites that resembled CraigsList with 1 pic dominated teh static web 1.0. The business users who keep forcing people to use it should be shit upon.
I like Chrome, IE 9, FF 11, and Windows 7 in 2012. I would shoot myself if I were still using it in 2022. My God would my PC suck then with the same software. Same concept.
Of course Apple sucked and was used for dumb people.
If you go to common non nerd websites you still see that attitude today with people in their 30s and 40s who were told to look down on the mac back in the 1980s. Generation Y was in diapers or not born yet.
Apple was presumed dead anyway. NT was the future and was cool unlike the lame Windows 9.x operating systems in the 1990s.
Keep in mind IT needs someone to set the standards. Who would that be? A dying company or the winner? So MS decided for them what to buy and how to use their products. This was how people thought and still think today as the cost savings of an integrated platform is still there.
Maybe Ipads and phones are changing this with the web? Consumers used to want MS to tell them what products to buy and set standards too. Today they have all grown up. It is only in corporate America where this thought it still there.
Keep in mind in 1999 when Slashdot was knew I heard the same arguments about Windows MFC, win32, and MS C++ not really a real C++ language. Developers HATED WINDOWS with a passion equal to IE 6.
Now that has changed and it took almost 10 years.
When technology is new bad implementations exist. Compilers were terrible in the 1980s. Office suites sucked too int aht time frame. Browsers sucked royally in the 1990s. They were new and experimental and are now maturing.
For the IE 6 haters keep in mind MS did what Chrome is doing today. Inventing and implementing new cutting edge technology standards submited to the W3C. The box model in CSS was invented in IE 5.5 and 6! MS was first and the W3c implemented different. Same with pixel layouts where we get the double margin bug. You can't cite MS for that?
MS then learned their lesson with IE 7 and 8 by not implementing standards that are not finalized. Then slashdot said "Waaa IE is sooo far behind look they do not implement the box model nor any recent standards... etc" You can't have it both ways? If the W3c decides to implement CSS 3 or HTML 5 different than the webmasers reading this better have seperate CSS for older verisons of FF and Chrome and its IE 6 all over again. Many Javascript stuff already works differently in Chrome and Google is hoping if FF imitates it that W3C will accept it as a standard. Hence, why corporate developers prefer the stability of IE.
MS is always hated here. I used to be an MS hater too in my youth. They have got better and no longer are the scary threat they once were. It seems arstechnica is more balanced for both sides, and if you are a MS fanboi there is always the 1990s classic zdnet. Though annoying Linux trolls are there just to mess with the Windows supports:-)
IE 6 was great in 2001. Just became obsolete fast as the web was evolving fast as today and then by 2004 IE had problems. Then it stalled and became total shit as FF started to implement standards after Mozilla purged Netscape code. Safari was the first to pass the acid2 test I may add as well.
IE 10 is certainly competitive but like Windows 1.0 - Windows 2000 it has bad baggage and terrible development with hacks. It will be well hated until more developers switch to HTML 5 which is like the webs.NET that saved Win32 development.
When you buy a car do you look for reasons not to stop in as many dealerships as possible because of what a salesperson *might* do? Or do you think about what you want in a car and look at several before you make a decision?
You talk about the owners dreams and how no one owes you anything! Fair enough, what about my dreams and the other applicants? What about being penny wise and dollar dumb with investments that also include hiring talent?
The problem is if you follow what everyone does which is just cut and paste the job requirements and skills listed in the resume then the top candidates will be bullshitters and narcastic or ego maniacs. You need to find out what someone is good at. Not how long has this person used a particular software package like yours for x amount of time.
If the job requires great organizational skills and attention to details hire candidates who can prove that. An accountant or book keeper can fullfil this if it is an entry level position. If the job requires an analytical skillset a statistics or physics major can full fill the job. This is how a lot of computer programmers *used* to be hired. True they may not be too familiar with the languages yet, but there are many bad coders who fill a,b,and c on your requirements who know the language but write crappy code.
This is how HR should work. If everyone else hires the wrong way you then have an advantage as these people will be under employed and can work for cheaper.
Because private entities aren't required to abide by the Constitution since the Constitution sets the framework for government.
You should look up unlawful detention? Retailers used to not let you leave the store if they catch you shoplifting until the police arrive. SOmeone used the Constitution claiming unlawful imprisonment and won!
If you steal anything the retailer can't stop you! All they can do is talk to you to distract you while the police arive.
If businesses are under the power of the constitution than this would be also.
In Central Florida if you search I.T. jobs you will find 80% of them pay below market average with many that pay half. A few pay the correct wage but there are so many applying for them that it is near impossible.
$13 an hour for an MCSE certified, computer science background, Cisco router certification a plus, SQL Server administration, etc. No benefits
HR has switched from finding the best talent for a position to mean discluding any and I mean any reason not to hire someone and then claim they couldn't find qualified applicants.
They are scared that if they make a bad hiring decision that it will reflect poorly on them and are obsessed with liabilities. In the great recession they got a tremendous boast of having many and sometimes hundreds of applicants to filter through for each position. Social media makes the job even easier.
Witness the case of requiring experience first? 30 years ago you left college applied for a job and it was understood that your grades and dedication proved trainable. Today, you can even be trained but it has to be percisely what the position requires in the exact same way or they are not interested.
Doing something for X long doesn't make you good at the job. Someone with the right smarts and work ethic does. HR needs to change their ways
How many moderate republicas are left? I mean really? Olympia Snow was run out by the Tea Party of Maine for being a RHINO. I lived in Alaska last year and Murkowski had to run as an independent on write in because she voted for Obama's healthcare bill and was labeled a radical left wing socialist.
If Romney losses it will only enforce that he was too socialist and they need someone like Santorum or a Tea Party nutcase to differentiate himself. To run as a republican the first thing you need to do is pass the litmus test. Reagan himself would not pass it as he was not conservative enough.
These lunatics are the new republican party and there is no room for anyone else. Romney is labeled a waffle, flip flopper, and a moderate when his is pretty conservative. He had to lie to pass the litmus test only to then appear to reactionary to the public. May God help you if you ever supported a.01% tax increase to pay for someting SOCIALIST@!
The GOP maybe dying unless it can change this. Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, Tea Party activists empower these folks to vote in the primaries. If you are a moderate your only hope is to be a democrat. The republican party doesn't need you.
Just accept that friendly request from that HR lady as a condition of employment.
Just last night I saw an ad on craigslist where the employer wanted me to click on a emloyment site that used Facebook as a login and requirement. I figured it was a scam. But it did offer a new password that you could choose different from Facebook but you had to friend the site first... and the employer can check to see if you have a pic drinking or do a grammar and spelling check on your casual entries etc.
Which means programmers will use obsolete products and the PHBs will say well XP works fine and can run all software so why upgrade?
It creates a perpetual problem. I mean the last 2 years we finally gave a finger to IE 6 thanks to Google and other websites refusing to support it. The corporations are not upgrading (well some). Unless someone big stands up and releases new software that uses these technologies the CPAs and phbs will keep using obsolete technology forever and never change so they can give themselves bonuses.
MS is hinting the next Office will only run in Metro/Win 7 and same is true with Visual Studio with the Windows 7 version being crippled. XP... what XP? The really cheap companies will just stay on obsolete versions until people start emailing.docx version 2 or something dumb.
All 3 of the machines have Vista on them. There maybe a few fortune 500 companies who upgraded as well and of course school districts. Vista is as popular as MacOSX according to g.statcounter.com. My guess is computers bought from 2007 - 2009. These machines still work and it does not make sense to plunge $120 for a machine worth less and lose all your important data in the process. It just works.... slowly:-)
XP is dying. I agree with MS on this as if they supported more people would still use it. IE 9 requires ASLR, refined DEP, new exception handling security fixes, and something else I do not remember, and of course DRM for their h.264 license which is part of aero.
In essence they would have to turn the kernel into vista lite and would more than quadrouple the development cost for a dying OS that is being discontinued. Even Chrome and Firefox run in crippled mode in XP without these security enchancements.
IE has changed and will have an annual release. IE 10 will be out soon and next year IE 11 will be out etc. Windows Update automatically updates to the latest browser now starting this year and IE 8 usage was only 13% this weekend according to g.statcounter.com! Corporations will have to update their browsers far more often compared to the past. It wont be like IE 6 since it was such a different beast from any browser or even version of itself.
IE is not perfect but MS is at least making steps and it should be simple to upgrade old intranet code if its made for IE 8 or later or it might just work with any future IE release. Metro forced MS to embrace HTML 5 and AJAX.
Also I would like to mention support for * greater than 4 gigs of ram * SSD and trim command support * better SMP support * Supperior security for all browsers due to better DEP and other security enchancements * Touchscreen * multi que async with Sata and PATA drives * Much better security
XP is running on bandaids with newer hardware. For shit and kicks I installed XP on my Phenom II 2.6 ghz 6 core, 8 gigs of ram system with a Sata drive last summer. It was sllooow. Boot time doubled, the kernel would freeze up when reading from the disk in random sets (not BSOD but just become unresponsive), not to mention I am used to using the keyboard to type which programs to start like W-O-R...> Word 2010... click.
It was a blast from the past and it felt anitquated. It was a great operating system 10 years ago. Sadly, todays obsession of minimizing costs and having financial gurus become CEOs have hugly devalued technology. You do not see people running Windows 3.11/DOS in 2006 anymore did you?
There comes a point where any upgrade offers more benefits than just costing money. Old hardware wont be around forever and there is productivity enchancements and a security risk has a much bigger cost than the CPAs realize.
According to statcounter XP in the United States is dying very fast if you include Aprils numbers. Home use on the weekends is only around 18%.
It is not good enough for most users anymore. Its old and will have a place in conservatives hearts like Windows 98, 95, and W2k did. Meanwhile its time to move on.
IE is secure now and is not version 6 anymore. It has sandboxing and other security features that Chrome and Safari has (Firefox still doesnt).
Now if the company still used IE 6 then yes they are stupid, cheap, or in trouble from the recession still and just trying to stay afloat and would agree with you.
All it takes is one employee to download or execute a trojan to have it spread on the network.
If they use FF or Chrome but auto update wont work because you are on a proxy (very likely in a big network) you open yourself to trojans.
Not to mention IE only apps, sharepoint using IE only extensions, and anti pornography and internet monitoring tools only working for IE are a major reason to ban all browsers, but IE. IE 9 is good and fine for the corporate market.
You can claim you wont support it but Bob the manager can't access a critical sharepoint thing for a file uploaded by the CEO in his FF and as a support guy you are on the hook. How is that fair?
I can tell you from experience it is lighter. Mozilla hired a memory guru starting around FF 8 to slowly improve its ram and VM allocation techniques. True it may not be as good as FF 2.0 but certainly better than 4.0 unless you have some strange add ons.
FF 4 has well over 30 exploits and it is a security hazard to still use it.
Or upgrade your computer. Ram is cheap with 2 gigs of ddr 3 costing like $29 or something silly. Webpages use more flash and AJAX than ever before not to mention your anti virus scanner probably has additional sandboxing and checking for each script. It takes a decent computer just to browse the web these days as more and more load is put on the device rather than the server.
When you run business reporting, keystroke monitoring, and various journaling and security software made for IE it quickly turns into a dog.
One place I have seen IE 7 take up to 3 minutes to load as it goes through the software and funnel through proxies that are badly misconfigured etc. This gives IE a bad impression.
When people look the other way and install Chrome it doesn't do these things and doesn't go through the same proxies and OMG ITS SOOO fast in comparison
Firefox 4 was so terrible I downgraded to 3.6 and started using alternative browsers. Try Firefox 11? I do not use it as my main browser anymore but I have to say it is fast on my 2.6ghz phenomII and loads and runs much quicker. It is an improvement.
If you have Windows 7 upgrade to IE 9?
IE 9 has the best and smoothest graphics due to hardware acceleration. Chrome seems to have the best javascript performance. I have news for you. Opera is no longer lightweight and test shows it uses as much if not more memory of other browsers.
IE 8 and earlier versions of Firefox are from the last era in web history. They are much slower and use more ram. I thought Seamonkey was discontinued in 2009?? Pretty much any modern browser is better than the last. I think everyone should run the browser of their choice as long as its new I do not care. There are too many exploits out there otherwise.
Slashdot Mirror
I find it hysterical ... well maybe not for you and I send my condolences.
But I find it funny the whole push for intranet apps was to leave old x3270 terminals and legacy mini computer and mainframe software behind. Now you had something that would work regardless of the OS in a web browser. No more tie in! ... 10 years later and we are setting up Citrix and terminal software to run a supposedly non tied in browser based solution that only works with a single OS on a single version from a single vendor. Shakes head
That is fucked up
Shit one of my old Core2 desktops I retired just over a year ago still had an option for OS/2 Palete snopping and some Eisa settings. Keep in mind this was a 100% PCI board with just that and AGP 8x?
XP as much as we hate it (some may love it) is not going away and the secure boot feature will be there to turn off for a very very long time for these reasons.
I look forward to EFI and secureBoot. We can finally kill the 30 year old BIOS and get a less buggy system that can work in Linux and resume and hibernate better. I just wish there was a way to get other operating sytems like Linux to support it? Once the keys are let loose it becomes useless anyway. Perhaps a network way to get a PKI key?
Rootkits are a HUGE problem and with secureboot I will finally not have to wipe my whole system in case I get an infection. :-)
No the bugs in MS will not finalized in W3C. The box model was invented by MS and the W3C implemented differently.
The pixel differences? Well is it stored as a double or float? That was not finalized either in 2001.
The lockin was not enginered at all. Its just old and new. Netscape was so bad no web developer would dare use CSS unless it is for backgrounds or fonts or something very simple. Netscape was too flakey and IE did wonders.
Go read slashdots hall of fame why do you still use Windows? Many readers who bash IE today say they use Windows becaue IE 6 is such a great browser! lol
When IE 7 came out slashdot then bashed it for not supporting more standards. After IE 6 MS decided to wait until all standards were finalized first.
Today Chrome is making the same mistakes at a record pace and so is Firefox! If W3C decides to have a different implemention for CSS 3 animations you will see a lot of pissed off webmasters and broken pages in all but IE. Corporate America is sticking with IE 9 for the reason its only updated once a year to avoid that mess.
IE 6 is still a POS and a security nightmare. I am not defending it and IE 6 needed to die many many years ago. But it was a new technology and I hated the fact Netscape screwed up as I hated MS but started using IE 6 more and more until 2005 when Firefox started maturing. MS should not have been shit on because all the things that are old and non standard were experimental and bleeding edge back when mindspring.net and sites that resembled CraigsList with 1 pic dominated teh static web 1.0. The business users who keep forcing people to use it should be shit upon.
I like Chrome, IE 9, FF 11, and Windows 7 in 2012. I would shoot myself if I were still using it in 2022. My God would my PC suck then with the same software. Same concept.
Of course Apple sucked and was used for dumb people.
If you go to common non nerd websites you still see that attitude today with people in their 30s and 40s who were told to look down on the mac back in the 1980s. Generation Y was in diapers or not born yet.
Apple was presumed dead anyway. NT was the future and was cool unlike the lame Windows 9.x operating systems in the 1990s.
Keep in mind IT needs someone to set the standards. Who would that be? A dying company or the winner? So MS decided for them what to buy and how to use their products. This was how people thought and still think today as the cost savings of an integrated platform is still there.
Maybe Ipads and phones are changing this with the web? Consumers used to want MS to tell them what products to buy and set standards too. Today they have all grown up. It is only in corporate America where this thought it still there.
Lol MS will never hear the end of IE 6.
Keep in mind in 1999 when Slashdot was knew I heard the same arguments about Windows MFC, win32, and MS C++ not really a real C++ language. Developers HATED WINDOWS with a passion equal to IE 6.
Now that has changed and it took almost 10 years.
When technology is new bad implementations exist. Compilers were terrible in the 1980s. Office suites sucked too int aht time frame. Browsers sucked royally in the 1990s. They were new and experimental and are now maturing.
For the IE 6 haters keep in mind MS did what Chrome is doing today. Inventing and implementing new cutting edge technology standards submited to the W3C. The box model in CSS was invented in IE 5.5 and 6! MS was first and the W3c implemented different. Same with pixel layouts where we get the double margin bug. You can't cite MS for that?
MS then learned their lesson with IE 7 and 8 by not implementing standards that are not finalized. Then slashdot said "Waaa IE is sooo far behind look they do not implement the box model nor any recent standards ... etc" You can't have it both ways? If the W3c decides to implement CSS 3 or HTML 5 different than the webmasers reading this better have seperate CSS for older verisons of FF and Chrome and its IE 6 all over again. Many Javascript stuff already works differently in Chrome and Google is hoping if FF imitates it that W3C will accept it as a standard. Hence, why corporate developers prefer the stability of IE.
MS is always hated here. I used to be an MS hater too in my youth. They have got better and no longer are the scary threat they once were. It seems arstechnica is more balanced for both sides, and if you are a MS fanboi there is always the 1990s classic zdnet. Though annoying Linux trolls are there just to mess with the Windows supports :-)
IE 6 was great in 2001. Just became obsolete fast as the web was evolving fast as today and then by 2004 IE had problems. Then it stalled and became total shit as FF started to implement standards after Mozilla purged Netscape code. Safari was the first to pass the acid2 test I may add as well.
IE 10 is certainly competitive but like Windows 1.0 - Windows 2000 it has bad baggage and terrible development with hacks. It will be well hated until more developers switch to HTML 5 which is like the webs .NET that saved Win32 development.
Most of New York was asleep and the listeners were in disbelief. Thats how it hit the newstands the following morning.
Fact of the matter is only one vessel was in those treacherous waters as many sailors avoided the ice field.
I will bite.
When you buy a car do you look for reasons not to stop in as many dealerships as possible because of what a salesperson *might* do? Or do you think about what you want in a car and look at several before you make a decision?
You talk about the owners dreams and how no one owes you anything! Fair enough, what about my dreams and the other applicants? What about being penny wise and dollar dumb with investments that also include hiring talent?
The problem is if you follow what everyone does which is just cut and paste the job requirements and skills listed in the resume then the top candidates will be bullshitters and narcastic or ego maniacs. You need to find out what someone is good at. Not how long has this person used a particular software package like yours for x amount of time.
If the job requires great organizational skills and attention to details hire candidates who can prove that. An accountant or book keeper can fullfil this if it is an entry level position. If the job requires an analytical skillset a statistics or physics major can full fill the job. This is how a lot of computer programmers *used* to be hired. True they may not be too familiar with the languages yet, but there are many bad coders who fill a,b,and c on your requirements who know the language but write crappy code.
This is how HR should work. If everyone else hires the wrong way you then have an advantage as these people will be under employed and can work for cheaper.
As long as it is not at work who CARES?!
Because private entities aren't required to abide by the Constitution since the Constitution sets the framework for government.
You should look up unlawful detention? Retailers used to not let you leave the store if they catch you shoplifting until the police arrive. SOmeone used the Constitution claiming unlawful imprisonment and won!
If you steal anything the retailer can't stop you! All they can do is talk to you to distract you while the police arive.
If businesses are under the power of the constitution than this would be also.
In Central Florida if you search I.T. jobs you will find 80% of them pay below market average with many that pay half. A few pay the correct wage but there are so many applying for them that it is near impossible.
$13 an hour for an MCSE certified, computer science background, Cisco router certification a plus, SQL Server administration, etc. No benefits
That is the problem right there.
HR has switched from finding the best talent for a position to mean discluding any and I mean any reason not to hire someone and then claim they couldn't find qualified applicants.
They are scared that if they make a bad hiring decision that it will reflect poorly on them and are obsessed with liabilities. In the great recession they got a tremendous boast of having many and sometimes hundreds of applicants to filter through for each position. Social media makes the job even easier.
Witness the case of requiring experience first? 30 years ago you left college applied for a job and it was understood that your grades and dedication proved trainable. Today, you can even be trained but it has to be percisely what the position requires in the exact same way or they are not interested.
Doing something for X long doesn't make you good at the job. Someone with the right smarts and work ethic does. HR needs to change their ways
I disagree.
How many moderate republicas are left? I mean really? Olympia Snow was run out by the Tea Party of Maine for being a RHINO. I lived in Alaska last year and Murkowski had to run as an independent on write in because she voted for Obama's healthcare bill and was labeled a radical left wing socialist.
If Romney losses it will only enforce that he was too socialist and they need someone like Santorum or a Tea Party nutcase to differentiate himself. To run as a republican the first thing you need to do is pass the litmus test. Reagan himself would not pass it as he was not conservative enough.
These lunatics are the new republican party and there is no room for anyone else. Romney is labeled a waffle, flip flopper, and a moderate when his is pretty conservative. He had to lie to pass the litmus test only to then appear to reactionary to the public. May God help you if you ever supported a .01% tax increase to pay for someting SOCIALIST@!
The GOP maybe dying unless it can change this. Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, Tea Party activists empower these folks to vote in the primaries. If you are a moderate your only hope is to be a democrat. The republican party doesn't need you.
Just accept that friendly request from that HR lady as a condition of employment.
Just last night I saw an ad on craigslist where the employer wanted me to click on a emloyment site that used Facebook as a login and requirement. I figured it was a scam. But it did offer a new password that you could choose different from Facebook but you had to friend the site first ... and the employer can check to see if you have a pic drinking or do a grammar and spelling check on your casual entries etc.
Which means programmers will use obsolete products and the PHBs will say well XP works fine and can run all software so why upgrade?
It creates a perpetual problem. I mean the last 2 years we finally gave a finger to IE 6 thanks to Google and other websites refusing to support it. The corporations are not upgrading (well some). Unless someone big stands up and releases new software that uses these technologies the CPAs and phbs will keep using obsolete technology forever and never change so they can give themselves bonuses.
MS is hinting the next Office will only run in Metro/Win 7 and same is true with Visual Studio with the Windows 7 version being crippled. XP ... what XP? The really cheap companies will just stay on obsolete versions until people start emailing .docx version 2 or something dumb.
That was 4 years ago. That is a whole PC life cycle. You do not expect Windows 95 updates in 2000 or NT 4 updates in 2002 do you?
Go upgrade or keep your security fixes.
In the good old days MS only supported OSes for 2 years. MS is frankly being nice and I think people are frankly spoiled
My ex and her 2 kids for one.
All 3 of the machines have Vista on them. There maybe a few fortune 500 companies who upgraded as well and of course school districts. Vista is as popular as MacOSX according to g.statcounter.com. My guess is computers bought from 2007 - 2009. These machines still work and it does not make sense to plunge $120 for a machine worth less and lose all your important data in the process. It just works. ... slowly :-)
XP is dying. I agree with MS on this as if they supported more people would still use it. IE 9 requires ASLR, refined DEP, new exception handling security fixes, and something else I do not remember, and of course DRM for their h.264 license which is part of aero.
In essence they would have to turn the kernel into vista lite and would more than quadrouple the development cost for a dying OS that is being discontinued. Even Chrome and Firefox run in crippled mode in XP without these security enchancements.
IE has changed and will have an annual release. IE 10 will be out soon and next year IE 11 will be out etc. Windows Update automatically updates to the latest browser now starting this year and IE 8 usage was only 13% this weekend according to g.statcounter.com! Corporations will have to update their browsers far more often compared to the past. It wont be like IE 6 since it was such a different beast from any browser or even version of itself.
IE is not perfect but MS is at least making steps and it should be simple to upgrade old intranet code if its made for IE 8 or later or it might just work with any future IE release. Metro forced MS to embrace HTML 5 and AJAX.
Also I would like to mention support for
* greater than 4 gigs of ram
* SSD and trim command support
* better SMP support
* Supperior security for all browsers due to better DEP and other security enchancements
* Touchscreen
* multi que async with Sata and PATA drives
* Much better security
XP is running on bandaids with newer hardware. For shit and kicks I installed XP on my Phenom II 2.6 ghz 6 core, 8 gigs of ram system with a Sata drive last summer. It was sllooow. Boot time doubled, the kernel would freeze up when reading from the disk in random sets (not BSOD but just become unresponsive), not to mention I am used to using the keyboard to type which programs to start like W-O-R ...> Word 2010 ... click.
It was a blast from the past and it felt anitquated. It was a great operating system 10 years ago. Sadly, todays obsession of minimizing costs and having financial gurus become CEOs have hugly devalued technology. You do not see people running Windows 3.11/DOS in 2006 anymore did you?
There comes a point where any upgrade offers more benefits than just costing money. Old hardware wont be around forever and there is productivity enchancements and a security risk has a much bigger cost than the CPAs realize.
According to statcounter XP in the United States is dying very fast if you include Aprils numbers. Home use on the weekends is only around 18%.
It is not good enough for most users anymore. Its old and will have a place in conservatives hearts like Windows 98, 95, and W2k did. Meanwhile its time to move on.
Then its time to get a new computer. The web apps are constantly updating and even a phone has more power and ram.
For $499 you can get an ok netbook with 4 gigs of ram and accelerated graphics and WIndows 7 which is an improvement over XP.
IE is secure now and is not version 6 anymore. It has sandboxing and other security features that Chrome and Safari has (Firefox still doesnt).
Now if the company still used IE 6 then yes they are stupid, cheap, or in trouble from the recession still and just trying to stay afloat and would agree with you.
All it takes is one employee to download or execute a trojan to have it spread on the network.
If they use FF or Chrome but auto update wont work because you are on a proxy (very likely in a big network) you open yourself to trojans.
Not to mention IE only apps, sharepoint using IE only extensions, and anti pornography and internet monitoring tools only working for IE are a major reason to ban all browsers, but IE. IE 9 is good and fine for the corporate market.
You can claim you wont support it but Bob the manager can't access a critical sharepoint thing for a file uploaded by the CEO in his FF and as a support guy you are on the hook. How is that fair?
I can tell you from experience it is lighter. Mozilla hired a memory guru starting around FF 8 to slowly improve its ram and VM allocation techniques. True it may not be as good as FF 2.0 but certainly better than 4.0 unless you have some strange add ons.
FF 4 has well over 30 exploits and it is a security hazard to still use it.
Or upgrade your computer. Ram is cheap with 2 gigs of ddr 3 costing like $29 or something silly. Webpages use more flash and AJAX than ever before not to mention your anti virus scanner probably has additional sandboxing and checking for each script. It takes a decent computer just to browse the web these days as more and more load is put on the device rather than the server.
When you run business reporting, keystroke monitoring, and various journaling and security software made for IE it quickly turns into a dog.
One place I have seen IE 7 take up to 3 minutes to load as it goes through the software and funnel through proxies that are badly misconfigured etc. This gives IE a bad impression.
When people look the other way and install Chrome it doesn't do these things and doesn't go through the same proxies and OMG ITS SOOO fast in comparison
Good God man
Firefox 4 was so terrible I downgraded to 3.6 and started using alternative browsers. Try Firefox 11? I do not use it as my main browser anymore but I have to say it is fast on my 2.6ghz phenomII and loads and runs much quicker. It is an improvement.
If you have Windows 7 upgrade to IE 9?
IE 9 has the best and smoothest graphics due to hardware acceleration. Chrome seems to have the best javascript performance. I have news for you. Opera is no longer lightweight and test shows it uses as much if not more memory of other browsers.
IE 8 and earlier versions of Firefox are from the last era in web history. They are much slower and use more ram. I thought Seamonkey was discontinued in 2009?? Pretty much any modern browser is better than the last. I think everyone should run the browser of their choice as long as its new I do not care. There are too many exploits out there otherwise.