Comment by Ardit20 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Ardit20 | Hacker News Reader

In my university, they still use IE6 everywhere. If a website asked me to upgrade I can not because we can not install anything on the machines. However, the machines do have firefox, so I tend to use that, but it does not come spontaneously to many people to look for firefox, while ie is right there on the desktop.

As for the article, I did find it insightful in as far as I did not know before why people continue using ie6. I thought the idea to ask them upgrade was quite a logical one. However, although it might work in forcing my university to upgrade, I am not too sure as I suppose the IT department has a lot on its plate and perhaps upgrading their browser is not as important as say upgrading the online learning environment.

Upgrading the browser is not too tedious a task. In fact, if your IT department had left Windows Update turned on, they'd have at least IE7 by now.

Of course, they can't leave WinUpdate on because they did not legally purchase Windows :p

this is a great point made by someone that has never worked in IT..

Nevermind the fact that nearly all proprietary software on a system may or may not function correctly with the release of a service pack or a new browser, testing should always be done before hand which is why auto updates are turned OFF.

on the IE6 front i completely agree, i have a redirect page setup with a link to IE 7 for our company website.. IE7 isnt the newest and greatest thing by any means but its a whole lot better than its predecessor.

I don't know why you're being downmodded, I think you've made a good point. I'd assumed that most orgs stuck on IE6 weren't offering Firefox in tandem, which is apparently not the case.

Perhaps "please upgrade your browser" messages should also instruct users to look for an alternative browser which may already be available. That said, I still think showing such messages to potential customers is categorically stupid.

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