So while every other browser out there (even Apple's Safari) will run on any reasonably modern OS, MS is making IE only run on 7?!? Do they really think their browser is enough of a feature to get people to upgrade?
This. Sorry but who cares? A 10+ year old OS is well out of date and people running Vista need their PCs removed and destroyed for the sake of humanity. It's not like IE9 is bad and there aren't alternatives out there.
Hey, XP still runs just fine thank you! Better than Vista does anyhow Doesn't sound so bad to me. If anyone wants IE10 so bad, they can upgrade to Win 7. Vista still gets IE9, which i've heard is a real improvement. XP can still go up to IE8 (even if many muggles will still languish in IE6). Of course, if you're really hankering for modern standards compliance, you could always install chrome/firefox/opera on any of those
Funnily enough I just put Vista on my mother's PC, she has Windows 7 on her laptop but is used to XP and Vista has an explicit "classic" XP mode that doesn't cost extra in a Professional version - if she needs it. IE9's only just launched and they plan to dump it in a year? Crazy. It's the best of both worlds if she has another year to learn the interface and then I've got 32-Bit Win7 (probably the final 32-Bit?) from the Family Pack which I can install, and both machines will have the same thing, ready for Win 8 if she wants it when I would most likely throw in the towel and build a new one or get her to pick up a Dell. It's not just businesses that have to plan their OS migration
So? Every other browser updates faster than that and you still have the option of using them on your legacy computers.
their shortening the support cycle makes perfect sense from a business standpoint. if they continued to support old versions forever, and update and backport new features to them at no cost to the user, they end up taking a loss. paying for r&d, staff to write software, operating costs, etc. without eol old version there is no incentive for the consumer to buy a new version and make the company money. i find it odd that there are still so many people that prefer a 10 year old os. its like giving someone the choice of a brand new aston martin or a rusty triumph with a broken transmission, and them picking the triumph.
I suppose it's more a shock to see MS just ceding to the competition like that but it depends if you can rip out IE entirely if you choose to uninstall v9 - if you can than that's the end of the problem on legacy OS.
I agree with it. Historically Microsoft have been pretty great with supporting old OSes and application softwares, although it does make sense that they start to put pressure on people and companies to upgrade and not keep using old OSes.
But I learnt to drive on a Triumph!! Microsoft have a standard 10 year support lifecycle. That hasn't changed on any of its OS' afaik. That's even longer than some "long" hardware supports (I forget what they call it) which are 7 years in business. It's also a matter of security and compatibility with the latest hardware and technologies. Hardware companies will stop making drivers for old OS' too eventually because it costs them more too.
I kind of miss vista aero.. the maximize and restore animations- even the close animation was better.. windows 8 will be coming out way too soon imo xp is cool if your running like 256k old laptop though.. you can't put 7 on something like that- it won't install (I've tried)
Only reason I haven't removed xp from my second system is because it's the family pc, and because I can't be arsed to spend money on another os licence, when xp is just fine.
First off, I don't really care one way or the other. I'm happily running XP and have not seen anything yet that looks like a compelling reason to change. Likewise, I wouldn't touch IE with a barge pole, so I have no personal stake in this. On the other hand, I find it interesting because IE is a browser. It's not like we're talking about DX11 which requires components unique to Vista or 7 to run, but rather a dinky application that displays web pages. Every other mainstream browser works in pretty much any common system, even non-Windows ones. As someone pointed out in the comments to this article, the only way IE knows what it's running on is if it does a version check on startup. This isn't a case of not taking the effort to make it reverse compatible, but rather a case of intentionally removing a capability that would work if they had done nothing. Likewise, MS does not sell IE, it's free and they make some money on ads and search. It's not like people will buy a new OS just to get the features of IE10, so why go to the effort to do this? What are they gaining by doing it?
It's faster for a start I had Vista on my Laptop when I got it first, and was lucky enough a few months later to have a friend give me a genuine W7 Home Premium 64 license code so that I could install from the media I already had for my PC for Win 7 With Vista, my laptop used to take a good 3 mins from switch on to log in screen and then a further 2 mins from there. With 7 its very much a case of switch on, HP Welcome Screen and then 1 minute later I've logged in and am doing whatever it is I turned it on for. I always found that Vista was always thrashing my hard drives, not noticed that once with 7.
I havent used IE for years so tbh this makes no difference to me at all, and i would have thought the majority of the population arent really that bothered which version of IE they're running tbh. and i seem to be in the minority that never had any problems with vista, and tbh if i hadnt got the win7 launch price deal id probably still be running it.
Vista, on a decent machine with a couple of gigs of ram is not a terrible OS. It was made terrible by oems shipping it on systems with 512mb - 1gig of ram. Many many systems around sill run it, seems silly to pull the plug on it.
Go Microsoft. Of course, part of this reasoning is to drive OS Sales. Win 8 next year should mean that Win7 should be the "older one in mainstream use". Sopport of XP is dead, meaning most PC's in the corporate world are bign upgraded. Vista was allegedly a POS (I personally disagree here.. the x64 version was WAY better that the x86 one the OEM's shipped), so the logical upgrade path is win7. Do it, MS. Do it. They can make a competitve browser, and FINALLY kill off IE6/7... do it...
