Microsoft Offers IE7 to All, Pirates Included 179
sjdurfey writes "Microsoft recently decided to open up IE7 to all users of Windows, not just the ones with legitimate copies of Windows. They claim it is in the 'end-users best interest'. As a result, Microsoft has decided to mark IE7 as a 'High-priority' update. This is essentially a forced update. Granted, its only a forced update if you are running Windows and have windows update set to automatically install all updates, but nevertheless, it's unnecessary. You can however uninstall IE7 from the Add/Remove Programs menu after its been installed. 'A blocking tool kit is still available for companies and organizations that don't use Windows Server Update Services and want to permanently prevent IE7 from automatically installing on PCs equipped with IE6.'" Update: 10/06 21:19 GMT by Z :Sorry if this seems a bit familiar.
Competition (Score:5, Insightful)
counterpoint (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm Siding with MS on This (Score:5, Insightful)
Why all the hate? (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking as a web developer, IE7 makes my life a hell of a lot easier. It's not perfect (it's not even great), but it's definitely better than IE6. If all the people still using IE magically became IE7 users, at least I wouldn't have to worry about some of the retarded things like the lack of alpha PNG support. I can understand that you might not want to upgrade if you're a business with a variety of web apps that rely on IE6--my heart goes out to you--but I would really like to see it pushed on the home user. Another legitimate complaint, of course, is that the GUI for IE7 is not what I would call intuitive; I do wish Microsoft had provided a version with IE6's GUI but IE7's rendering engine.
We should be trying to make the web incrementally better whenever possible, instead of making snide remarks because it's not a 100% solution.
Re:Why all the hate? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Competition (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:But Ubuntu lets you go back (Score:1, Insightful)
The fucking SUMMARY mentions how to uninstall IE7
Idiot
Microsoft has all but admitted to the trend (Score:5, Insightful)
Gone are the days when people are excited by the next thing from Microsoft. (I remember lines outside of CompUSA when Win98 was released!) Gone are the days when people just blindly 'upgrade' to whatever is the latest thing from Microsoft. People have learned to mistrust them. Microsoft granting 'concessions' isn't really enough! They've lost TRUST. That can't really be restored with concessions and free stuff. Regardless of whether people actually accept the concessions or not is no indication that trust could be earned back or restored.
forced updates (Score:3, Insightful)
Thank god, now if just everyone installed it (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh I don't mean the linux or the mac or the firefox or the opera people, these people I don't care about. NOT because they don't matter, but because if a website doesn't work for their browser version they know that they must upgrade.
But the windows people, that is a different bunch of idiots, and I for one am sick to death of having to design each and every site to cope with the most obsolete version of IE. IE is already bad enough to code for, but the different version (Extreme cases 4) are a nightmare, not only do they not support any kind of standard, among the versions there is no standard. That is not even beginning to talk of the horror that is the mobile versions of IE.
I finally managed to have to only support from 5 onward and just accept that those with IE's older then that can just go and stuff themselves, IF (and I doubt this will happen) the cattle is FORCED to go to IE7 it will still mean I got to code to a crap browser but at least only one version of it.
Offcourse that won't happen, you still got people not on XP and people running CE and got knows what else kinda MS crap that has been making website design a living nightmare since MS found out about the web.
It is still amazing to me that in 2007 we still can't do implement those "cool things" from the mozilla demo page like the moving shadow because IE users can't be bothered to upgrade. This is 2007, and if you want to change the bankground color of a page, you better include a new set of images for all those "transparant" effects like the slashdot logo has (png support).
I would go further then just a forced upgrade, use IE7 or a real browser of you just don't get on the net anymore. Or maybe I should just work on sites where the audience is educated enough to upgrade their software. I am just sick to death of having to say "no, we can't do that cool thing because X% of our customers browsers don't support it and NO I cannot do a "this page best viewed with X link" because it ain't the 90's anymore.
IE7 64, very secure browser? (Score:4, Insightful)
There was at least one exploit against IE that didn't involve shellcode - you could ask a particular ActiveX control to download and run a program. Obviously IE 64 wouldn't be immune to that...
Re:Dropping WGA requirement (Score:5, Insightful)
* People bought a copy, and upgraded every computer they owned. And probably their parents' computer, too, if they were feeling particularly masochistic. Even the old, lame, and barely-running PCs & laptops that nobody would EVER spend $200 or more buying a separate copy of Windows for.
* People upgraded their work computers. This made admins unhappy, but it also forced them to deploy new versions of Windows a lot faster than they'd have otherwise liked, because they knew that the longer they waited, the more guerrilla upgrades they'd have to deal with. Most people who'll install a "free" copy of Windows to their work PC won't spend $200+ of their own money to buy a new copy of Windows for it.
In short, by locking down Windows to a single installation, Microsoft has gained very, very few actual new retail sales compared to what they would have had... but they've lost a HUGE amount of mindshare and free PR. Is there anyone who SERIOUSLY believes that Vista's issues with apps & drivers would have dragged on as long as they have if Vista had become ubiquitous overnight the way Windows95 did? By limiting Vista installations, Microsoft has effectively ensured that Vista represents a minority of Windows users. A minority whose wails have thus far been largely ignored by the next group...
THESE are the REALLY dangerous users, because they're the "influencers" who others turn to for advice. And these are the same users who are currently pissed as hell at Microsoft for annoying them with WGA, and want nothing to do with Vista due to its DRM (real or imagined). God forbid, they might even be playing with Ubuntu on one or more machines. So... when Joe Sixpack asks his coworker Joel Aleet what he thinks about Vista, Joel is going to roast Microsoft and Vista, regardless of whether he's ever actually touched Vista. And Joe is going to walk away convinced that Vista is the Spawn of Satan, and when he orders his new PC from Dell, he'll ask to get it with XP. Stir, rinse, and repeat a few hundred thousand times, and you have Vista's current plight.
IMHO, Microsoft had the product breakdown mostly right with Windows XP -- a "Home" edition that's cheap, but lacks networking & management features businesses want, and a "Pro" version with everything else for about 50% more. If they really, REALLY had to, they could add a third level -- "Enterprise" -- that cost a lot more, but with a twist: it would come on the same CD/DVD as "Professional", and simply ask you at installation time which version you had. In other words, enforced purely by legal license rather than by technical means (like a different CD key). Why? Because it's a wonderfully-elegant way of ensuring that TRUE "Enterprise" users pay the higher cost, without burdening or pissing off everyone else. IMHO, the defining trait of an "Enterprise" (vs simply a "business") i
Re:I'm Siding with MS on This (Score:3, Insightful)
Please support all gecko based browsers. I run Seamonkey and it is very irritating when sites only support Firefox.
There is no reason that a gecko based browser has to masquerade as Firefox
end user's best interest? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's in Microsoft's best interest that they regain market share.
Re:IE7 on Linux? (Score:3, Insightful)
I used to work for a company where the attitude towards Firefow web browsers was "They are a small percentage of the browser market. If your page works in Firefox then that's great but if it doesn't we don't really care enough to fix it."
In other words it doesn't matter how much of the official standards IE supports because IE is a standard in its own right.