IE6 Still Going Strong In China 158
RackNine writes "Net Applications estimates that IE6 has a share of 33.8% in China, StatCounter estimates about 40.2%. Consider the fact that there are currently about 477 million Internet users in China and you get 160 to 192 million IE6 users. That is potentially more than all Internet users in Africa and the Middle East combined (187 million)."
Aye, pirates be the reason IE6 just won’t di (Score:2)
...and StatCounter also reports that Windows XP - the most frequently pirated OS in existence - is still powering along at 81% Coincidence? Nay, I think not: http://www.troyhunt.com/2010/08/aye-pirates-be-reason-ie6-just-wont-die.html [troyhunt.com]
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They may just be too lazy to figure out how to activate which can be pretty complex if you're not willing to pay. Which means they may be stuck with SP1 or even worse no service pack. I can't remember if Firefox 3+ requires a service pack or not but I know a lot of applications require Windows XP SP2.
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besides all of the |337 p1r4735 have copies of sp3 now anyway
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China is going through the same thing we more or less fixed about... six or seven years ago. Websites are coded to IE6 because everyone uses IE6, and everyone uses IE6 because that's the only thing that will render these websites "correctly".
Between that and the Great Firewall, China might as well be considered as having its own version of the Internet.
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Re:Aye, pirates be the reason IE6 just won’t (Score:5, Funny)
The next 10 versions of FireFox will still support XP. That should cover us till the end of next week.
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Though I think a lot of web based apps like online banking facilities use ActiveX for stuff over there (and in other countries, such as South Korea, too), which locks users into I
Re:Aye, pirates be the reason IE6 just won’t (Score:4, Informative)
It's only IE8+ that doesn't run on XP.
All the others run on XP and several of them will still run on 2000 and even 95/98.
The problem is that activeX seems to be very popular in Chinese websites.
Re:Aye, pirates be the reason IE6 just won’t (Score:5, Informative)
IE9+ actually.
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Okay, I guess that means Microsoft aren't as annoying as I thought they were.
Never mind [google.com] :-)
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That's weird, because it's trivial to download a copy of XP SP3 on BitTorrent. The pirate copies are usually the corporate versions too, which don't (to my knowledge) require any activation.
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AFAIK the only case I know of is that XP SP1 installer bans the FCKGW keys that was leaked soon after XP RTMed. Stronger detection was considered for SP2, but it was not worth it to make pirates insecure.
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The problem is that activeX seems to be very popular in Chinese websites.
And IE8 supports ActiveX, same as IE6.
Re:Aye, pirates be the reason IE6 just won’t (Score:4, Interesting)
Chinese websites don't support Firefox, so that's where it ends. E.g. to make payments with Alipay/Taobao you need IE specific ActiveX plugins.
(Actually they will have unofficial firefox and even linux plugins, but it's hard to find and troublesome to install.)
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But couldn't they be running a somewhat modern version of Firefox? I know recent versions don't run on XP, but certainly there's something more capable than IE6 that will run on XP. IE7? IE8? Opera? Chrome? Are the Chinese really so lazy as Americans that they can't be bothered to upgrade beyond the default browser?
i like XP
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Me too!
But then again, I work in IT security and make a living fighting malware, so my view might be skewed...
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In short, I don't think the "alternative browser" revolution ever happened in China. About 86% still use IE, the Chinese web is built for IE. They're really in a class of their own here, compare it to say India which is another country that is big and will be ridiculously huge as everybody gets online (July estimates):
IE: 33.48%
FF: 32.86%
Chrome: 29.78%
It's pretty much the same with search engines, everywhere but China Google has about 90%. In China it's 65% Baidu, 31% Google. They are on the Internet in the
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Banks and most e-commerce websites require ActiveX controls thanks to export bans on encryption back in the 1990s. SSL is not preferred as it was only 64 bit until a few years ago. This was also way Apple gave up on Korea a few years back, as Macs were useless due to every site that needed SSL simply required ActiveX a decade ago and most still do today.
Requiring genuine copies of XP prevents Windows Update to upgrade these users to IE 8 which is much better than IE 6 and at least considered a modern 2009/2
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I once repaired a computer with no fewer than 250,000 copies of a particular virus (don't recall which) installed. With each virus .exe weighing in at 12KB, that was 3GB of virus code on the laptop (given that this was about 6 years ago, that was a substantial amount of space).
The machine was a new laptop with XP SP1 installed (so no firewall). On its first day, it was connected to a university LAN for 8 hours non-stop, while a virus was running around the network. The virus did not have code to detect an e
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I know recent versions don't run on XP
Running v5 on my XP SP3 work PC right now.
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Who cares? They work hard to isolate themselves from everyone else, and they have no problems with software piracy. Why should anyone else care about what crappy old software they're using? Maybe one day the great firewall will go up in smoke and they'll have access to the wider internet and realize just how far behind their browsers are. Other than that, it doesn't make a single bit of difference to me what browser they use. The only Chinese people who would be accessing my sites or servers are workin
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(I can't access my Bank of China account on anything but IE; BOC requires a browser plugin for "security" that won't run on anything but IE. Guess I'll be doing all of my online banking at work, because I run Macs and Linux at the house.)
Chinese don't need anything but IE to access their internet, because their internet is damned ugly with no sense of design or aesthetics. The entire Chinese internet is like visiting MySpace. The few sites that cater to us expats usually have non-Chinese designers.
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So basically they are still in the Geocities era of perpetual under construction gifs.
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(I can't access my Bank of China account on anything but IE; BOC requires a browser plugin for "security" that won't run on anything but IE. Guess I'll be doing all of my online banking at work, because I run Macs and Linux at the house.)
Chinese don't need anything but IE to access their internet, because their internet is damned ugly with no sense of design or aesthetics. The entire Chinese internet is like visiting MySpace. The few sites that cater to us expats usually have non-Chinese designers.
ActiveX for security, yep, that's smart.
As for Chinese website design, I think it's partly linguistic. Chinese can fit a whole sales pitch on two square inches. So their websites look like lots of little boxes, all crammed together. It's a weird aesthetic. Japan has it too. Other websites (especially official ones) are just badly designed, by someone with more "connections" than skill.
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Not sure whether the Ling's Cars [lingscars.com] website is representative of the weird aesthetic you refer to, but it's a hoot nevertheless.
A must see for aspiring web designers everywhere. ;-)
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LOL awesome website! XD
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That's for a car leasing business in the UK, near Newcastle in northern England. Is this representative of British aesthetics?
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Actually - that page makes me think of two things. 1970's used car dealer commercials were pretty damned corny. This guy would have fit right into Youngstown, Cleveland, or Pittsburgh in that time.
But, the FIRST thing I though of when I saw the guy's pic was, "Oh no, Chinese Junior Samples!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeDX6ESys10 [youtube.com]
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So their websites look like lots of little boxes, all crammed together. It's a weird aesthetic. Japan has it too.
Yes, but most of the Japanese websites I've seen definitely have a real sense of aesthetics to them. It's unique and very different from western aesthetics, of course, but just as present; it certainly doesn't look like something someone threw together with no attention to detail.
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The better to snoop you with, my dear.
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The entire Chinese internet is like visiting MySpace. The few sites that cater to us expats usually have non-Chinese designers.
Oh, so that's where GeoCities went!
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Not lazy. I bet most are probably not aware. They may also not see the need for a better browser?
You don't need to see the "need" for a better browser to want to abandon IE6. You just have to see that it's a part of a 10-year-old operating system that's no longer sold, and that the latest version of Windows, 7, comes with a much newer version of IE. It shouldn't take a genius to figure out that if you're stuck on an ancient web browser, sooner or later you're going to have some problems. And sure, XP may
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Okay, you'd done your duty to the Microsoft propaganda dept.
Of course, one of the major reasons that the "Tomato OS" is so popular is Microsoft lockin. If you're using a MIcrosoft web server (like Bank of China does ... did?) you really have to use the Microsoft browser for it to work properly but that's far too expensive for the working Chinese. Add to that the fact of the political decision to force the browser into the OS 'shell', ie explorer.exe. and Microsoft have effectively bazookered their feet.
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Your post sounds more like propaganda than his post...
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I know, I'm not very good at propaganda. But like the best propaganda everything I said is true, however, I've tried to be 'complete', ie not take anything out of context.
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Except for this:
If you're using a MIcrosoft web server [...] you really have to use the Microsoft browser for it to work properly
...which is completely not true. If you serve up ActiveX controls, then yes, you need IE; however, there's nothing inherent in IIS or ASP.NET that requires IE on the client side.
How does M$ server require M$ browser? (Score:2)
If you're using a MIcrosoft web server (like Bank of China does ... did?) you really have to use the Microsoft browser for it to work properly
When I ran Apache HTTP Server on Windows Server 2003 inside my employer's intranet, clients running Firefox on Ubuntu had no problem accessing it. Nor have I had a problem reaching public web servers running IIS from my Ubuntu laptop. I've never used IIS in any of my own deployments, but I've been told it still runs PHP applications [iis.net]. So to what extent does any popular Microsoft web server technology require Internet Explorer?
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That is IIS using ActiveX extensions, which only work on IE6/7/8
This effectively stops anyone using many alternative browsers (or IE9), and many use pirated XP (SP0) simply to run IE6 to access these sites ...
You can run IIS quite easily with no alternate killing extensions, but many sites were actively encouraged to use them (everywhere in the world), in China this has not (yet) stopped and so they still have an IE6 centric Web ...
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There is nothing in IIS itself that encourages you to use ActiveX - ActiveX is a client-side technology, it has nothing to do with the server.
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It was caused by earlier versions of IIS, that were packaged with web development systems that encouraged development using ActiveX, back when they thought they could take over the internet by making propitiatory extensions to it ... MS have since depreciated this and now actively discourage it ... but the damage was done
As you say nothing intrinsic to IIS, but the whole package as sold (Browser/Server/Development system) was touted as a single solution and that encouraged development of systems heavily
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First of all, please read the disclaimer in my /. profile. After that, if you wish to continue the discussion, let's stick to the facts. Specifically:
It was caused by earlier versions of IIS, that were packaged with web development systems that encouraged development using ActiveX
Can you give a specific example of a "web development system that encouraged development using ActiveX"? Before .NET, there was ASP, which was also strictly a server-side technology (it used ActiveScript was based on OLE Automation, which was part of ActiveX - but this has nothing in common with ActiveX use in the browser; unfortunately, a lot of people assume
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If you're using a MIcrosoft web server (like Bank of China does ... did?) you really have to use the Microsoft browser for it to work properly
That is BS. IIS, like any other web server, just serves whatever you tell it to serve. If you write valid standard HTML, any browser will be able to handle it, regardless of the server.
Add to that the fact of the political decision to force the browser into the OS 'shell', ie explorer.exe.
That's more BS. explorer.exe has nothing whatsoever to do with Internet Explorer - the binary for the latter is iexplore.exe. Furthermore, explorer.exe does not even load IE's rendering engine (mshtml.dll) - this is trivially checked by Process Explorer or any other similar app that shows DLLs loaded in a process.
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Lots of mainland Internet users don't have access at home, but will use it in Internet cafés instead. I wouldn't be surprised if many of them are still running XP (if a computer ain't broke, don't fix it - that costs too much), with the default IE6.
Many mainlanders have connection at home or at work as well of course, yet those are used far less intensive than shared computers.
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As for TFA maybe someone in China can answer this next question: Is your banking tied to IE 6 like Korea?
For most banks that matter, yes. For odd reasons the password field uses ActiveX.
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For odd reasons the password field uses ActiveX.
Might it have something to do with historical limits on the strength of encryption that can be exported from the United States to China?
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Installing a pirate version of windows has never been hard (you could integrate the key with XP too). The problem is keeping it up to date without the risk of running into WGA and/or activation. So while machines sold with legitimate windows strongly encourage (in the first run setup) users to turn on automatic updates machines sold with pirate windows (which probablly won't bother with the first run setup) are likely to have them disabled.
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poor people, old hw. (Score:4, Interesting)
doesn't need more explaining than that. also these stats are nothing new, the last time there was blabla confirms it browser blablychro has a blabla marketshare, the stats included these as well.
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To make it easier on you (Score:1)
http://isie6deadyet.com/
Botnets (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it any wonder why so many botnets command zombie legions in China?
Is it also any wonder why so much high-profile hacking originates from inside China? (undoubtedly a lot of it does come from Chinese efforts, but anybody that's interested in hacking high-profile targets can just route themselves through China, too)
IE6 has 30%-40% in China? (Score:5, Informative)
That's kind of funny in comparison to my little corner of the US. On a gardening site I run (so non-techie) I'm currently seeing IE with a 42% market share total. This is down from 51% a year ago, and somewhere around 65% the year before that.
Re:IE6 has 30%-40% in China? (Score:4, Funny)
I always thought gardeners used Gnome. *Zing
Re:IE6 has 30%-40% in China? (Score:4, Insightful)
The key difference is that most computers in the west have a valid Windows license, but most computers in China have a pirate one. Pirate copies can't install later versions of IE.
Back when I used to fix PCs I noticed that a lot of Chinese students used pre-cracked install CDs which disabled automatic updates. If you keep installing new hacks you can get the updates, but for non-technical people that isn't really an option.
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I guess the chinese haven't discovered volume-licensed versions of Windows. I got my current XP media from the last school I attended, and it's VLK'd so I never have to activate, though I do still have to deal with WGA... but that works fine.
About size... (Score:3, Interesting)
"...about the size of two football fields, or your average restraining order". -- Adam Savage
Why always comparing numbers to the size or anything else? In all media there is always the "it's about the size of ..." quote that always seems it does not mean anything related to the subject discussed.
I know, completely unrelated subject. I missed it by about that much.
So is toxic metal in food products. (Score:3)
I'm not sure why you'd care, unless it's that there's that many zombied botnet computers in China already pwned by IE6 vulnerabilities.
Those users are useless as far as users/views go to anyone but the Chinese government and websites inside China. If Microsoft thinks they can benefit by grovelling and playing nice they'll just get their Google-chasing asses kicked harder later.
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Yeah, but it is a botnet on the wrong side of the Great Firewall - unless your goal is to take down some server in China. Plus, chances are the Chinese government already has half of those PCs in its own Botnets, and they might not take kindly to anybody borrowing their CPU resources. It isn't like you can send spam, since 80% of all the mail servers already block traffic from China.
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Unfortunately, IE6 is big enough that if a site doesn't work with it, the site is blamed rather than the browser.
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As long as you have a noscript version of the site, you're fine. IE still renders plain HTML properly (well, some idiosyncracies with how it handles margins and css divs, but nothing the average user would ever notice). The problem is when you want to start adding fancy JavaScript, AJAX, or other Web 2.0 bling that IE 6 starts to gak. Present IE6 users with a one-time (per session) warning at the top advising them that they really should upgrade to something like Firefox or Chrome (or even a more recent ver
Many poor people. (Score:2)
In countries with a lower average income, the lifetime of computers is significantly longer. And the chinese i worked with usually have an extreme habit of "never touch a running system". And they dont declare a possible virus infection to be a problem.
Old tech - old OS - old browser (Score:1)
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That might be a mistake depending on your site. Here in North America or even Europe I would ignore IE 6 unless it is a very corporate site. Chinese do buy things online and ActiveX is required there and so are crippled computers with pirates operating systems that Windows Update can't upgrade to IE 8 easily. I know webmasters want to burn all copies of IE 6, but China is different and IE 8 can run in compatibilty mode so coding once for ActiveX and IE 6 is viable. Everyone else does it so it is standard as
UK govmt still hugely IE6 (Score:2)
Still using alot of IE6 even pre SP1 so SSL v2 doesn't work and they are wanting to use more and more 'cloud' solutions in their IT strategy #fail
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You probably mean something else, because SSL v2 is much older and very insecure:
'version 2.0 was released in February 1995 but "contained a number of security flaws which ultimately led to the design of SSL version 3.0"'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security [wikipedia.org]
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yup I meant SSL V3 - thanks for the correction.
Still horrendous that many of the UK gvmt are still on IE6, usually as they have so many stupid apps written that break if up don't use IE6. yes IE7 or 8 break the apps as well cos the devs used so many IE6 specifics.
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Luckily Microsoft released IE9 to make life easier... euh... well, not so much. But atleast they will release IE10 with Windows 8. Which means an other new version to support. Should be 'fun'
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Yup, my workplace is IE6. Didn't really cause problems until maybe a year ago when they started rolling out very Javascript-heavy websites all over the place. So, I use Chrome as much as I can (doesn't cause conflicts and navigates everything quickly), and then when I get to a URL that won't work without ActiveX I copy/paste it into IE6 and go take a bathroom break while the page loads. In IE6 the workflow is more like click link, go grab a cup of water, click link, go type up a document, click link, and
China uses the Maxthon browser (Score:5, Insightful)
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Just because some Chinese uses Maxthon, doesn't mean they all do. In fact I've never seen anyone use it in the offices I've visited. Foxmail is huge, but Maxthon? Don't think so.
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I have lived in P.R. China since 2006 and I do not recall ever coming across this browser on anyone's machines or in any internet cafes. I am not saying that no one uses it. However, the only browser I ever see anyone using is the Chinese language version of IE.
The IE market share in the PRC won't last (Score:2)
because Baidu [pcworld.com], the most popular search engine over there, is working on a browser of its own [baidu.com] which guessing by the screenshots is based on Chrom{-e, -ium}.
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Hmm, the Google Translate of that website has the first feature described as:
Baidu powerful platform integrating the use of force, as you integrate thousands of popular applications, give you a key touch of the Chaokuaigan experience.
The third is described as:
Safe Browsing mode combines sandbox technology and the advantages of protected mode IE will completely isolate your horse with the virus, but also your "Internet sterile environment."
Well, I guess integrated use of force and a sterile Internet environment are definitely well in keeping with modern China.
(And yes, I realize these are almost certainly butchered translations...
and this is why... (Score:2)
All the damned Security digital video recorders still use fricking Active X for their web control. Every single one of those things are complete crap because that are all China made and they don't put any effort into making the interface work with any browser.
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XP may be officially "unsupported" in 2014, but China, and corporate users in other countries will keep it going for decades to come. Too bad Ubuntu/Gnome didn't "get the hint" and create a usable interface like XP instead of Unity/Gnome-Shell or they could of got some of the market share. IE6/XP is this centuries' COBOL.
Those who subscribe to the "it works, don't change it" mantra won't ever change unless they absolutely have to. And if they do have to change, they choose the smallest possible change which would be a Windows upgrade. The massively conservative won't switch until almost everybody else does, it's pointless to look to them for early adopters.
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"The massively conservative won't switch until almost everybody else does, it's pointless to look to them for early adopters.
"
The issue is the massively conservative are becoming the new moderate majority. I am quite shocked to read all the pro Windows XP posts here on slashdot. Slashdot users are the ones who *should* welcome change more and experiment before the average users. If half the users here prefer Firefox 3.6 and Windows XP then these tech giants and I.T. consultants are in trouble.
If I had a tim
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It is the equilivent of turning down Windows XP for Windows 3.0 when it was new. That would have been ludcrious. Today, this is common sense and mainstream. Is it the recession?
No IMO it's a sign of maturity.
In the decade leading up to 2K we got plug and play (which made it much easier for users to add hardware), USB (which relied on plug and play), a proper kernel (with premptive multitasking memory protection and security), the taskbar which made it easy to see what was running and switch between them. 2K was where all these important features came together in a single release. XP was a minor update to 2K which added a crippled version for home users and a few other bits and pei
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I thought it was mostly Windows XP without some SP's with also do not support activation and thus have no IE7 or IE8.
IE6 does support IPv6, if you install IPv6 in Windows XP.
I've atleast see it send AAAA DNS -queries.
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I thought it was mostly Windows XP without some SP's with also do not support activation and thus have no IE7 or IE8.
Retail and system builder (small OEM) copies of XP require activation
volume license versions of XP don't require activation
Big brand OEM versions of XP don't require activation if appropriate BIOS keys are present but will demand activation if those BIOS keys are not present.
All of the above applies regardless of service pack. What did change in XP's lifecycle was that MS introduced key blacklisting and WGA to try and root out those that were using volume license versions with leaked or generated keys. The
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Downloading a VLK copy of XP has been an easy option for many years. No activation, no problem.
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are they viewing? Do any sites still support IE6?
T-Mobile's, for one. You cannot pay your T-Mobile bill online with Firefox, so I need to fire up the XP/IE6 partition once a month.
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do you click on the "feedback button" and tell them every month that their website is broken because it does not work with Firefox or Chrome. If you don't they assume you absolutely love that it only works with IE...
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Perhaps that used to be the case. After reading your comment I tried paying my bill in Firefox 4 and it worked just fine. FF isn't my usual browser, so I can't say if this is a recent fix on T-Mobile's site.
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Fortunately, my bank's website works perfectly with Firefox, and I can pay my phone bill by adding the phone company to the list of payees through the bank.
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since IE6 is the one major browser left that doesn't support the new protocol.
MS claims otherwise
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2007/02/20/ipv6-uris-in-ie7.aspx [msdn.com]
"Additionally, I should mention that although support for IPv6 URIs is new to IE7 and not available in IE6, IE6 does support DNS names backed by IPv6 addresses."
APNIC doesn't have any more IPv4 addresses to give them.
Web browsing isn't really a concern since it gets along fine with NAT. The applications that need to be concerned about IPv4 exhaustion are those that rely on accepting incoming connections from the internet on domestic connections (primerally P2P networks).