You have to understand that anybody who has to write web pages for a living hates IE. In the last 10 years, hundreds of thousands of dollars (if not, literally, millions) have been spent on extra work hours trying to make special code just for IE.
As one of those people you describe I agree 110%. If you take a college/uni course these days you are quickly told that IE is satan. And yes, the computer illiterate either won't update or don't know how to. It really is a sad state of affairs. IE6 in particular has been a bone of contention for many in the industry for far too long, as the years go by people are naturally dropping it, but many workplaces still use it along with XP. IE7 and IE8 both suck too with huge admissions and stuff that you have to explicit about. Although IE9 seems to have finally 'got there' I still won't use it as a personal browser.
http://www.ie6countdown.com/Personally, I am also looking forward to the day that 'everyone' is using a modern HTML5 browser so I don't have to keep writing code for
all the time - all the 'new' HTML5 form property will make life for the web designer so much easier as the burden shifts to the browser itself.
