Internet Explorer users stupid, study finds

[Daedalus]

@AccyD

Mine. Our PCs still have IE6, and the updates are pushed down to the clients meaning the IT department control which updates the PCs get, and they've chosen not to update IE. They say it's for compatibility with some old Citrix setup we use for QPulse and the likes... Now, for my particular job I have admin access in my department so I could upgrade it, but personally I've installed Chrome on my machine. Yes, I have used all the others. I just find that I prefer Chrome for many very small reasons.

Not a Google fan as such, and I know they do some nasty stuff, but if you stick to the rule of *never* putting anything on the internet you don't want people to see, you'll be fine regardless of what evil corporation's software you use. I couldn't care less if Google read my report on Google Docs about our latest long-term stability test on one of our products, or see my spreadsheet of how many outstanding work orders I have each month. Good for them - they might even enjoy my probe temperature study on haemostasis analysers! For me it's bloody handy access to these files wherever I am. And I happen to find Google Streetview very handy as well for finding an address. Knowing that someone has a big tree outside their house and a red door makes it a little bit easier to find that house party

[Daedalus]

I only ever see inexperienced users who think they are power users installing firefox, opera or chrome.

Wow. That must make me a pretty inexperienced user. I guess I'm only programming as a hobby for 20 odd years, and work developing firmware for the medical devices industry, so that doesn't count as experience, right? The way you say that almost sounds like "Real men only use IE" as if anyone using another browser doesn't really know what they're doing, and can't handle IE. I guess that makes Linux users like myself total wimps, right?

[Daedalus]

@Kremlar

Chrome? Bloat?? Ummm... Not sure how you arrived at that conclusion. I find that putting Chrome on computer-illiterate users' PCs actually reduces the amount of bloat they end up with. Have you never gone to a client's PC to find they have IE with 6 or 7 toolbars installed as free "extras" from various packages they've installed? Maybe a Yahoo toolbar, a Google toolbar, sometimes the odd warez or pr0n toolbar, a couple of printer driver toolbars and of course the free virus checker toolbars. All installed fairly innocently.

Anyone with a "slow internet" problem that I've told to install Chrome have been blown away by the speed and efficiency of it, and that's mostly to do with the toolbars and plugins rather than IE itself. And way to go helping out your users there by leaving them with broken shortcuts. It's a pretty crap way of handling things on Chrome's part, but you sound like you enjoy the extra hassle you cause your clients by doing that.

In fairness, I don't like Safari under Windows at all, but I use it most of the time on my Macs.