Ask HN: How to make home users ditch IE6? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to make home users ditch IE6?

5 pointsCWIZO6 comments

There are a whole lot of chain-emails circling around the internet. We tech savvy people ignore them as they are full of BS. But your regular user (who is probably still using IE6 at home) takes them very seriously and almost always forwards them. So I was thinking, what if we would use chain-emails for something good for a change? If we would write-up a email saying that IE6 will get you a broken internet and a handful of viruses, accompanied with simple instructions on how to upgrade/switch, maybe we could make a change in the browser statistics.

What do you think? At the very least we can't do any harm this way.

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I'd guess that most people using IE6 at home don't know what a web browser is. A chain e-mail to enable Windows Update would be more likely to work, I'd guess, and would have benefits beyond killing off IE6.

I thought the main reason IE6 was still in use so much was intranet sites requiring it? So I'm not actually sure this would do much to kill off IE6.

The majority of IE6 are "corporate" users, yes. But there is still a great deal of home users who just don't know better. I realize those users don't know what a browser is, the email would try to explain that. Advocating for enabling windows update is not a bad idea also!

At least you've offered up an idea for debate. I don't have an opinion as to its efficacy, but it addresses an annoying problem. Last I checked our user base has been hovering at about 10% IE6 for at least the last 4 months. It seems the decline in use has leveled off.

I've also noticed that % is no longer dropping as it used to :\

Where are you based?

I'm finding most technically naive computer owners have at least IE7 now - their IE6 bearing computers having got a glitch and been replaced. Isn't this remaining percentage supposedly business users or those using corporate owned computers?

I'm based in Slovenia. IE (all versions) has 46.00% share on one of our webpages (one of the biggest in Slovenia), IE6 has 23.98% share (inside the whole IE share).

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