Microsoft is turning on automatic updates for Internet Explorer, bringing it into line with competitors and its other products. Somewhere, the world's laziest IT guy is very, very angry!

  • http://twitter.com/ShirtNinja K. Williams

    Wait.  People still USE Internet Explorer?!

    • Erin W

      Yep.  My office does.  We’re stuck with some legacy online databases that only work in IE.  Until we can convince our clients to switch, we can’t do much about it.

      • stovedoor

        Current Microsoft products like ‘MS Dynamics CRM’ require IE. It’s a great product, but the browser requirement makes it hard to swallow.

        The bad part with this: IE updates regularly break Dynamics CRM. Then you get a CRM update rollup that fixes it until the next IE release. This is with a current produced by the same company as the browser.

        Thankfully, the article itself mentions that the IE updates wont be forced on corporate customers – they can keep using wsus and pushing updates after they’re properly tested with legacy software.

    • Nylund

      That’s like asking if people still eat at McDonalds or still watch Two and a Half Men.  They do!  And in large numbers.  And to ignore and dismiss them is to ignore and dismiss a huge chunk of the population.

      Annoyingly, there are actually a couple websites that I have to use for my work that seem to only function properly with IE. 

      One common culprit is the US government.  I get a lot of data from various agencies and some sites have these real-time interactive data selection tools that only “update” properly in real-time when you make a selection if you’re using IE.

       With other browsers, you sometimes have to refresh after every new selection to have the changes go into effect (rather than things automatically updating).  This can really slow you down. Or, oddly, the opposite sometimes happens and the non-IE browsers* seem to randomly refresh on their own (which can clear all the fields you’ve just filled out). 

      I’m not savvy enough to explain why this happens.  Surely people here are and can explain.  I bet they’ll probably lay the blame at the makers of the site.  That very well may be true, but until those sites get their acts together, I’ll be forced to continue to use IE with them.  (Actually, those browser extensions that can create a new IE tab in your non-IE browser that emulates IE often does the trick.)

      (*by  non-IE browsers I mean Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Opera.)

      But mainly, I’m a Chrome man.  (PS.  Anyone else notice that the Boingboing site doesn’t always play nice with Chrome?)

      • Guest

        And to ignore and dismiss them is to ignore and dismiss a huge chunk of the population.

        Why should they be paid attention to? Are they likely to do anything interesting? No.

    • http://saberuk.pip.verisignlabs.com/ SaberUK

      Contrary to popular opinion, Internet Explorer 9 is actually a somewhat decent browser.

    • Zach Stevenson

      Large numbers of people that work for large corporations are stuck with IE 7 end even (shudder) IE 6. Their workstations are locked down to allow only IT staff to perform software updates. My Digital Marketing company has two clients in such situations. Very annoying to have to design and test for out of date browsers.

      • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/TGZ75URQ6DKTCNXV3RV36ZKALQ Matthew

        Too bad those IT departments didn’t keep everybody on Mac Word 5.1 instead of choosing to keep old IE versions…

  • Lobster

    Doesn’t it already does that as part of Windows automatic update?

    • A Nonny Moose

      Windows Update is automatic by default, but easily switchable to alert you and allow you to choose which updates to download and install.

  • http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/TGZ75URQ6DKTCNXV3RV36ZKALQ Matthew

    Funny how they still allow company admins to turn this off.  What they realize is that most IE users ARE corporate users.  The average joe has been looking for alternatives like Firefox or Chrome for years.

    • MarcVader

      In the China the average Joe uses IE. IE has in fact 83% of the broswser market share there.

    • Guest

      I think browser choice is only a real problem if you goof-off at work. 

    • stovedoor

      Believe me, a lot of corporations would love to switch – but they require more static software. You need a big release, then a while of just bug fixes, then another big release.

      Firefox was the major contender for a while, until it when the way of rolling releases (ala chrome). IE is the only real option.

  • iamdoingscience

    I would think the world’s laziest IT guy would be quite happy.

    • cfuse

      Then you’ve never worked in IT.

      This kind of stuff breaks things. Those things need to be located and repaired, and this takes a lot of time and effort. This is highly stressful for the staff involved, it interferes with the running of the enterprise (ie. it costs money) and it is totally avoidable (ie. Microsoft shouldn’t be making unilateral decisions on behalf of its clients).

      Any company that created problems for me when I was working in IT immediately got put on my shitlist. They didn’t see a cent of my spend until they fixed the problem. I certainly didn’t expect Microsoft to ever change their ways, but fortunately there were always alternatives, and we did move away from many Microsoft solutions for exactly these kinds of reasons.

      At the end of the day, I was the admin of my company, not Microsoft. They *do not* get to make decisions about how things are run inside my network (and if I was still there, and unhappy about this, I’d block them at the firewall – good luck with your forced updates then).