You wouldn’t drink 9-year-old milk, so why use a 9-year-old browser?

To the few remaining Internet Explorer 6 users on this site, this is dedicated to you.

Microsoft Australia has recently launched a new online campaign aimed at prompting Internet Explorer 6 users to upgrade to IE8 with an interesting choice of analogy, milk.

As bizarre as the comparison might seem, the claim is undeniable – IE6 is nine-years old technology and that’s a good enough reason to stop using it. I don’t know what 9-year-old milk looks like, but I’m sure Internet Explorer 6 isn’t that far off.

Now we just need a similar campaign for Windows XP. Come to think of it, they wouldn’t have to change much at all. 🙂

63 insightful thoughts

    1. NickelGreen is correct it is time to leave XP and IE6 behind and move on to Ubuntu. This is also true if you don’t have the money to upgrade from Windows 2000 and IE6. Remember Microsoft made IE 7 and IE 8 to not run on Windows 2000 still a quite usable OS. So long live IE 6….or better yet move to Ubuntu which with Wine can ran pretty near any Windows app.

  1. No but IE8 RTM’d in March 2009, and I wouldn’t drink 1-year-old milk either. 😛

    I’m a happy user of IE8, I’m just sayin’…

  2. Typo: “I don’t know what 9-year-old milk looks like, but I’m sure Internet Explorer 9 isn’t that far off.” I’m thinking you wanted to say IE *6* isn’t that far off. Hurry before the zealots see it! 😉

  3. It’s almost pointless pestering users for this. Like me, my work place has ie6 and there’s not a lot I can do about it. There are plans to upgrade – but it takes a long time.

  4. considering that most sites consumers look @ have made the transition to ie8 or 9 i think it would benifit them to see a better experience even if their old xp hardware cant handle it

  5. Why is it that all the interesting stuff comes from MS Australia? Maybe their comedian-programmers should be moved to the home base to replace MS’s crappy advertising department.

  6. @Joe is spot on. From my experience the majority of user still on IE 6 are corporate users that don’t really have a choice. And generally the reason why IT departments are sticking with IE6 is not because they are masochistic but because they often have legacy web applications that only work with IE6.

    Quite ironic really… I know of a number of clients that moved to web based application in order to get away from legacy desktop apps… The web apps they procured where then all developed with IE6 in mind… read they are standards based and will break on any other browser. Now there is no money to migrate those old web apps to work with newer browsers so it’s considered cheaper to stick with IE6.

    Who’s fault is it? Microsoft for making such a bad browser in first place or the developers that didn’t bother making their apps standards based or worse got suckert into using features that only worked in IE6.

    One of the biggest arguments against Silverlight in my opinion. Silverlight is an interim technology that will be replaced by HTML5 sooner or later. Even Microsoft themselves concedes to that.

  7. The thing that kept me from IE7 and consequently 8 was I REALLY like the “classic windows” appearance of IE6. I couldn’t for the life of me find things in IE8 and even Office 07, having long since switched to FF and Office 07 I can find a few things, but still don’t know how to operate IE8.

    People come up to me when I am on my laptop, and ask why or if I’m running Windows 2000 all the time. (see Mr. Ferris’ comment: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=2579005&id=500902803). Atleast I know 9 years old milk was in a carton, at a local elementary school here they serve milk in pouches. DuPont plastic FTW?

    1. i find ff default layout is the same as netscape confusing. & honesty who has time to look for & test add-ons

  8. Long, if you surfed a day in IE6 shoes, you wouldn’t be so flippant about hating on IE6. Trust me, I browse with IE6 on a regular basis, and the IE6-specific messages are everywhere. They range from small notes of upgrade, to complete lockouts. I would say 30% of the sites have some sort of “Did you know your browser is out of date?” message — some telling me that they feel sorry for me — some saying they kind of hate me. By now, pretty much everyone who is computer savvy enough and has the administrative privileges to upgrade, has. These silly marketing programs serve only to make the people creating them feel smug. Don’t encourage them. Corporations will be rolling out Windows 7 over the next couple years, and with it, IE8. That’s what will get the remaining folks to upgrade.

  9. I’d be much, much more in support of this if it weren’t for the fact that Microsoft’s fairly new product, the Zune HD, uses IE6 internally. I was very hopeful and optimistic over the launch of the Zune HD; when I read what the internal browser was using, my heart sunk. I understand the technical limitations, but I seriously thought they would have overcome them to release an updated version of their mobile browser.

    I love Microsoft products, but until the entire company (all of their departments and satellite firms) makes an effort to rid itself of IE6, this just seems like simple marketing smoke and mirrors to me.

  10. Brilliant. Microsoft should start paying more attention to whoever did this advertising for them. I want to see them do more with it.

  11. Stupidest analogy ever. Why don’t you throw away 9 year old wine or whisky? Because it gets better with age. Why don’t you dump your 40+ year old parents? Because you love them? Why don’t you dump your decade old photos and take new ones? Windows XP works and works better with files and programs (MS gangraped Windows Explorer and the shell in 7).

    1. Apples and oranges. Milk does not age well, nor does it have any nostalgia value, so why compare them.

  12. Comparing IE6 to XP is like comparing spoiled milk to an older car that is still in good shape. You can still run IE8 on XP. You can also run Firefox or Opera (the way things are with Windows 95 and Opera, I doubt they’ll drop support for XP before 2020).

    I think that it was a bad idea for Microsoft to not include XP support for IE9. XP is still rather widely used, and that means that for the most part XP users will use IE8. That means that IE8 may very well become the new IE6. No 100% adoption of HTML5 until Windows XP is the way Windows 95 (or 98 or ME, or 2000, even) is now: no one uses it anymore.

    1. it was a surprize that they added exfat to xp/2003.
      as for ie it wouldnt happen since the video standards werent updated to handle stuff like html5

  13. Long- What is so wrong with XP? (Yes, 7 is undeniably better.)

    XP boxes can be quite solid and relatively quick if set up well..

    1. It’s like a 20-year old car. Sure you can still drive it, but you’re not getting the latest innovations in security, efficiency and performance.

    2. i agree xp mce was great. but i cant havent really seen xp for years unless you inclued WHS(ws 2003 sbs)

  14. It’s like a 20-year old car. Sure you can still drive it, but you’re not getting the latest innovations in security, efficiency and performance.

    And Spyware tracking.. jeesh long you’re still a shilling dumb ass.

    Now we just need a similar campaign for Windows XP. 😛 yeah because they need to use shitty vis7a, when really they have everything that is useful already. No need for Microscumopoly junk, when other alternative apps work better.

  15. Nice idea.

    I send a link to this page every time a client or someone I know has IE6, to help explain the stain on the Internet that is Internet Explorer 6.

    Hate IE6, love XP (fairly indifferent towards Windows 7).

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