rant: workplaces, STOP USING IE6!

[secretanchitman]

there is absolutely no reason to use such an outdated browser like ie6 today. my work (hospital) refuses to upgrade and hell, even update it. apparently, every single computer still runs xp and ie6 with sp2 and hasnt been updated since then. xp i dont really care about, but ie6? give me a break.

loading anandtech's home page literally takes a few minutes, and if im lucky, it wont crash and say "ie has stopped responding". same with gmail (boy am i glad google has decided to stop supporting it soon) - loading gmail takes ages, even on the "slower connection" setting. i mean, literally every website i go to is slowed down to a crawl thanks to this pathetic browser. another annoyance? these computers all have at least a decent 2.2ghz pentium 4 or even core 2 duo, with 1GB+ ram, so i know they arent the culprit.

i have talked to our hospital IT department and all they can say is "its up to corporate to allow us to upgrade web browers, because upgrading would break all of our intranet and web apps". really? i dare you to try chrome, opera, firefox, and dare i mention them, ie7/ie8.

cliffs:

ie6 sucks, everyone should stop using it if they still are, and upgrade to a modern browser if you havent already done so.

 

[Anubis]

while i agree with you, people wont upgrade/update it because they will have to learn how to troubleshoot/fix a new browser and or make all their aps work with it.

 

[FelixDeCat]

Do they have a waaambulance at your hospital?

 

[Matthiasa]

Sorry to tell you this but p4 that slow is not decent.
Oh, and in case you missed it they are using ie6 most likely for compatibility reasons with stuff you probably don't use as you would have known that already.

 

[Bignate603]

There's a possibility that maybe they don't care if it's slow for you doing things that aren't related to your job.

And yes, the IT department has a point. They probably have applications that work through the browser that was designed for IE6. They know they work in IE6 just fine so why should they bother changing?

Work computers are for work and there's a big argument for using something you know works well enough. You've got what you need for your job so they have no motivation to change it.

 

[blackdogdeek]

large corps take a long time to do upgrades, especially if they involve mission-critical apps.

EDIT: even more so if there's no value add to the upgrade. in fact, that would be the reason to not do an upgrade.

 

[secretanchitman]

Sorry to tell you this but p4 that slow is not decent.
Oh, and in case you missed it they are using ie6 most likely for compatibility reasons with stuff you probably don't use as you would have known that already.

2.2ghz p4 is just fine for web browsing and intranet. the nurses/doctors complain to IT because they especially use and depend on it more than me.

compatibility reasons? they've been using ie6 since it first came out, and it was fine back then, but today its not. i understand about not learning a whole new browser that isnt from microsoft, but i dont see a problem in learning how to use at least ie7/ie8 - something that people will be using at least in the future.

 

[FelixDeCat]

There's a possibility that maybe they don't care if it's slow for you doing things that aren't related to your job.

And yes, the IT department has a point. They probably have applications that work through the browser that was designed for IE6. They know they work in IE6 just fine so why should they bother changing?

Work computers are for work and there's a big argument for using something you know works well enough. You've got what you need for your job so they have no motivation to change it.

Yeah but I want gmail and to be able to cruise the forums while I get paid. This is America damnit! I want my stinkin' rights right now!

 

[secretanchitman]

There's a possibility that maybe they don't care if it's slow for you doing things that aren't related to your job.

And yes, the IT department has a point. They probably have applications that work through the browser that was designed for IE6. They know they work in IE6 just fine so why should they bother changing?

Work computers are for work and there's a big argument for using something you know works well enough. You've got what you need for your job so they have no motivation to change it.

a few doctors i know specifically bring in their laptops so they can log in using a vpn and not have to suffer using ie6. its seriously a pile of crap now. i admit, a few years ago it was fine, but today its not.

only when there is downtime right now, that i have to live with ie6. otherwise, im hardly at the computer. its just frustrating to have to live with a crap browser, and have the mentality of "who cares if its slow, but as long as its running, its fine" from the IT, but i guess thats how it goes.

 

[Bignate603]

compatibility reasons? they've been using ie6 since it first came out, and it was fine back then, but today its not. i understand about not learning a whole new browser that isnt from microsoft, but i dont see a problem in learning how to use at least ie7/ie8 - something that people will be using at least in the future.

It's compatibility reasons with the apps they use for actually doing work.

Most of these apps are written once and then never touched unless they absolutely have to. They've never been updated to work well with new browsers so there's no guarantee that every single feature will work correctly.

Again, it's a work PC. If it does what it needs to do for work that's all IT cares about. Changing things around just increases the chances that something may not work correctly and cause major headaches.

 

[lxskllr]

large corps take a long time to do upgrades, especially if they involve mission-critical apps.

EDIT: even more so if there's no value add to the upgrade. in fact, that would be the reason to not do an upgrade.

Security issues are a good reason to upgrade. This is also a good time to analyze their software procurement practices, and work on getting software that won't have built in obsolescence.

 

[VinylxScratches]

Maybe because a lot of their business functions only work on IE6?

 

[Vette73]

I thought ie8 had backwards compatibility to sites done for ie6 or later?


I work at State Dept and they MIGHT be upgrading to ie7 by the time ie9 comes out. And no that is not a joke.

 

[shortylickens]

I am thinking the OP's rant is not getting support by ATOT.

 

[TheGizmo]

ok so I hear you.. I am currently on my work box, which is a 3.2ghz core 2 duo with 2gb ram.. and yes, we are also running window xp sp2 (yea not even sp3.. wtf).. anyway, my browser I'm using is also ie6.0 and its pretty pathetic they would use it, but I do understand we have quite a lot of proprietary apps that run in ie6 over intranet. so I do understand your whining but also at the same time I see the company's perspective. I just wish they would install two browsers, one for our proprietary crap and another for everything else. i actually have no problem with win xp sp2.. but given our machine specs its kind of odd.

edit: oh and btw theres something else wrong thats slowing your browser to be that slow.. maybe your internet, b/c as crappy as ie6 is here as well.. my internet is quite fast.

 

[Engineer]

I've got Win2k on my laptop and it won't let me update to anything past IE 6. I did however, cheat, and start using FireFox! :biggrin:

 

[Scouzer]

i love these threads, because my work always wins for supreme IT fail:

our advanced computers:

P4 2.4ghz 512mb RAM
40mb email inbox
IE6, adobe acrobat 7.0, office 2003 (we dont even have the office 2007 compatibility plugin so we cant open those documents) , XP SP 2, flash 8 (we only got flash last year)
250kbps high latency connection shared by 8 computers. i think its a dual ISDN? not really sure.

we also have a system running windows NT with a PII 400 ish

our fail computers:
PII 266
proprietary MSDOS application
8000 baud modem shared by 2 computers

since most of our work takes place in the proprietary MSDOS application, we mostly use the PII 266 computers.

so in short, i win.

 

[FelixDeCat]

OP, while I have been teasing you, I actually sympathize with your plight. I used to work for a bank with a slow upgrade cycle. However, when I argued for something better and was met with compatability excuses, I would go to vendor websites to see if improved versions had been released (or patches).

If improved versions of key software do exist, it would behoove management to upgrade to IE8 as it is more reliable and much more secure than IE6. Approaching this from a security standpoint as opposed to a convenience one will be a much easier sell. Then you can show them the upgrades and patches you found to accomodate newer and safer browser technology.

Security alone is reason enough to purchase upgrades.

 

[Jeff7]

Firefox is standard where I work.

And I can't complain about my PC.
Dual dual-core Xeon processors, I think somewhere around 2GHz.
PCI-Express Quadro video card, though it's only got 128MB of RAM.


The saddest part of it all: Pro-Engineer isn't multi-core capable on Windows.
The only way you get any benefit from multiple processors is if you're also running an FEA analysis in the background.

 

[olds]

My work used IE6 and won't let us update.
But I was able to install Firefox.

 

[Linflas]

I work for a public school system. We would love to be on the bleeding edge of the technology curve so I assume that the OP is ok with the tax increases necessary to allow us to spend money like that? Or perhaps you might prefer that we try and make use of all the resources available to us for as long as practical and save the taxpayers a few dollars? Part of that is knowing that browsers at work are not just used to surf ATOT, there are actually many web based applications that in some cases may need to be upgraded to be compatible with a newer browser. It is not so simple in an environment with 15K+ workstations to just install the newest version of whatever app without testing the total impact on other applications.

 

[Acanthus]

I am thinking the OP's rant is not getting support by ATOT.

That's odd, you would think you would want to migrate to IE9 when IE9 comes out... So youre not on outdated software all the time. If you move to IE7 when IE9 comes out youll have similar issues eternally.

 

[Acanthus]

i love these threads, because my work always wins for supreme IT fail:

our advanced computers:

P4 2.4ghz 512mb RAM
40mb email inbox
IE6, adobe acrobat 7.0, office 2003 (we dont even have the office 2007 compatibility plugin so we cant open those documents) , XP SP 2, flash 8 (we only got flash last year)
250kbps high latency connection shared by 8 computers. i think its a dual ISDN? not really sure.

we also have a system running windows NT with a PII 400 ish

our fail computers:
PII 266
proprietary MSDOS application
8000 baud modem shared by 2 computers

since most of our work takes place in the proprietary MSDOS application, we mostly use the PII 266 computers.

so in short, i win.

Ha, i would quit.

 

[Modelworks]

Are they using activex ? There were a lot of business/medical applications that depended on it when it was all the rage.

The other thing is to look at it from their perspective . Does what they have work for their business needs ? It doesn't matter to them how fast people can pull up yahoo or facebook as long as it works for what they need .

 

[Vette73]

I work for a public school system. We would love to be on the bleeding edge of the technology curve so I assume that the OP is ok with the tax increases necessary to allow us to spend money like that? Or perhaps you might prefer that we try and make use of all the resources available to us for as long as practical and save the taxpayers a few dollars? Part of that is knowing that browsers at work are not just used to surf ATOT, there are actually many web based applications that in some cases may need to be upgraded to be compatible with a newer browser. It is not so simple in an environment with 15K+ workstations to just install the newest version of whatever app without testing the total impact on other applications.

IE8 has compatibility mode to cover this. That and what is worse, losing everything due to security issues or having to turn compatibility mode on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_8#Compatibility_mode