No IE10 for Vista or Earlier

I disagree that it is just marketing. If we follow the IE9 timetable, IE10 will most likely be RTW around April 2012. This happens to coincide with Vista SP2 ending mainstream support. Hopefully, Win 8 will be well on its way to reaching RTM status.

The long XP lifespan is an anomoly for MS. They never wanted that much time to pass between OS's, but bad planning and shifting of priorities forced their hand. Worldwide, Vista has about a 20% marketshare and Win7 and XP combine for about 70-75%. In fact Win 7 just in the past months finally passed XP in terms of market share. Vista isn't even installed as an OEM anymore. Major corps. are moving from XP to Win 7, bypassing Vista completely. Vista's share in 12 months time is probably going to be closer to 10%.

Frankly, I think MS just wants to limit the number of OSs it has to support.

LOL

Yet another fail for Vista. Oh well, no big deal - just change browsers and you're set.

SIW2 said:

I liked it.

+1 there's nothing wrong with Vista, I'm still using it :)

I liked it for a while until having issues. 7 is a vast improvement.

It's not s sight to see that it go because high chances are most computer users out there use some thing else for there browser such as firefox chrome etc. I my self refuse to use IE, I've had bad run in with IE with virus.

PhreePhly said:

snip....

I agree with everything you wrote, and yet somehow we seem to have differing viewpoints on this

Surely the fact that ANY (paid for) software loses mainstream support is a marketing ploy? The company drops support for older versions, because they want you to buy the new version.

Freeware of course is another issue, there is only so much time you can reasonably devote to a legacy product you aren't (directly) making money from. Especially if you have paid staff.

If Microsoft really wanted to, they could support every OS they have ever released. Of course doing so would be a massive undertaking, and probably a stupid idea, for the same reasons as freeware, there are only so many man hours that can be dedicated to it, and from a purely financial point of view, it is better to devote proper support to an OS that is going to make you between £80 and £200 a pop, than half assed support (due to the workload being spread thin between all OS's) to one that is going to make you £15 (which would probably be the market value of something like 95 nowadays) but within theory at least it's possible.

From a purely technical standpoint, it should be childs play (relatively) to make it Vista compatible, especially if it is Windows 7 compatible, where the two work in pretty much the same way in aspects like that (As Digerati pointed out in another thread, the majority of drivers for Windows 7, although released as seperate Vista and Win 7 drivers, are actually the same driver with different names).

As you said, by the point that IE10 comes about, Windows 8 will probably be well on the way to RTM, if indeed MS don't hold it back until 8 is ready, so they can release them together, like they did with IE8 and Windows 7. At that point Vista becomes the "third wheel" much as XP is now. Microsoft will be wanting people to drop Vista and move on to 8, because let's face it they aren't making money if you're sticking to Vista, and they are a company they exist purely to make money.

I don't see how it is anything but a marketing ploy, as I said, Microsoft is a company, they exist to make money, EVERYthing they do is a marketing ploy.

severedsolo said:

Surely the fact that ANY (paid for) software loses mainstream support is a marketing ploy? The company drops support for older versions, because they want you to buy the new version.

No, they drop support because the technology has moved on and the current software is no longer worth supporting. The hoops they have to jump through to try and keep old code upto date would lead to incredible insecurities. Do you really think the Win95 code should be accessing the internet today?

severedsolo said:

If Microsoft really wanted to, they could support every OS they have ever released. Of course doing so would be a massive undertaking, and probably a stupid idea, for the same reasons as freeware, there are only so many man hours that can be dedicated to it, and from a purely financial point of view, it is better to devote proper support to an OS that is going to make you between £80 and £200 a pop, than half assed support (due to the workload being spread thin between all OS's) to one that is going to make you £15 (which would probably be the market value of something like 95 nowadays) but within theory at least it's possible.

MS would be bankrupt by now if they followed that policy.

severedsolo said:

From a purely technical standpoint, it should be childs play (relatively) to make it Vista compatible, especially if it is Windows 7 compatible, where the two work in pretty much the same way in aspects like that (As Digerati pointed out in another thread, the majority of drivers for Windows 7, although released as seperate Vista and Win 7 drivers, are actually the same driver with different names).

On this I absolutely agree. I'm sure The IE10 preview is perfectly capable of running on Vista right now. MS is just not going to give users the false impression that OS upgrades will follow the XP path, but return to the 3 year cycle they were on earlier in their life.

severedsolo said:

As you said, by the point that IE10 comes about, Windows 8 will probably be well on the way to RTM, if indeed MS don't hold it back until 8 is ready, so they can release them together, like they did with IE8 and Windows 7. At that point Vista becomes the "third wheel" much as XP is now. Microsoft will be wanting people to drop Vista and move on to 8, because let's face it they aren't making money if you're sticking to Vista, and they are a company they exist purely to make money.

I don't see how it is anything but a marketing ploy, as I said, Microsoft is a company, they exist to make money, EVERYthing they do is a marketing ploy.

Again, I don't think marketing is the driver. Technology is the driver.

DeaconFrost said:

So if I still use IE that means I don't know much about computers?
Better? Someone who knows a lot about computers knows how to research and stay current with their information. IE8, IE9, etc are perfectly fine to use. We aren't living back in the IE6 days when you could make a case that other browsers were better. As it stands today, the choice in browser comes down to personally preference. Firefox and Chrome aren't "better". They are what they are, and all three are fine. People use what they are comfortable with.

Hear hear! My thoughts exactly Deacon. I've tried a test drive on most current browsers and I see no reason to switch. It seems a browser is a fairly easy piece to write, so many are doing it and touting the "more secure, faster" tags. I have found many sites' pages display in a really odd way but IE handles it fine.
For myself, I am comfortable with IE for now.

Britton30 said:

DeaconFrost said:

So if I still use IE that means I don't know much about computers?
Better? Someone who knows a lot about computers knows how to research and stay current with their information. IE8, IE9, etc are perfectly fine to use. We aren't living back in the IE6 days when you could make a case that other browsers were better. As it stands today, the choice in browser comes down to personally preference. Firefox and Chrome aren't "better". They are what they are, and all three are fine. People use what they are comfortable with.

Hear hear! My thoughts exactly Deacon. I've tried a test drive on most current browsers and I see no reason to switch. It seems a browser is a fairly easy piece to write, so many are doing it and touting the "more secure, faster" tags. I have found many sites' pages display in a really odd way but IE handles it fine.
For myself, I am comfortable with IE for now.

Yea, I get tired of this old canard as well. I jumped on the Firefox wagon early on (IE6 did have its problems), but FF was a resource hog. As soon as IE7 came out, I jumped back. I tried FF 2 and FF 3 in the meantime, but the memory leaks were a joke. Yes, extensions are cool, and I do miss them, somewhat. I also found that it was very easy to go overboard with extensions and really turn FF into a bloated whale.

Chrome had some growing pains, but I liked it's per process tabs. Yes, that used resources, but it was controlled. I just didn't like how it handled bookmarks and pop-ups. IE8 did all that I needed. And as far as security goes, go do a search on Secunia and take a look at how badly they all do. To go on about security for any of the browsers is a joke. See:


http://secunia.com/factsheets/IE-2010Q4.pdf
http://secunia.com/factsheets/Firefox-2010Q4.pdf
http://secunia.com/factsheets/Chrome-2010Q4.pdf

IE9 has changed the game. While FF4 may be just as good, after my last experiences with Versions 2 and 3, I've washed my hands of it. Chrome is still a contender, but it doesn't do anything that will pull me away. Given that MS is ready to preview IE10 already, I would say thet MS has finally decided to really enter the browser world and contend.