GE is just an example. Read "GE" as any one of 100s of clinical, financial, and logistics vendors that are locked into a certain # of 9s on their uptime (or face real, tangible financial penalties). The latest greatest browser is not what is going to deliver that, the “October 18, 2006” browser that their development teams have had 4 years to work out every possible thing that could ever go wrong in a million years is what is going to deliver that. And when they collectively, as an industry, decide to make the natural progression to IE8, that will happen with little fanfare. Just another day at the office.

I can guarantee that faster downloads, killer graphics and sweet facebook apps are not what is going to drive business decisions. Some things are serious, and the “uncool” browser is going to be unsurprisingly the correct choice for people who have actual work to do.

And some are still on IE6.

Huge, say, like IBM? The IBM which has standardized on Firefox? That kind of huge?

In any case, that sort of argument doesn't matter to individual users who can choose whatever works best for them. What's best for GM is no longer what's best for America - if it ever was.

Nuts to IBM. They wish they were EMC.

IBM wishes it were the Evangelical Methodist Church?

BAN THEM BOTH! DO IT NOW!

You can't win, Darth classic. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.

:lol2: That's funny right there, I don't care who ya are.

...in 2010. In 2012, though, maybe all three will be critical.

There's nothing particularly wise about "business decisions". A thing is not to be considered "quality" because a Fortune 500 company settles on it. The IT hive minds have routinely missed major trends - not noticed it until upstart companies were killing them by taking advantage. If business were really in charge, we would all have Lotus Notes instead of email and web, and people would pay $70/month for remote desktop capabilities.

That's 3 years and 11 months longer than they actually needed.

Except if they want to work at home

Or on the bus on their Android phone

Or at the beach with their iPad

Or at their friend's house with the Mac

Or any of the platforms and places we haven't thought of yet. Can't do any of that because of "business decisions". Because of ƒuckin MBAs and CIOs who get their information from places like Information Week so they can do exactly what everybody else does.

Thus preventing them from having any competitive advantage from any competitors, who operate in exactly the same way, by hiring the same consultants and making the same safe decisions and cashing their big-dollar paychecks for doing it...

I ƒart on their graves.

Sometimes it's okay to just go with what you know. With what you know will work because you've seen it work before. You don't always have to try to be George Jetson, riding your rocket car to your space office. Newer isn't always better. Traditional things get to be traditional because they have a solid track record. There is an acceptable risk you have to calculate when you feel like going out on a limb, and "being cool and edgy" is not one of the things that factors into that decision.

Incidentally, how exactly does using Windows prevent me from working at home/the beach/the bus ???

When you got Win 7 pre-loaded with the new desktop it didn't match your platform choice.

Me?
I don't even know what a platform is.

Sparky, stick with Firefox man. You can't go wrong. It's for everybody - "platform" people and non-"platform" people.

lol - thats what I figured. I was just thinkin that I must have used IE to download firefox that first time. Guess I have used it.

That's the best use of IE. To download Firefox.

Repeat Protip: after taking your Windows computer out of the box and connecting it to the net, open IE and visit ninite.com and select all the best free or semi-free applications. You download and run one single install package, and boom, your system is usable!