Larry, most people aren't techs who change their computer every two years. The life of a PC for average JOe is about 5 years. Heck, I am sort of a techie and my home computer dates from 2001. My wife's computer is also 2001 and it shipped with ME. And even in 2001, there was still a lot of computers sold with ME, not XP. XP was the defacto OS more in 2002 or maybe late 2001 only, and that's only 3 years ago.

So, did some Googling around, and what I've found is that, right now, in March 2005, XP seems to have 63% of the market. Now, of that number, how many do you think are illegitimate versions of WinXP that can't install SP2? Now I have no numbers but I think 13% would be quite a conservative number. That would mean that it would be 50% XP SP2 and 50% something else. But my guess is that the number is quite higher than 13% of XP users haven't updated to SP2, whether it's because of the horror stories they've heard, because they don't care and don't want to bother or because they have a pirated version of XP.

Paxx, most of the techies are on XP, as you said that mostly non techies are using older systems. Firefox is mostly being used by those comfortable with computers. Which pretty much covers the XP population. The 64% I think would be very conservative.

I agree the WC users are mostly of those tech savvy, whay do I think that?

The numbers for WC are http://www.sitemeter.com/default.asp?action=stats&site=sm7wincustomize&report=19 and http://www.sitemeter.com/default.asp?action=stats&site=sm7wincustomize&report=13 - 94% of XP users out of which 29% uses Firefox and being tech enthusiasts I would say the WC crowd is among those spreading Firefox.

Now about the piracy, I think whomever was so resourceful to get his XP "the other way" will be smart enough to get their SP2 installed, have no doubt about that.

So IE7 is liable to be a big wilencer of the wind in FireFox sails. It's not going to stop its development but I'm pretty sure if it meets some basic user needs of today it will most definitely allow MS to regain its market share.

I use firefox every day for most of my browsing as currently it's the most convenient way for me to browse the Web, but to be honest I find it less than stellar in terms of quality. Having to deal with it's skinnig engine I can say there are some major problems with the design of its gui toolkit to say the least.

That said I will be back to IE if only they add tabbed browsing and a decent download manager. The one in Firefox is really good and I cannot do without tabbed browsing any longer. but in terms of quality (based on my experience with IE as a control (which I use for Blog Navigator) it is of really good quality. I'm pretty sure Microsoft will deal with the security threats (when in doubt throw money at it) and will be able to regain their good name in that term just like they did with XP after years of crappy 9x incarnations.

I don't know what it is with you Firefox boys. IE still stsarts faster out of the gate and generally does a better job showing websites. IE also organizes favorites better.

IE doesn't have tabbed browsing. Many people like this feature. Why should I have 5 open IE's instead of just one Firefox?

SkinStudio reads kona's comment and sighs.

Talking about pepole who can't change their mind and won't change the subject.

If you consider bad rendering a "better job at showing sites" then you need to get more informed. IE will display sloppy/bad coding because its joke of a rendering system only conforms to MS standards as compared to the actual W3C standards (and it seems MS had no real intentions on fixing the rendering engine).

We like firefox and prefer it to IE, get over it.

Bebi, calling bulletproofness a joke is not really a smart thing to say.

I believe our web people have quite an oposite experiences with MSHTML rendering and Gecko.

Oh, and IE is a standard. it's W3C that's not IE compliant

IE doesn't have tabbed browsing. Many people like this feature. Why should I have 5 open IE's instead of just one Firefox?

Maxthon has tabbed browsing and is IE based. Anyhow what about us people who would rather have 5 open IE's instead of useing tabbed browsing? I can't stand tabbed browsing.

Maxthon has tabbed browsing and is IE based. Anyhow what about us people who would rather have 5 open IE's instead of useing tabbed browsing? I can't stand tabbed browsing.

I use Maxthon also, but it still doesn't not compare to Firefox. It renders the pages much slower than Firefox.

We all know you don't like tabbed browsing, but many more people do.

I find it interesting that you want to get rid of Windows in favor of Linux, but defend IE all day.

Well Island Dog the reason I wanted to switch is two fold. Firstly becuse M$ says my XP key is not legal. I have to clue why they say that. And then M$ said no more updates to pirated copyies (or those they THINK are pirated) later this year. Secondly I wanted to switch to Linux because I thought learning a different OS would be cool. I was wrong. Linux is a headache.

Why do I defend IE? Because for me it's faster and I believe it to be superior. I am just waiting for a big security hole or big virus to befall Firefox so I can sit back and laugh as I type "I told you so. Now who wants to say FF is as secure as you thought?"

Native PNG Support! SWEEEEEEEEEEEET -- it's about time!

Adam, I don't know why you specified that tech savy people mostly have XP. It has little to do with the fact that IE7 won't be available for people running pre-XP versoins of Windows. Tech savy or not, these people are going to find out that they have an outdated browser and that the newer version won't work on their machine. Chances are number of these are going to switch to a modern browser that works on their machine.
Also, I know a lot of non-tech people who are currently using Firefox (probably cause they have a tech-savy friend of family who told them to. LOL), and you seem to forget Windows 2000. On the site where I got the 64% of XP users stat, 20% of the remaining were using Windows 2000. A LOT of techs I know actually use Windows 2000 because they think XP is just 2000 with extra useless fluff. I personaly like the fluff, but quite a few techies don't.

Why do I defend IE? Because for me it's faster and I believe it to be superior. I am just waiting for a big security hole or big virus to befall Firefox so I can sit back and laugh as I type "I told you so. Now who wants to say FF is as secure as you thought?"

I know Firefox isn't completely secure. No software is.

But the problems with IE have been mounting and they are the basis for many security flaws. IE is outdated software that maybe will improve with version 7, although I wouldn't count on it. I have tried many browsers, Firefox, Opera, etc., and IE is almost always at the bottom of the list.

paxx, the conclusion was based on the assumption that, most tech savy people updated within the last 3 years or got a newer OS "the other way". The first gtroup will probably get it with the next service pack, the other group is... well... pretty resourceful. I agree though that the stats may differ based on which sites they were measured at and Wincusromize is likely to get more XP optimistic stats.

For the moment I'm enjoying Firefox. I spend 95% of my browsing time either in Firefox or in Blog Navigator (reasing various RSS feeds). Hardly ever use plain IE.

One way or another I believe the best browser wins and I am pretty sure MS can afford one

IE7 has been announced to have tabbed browsing.