"Given that everyone using IE6 is, at best, running Windows XP, and given that Microsoft have stated that IE9 won't be available for pre-Vista SP2 OSs, the most recent version of Internet Explorer they could ever hope to upgrade to is IE8."
I've got no real reason to. XP works fine, and it's secure enough. Java isn't installed, and flash is enabled on a case-by-case basis (<3 Flashblock). The odds of me suffering an exploit will go down as hacking efforts shift to the newer versions. This is after not suffering _any_ attack, malware or otherwise, in all the years since XP came out, so I'm not terribly concerned.
I'll probably have this laptop (and XP) for another year or so.
Now, try convincing someone who _doesn't_ know much about computers to upgrade. All these "everyone should upgrade" declarations I keep seeing won't do it.
Because it would have to come through a vector that I haven't completely walled off, and those are exceedingly rare (like the WMF thing ages ago). I keep up on vulnerabilities, and I'd do a paranoia reinstall if I suspected I were affected by one.
It would be one of these:
* Noscript exploit
* Simultaneous Flashblock + Flash exploit
* Image-based exploit
* Renderer exploit
And those are extremely rare. My software stack is also pretty stable, and it's all from trustworthy vendors/projects.
Yeah, even as someone who works with computers all day I only upgraded my desktop less than a year ago. Sure there are a few nice things that Windows7 does but coming at it from the regular users perspective, unless things stop working that they use frequently there isn't a lot of motivation to upgrade. So unless games stop supporting XP, browsers as a whole move away from it, computers actually start doing something a lot cooler with the latest version or some exploit starts owning all XP installs I can't see a great amount of motivation for the average user.
unless they upgrade Windows. Which they should.