This week the tech giant rolled out plans to automatically push the update onto users computers everywhere, although installation wouldn't be automatic. Users will have to opt in to make the installation final.
According to online sources, Microsoft plans to push the update gradually, giving businesses the option to block it entirely.
"Starting on or about the third week of April, users still running IE 6 or IE 7 on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, or Windows Server 2008 will get will get a notification through Automatic Update about IE 8," a representative for Microsoft said.
Microsoft might not want to be too hasty in pushing IE 8. Critics have derided the new version as slow, clunky and stubbornly incompatible with a great many websites.
Among the tech-savvy, Internet Explorer represents a dying breed as friendlier, faster and more up-to-date browsers like Firefox continue to unveil new versions that incorporate all of the latest trends in web design. Tech pundit James Edwards devoted an entire column to celebrate the idea of the death of IE version 6.
"Some people think that IE 6 is dead already," he said. "But only developers who have the luxury of a specialist audience, or who don’t have any business interest vested in their work, can think like that. For the rest of us, who have a real-world audience of ordinary, non-technical users to think about, IE 6 is still very much a going concern."
Internet Exporer does hold some appeal for the adult industry because of its private browsing feature, called InPrivate.
Despite that, Firefox has proven popular in the adult industry. Carl Borowitz, vice president of marketing for Big Sister Media, praised Mozilla's signature application.
"It's more stable, less vulnerable to spyware and it had tabbed browsing before Microsoft [Internet Explorer]," he said.