The web developer in me wants to say "Upgrade them! Upgrade them all and damn the consequences" because as you so rightly point out, it makes life so much easier knowing that I can code to an expected modern standard.

However I remember a conference a few years back where Scott Hanselman mentioned "I don't think users want to be taught". In other words, don't move their cheese.

It can be frustrating and even stressful for the Mom &amp; Pop users who seriously don't know a thing about computers. These are the ones Thomas Fuchs is referring to as not distinguishing between the browser and the actual internet. They refer to Internet Explorer, Google and the like collectively as "The Internet" and don't see the same delineations the rest of us do.

Regular upgrades to browsers are great in principle and I believe they should happen automatically for security and stability reasons, but when the UI is significantly altered (a la IE9), that's when I think it's more appropriate to prompt the user to take a more active role.