@warbird
Probably but I mean technically it isn’t—or at least it shouldn’t—be extremely malicious these days with the company defunct (can’t connect to the server). Some say it’s worst traits are that it eats a lot of resources. Note that doesn’t mean it’s safe, you should probably at least run it in a VM isolated from the host, if you’re going to run it at all (I personally wouldn’t).

I still feel bad for Celestia in this pic. Has anyone ever made a Bonzai buddy that isn’t horrific malware?

@Neko Majin C
It’s a Homestar Runner reference (the number Celestia got is even one higher than Strong Bad’s).

@PUBLIQclopAccountant
It is not that big of a number. In fact, compared to all the numbers that come after it, it gets exponentially smaller the higher you go.

That is not a small number. That is a very big number.

@warbird
I’m sure there is more to it than that, but there are many things behind the scenes we often don’t see. It’s easy to forget that places like China and India don’t always have the choices available to them for one reason or another; even companies in the west aren’t immune. Economy and politics play a part in business more often than we think (though I don’t necessarily think that’s the case for this subject).

Note that I’m not necessarily defending them, just trying my best to explain to the best of my ability.

@ABronyAccount
Hi. I don’t know where you are getting that people pirate Windows XP. We pirate all the windowses.

@ZhaoZoharEX
That’s interesting Zhao. So then the issue was more a bad call of software developers not bothering to even try to make there programs compatible with other browsers.

The Asian companies that were troubled by this simply fail to consider browser compatibility before choosing what software/system they would rely on, thinking IE would always there for whatever they chose.

@warbird
Some software and web systems is closely tied to IE and doesn’t function (or at least not optimized) on Firefox or Chromium based browsers. My mom used to work at home for a call center and the software they used for call routing and schedules and support exclusively used IE. Trying it on Chrome or Firefox usually broke it, if it even worked on the first place. I can’t explain why this is, but that was like 8 years ago and she moved onto other things.

@ABronyAccount
This too.

@warbird
It’s inertia and the pirate OS market. Windows XP comes with super old versions of IE pre-installed and that’s what’s pirated.

@ZhaoZoharEX
I wasn’t talking about the OS, I was talking about the internet browser. How are they not prepared to use Chrome or Firefox or anything other than Explorer? Is it language support?

Did they not have browsers beyond IE that supports their language?

@warbird
A lot of it has to do with the overreliance on legacy systems that were built to use it. Even here in the United States where I live it’s not terribly uncommon to see businesses (especially retail establishments) still using Windows XP or Windows 7 despite both of those being discontinued support, I can’t even imagine how bad it can be in some other countries.

It’s not always so simple to migrate to newer systems when you have a huge business running to where even just a couple hours or days of lost revenue can cause headaches; Developing a new system costs a lot of time and money and implementing that new system also costs a lot of time and money, which is something that executives don’t always want to stomach especially if it’s a smaller business with smaller margins for loss. And that’s not even taking into account that the vast majority of people are not very good with computers so it takes a lot of time to train them on the new system which can cause further costs.

Of course being afflicted by malware can cause significant loss in revenue as well, often several orders of magnitude higher. I mean look at the rising ransomware issues. However it’s not always easy to convince people especially older folk of that fact until it’s too late.

@Ereiam
Wow, why are so many Asian companies still so reliant on Explorer? Surely they notice how it got slower and slower over time.

Also, I like that one comment that was included in the article,
“I’ll miss using Internet Explorer to only ever download another browser,” that was hilarious.

@Mellow Rhythm
It’s a shame that it turned out to be malware/adware/spyware, whatever it’s classified as because it was kinda fun.

I remember messing with it in my computer class way back in high school.

Honestly I feel bad for Celestia. She’s lost her laptop, but even worse she had an attachment to that buddy app. It’s just kind of sad that no one warned her the dangers of malware before she had such fun with the Bonzi Buddy.

@RDDash
I remember seeing that as a kid and struggling to hold back my hand from touching my scalp in shock and disappointment.

@RDDash
You’re right, it really isn’t. The vast majority of tech support issues are user error. That said, nowadays I think it’s less “toolbars” and more “extensions”, though it isn’t nearly as bad.

@Ereiam
I don’t think Edge is terrible as a browser, it’s just with it being based on Chromium, you may as well use Google Chrome. Or Brave as I’ve taken to using. I still use Chrome on my PC and phone as a holdover but I’ve more or less been transitioning to open source alternatives whenever possible or convenient. I like Firefox just fine, but I’ve encountered functionality issues occasionally that force me to use a different browser.

this is from the era when people had been killing their browsers with search toolbars from multiple companies. I highly doubt that IE is at fault

@ZhaoZoharEX
Me neither. I’m mainly a Firefox user and have also branched on Chrome to a limited extent. I’ve tried Edge out of curiosity when I got my new computer and promptly gone back to Firefox without a regret.

@Ereiam
I don’t think I’ve used IE since 2012. I’ve been using Firefox and Chromium based browsers for almost as long as they’ve been around. Heck I’ve used Safari more than IE and I don’t even own a Mac.

Also, I find it funny how this comic got made just before Microsoft pulled the plug on Internet Explorer too.

BonziBuddy?

I feel bad, but the nostalgia with this is hard. This happened to me so many times, lol! And I’m probably not the only one.

@Bravery
Moondancer’s too, and she chose to fight it with fire.

Officelestia is too adorable!

That screen triggered my fight or flight response