"Internet Explorer used mostly by the dumb people"

[DisaFear]

AptiQuant, a company from Vancouver, Canada, published a study which shows a correlation between a person's IQ and the choice of their web browser.

The study revealed that the average IQ of IE users (especially old versions) is drastically lower than the IQ of modern web browsers users.

Is Internet Explorer For The Dumb? A New Study Suggests Exactly That.

Vancouver, BC. July 28 2011

A Vancouver based Psychometric Consulting company, AptiQuant, has released a report on a trial it conducted to measure the effects of cognitive ability on the choice of web browser. AptiQuant offered free online IQ tests to over a 100,000 people and then plotted the average IQ scores based on the browser on which the test was taken. And the results are really not that surprising. With just a look at the graphs in the report, it comes out pretty clear that Internet Explorer users scored lower than average on the IQ tests. Chrome, Firefox and Safari users had just a teeny bit higher than average IQ scores. And users of Camino, Opera and IE with Chrome Frame had exceptionally higher IQ levels.

Internet Explorer has traditionally been considered a pain in the back for web developers. Any IT company involved in web development will acknowledge the fact that millions of man hours are wasted each year to make otherwise perfectly functional websites work in Internet Explorer, because of its lack of compatibility with web standards. The continuous use of older versions of IE by millions of people around the world has often haunted web developers. This trend not only makes their job tougher, but has also pulled back innovation by at least a decade. But with the results of this study, IT companies worldwide will start to take a new look on the time and money they spend on supporting older browsers.

Microsoft created a conspiracy with Internet Explorer’s shell integration with Windows Explorer, and making its removal complicated, if not impossible. It is usually criticized that this move was made during the last moments of Windows 95 release in a haphazard manner, just to snub the competition from Netscape Navigator. In the following years Microsoft spent millions of dollars on Internet Explorer, with the aim to dominate the browser market. It succeeded to gain a huge share of over 95% for quite a few years. But recently open source browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome have taken away a large share out of Microsoft’s pie. These browsers are not only better in performance than IE, but offer better compatibility with W3C standards.

This latest report about the intelligence levels of IE users is expected to create a storm. The company behind the study, AptiQuant is a psychometric consulting company, that offers online tools to other companies to better assess their existing/potential employees based on their mental aptitude, skills, motivation and performance. It also has self-serving tools for individuals looking to identify their skills and reach their potential.

The full report can be downloaded at: http://www.aptiquant.com/IQ-Browser-AptiQuant-2011.pdf

Source: http://www.aptiquant.com/news/is-internet-explorer-for-the-dumb-a-new-study-suggests-exactly-that/

Discuss.
What I find funny is a comment from another forum

Threatened by a law suit lol..

"you called us dumb, and proved it"

what a world we live in.

[vexx]

IE sucks, only people who are too stupid to find a better browser on their PC use it, so it makes sense

[MJRomeo81]

IE is awful. I haven't gone near that dreaded browser for at least 7-8 years. I shouldn't be surprised that people still use it.

[b^3]

That wouldn't work. People with a lower average IQ than those on opera will change to opera, bringing the average IQ down, to be replace by another browser. Its kind of like the time travel paradox. If you had a time machine, and you wanted to go back in time to get rid of it, you would never of had the convosation or thoughts that motivated you to go back to get rid of it, so that you would still have it. Here changing browsers is the time machine, you are stuck with what you have regardless.

Note: yes I know it was a joke

[taiga]

Or be a complete nerd like me and have Firefox, Rockmelt, Chrome, IE, and Opera installed on your computer.

But yeah I think a reasonable proportion of IE users use it because they simply don't know how to install anything else/aren't tech savvy enough to know there is better. Whether that translates directly to IQ, I'm not sure

[Predator]

With Internet Explorer, Microsoft made a big deal out of IE9 being 'great', I thought I would give it a go but it just didn't seem right for me to use with the UI being a bit everywhere. Downgraded back to IE8 and it is a lot better.
However out of the browsers, I find chrome quite good loads pages fast and before that I used Firefox but just found that it hogged a few too many resources however its vast amount of plugins are great.

[MeLucky]

that's silly, they have old versions of Internet explorer(which would usually be the default one) because they're not smart enough to get updated or different browsers.

[Fyrefly]

Honestly... I'm not particularly surprised.

/runs.

[pi]

Honestly... I'm not particularly surprised.

+1

[mark_alec]

links -g

[nacho]

I use chrome at the moment, but i'm going switch to opera so my IQ goes up a bit

this would not 'up' your IQ
however, it would decrease the average IQ of opera users and increase the average IQ for chrome users! :

LOL jks

[b^3]

I use chrome at the moment, but i'm going switch to opera so my IQ goes up a bit

this would not 'up' your IQ
however, it would decrease the average IQ of opera users and increase the average IQ for chrome users! :

LOL jks

This is basically what I said before:

That wouldn't work. People with a lower average IQ than those on opera will change to opera, bringing the average IQ down, to be replace by another browser. Its kind of like the time travel paradox. If you had a time machine, and you wanted to go back in time to get rid of it, you would never of had the convosation or thoughts that motivated you to go back to get rid of it, so that you would still have it. Here changing browsers is the time machine, you are stuck with what you have regardless.


Note: yes I know it was a joke

[Zebra]

I use Chrome
haha

INCOGNITO ctrl+shift+N

[demongleekgazza]

Seeing as mostly older people use IE and the 25 and under demographic seem to use Chrome/FF/Whatever else (from experience), does that mean we're smarter than outdated generations? 

[ninwa]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14389430