I've never understood the "well we have to keep IE6 because of this one obscure program" as the excuse to why IT departments force their users to use IE6. Keep IE6 for that one obscure, poorly-made program. Give then a copy of Firefox or Chrome to use for everything else. I realize for a lot of users that's more choice than they can handle, but those that know better must be tortured by that awful lack of choice.

It's actually worse than that: Microsoft gives you free integrated desktop virtualization (MED-V) and, in IE 11 they added an Enterprise Mode which works very well with antique sites. Both can be seamlessly integrated using group policy so a user clicks on the blue e, uses the web as normal and when they hit http://creaky-internal-app.example.com the experience seamlessly jumps back a decade.

This isn't being conservative about upgrades. This about an IT department refusing to learn to do anything they weren't doing in 2000.

I've never used one but I understand there are plugins that load a particular URL in an IEframe. So there's no need for the user to know that they need to use IE for one thing and FF/Chrome for another.

Companies can pay extra for XP support even after MSFT's EOL.

Or keep using it anyway. Most organisations don't actually receive direct Microsoft support/assistance when they run into problems anyway. So Microsoft ending XP support is practically meaningless.

At worst, it allows independent software vendors a small market for regular repeat business. At best, people just keep using XP the same way they've been doing for years.