Microsoft is planning on retiring IE6 and IE7 with a forced upgrade in January 2012.  This is great news for web developers!  Internet Explorer 6 was a nightmare to develop for.  I say that it was a nightmare to develop for because I don't think anyone should be supporting it anymore.  If you are then you are doing something very very wrong.  And if you are, I can only imagine that you are being forced to do so by corporate or goverment overlords!

Windows XP users will be upgraded to IE 8.  Windows Vista and 7 users will be upgraded to IE9.  For users of Windows XP I encourage you to use a different browser.  The reason for this is that you are missing more and more of the internet.  You can test your browsers support for HTML5 at HTML5 test.  For people that don't know what you are missing they are little things like images, gradients, fonts, audio, and video.  If you try typing "do a barrel roll" into google using IE8 you are missing out on the fun.  Try it using an up to date browser like Google Chrome, Firefox, or Safari.

The forced upgrade is due to security threats that are not and will not be patched in older versions of IE.

Now might be a good time to backup your system.  You can save yourself a lot of time and effort by backing up your files.  For easy offsite backup you can a service such as Dropbox, or Carbonite.  For image based backups you can use Acronis, Clonezilla, or DriveImage XML.  These links are far from extensive as there are many good backup alternatives.  Please, for the love of the poor nerd you might turn to for help.  I encourage you to backup your system now if you haven't done so in a while.