In response to the article, we shared about the future of Internet Explorer where a Microsoft official said that no one should be using Internet Explorer as a browser unless they were running some type of program that absolutely won’t work without it, a reader asks:
“I still have IE on my HP Pavilion HPE Series that was Windows 7 before accepting the free download of Windows 10. I haven’t use IE in a while, and only then to open some old personal photos. After reading your article, I’m not sure if need to keep it on my computer. I’m not a computer genius and don’t know if there is anything on IE that is needed. I use Microsoft Edge with Windows 10. Certainly, don’t want to do anything to create a problem that can’t be recovered!”
Internet Explorer is currently built into Windows, so at this point, you can’t delete it even if you wanted to.
I’m not sure why you’d need to use Internet Explorer to open your personal photos, unless you’re accessing a site online that runs Flash. But if you have images, I’m pretty sure there are better places to open them.
Internet Explorer isn’t some form of malware, it’s not going to open and start doing things all by itself. As long as you have another browser set as your default browser, you’ll likely not even notice that it’s there.
And remember, IE is still currently supported by Microsoft. As long as your security is up-to-date, there’s no real issue with using it occasionally. The main concern is that it simply isn’t compatible with a lot of websites these days and you might not see the website displayed correctly or, in the case of sites like Yahoo!, be able to use the full functionality of the site.