It's interesting that what Google have done runs counter to what many web developers are doing – by ceasing active support for IE6 Google are setting a precedent for others to follow. Most people seem to think IE6 should be supported in perpetuity, but perhaps we should take note of what's happening with digital television, where the analogue signal is being switched off so we can have more digital services – the difference is that people are having to pay for a digital converter in these circumstances. There isn't really any cost to end-users in upgrading their browsers, so it's up to them to do so. Corporate desktops are a harder sell – some companies are actually not bothered because if external sites don't work with IE6 employees are less likely to waste time at work.

I actually think it's likely that there are very few people who still use IE6 at home, and probably most IE6 users these days are on corporate desktops.

2) Ability to install inside a windows user's personal profile – the only option to install chrome is to install it inside a user's %UserProfile%. This bypasses the Program Files directory (which firefox, opera, and practically every browser out there installs to by default), along with all the restrictive permissions settings enforced by IT (or by friendly geek family members who sets the computer to log in as anything other than “administrator”). Most people in corporate land are able to install Chrome on their computer even though users cannot install other software (for example, firefox). This “instant install” idea is very gratifying for users – there is no dialog box asking where to install stuff, there's no extra steps – just download, and the installation finishes in less than a minute or so.

3. (initial) lack of features – Chrome starts with deceptively very few features – it's just a universal address / search bar, and the browsing screen. Nothing else. It doesn't try to annoy you with other details, and a lot of nontechnical users find it easier to navigate than other browsers that separate “search” from “address”, etc. Nowadays chrome has extensions and all kinds of bells and whistles, but the simplicity of the default install has always been attractive for people overloaded by options.

There are probably other important reasons, but these are the ones I've observed after talking to non-technical people who, for example, believe that they need to copy and paste the contents of a youtube page into a MS Word document to send it to me via email, and the fact that I don't have the link (because they never included it in the word doc) – and that the video doesn't play from inside the word doc means that my internet was “defective” – this person was able to install chrome – and was using it when they were troubleshooting over the phone with me about my “broken youtube” – think about how “user-proof” google has been able make their software.

Regarding the tabs issue, any version of Vim from 7.0 onwards supports tabs out of the box. There's a link that explains this feature at http://www.linux.com/archive/feed/59533.

I agree that Kate's a pretty good editor (certainly an improvement over the likes of Notepad), but I can't always rely on having it around on every system I use (I use Ubuntu, Slackware and OS X regularly). Also, I've reluctantly moved away from KDE since I don't currently have a machine that will run KDE4 to my satisfaction, so Kate's not an option at present.

I personally don't think IDE's are the best choice for newbies since they automate a lot of things people really need to learn to do properly, at least to begin with, although there are good and bad IDE's around – I quite like the Visual Studio Express Editions. IDE's have their place for more experienced users, but I'm not convinced they're the best choice for newbies.

But, ultimately it's about what works for you, and if emacs does that for you, then I have no intention whatsoever of changing your mind. By and large, I think the most basic text editors such as gedit and Notepad are not great programming tools, and something like Vim represents a big step up in efficiency, albeit with a steep learning curve. I'm not really in a position to advocate emacs because I haven't used it to any great degree, but I don't doubt that it's an extremely powerful tool that offers at least as much capability as Vim.

I think the main thing I was trying to get across was “Don't be afraid to try a powerful tool like Vim just because it looks scary” and the same applies to emacs.