choster - 7:29 pm on Feb 25, 2010 (gmt 0)

What's more, different people access the Internet in different ways. My parents had dialup at home until this year, but it's because they had access to broadband at work and didn't see the point of paying extra at home just to download their 3 daily e-mails a little faster. This is the flip side of the same coin as the persistence of IE6 in the corporate world, i.e. just because your company's IT policy is to use IE6 for eternity doesn't mean you're using it on your computer at home.

While affordability is cited as the biggest barrier, the population for which this is truly the case will have trouble affording a computer and any Internet access in the first place. Skills and relevance shouldn't be diminished either. Two households may have the same income level, but one which understands the benefits of the Internet and knows how to exploit it is going to make Internet access a higher priority than one that doesn't, at the expense of some other purchase the less skilled household considers more "essential."