XP SP2 Adoption Lagging Overseas

Vizquel wrote to mention an eWeek article reporting that Microsoft is frustrated with the lack of Service Pack 2 usage overseas. From the article: "During a keynote at the Security Summit East here, McKee said Microsoft has so far distributed more than 250 million copies of XP SP2 to provide a hardened shell around the operating system but the low upgrade levels remains a disappointment."

Comments

BREAKING NEWS FLAHS

[Anonymous Coward]

When asked for comment Steve Ballmer replied:

"I'm gonna fucking kill Overseas, i've done it before and i'll do it again"

He then hurtled a chair in the direction of Japan.

Possible reason

[GeekyMike]

I am wondering if he is referring to the upgrades of licensed copies. If not countries such as China and others with almost institutionalized software piracy might cause this lack of upgrades. If it is for licensed versions, I could assume a lack of bandwidth being somewhat limiting. I personally have had no issues with XP SP2 either time I installed it, but the second time was much more pleasant because I had my cable internet connection.

Re:Possible reason

[Stan Vassilev]

There are two reasons for the low adoption overseas:

A. Ignorance, as in:

"I don't need it, I'm safe"
"I don't know where to get it"
"ess pee.. what?"
"oh no I can't do it, it's too complex"

B. Piracy concerns, as in:

"oh no, they blacklisted my serial key and will b0rk my PC"
"OMG, it calls MS and reports my pirated copy"

Thing is MS did black list the keys but wants SP2 everywhere, even pirated copies, since it's bad PR to have tons of vulnerable Windows copies around. I know people still on 98 btw.

Because Piracy Abound

[robbyjo]

Well, SP2 adoption is slow because piracy abounds in foreign land, especially in Asia. Windows updater checks the authenticity of the installed windows and refused to install SP2 (and other updates) if the check fails. For some reasons, critical updates can be downloaded from time to time, but not always. Coupled with lack of broadband internet and clueless users, I'm not surprised at all to hear this news.