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What's Keeping You On XP?
Hugh Pickens writes "PC World reports that Windows XP lost more than 11 percent of its share from September to December 2011, to post a December average of 46.5 percent, a new low for the aged OS as users have gotten Microsoft's message that the operating system should be retired. Figures indicate that Windows 7 will become the most widely used version in April, several months earlier than previous estimates. Two months ago, as Microsoft quietly celebrated the 10th anniversary of XP's retail launch, the company touted the motto 'Standing still is falling behind' to promote Windows 7 and demote XP. In July, Microsoft told customers it was 'time to move on' from XP, reminding everyone that the OS would exit all support in April 2014. Before that, the Internet Explorer team had dismissed XP as the 'lowest common denominator' when they explained why it wouldn't run IE9. The deadline for ditching Windows XP is in April 2014, when Microsoft stops patching the operating system. 'Enterprises don't want to run an OS when there's no security fixes,' says Michael Silver, an analyst with Gartner Research rejecting the idea that Microsoft would extend the end-of-life date for Windows XP to please the 10% who have no plans to leave the OS. 'The longer they let them run XP, the more enterprises will slow down their migration.'"
This is a troll article. Using a decade old OS and going on about problems it has today is typical discussion for the stagnated slashdot.
Cheap PCs run XP.
If it ain't broke, why fix it? It's not like I'm running a nuclear reactor at home on my XP box.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
You know you can continue using XP even after the security patches cease right? I haven't upgraded my XP after SP1
Not acceptable for any business environment, how'd you feel if I was processing your SSN off that xp sp1 box?
Paying $100+ for Windows seems like even more of a ripoff when I've got to buy it again every 2 years.
I bought this software, its mine, and I'll use it, thank you very much.
If only more of the software industry would target linux and mac, we could get away from having to pay an arm and a leg to Redmond every few years.
Dunno about you guys, but I don't exactly have a ton of free cash to spend.
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
It may have escaped PC World's notice (not like THAT ever happened before) but there are some applications and drivers that will not install on any of MS's newer OS's and that so-called XP Compatibility mode isn't. And if those applications need to be supported then XP is what you use. Maybe you hide it in a VM that is running on a newer version of Windows but chances are that you'll do like me and keep that XP machine running and wish you never got sucked into the Microsoft maelstrom.
They are only willing to support their product for 13 years! How dare they demand that users move to new technology once a decade to maintain support!
Please, come off it. MS has a plenty lengthy support cycle. They support all their OSes for 10 years from release minimum. XP has been extended 3 years past that. That is quite reasonable.
At least with focus-follows-mouse, there's a X-mouse workaround involving a couple of registry edits, but I'm dreading Win8.
Every time Windows "evolves", I'm forced to add another 10-15 minutes to undo the latest round of dumbing-down.
And they say that the Desktop isn't dying.
I have a 5 year old Mac Book Pro, and I don't have any needs to upgrade that as well. I think we are seeing the end of the desktop, because people are no longer feeling the need to upgrade. Go back 10-15 years ago. Every 2-4 years we felt that we needed to upgrade our PC, and when we upgraded we felt the difference.
Floppy to CD to CDR to DVD to DVDR. 512k to 1 meg to 4 meg to 32 meg to 128 meg to 1 gig to 3 gigs of ram.
CGA (4 colors 320x200) VGA (256 colors 320x200), SVGA, 3d cards...
When we upgraded every 2-4 years we got something new and cool. Today an upgrade doesn't give us the same bang anymore. So we hold off and wait longer between upgrades with perfectly usable Computers that are getting much older however still function well and runs modern software.
We are now looking at Tables and our Phones and using them more and more compared to our PCs or Laptops. Every new version adds a bit more of a wow factor and entices people go upgrade and get the new one.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
(good) 64 bit support
-- if you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine
I still use WinXP and I expect to continue using it for quite some time to come. It's the operating system that the TabletPC slate I use for drawing runs on, and it does everything I need it to do: load my graphics application, provide storage and TCP/IP services to that app, and support drivers for the stylus and other input devices on it. I could upgrade it to Windows 7... but would gain absolutely nothing from doing so. The OS serves quite nicely as an operating system for the device, and that's all I ask of it. By the time the security updates from Redmond stop, WXP should be such a niche OS that the minimal exposure that this device has, should be a tiny risk.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Ok, here's the rundown as I have managed to wring out of friends and family that cling to XP.
1) it came on the computer they currently have, and works fine on that hardware.
2) they are familiar with it, and it does what they expect it to.
3) they don't want to buy new hardware when the hardware they have suits their needs already, (when running xp)
4) microsoft has switched around how the user interface works, so that now it treats you like you don't own the box. This causes issues for users who just want to make the printer they got for christmas work. Clicking OK on 3 or more scary "let this program make administrative changes?" Dialogs and other "scary" popups are not enjoyable to users, who really don't understand the significance of what the windows really mean, and who don't have an alternative to the "untrusted" 3rd party driver CD that came with the printer anyway. Windows 7 does this "less" than windows vista, which complained when you wanted to run solitare, but this is simply users chosing the lesser of two evils. They prefer the simplicity and nonverbose output of xp.
5) fewer and fewer people buy computers to play video games these days, given the rise of modern console games with online multiplayer, and the reduced hassles of competing against people with better rigs. There is much less incentive to continue driving the forced upgrade cycle, so users try to get more equity out of already owned assets, like older hardware. Let's face it, unless you turn on 3d return of clippy or some other horseshit, you don't need an i7 to print resumes or make greeting cards. You don't need gobs of resources to play mp3s while you clean your house, facebook and farmville don't need epic leetness, etc. An old windows xp era rig can do all those things just fine, and users know this. Thus, windows xp satisfies most of their needs for a general purpose computing environment.
The few issues that crop up appear to be (and are) totally contrived to continue monetizing the computing market. Driver support for devices, for instance. Unless it is some radical new slot architecture or something, there is little to make xp insufficient for a driver, especially when you are pushing a crapware consumer peripheral device like a printer or scanner, which usually use unidrv.dll for 99% of the functionality anyway. Other than drivers, you have security fixes, updates, and browsers. Browser makers don't like to support "legacy" OSes because they usually represent the dreaded "low end hardware", which forces them to make efficient code instead of quickly produced code; the impetus of which is purely due to makerting forces in the vast majority of cases. Feature creep causes a software product to require more and more resources to satisfy more and more edge case uses, which would be better satisfied with optional plugins run in sandboxed processes. Remember: "newer isn't always better." when users feel financially pinched, they stop chasing the shiny.
So it's Microsoft's fault that HP hasn't released a Win7 driver for your old discontinued printer? Yes, I know it's an expensive multi-function copier, but MS radically changed how drivers work in Vista/Win7, which has made the systems far more secure and better for the future.
Blaming MS in this case is like the people who blame Apple because the newest version of OSX won't run their 6-year-old version of Quickbooks anymore.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Not acceptable for any business environment, how'd you feel if I was processing your SSN off that xp sp1 box?
Since you'll just paste them, along with a variety of other personally identifying information, into an unencrypted spreadsheet which you then email to your various regional offices, I don't really care what OS you run on your desktop PC. Attackers will take advantage of the easiest way to get what they want - And I don't care if you still run Windows ME for all it matters, because "YOU are the weakest link" (or rather, humans in general, not you in particular).
To answer the original question, though, I still run XP (SP3, at least) on some of my machines for the same reason I run any OS - It works well and runs everything I want it to. Tell me what Win7 does for me* that XP can't, and we can have a more meaningful discussion; but as phrased, the FP amounts to a trolling question. He may as well have asked what keeps us all from using Beos.
And that 11% drop? We call that "Christmas" here in the US, and you just can't buy a new machine with XP anymore.
* And for the record, I DO have two machines running Win7, for precisely the one thing it does that XP doesn't (at least, not well) - 64 bit support. Not all that impressed, otherwise, and outright annoyed by most of the "improvements" to Windows Explorer.
Well, the driver support is pretty terrible for 64-bit XP.
Aside from that, 64-bit Vista/7 support the Kernel Mode Code Signing Policy. This means that it is practically impossible to get a rootkit, because kernel-mode binaries must have strong signatures embedded directly inside them to prevent tampering.
You should see the hoops that malware authors must jump through in order to circumvent KMCSP. It's insane, there's only two rootkits that I know of which get around it, neither of which directly attack KMCSP but instead try to work around it by e.g. infecting the MBR with malware that hooks the boot process and loads the infected driver before KMCSP is in effect.
Even if you don't need >4GB memory...even if you don't need 64-bit application support...the KMCSP is a Good Thing that makes infecting your system much more difficult.
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