Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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."
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.
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
You do realize that MS was selling new licenses for most of that time, right? Additionally, MS doesn't give support for free, most of the time you have to either go through the OEM or pay MS to provide it. The cost of them providing patches to all the XP users isn't significantly higher than providing them only to people that have bought in the last X months. Developing the patches is the cost there.
Many business I know of are still using XP on their desktops. I guess often due to specially written apps, or just that the mandate to change has not yet come from upon high.
Heck..on on project I know personally about...federal one....everyone is on XP. Until they upgrade the workstations/laptops, no one on that team is going to be moving from XP to Win7....I'm not 100% sure that the move has been sanction for the whole system in this rather large Federal department.
And you don't go updating these computers yourself....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
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.
:(){
Whats keeping people on XP is that it's good enough for what they need an OS to do (both from a user and a developer point of view), nothing in the more recent OS's is a compelling reason to upgrade.
If it weren't for the looming end of life I don't think a lot of people would upgrade at all.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
If it weren't for the looming end of life I don't think a lot of people would upgrade at all.
Microsoft could probably make more money selling yearly extended support contracts for XP than it could selling Win7 upgrades.
Upgrading an OS costs a company much more than just the license fees the OS vendor would get.
For every $1 MS would ask as one-time upgrade fee, they could charge $2 for a single year of XP support per license.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Easy. Cost of upgrading to Windows 7 vs benefit it brings. XP does everything I need it to do at home (Netflix, Gmail, Slashdot); and at work (Office, LiveMeeting, Telnet, Photoshop, AutoCAD, etc). Why would I bother upgrading if there is no real driver to do so? What, the viruses? That's what antivirus, firewalls, NoScript and common sense are for. So I got hit by one 0-day worm in last 10 years, really does not justify the thousand bucks to upgrade each system for either me or my company, especially since it's not like there isn't going to be any more 0-days on Windows 7. In fact, you are more likely to see a 0-day on a newer OS...
Bow before me, for I am root.