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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.'"
MS isn't giving away free upgrades and I'm not interested in paying for a really expensive copy or Windows just to play games.
When the security patches cease, I'll just uninstall XP and replace it with whatever the best version of Linux is at that point.
I just don't care. XP works as a platform for the programs I actually use, and between the lack of anything to be excited about, and lack of a clear upgrade path, I will probably use XP until I lose my key.
To be honest, the only reason I eventually chopped in 2K for XP was that MS started shipping tools and SDKs that (arbitrarily) refused to install on 2K.
Windows is a operating system for hosting applications, generally ones written by someone else. Everything else that it insists on doing is completely extraneous to my requirements - that it just shuts up and gets into the background. MS has failed to make a compelling argument in favour of 7. I don't find "or else" particularly persuasive.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Two things for me on my last XP machines.
1) The laptops I acquired that run XP can't run Vista or Windows 7. They are at their last Windows OS even per Microsoft specs.
2) You would have to be insane to try to upgrade an old XP box to 7 in place. I've seen enough toasted and flaky OS installations in my time that I've switched entirely to "lift and shift".
License cost? Meh - I haven't paid for Windows 7 yet or any of the other Server OS's around my house. Somehow Microsoft thinks I need lot of free samples (development editions, Windows 7 party packs, etc.) and who am I to dissuade them?
And it doesn't cost any more money to keep it working. XP is tightly locked down for the few applications and few websites needed by those applications. The primary argument against staying on WinXP appear to be security issues. But if I only visit Symantec, Microsoft, Adobe and US Government sites, I suspect my risks are acceptable.
For everything else, I use MacOS, but that's of course just my opinion.
He/She isn't blaming MS, I don't think. Merely pointing out that a significant feature set is not present on Win7, so upgrading completely isn't an option.
btw, I agree. The HP thing is a total scam. They've stopped supporting printers that are even just several years old. I've vowed never to buy another HP product again because of this (we got caught pretty badly in this as a small business).
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Bingo. I'm running XP in a VM as well. Why?
1: No fussing with activation. I can radically change the hardware in a VM without having to deal with the "genuine-ness" of my OS each time.
2: XP has a small disk/RAM/CPU footprint.
3: I have some old 16 bit stuff I like running once in a while, and XP can run that.
4: I have a few special purpose applications that only run under XP. Especially some "antique" MP3 players such as the Nomad Jukebox. 32 bit Windows 7 might be able to run them, but likely not most due to the different driver model.
For a main OS, Windows 7 is light years ahead. However, for a VM guest, XP is still a good candidate because it still runs virtually everything.