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China Has a Massive Windows XP Problem
An anonymous reader writes "The Chinese are going to have a very, very hard time kicking the Windows XP habit. The deadline for the retirement of Microsoft's most successful operating system ever is eight months from tomorrow: April 8, 2014. That's the day when the Redmond, Wash. company is to deliver the last XP security update. According to analytics company Net Applications, 37.2% of the globe's personal computers ran Windows XP last month. If Microsoft's estimate of 1.4 billion Windows PCs worldwide is accurate, XP's share translates into nearly 570 million machines. In the U.S., 16.4% of all personal computers ran Windows XP in July, or about one in six, Net Applications' data showed. But in China, 72.1% of the country's computers relied on the soon-to-retire operating system last month, or nearly three out of every four systems."
ive got at least 4 workstations that are still running xp, we have legacy software and drivers that wont work on win7, and win8 blows. but we dont worry about updates, since these dont connect to the web. m$ is going to be a dinosaur very soon, the signs are there....
It will be interesting to see how they will handle this. When I visited China, computer security didn't seem to be one of the top priorities among the computer users, so the majority of the population might just not care much about updates. If it starts breaking down completely, and Windows 7 or 8 isn't as easy to pirate, perhaps we'll see a Chinese mass migration to Linux.
I wonder how difficult it would be for the Chinese government to make their own Windows patches. They could probably perform a MITM on the windows update servers and feed their own patches if a lot of unpatched Windows machines leads to an increased influx of CIA-sponsored viruses to China.
c++;
I own and operate a movie theatre, and my digital projector runs on Windows XP, believe it or not. (The server that talks to it runs on Linux.)
In my case, this setup is not on the Internet; all of the gadgets in my projection room talk only between themselves, so there is no particular security concern in that regard. But I wonder how many other folks have very expensive hardware like this that will probably never be upgraded to run on anything other than XP.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
When XP's EOL comes, Microsoft will have supported it for nearly 13 years. How long do you want them to support it for? Should they still be supporting Windows 3.1 and DOS 6.22?
In the tech world, 13 years is an epic amount of time. Microsoft is not EOLing XP to force people to buy a new version of Windows. It's time to put XP to rest. It had an amazing run, but no one can expect any OS to be supported forever.
When XP's EOL comes, Microsoft will have supported it for nearly 13 years. How long do you want them to support it for?
Yet was only replaced 6 years ago by Vista, and did not have a real alternative till Windows 7. In fact Microsoft sold XP well beyond its Vista Operating Systems to starve off the mobile threat...then in the less threatening Netbook form, XP was used to stave of Linux. A strategy that gained them a few years Windows revenue at the cost of letting the iPad...and now Android into the Personal Computer Space.
In answer to your question...long enough not to let your competitors through the door. Especially if your strategy is to license your OS to *Manufacturers* not customers.
In May, Panda Labs (not Express) published a study suggesting that 55% of computers in China are infected by malware. http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/half-chinas-computers-infected-malware-study-finds-1B8290982 I had the pleasure of cleaning up malware on friends' computers while living in China, back when XP was the dominant OS. Though my sample size was small, I believe the Panda Labs number comes much closer to reality than what is captured by the afterthought that is Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool. Popular programs like QQ are laden with security holes that essentially invite any hacker to take control of a PC. The end of XP updates may cause extra few million computers to be infected, but it will be a drop in the bucket compared to the true problem. My advice is- don't trust personal computers in China or email servers in China.
Stay skeptical, my friends.
This is what VMs were made for.
Apple managed it, why didn't MS? They should have put a transparent VM into Vista and 7 to run binaries, drivers, etc and called it Windows Classic. They could have had everyone migrated by now and made more money in the process.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
I'm surprised MS hasn't announced they're moving to a model where XP patches are available as part of a subscription service - I'd pay $2 per month to keep Windows update running on my XP machine - Just tie Windows update to a Windows Live account, with a credit card attached to that. Corporate customers could purchase a site license. If there really are millions upon millions of XP machines out there, there must be some money to be made here.