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."

Comments

xp still works

[Anonymous Coward]

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....

Re:xp still works

[ackthpt]

I still use Windows XP and Windows 2000. They were good operating systems and, from my perspective, Vista, 7, and 8 haven't brought anything to the table. Quite the opposite, in fact: I went full penguin after Vista came out. It was patently clear that Microsoft was going in a direction I didn't want to go.

Yes, but what of the botnets? Who will take care of them? Without care and feeding of ineffective security updates to make users believe they are safe from such things, the botnets will wither and die.

Re:xp still works

[symbolset]

I have three xp units left. We will migrate to Linux.

Re:xp still works

[UltraZelda64]

DOS still works too, if you find the right hardware to run it on or use it in a virtual machine. Does that mean we should all be using DOS?

Re:xp still works

[Billly Gates]

You mean the all so horrible instant search where I can start word and view files by subject in 1\9 of a second without a mouse?

You couldn't pay me to go back to XP style start menu! Yuck.

Some people are so stuburn and hate change so much they refuse to learn anything new including Windows 7 features as I am not referingto 8 at all.

Re:xp still works

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, Linux boxes are far from immune from them. As soon as they take an interest, the botnet creators will be happy to make sure that their software is safe and sound on your Linux and MacOS boxes.

Warms the heart, really.

Re:xp still works

[tnk1]

Yeah, running both "Classic" and Windows 7 style start menus, I prefer the Windows 7 start menus. It's a lot easier to get at what you use all the time by pinning to to the start menu or the task bar.

I wasn't so sure about those changes, but they work pretty well when you get used to them.

Re:xp still works

[Skrapion]

Eh, the Windows Vista/7 Start menu came with good changes and bad changes.

The search feature is definitely a boon, but I don't feel it's panacea. If you just want to browse the software on somebody's computer, or if you forgot the name of the program you want to run, the search feature is no help.

The really bad decision they made was to remove popout menus from the Start menu and replace them with a scrollbar. This definitely made the Start menu less usable, and I feel Microsoft's only reason for doing it was for aesthetics.

The real shame is that there was never an option to have both the search feature and the popout menus. It was always one or the other.

But the search feature is nice, because the Start menu has never been well organized, and the new Start screen is no improvement. But does it have to be this way? Linux distros have well-organized start menus. I feel like Microsoft could have made an effort to create a framework that would have fostered a well-organized menu, and we could have had the best of both worlds.

But obviously we don't live in a world where that happened, so we just type our commands into a search box. It works, but at this point we may as well be running our programs from a terminal.

Re:xp still works

[Billly Gates]

Windows 95 used to do that and I forgot about that.

When I am on a Windows 7 if I am thinking of something I wrote 3 years ago I just hit th windows key and type acme sales 2010 and enter to find the documents. Beagle under Linux tried similiar functionalty.

I show all die hard XP users this and within 10 minutes they are hooked. I do not care about the menus as I am so hooked on instant search now that I cant live without it. Jumplists and aero snap make me a windows 7 diehard.

Sorry I lost faith in Linux after gnome 3. Windoes 8 might make me reconsider though :-)

Windows 7 for a crappy Windows OS really was the best version and to me even eclipsed XP.

Re:xp still works

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, Linux boxes are far from immune from them.

People here have been saying that for decades, but still there's no Linux malware.

Even when a Linux derivative (Android) is about to pass Windows' installed base, it still has less than 0.1% of the malware out there on Windows. You'd have to say this theory is thoroughly busted.,

Re:xp still works

[deroby]

Off course said theory isn't busted. It's not like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_malware doesn't exist, it's simply hardly worth the effort to focus on Linux.

On top of that, the typical/average Linux-user is much better informed about security issues than is the typical/average Windows-user (**). So making a website to trick people into clicking/downloading/running something malicious is more likely to work in the latter case.
Switch mom&pop to Linux and before you know it they'll be clicking the same links and the botnets will live happy ever after.

Linux might never see the sheer volume of malware that exists for Windows because it's "late in the game" and because simply put both the developers and the users have learnt quite a bit over the years making it harder for viruses etc to propagate.

(**: Apple used to be 'virus-free' too. As its user base is growing (and dare I say dumbing down?) there is an uptake on the amount of malware too...)

Re:xp still works

[deroby]

Then do both, like I do... doubly-so.

* I use the search function to start quite a lot of things
but
* I also use the 10-ish icons on the start-menu that represent the things I've worked with lately/often (not sure what the logic is, it works). Added bonus is that (a lot of them) are able to show a sub-menu with the most recent documents I worked with for that given program; I even can pin those if I want. Genius!
* Old-school as I am I also revived the Quick-Launch toolbar and have like 20 icons of things that I work with most often.

Yep, there is some overlap between 2 & 3, but as far as usability goes I am quite happy with this setup.

PS: I don't like pinning stuff to my system-bar for some reason. Tried it, annoyed me and haven't done it ever since. Everyone's different I guess.

Re:xp still works

[jrumney]

The biggest barrier to an organized start menu on Windows is that every program you install wants to put an uninstall icon, the user manual in several formats and/or languages, a link to the developer's website and bunch of other stuff in the start menu that doesn't belong there.

Re:xp still works

[jrumney]

I do not care about the menus as I am so hooked on instant search now that I cant live without it.

Sorry I lost faith in Linux after gnome 3.

This is a strange combination of comments, because the changes from Gnome 2 to Gnome 3 were to deemphasize the application menus and introduce search as the primary way for interacting with the shell.

Re:xp still works

[TheRaven64]

Linux malware is hard to write, although the SCTP vulnerability last year would have allowed a worm that ran in kernelspace and didn't depend on any installed software. Ubuntu malware, or Android malware, however, are quite easy. That 0.1% figure for Android malware in comparison to Windows malware is probably just about true if you're counting all malware written for both platforms since they were introduced, irrespective of whether it works on recent versions, but it's nowhere near close if you're counting new malware. Take a look at this list and tell me that a widely deployed Linux distribution is hard to write malware for. For example, the CURL CVE-2013-2174 allows a remote attacker with a crafted URL to run arbitrary code, and CVE-2013-1697 in Mozilla allows HTML emails displayed with Thunderbird or web pages displayed with FireFox to execute JavaScript with a privilege level that allows it to make calls to native libraries, effectively meaning arbitrary code execution with ambient privilege. CVE-2013-1052 would allow either of these attacks to upgrade privilege and then install a rootkit.

Re:xp still works

[TheRaven64]

Doesn't the Windows search box include a calculator? The OS X one allows you to type expressions in and then copy the result. command-space, enter expression, command-c, escape, and you're back where you started with the result of the calculation in the pasteboard.

Re:xp still works

[hairyfeet]

Uhhh...you wanna explain how a million infected devices is 0.1% Miss AC? because i REALLY want to hear the logic hoops you pull out of your behind to explain the evidence away, i REALLY do.

Like it or not Android, which every Linux advocate has claimed as their own from day one, proves beyond a reasonable doubt what so many of us have said for so long...OSes are some of the most complex code ever written and because man is fallible there IS bugs which WILL be exploited once a target becomes big enough which tada! Is EXACTLY what happened when Linux on mobile went mainstream with Android.

So welcome to the club, the coffee is in the back, ignore the guy rocking in the corner as that is Mac who felt like you he had magic armor and then he got a beatdown from macDefender and Guardian and is still traumatized. I don't know what they did to him but considering he's been like that for awhile and keeps muttering "You shore are purty"? Probably best not to ask.

Re:xp still works

[RabidReindeer]

Linux might never see the sheer volume of malware that exists for Windows because it's "late in the game" and because simply put both the developers and the users have learnt quite a bit over the years making it harder for viruses etc to propagate.

Thank you for not saying "virii". You've actually used the correct plural.

The main reason why Linux is more secure is history. Linux is descended from Unix, and Unix spent its formative years in University labs where students would routinely prank each other. Of necessity, Unix grew up with security being an issue almost from Day 1.

In contrast, Windows grew out of DOS. Unlike Unix, where people were sharing a computer and had to play nice together, DOS was an environment where you owned everything, lock, stock and barrel. The thrust of the design was on usability, not on security. As a result, several fundamental system components were designed insecure and it was difficult-to-impossible to retrofit security on them.

Re:xp still works

[Dcnjoe60]

While what you say has some truth, the part you leave out is that the attacks against Android were not against the linux kernel used by Android, but the Android specific parts. So, while while your numbers may be accurate as they quote Trendmicro, they misrepresent the reality. Just as a vulnerability in Firefox is not a linux vulnerability, even though Firefox ships with most linux distributions, likewise, a vulnerability found in the Google specific Android pieces does not make it a linux kernel vulnerability. If those pieces were tied directly into the kernel by the kernel developers, that would be different. But just like if I raise my Jeep and it becomes unstable when cornering, that doesn't mean it is a problem with all Jeeps, Google, modifying specific pieces of "linux" does not mean that the vulnerability is a problem with linux.

Re:xp still works

[Dcnjoe60]

Sorry I lost faith in Linux after gnome 3. Windoes 8 might make me reconsider though :-)

There are alternatives to gnome 3. Xfce was pretty much like Gnome 2 and KDE could be made to look and work like just about anything. So, if gnome 3 pushed you away from linux, chances are you were already dissatisfied before gnome 3 and just needed an excuse. It's just too bad that Gnome 3 was released when it was. 3.8 is pretty usuable and the upcoming 3.10 looks better yet. But not to start a desktop war, as I stated, there are many alternatives, even if Gnome 3 isn't to one's liking, choose a different one.

Re:xp still works

[hairyfeet]

OMG are you REALLY gonna drag out the old "Its not the OS, its the kernel" bullshit? Really? because by that logic windows is 100% bug free as well since no bug that I know of attacks the WinNT kernel but the stuff above it as well.

I'm sorry dude but that bullshit won't fly, a kernel with nothing else is fricking worthless and every. single. mainstream. distro all come with the SAME APPS over and over AND OVER so that shit ain't gonna fly. Firefox, Chromium, Gimp, Libre office, you'll find those on pretty much every mainstream desktop distro there is so if any of those are pwned then yes Virginia Linux is pwned.

Re:xp still works

[Krneki]

There is one huge difference, Windows malware spread across Windows network protocol with ease. On the other hand SSH can't be compromised, so even if you have a virus on your Linux server it won't spread to the next box.

Re:xp still works

[Bert64]

There is linux malware and has been for years (ie rootkits, look for lrk or t0rnkit), and there is android malware floating around there these days. Linux has long had sufficient marketshare in several markets which are attractive to hackers (servers, firewalls, appliances, supercomputers etc) and there has never been a shortage of people trying to compromise linux boxes and install malicious code onto them.

The point is that while linux isn't immune from malware, it is considerably less susceptible to it than windows for a number of reasons, both in traditional server deployments and in end user deployments.

Re:xp still works

[WuphonsReach]

The main reason why Linux is more secure is history. Linux is descended from Unix, and Unix spent its formative years in University labs where students would routinely prank each other. Of necessity, Unix grew up with security being an issue almost from Day 1.

That's a bit revisionist. Early unix was horribly insecure at multi-user stuff. It took a long while before security became something important in design.

Easiest example to name is the storage of passwords in /etc/passwd. Since the file was readable by everyone, it was easy to grab the hashes and perform offline attacks. I'm not even sure that early password hashes were salted in unix, which meant that if you could crack one account you could easily see that your password would match accounts X, Y and Z.

Re:xp still works

[Bert64]

And categorise by vendor rather than what the application does, because trying to promote your company brand is more important than letting users easily find the applications they need.

Re:xp still works

[Imagix]

That's a bit revisionist. Early unix was horribly insecure at multi-user stuff. It took a long while before security became something important in design. Easiest example to name is the storage of passwords in /etc/passwd. Since the file was readable by everyone, it was easy to grab the hashes and perform offline attacks. I'm not even sure that early password hashes were salted in unix, which meant that if you could crack one account you could easily see that your password would match accounts X, Y and Z.

Speaking of revisionist... those attack methods did not exist (more accurately, had not been conceived of) at the time. Which is why salting came in (trying to counter both the "same password on two machines" and making it harder to create a rainbow table), and then afterwards the shadow password file (so that normal mortals can't get a hold of even the encrypted password). For the longest time MD5 and DES were both considered secure, was it an error to rely on them 20 years ago?

Re:xp still works

[RabidReindeer]

The main reason why Linux is more secure is history. Linux is descended from Unix, and Unix spent its formative years in University labs where students would routinely prank each other. Of necessity, Unix grew up with security being an issue almost from Day 1.

That's a bit revisionist. Early unix was horribly insecure at multi-user stuff. It took a long while before security became something important in design.

Easiest example to name is the storage of passwords in /etc/passwd. Since the file was readable by everyone, it was easy to grab the hashes and perform offline attacks. I'm not even sure that early password hashes were salted in unix, which meant that if you could crack one account you could easily see that your password would match accounts X, Y and Z.

Not revisionist. I never said that Unix was designed totally secure from Day 1, just that it spent its formative years in unfriendly environments. Even before users started attacking each other, it had a need to keep things isolated from each other, however, just to maintain separate user/process identities. Windows/DOS started out with a single identity, so a lot of those isolation mechanisms were things that had to be added on after certain unfortunate fundamental mechanisms had become an inextricable part of the core OS architecture.

Re:xp still works

[RabidReindeer]

What are you talking about?

Windows '9x grew out of DOS. Windows 7 grew out NT, which was most definitely designed with security in mind.

I would argue that "pure" NT is more secure than pre-selinux Linux or Unix. Selinux is something whose true security I have never been able to calculate. unlike NT or IBM's (mainframe) RACF, the rules and support mechanisms are hard to fathom. So hard, in fact, that a lot of people give up, switch it off, and thus defeat its purpose.

However, nothing runs "pure" NT. NT was forced to accept the Windows Gang of 3 core DLLs inherited from the DOS-based Windows predecessors, and they required wedging the security door open in order to remain backwards compatibility. Which is basically the same sort of problem as the Selinux complexity issue except that if you turn off Selinux, it's your own fault, not a core OS design decision.

You have enumerated and expanded on those precise problems and I can't state it any better. The only thing I can can is Who the $%@!! thought that a Web Browser needed to be (squeaky Steve Ballmer voice quote) "An Integral Part of Windows" as stated in the anti-trust trial. What actual advantage did it give? No other OS I know of puts the web browser code into the OS itself and I've yet to see any performance or capability advantages that Windows has over those other systems in that realm. Security holes, yes. Actual advantages, no.

Re:xp still works

[SiChemist]

My switch to Linux was decided when I accidentally mistyped a url into my web browser while running Win2K and was instantly pwnd. I was dual booting at the time and I decided that Linux needed to be my daily driver to avoid being so easily attacked.

Re:xp still works

[KingMotley]

Only the Windows 3.1 line grew out of MS-DOS, and the last in that line was Windows ME. The NT line grew out of VMS, which became Windows 95.

Re:xp still works

[John Bokma]

Unix grew up with security being an issue almost from Day 1.

Day 1? Hah! A nice story but it sure isn't true. I clearly recall that in the early 90's it was still no problem to login to a machine someone else was working on and change the background image of the root window of someone else's session... The days of telnet and ftp...

Re:xp still works

[sjames]

That might have held water except that Android phones vastly outnumber Windows phones and certainly would be a sweet target for a virus.

Servers are also a sweet target and Linux has had Windows outnumbered there for quite some time.

I wouldn't claim there is no Linux malware or that there won't be more, but it is notably rare in spite of some of the sweetest targets out there running Linux.

Likewise, there exists malware for Apple, but not in proportion to it's popularity. It genuinely looks like Windows is a soft target even with the confounding factors accounted for.

Linux also isn't particularly late in the game. While ads were gushing about the upcoming Windows '95, I was installing SLS Linux.

The one thing that could screw that up is if a distro encourages new users to run as root so they can get the full 'Windows experience' they are used to.

Remember, until MS came along, getting a virus from email was only a running gag. The idea that it could actually happen was absurd.

That will be a lot of spambots

[NixieBunny]

Once the patches stop and they all get infected, they'll be so busy sending junk to each other that they won't have time to compute anything.

Re:That will be a lot of spambots

[MurukeshM]

What makes you think that isn't happening already?

Interesting

[pipatron]

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.

Re:Interesting

[armanox]

They'll probably just push Red Flag Linux to everyone.

Re:Interesting

[ShanghaiBill]

perhaps we'll see a Chinese mass migration to Linux.

Don't hold your breath. I went to a Linux User Group meeting in Shanghai a couple years ago, and more than half the people there were expat white guys. Linux has an astoundingly low adoption rate in China. You'd think that people that are at least nominally commies would more open to FOSS.

Re:Interesting

[interval1066]

Pirated/hacked copies and Linux...

The ability to hack Linux is by design.

He/she meant Pirated/hacked copies of WINDOWS AND linux, genius. Learn to 'merican.

Re:Interesting

[Sir_Sri]

. When I visited China, computer security didn't seem to be one of the top priorities among the computer users

Remember that China has it's own state filtering and spyware software they install and run. And woe to you who are not happy to be spied on by the government. Unlike the US, who basically get to talk a lot, the PRC government feels no legal limits to doing whatever it wants to whomever it doesn't like.

There's no point in trying to have a secure system if the government itself is mandating an insecurity and is primarily the one spying on you, and is free to throw you in jail arbitrarily for complaining about it.

Re:Interesting

[slackware 3.6]

I found the opposite everyone from relatives to babysitters liked using Linux (Debian/Gnome3 or Bodhi or Magia) and asked about me installing it on their computer. So no not just dorks like Linux, the kids with the fancy $600 phones and the grandparents like is. Although my brother-in-law phoned me last week and asked if I could help him install and configure Slackware over the phone I told him no, then told him to try Mint.

Re:Interesting

[tnk1]

I prefer Black Flag Linux. It only costs 35 dollars and a six pack to license.

Re:Interesting

[sdnoob]

It will be interesting to see how they will handle this.

windows 7 is nearly as easy to pirate as windows xp was.... so it's pretty obvious what chinese users will do when the time comes.

Math much?

[ArcherB]

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."

This is Slashdot. I think we can do the math on that one.

Re:Math much?

[Lendrick]

Relevant.

Re:Math much?

[dotancohen]

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."

This is Slashdot. I think we can do the math on that one.

I came for this. I do wonder, though, for how much of the general population does "72.1%" go in one ear and out the other, but "three out of every four" sticks.

Re:Math much?

[sourcerror]

"There was a 23% drop in temperature." is a worthless comment as well unless you mean it in Kelvin.

Re:Math much?

[dotancohen]

... or nearly 721 out of every thousand.

721000 ppm?

Embedded XP machines

[innocent_white_lamb]

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.

Re:Embedded XP machines

[yuhong]

Ah, Embedded Standard 2009 and POSReady 2009 is supported until 2019, and is based on XP. When WEPOS SP2 support ended after plain XP SP2 support, they just put up the plain custom support patches without any checks at all. I wonder what MS will do about it this time.

No worse than right now.

[khasim]

If they are not already running a firewall then they're probably already infected.

If they are running a firewall then they might be infected through a 3rd party app (I'm looking at you, Java). Or maybe not infected at all (that is possible).

Which will be the exact same situation when XP support expires.

Re:No worse than right now.

[Billly Gates]

IE 6 also is one the most popular browsers. Infact until this time last year it was the most popular browser as Chinese websites are still made to only work with IE 6.

Microsoft will extend the deadline

[tuppe666]

Microsoft simply has no choice especially if it wants to protect its compatibility insurance with Windows Office. In reality its monopoly in Desktop Applications...Relies on on it being a Monopoly, and it has real competition. I have bought tablets, smartphones, rasberry pi, an Ouya replicating everything I do on a PC. At a fraction of the cost of a less desirable bottom end PC. Intel and Microsoft have been overcharging its hostages on massive gross profits of 70%(Its not working for Apple Macs either), and are finding it very difficult to adjust when its competitors with can produce devices like a Chromebook for $200 a Tablet for $100 a Smartphone for $100 a chromecast for $35. buying an *unpgrade* to the crippled version of Windows 8 at £99($150) is stupid.

The bottom line is any money they earn from cutting off their hostages from essential packages is a potential export to another platform.

Let us think a little

[tuppe666]

I don't see a problem. They probably pirated most of those copies of XP and they'll do the same for 7 or 8.

If all copies of Windows are the same price you have to expect they have *chosen* windows xp over Windows 7 for a reason.

Its not difficult to imagine that many of these machines simply will not work with anything other an XP.

Re:At long last...

[pegacat]

rather than [sending all that money to Ireland, then Holland, then Ireland, then a Swiss bank account]

(was: rather than sending all that money to the States)

There, fixed that for you...!

Re:Keeping XP For Legacy Games?

[Osgeld]

nope

if it was made for XP it runs in 7

if it was made before XP get virtualbox, not like its going to consume that much power in a VM

The world has a Massive Windows problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

But Ballmer, dog bless him, is slowly but surely solving it for us all!

LPT bit banging

[tepples]

Does that mean we should all be using DOS?

No, but it means that people with a need for DOS should still be using DOS. In a lot of cases, only DOS supports legacy or hobbyist hardware that bit-bangs the parallel port. Likewise, the AC that you replied to has a need for Windows XP for much the same reason: to use hardware that lacks an NT 6 driver.

Re:LPT bit banging

[foniksonik]

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.

Re:LPT bit banging

[ai4px]

can't... resist..... do we really want hardware that must bit bang ports used to maintain aircraft? Or a person working on airplains who cannot spell airplain?

Re:LPT bit banging

[amicusNYCL]

Webmasters are tired of IE 8

The hell you say! Only just yesterday I had the joy, the pure joy I tell you, to debug an IE8 issue where it would show an error message helpfully informing the user that the website was unreachable because I had the audacity to send a PDF file over HTTPS and include the standard headers to disable caching. So now my application is technically broken for everything else in that it might allow caching of those PDF files, but hey, at least IE8 works with it again.

IE8 is seriously a pure joy to work with. Any developer who has set up a page which features HTTPS and a Flash movie inside an iframe trying to launch an external URL to an Office file (but only with Office installed!) knows what I'm talking about.

Re:LPT bit banging

[tibit]

So, if a microcontroller does it, it's OK, but if a PC does it, it's bad? Yeah, I know that bit-banging printer parallel ports is usually a bit retarded in light of there being really affordable digital I/O cards from multiple vendors, but still, if it works, it works. Alas, the fact that nowadays there's plenty of semi-professional CNC gear that's still bit-banged via the printer port, now that's disturbing in light of a PCI-DIO24 card costing only $99. There are also PCIe variants from multiple vendors.

Re:LPT bit banging

[tibit]

There's no such thing as an unmount in legacy DOS, I don't know about FreeDOS. When you're at the command line prompt, where writes don't "just happen", it's always safe to pull the plug. Again - as long as you don't have something like smartdisk doing delayed writes behind the scene.

Re:LPT bit banging

[amicusNYCL]

I'm perfectly happy if that particular combination of bullshit never works on any platform! Anyone seeking to implement such a thing is either a) a deployer of malware, b) someone with malicious intent, or b) not a real web developer. None of which persuades me that I want anything to do with a site they've "developed"...

You have 2 b)'s there, so I guess I'll add a c): designer of custom online training courses which the customer views through a project management test site which displays the course inside an iframe to allow it to be wrapped with a resolution switcher and bug report/feedback form. I'm sure you knew that, though. But that's hardly the point, the point is that it is yet another stupid edge-case bug in IE that hints at fundamentally poor design decisions in the browser itself, and requires me to spend time researching and fixing a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place and for which I cannot bill anybody.

Also, what's the difference between a deployer of malware and someone with malicious intent?

Re:EOL a product to force new sales?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re: Of course if you can pay...

[Patch86]

My company (which is a big UK national) enquired after this sort of arrangement (not for XP, but for another programme going out of support in 2014- an old Microsoft CMS). Basically, they wanted multi-millions for it. Our pockets are deep, but nowhere near deep enough for those shenanigans.

There won't be many companies who can justify that sort of cost on a long term basis.

Re:To eat or to upgrade?

[shadowofwind]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought people were starving in China and a very few (1%) can actually afford an iPhone or a new computer.

You're wrong.

http://www.zdnet.com/chinas-internet-population-surges-to-564-million-75-percent-on-mobile-7000009813/
http://www.minyanville.com/sectors/global-markets/articles/Apple-Inc-Doubles-iPhone-4-Sales/6/21/2013/id/50472
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-26/apple-iphone-share-shrinks-as-china-s-huawei-to-zte-lure-users.html

The market is huge, closer to 50% than 1%, and Apple's sales, while growing rapidly, aren't as large as Samsung's or growing as fast as those of Huawei or ZTE.

It should be obvious that there are a lot of reasons besides poverty to prefer other smart phones over Apple phones.

Re:EOL a product to force new sales?

[Pinhedd]

That's a horrible example. Car manufacturers do stop making parts for old vehicles after a while. Fixing up old junkers can be expensive because the parts can be quite rare. Owners certainly have the option of buying aftermarket parts just as PC users have the option of third party software.

Whenever emissions or road standards change the car manufacturers don't retroactively update every previous production model to meet them. The owners either pay for a custom fix up, are SOL, or get grandfathered in.

We need to understand what "retire" means

[roc97007]

I'll let you in on a little secret -- a lot of embedded control systems are still running Windows 98. Test by: Stick around when a bottle return machine is rebooted.

In other words. What is China going to do when XP is "retired"? You're kidding, right?

Re:We need to understand what "retire" means

[m.alessandrini]

Here in Italy, until a couple years ago, the ticket machines at the train stations were running OS/2.

Re:We need to understand what "retire" means

[sqrt(2)]

Why do I keep seeing this meme repeated all over a tech site of all places? Windows (including 7 and 8) has been completely cracked and broken to the point where pirate copies are indistinguishable even to Microsoft. They couldn't cut off the pirate copies even if they wanted to. The pirate copies are actually EASIER to activate and keep updated since it's all automatic, no messing with keys.

Strange way of measuring Support

[tuppe666]

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.

Re:I think M$ will extend XP support

[mrbester]

No there aren't. Extended support began 5 years ago. 5 years is long enough for even monolithic dinosaurs like government and hospitals to get their shit together to prepare for the inevitable. Except they did nothing and still expect everything. Bollocks to the lot of them.

Re:To eat or to upgrade?

[ruir]

There is no joke. Different mentalities and priorities, and not only exclusive to china. If it aint broke, don't fix it. Heck, when I went to do my final project in the uk, there were still people using 8-bit machines. As long as it works and does what they want, they use it.

Taxes

[ebonum]

China's whole tax system works on a printed documents called a fapiao (fa-piao).
Every company in China has at least one dedicated machine with a special dot matrix printer to print fapiaos.
The software to print fapiaos only runs on Windows XP.

It can not be understated how critical fapiaos are to China's tax system. Big companies use them to pay the 17% VAT (some services and logistics companies pay less than 17%). If you lose the fapiao you get from your supplier, you might as we have lost actual cash. You must have it to offset the VAT you owe. During your annual tax review, you must have fapiaos to keep your taxes low. These are so important, there is a booming business in faking fapiaos. This is mostly done through fake transactions. Faking the actual fapiao is not so easy these days. Each fapiao carries a unique number and can the traced.

If you go out to eat, you can demand a fapiao. For westerners, this can be submitted to reduce your taxes. The top tax rate is 45%, so fapiaos are very valuable. For local Chinese, they submit them as a business/company expense. For people working in restaurants, this is a source of extra cash. If a customer doesn't ask for a fapiao, the employees can print one anyway. On the black market, these can be sold for 5-10 cents on the dollar. The same applies to cab drivers. Many passengers don't take their receipt. The receipt is a valid fapiao that can be used to reduce taxes. The cab drivers will sell them for extra cash. Just ask. :)

easy solution

[ruir]

Microsoft pays to all this "anti-virus" labs to instead of writing mild viruses to sell their products, write one that wipes out all of the XPs after a couple of months of being installed.

That's how basically all companies do it

[Sycraft-fu]

Look at Ubuntu: They support standard releases for a year (they've reduced it) and LTS releases for 5 years. That means from the date of initial release. RHEL is 10 years of support for their 5 and 6 releases (7 for 3 and 4) and then you can buy 3 more years of support for extra money.

OS-X is a bit different in that Apple supports two version older than the current one. That in practice means about 3-4 years of support, but is harder to plan since you don't know how fast releases will come, you don't get a defined, guaranteed, cycle.

So... Where's the company that gives a much longer/better support cycle? Because I sure don't see it.

Re:I've stuck with XP because

[m.alessandrini]

I do a lot of development for Access and Excel in VBA

So you're part of the problem! :-)

Why change when ...

[dbIII]

Why change when so much software is still being churned out as 32 bit, single threaded and doesn't run reliably without Admin permissions?
As long as we have so many software developers stuck in 1995 then even XP is overkill.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:EOL a product to force new sales?

[bazorg]

Does MS not realize how vividly anti-consumer this is? Even to non-tech types?

so in your view, MS (and everyone else in business) should have dedicated resources for maintaining old products in perpetuity, just to ensure that people who ARE NOT BUYING new products can enjoy the old products?

I think it's your comment (and the 2 Insightful mod points) that is out of touch with reality. With companies requiring to show sales and profit growth in order not to be considered dead by the stock market and therefore by the consumer and by the banks, it is quite amusing to read that the 10+ years support period Microsoft has invested on the XP product is a let down. It would be an interesting exercise to consider the implications of this perpetual support requirement for every other software/hardware and non-IT product you can use.

Most Chinese computers are already infected

[VernorVinge]

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.

Make their own OS?

[Sait-kun]

Wouldn't it be much easier, cheaper and more secure if the Chinese government would develop their own OS from scratch?

Even though many of us do not agree with the way the Chinese government runs the country but they - unlike most countries - have the ability to make things happen.
They have plenty of highly skilled coders en plenty of resources, I believe it's one of the few countries that can pull it off successfully.

This will give them many advantages:

- Full source control
- More secure / not dependable on other parties to fix issues.
- Can be catered to the needs of the government / Chinese people.

Re:Make their own OS?

[StarWreck]

They did release their own OS, a crappy one based on Ubuntu. Nobody uses it.

Re:EOL a product to force new sales?

[sasparillascott]

They should just offer extended security support for $4.99 per year per machine and watch the profits roll in. Otherwise its just a big opportunity for folks to switch platforms since those old machines will run Linux and Wine but can't run newer versions of Windows because Microsoft changed the device driver architecture - if they hadn't done that they could just tell everyone to upgrade.

Charge for Updates

[CohibaVancouver]

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.