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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....
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.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
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++;
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.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
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!
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.
But Ballmer, dog bless him, is slowly but surely solving it for us all!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
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.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
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. :)
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.
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.
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.
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.