Microsoft's Ticking Time Bomb Is Windows XP

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Shona Ghosh writes at PC Pro that the final deadline for Windows XP support in April 2014 will act as the starting pistol for developing new exploits as hackers reverse-engineer patches issued for Windows 7 or Windows 8 to scout for XP vulnerabilities. "The very first month that Microsoft releases security updates for supported versions of Windows, attackers will reverse-engineer those updates, find the vulnerabilities and test Windows XP to see if it shares [them]," says Tim Rains, the director of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing group. Microsoft says that XP shared 30 security holes with Windows 7 and Windows 8 between July 2012 and July 2013. Gregg Keizer says that if a major chunk of the world's PCs remains tied to XP, as seems certain, Microsoft will face an unenviable choice: Stick to plan and put millions of customers at risk from malware infection, or backtrack from long-standing policies and proclamations." (Read on for more.) "In either case, it will face a public relations backlash, whether from customers who complain they've been forsaken or those angry at Microsoft for pushing them to upgrade when, in the end, they didn't need to." Microsoft makes little or no revenue from customers with old PCs, and desperately wants them to buy a new Windows system of some sort. "It's very easy to say 'just upgrade,' but not all business can do so," says Lawrence Pingree, citing money, resources and mission-critical software. "One of the main reasons why people cannot leave XP is compatibility with other software." Nor is Microsoft blameless. XP has hung around because of the mistakes Microsoft made with Windows Vista, the OS flop that outgoing CEO Steve Ballmer copped to as his biggest regret. If Vista had been more like Windows 7, or had shipped at its original "Longhorn" timetable of 2004, then been followed three years later by Windows 7, XP would not have had the opportunity to lock up the ecosystem for a decade. Pingree has a suggestion for Microsoft. ""If it's such a big problem, maybe they should offer an 'Extended Life' [support] subscription and charge for it.""

Comments

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[Joce640k]

The question is: How much does it actually cost them (in dollars) to support XP?

I get the feeling this is just to try and push people to upgrade, not because XP can't be supported.

I own two machines which cannot be upgraded for very good reasons.

(And right now they have auto-update disabled because of the "Windows update uses 100% CPU and leaves the machine unusable" problem which appeared a couple of months ago - a coincidence that this happened just before XP is retired...?)

Re:So upgrade already

[BUL2294]

I'm sorry, but tell me an easy way for a non-technical business (e.g. a dentist's office) to shut off Internet access in most consumer-grade VMs (VMWare Player, Hyper-V, Win7's VirtualPC, etc.) while keeping network access alive. Yes, there's things like fiddling with hosts files and the like, but no consumer-level VM offers a "keep networking but disallow Internet access" switch. (Sure, you can disable NAT, but then your VM can't network, so what's the point???)

Also, Microsoft's Win32 application compatibility via the Windows 6.x kernel is decent for 32-bit and weak for 64-bit (WoW). To add, there's so much 16-bit code floating out there in businesses, written during the Win9x era, especially from vendors that no longer exist. Even trying to get some Microsoft programs working is a chore--e.g. Visual FoxPro 9 SP2. (I don't give a shit how "old" it is, it's still used and doesn't work well with Win7 x64). Microsoft has the R&D resources to figure out how to run 16-bit code on 64-bit Windows (e.g. NTVDM running on WoW--essentially a VM within a VM), and we'd be fully in the 64-bit OS era...

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[Khyber]

Of those reasons, I'm betting #1 is 'No driver support for half the hardware in the system.'

I have tons of equipment that's better than crap being produced today, but drivers for it don't exist past XP.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[CohibaVancouver]

There is almost no scenario where continuing to use XP as your main desktop makes sense

Take the case of my 74-year-old dad.

His Gateway runs XP, and runs well. Chrome is fast, YouTube vids of his grandkids play fine.

Upgrading to Win 7 will cost him $300 - The Win 7 DVD + a new printer, as his HP 1012 doesn't have a Win 7 driver. If there was a $20 / year subscription option I'm sure he'd take it.

Re:If you think Win 8 is crap

[TheGoodNamesWereGone]

I know of NO businesses that are just hankering with bated breath to use Windows 8. They would rather upgrade to 7. Home users are having it shoved down their throats with every new PC they buy and they hate it too. You can argue about all the new wonderful things it has under the hood, but the interface is shit. Don't say "It's fine once you get used to it," because it's a step backward in usability. Even after installing something like Classic Shell or Start8 the 'Modern' apps still run fullscreen. "But you can learn your way around that!" you cry. That's some helluvan arrogant attitude to have. The only reason M$ dumped the old menu/window-based interface is because they it would benefit THEM in some imagined convergence of the desktop and tablet, **not** to benefit users or create something more efficient. They were wrong.