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

The Solution is Obvious

[Nova Express]

Microsoft should extend support for XP...but only on a cash-for-patch basis. Sell patches at $5 a pop for XP user's, or a one Year Security Update Subscription for $20.

It's a win-win situation....

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[rmdingler]

There will be no second act here if the protagonist solves the dilemma in the opening minutes sir.

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:The Solution is Obvious

[AmiMoJo]

There really are only a tiny number of people for whom such a subscription would make sense. Everyone else would be better off just replacing their PC with a newer one running Win7/8. Windows 7 has XP Mode which works pretty well, and people who absolutely need XP for that one bit of ancient hardware that doesn't even work in the VM would be better off retiring their current machines from day-to-day use and saving them just for that single purpose.

People who are still using XP day-to-day are idiots and Microsoft shouldn't encourage them. There is almost no scenario where continuing to use XP as your main desktop makes sense, although I'm sure there will be plenty of replied from people who claim that they absolutely have to.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[couchslug]

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

What are those? I support a couple of XP machines for a friend who is content with his old CAM software because it does what he wants and the post-processor works with his old Fanuc control, but they no longer connect to the internet. Cut the cord, problem solved.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[houghi]

Car analogy: If you bought a car, the company will take out as many errors as possible. However sometimes they miss one. During warranty, they will repair it for you free of charge.

Now imagine that you bought a car and you want some of the same security features new cars have, like seat-belts and third break light. The old company does not do any security upgrades anymore. You still have several options.
1) Pay the company to do it for you (as you suggest above)
2) Pay another company to do it for you
3) Do it yourself

Number 2 and 3 are possible because you or somebody with the ability can just take a screwdriver and start.
So what they need to do is OpenSource it when they don't give any support anymore.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[CaptainJeff]

Better car analogy: When a defect (mistake in the fundamental design or implementation of the car) is found that affects its safety, a recall is issued, and the manufacturer fixes it for free. Regardless of warranty status of age of the vehicle.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[hot soldering iron]

Microsoft will never Opensource XP. Mostly because it would be a major liability with no benefit to them. Yes, liability. If you have your programmers going through the code and find a module that obviously didn't work like it was supposed to, and exposed the machines to a 0-day hack, your lawyers would race to file law suites against Microsoft to compensate for the companies losses. Or lets say you figure out what ALL the settings in the registry do, including the ones for exclusive use of the FBI/NSA/Microsoft. Now you know that they were fully able to bypass the Microsoft supplied firewalls, and grab whatever info they wanted. And you would spill that knowledge all over the net.

Where is Microsoft's benefit in all this? It's just not there.

The only project to Opensource XP that I've heard of is ReactOS, and it is STILL in Alpha stage, even after all these years. I suppose if the demand for it is there, some companies could be encouraged to donate time/money and accelerate the project, for their own benefit.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[DrLang21]

These are hardly safety issues here. If someone dies or gets injured because of unpatched Windows vulnerabilities, it will be the fault of whoever used Windows XP in the system that caused it, not Microsoft.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

Find the latest "Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer * for Windows XP" for the current month. Download it, install it, then do Windows Update. I have had multiple machines have issues sometime since June I think because of some bug. Hangs on the webpage for a long time, checking for updates. Doing that will make it work real quick.
Make sure it's for XP, your right IE version, 32- vs. 64-bit, etc.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[Charliemopps]

The unfortunate fact is, the majority of these people are home users on DSL. They aren't going to pay, we're lucky if they even update, and once they're infected their machines are used in botnets to attack the rest of us. Microsoft should continue to publish security updates for XP for free to protect THE REST of its users.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[Runaway1956]

One problem with supporting XP, is the old 32 bit thing. Some of the security features available on 64 bit systems just don't work so well on 32 bit processors, or with 32 bit operating systems. http://www.howtogeek.com/165535/why-the-64-bit-version-of-windows-is-more-secure/ Feel free to Google for more information along those lines - there is plenty.

Worse, XP supports legacy 16 and 8 bit stuff, which is far more insecure than a rational 32 bit system.

Microsoft does indeed push the upgrade cycle for their own selfish reasons, no one can deny that. But, really and truly, XP is so obsolete that no sensible people are going to waste time trying to support it.

As soon as I could afford to purchase a 64 bit Opteron, I made the switch to 64 bit computing. The fact that 64 bit Windows XP couldn't support all of my hardware prompted me to make the switch to Linux. At that point in time, Suse Linux had the edge on AMD 64 bit computing, and everything just worked out of the box.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

No more support. XP needs to die and everyone needs to get over XP. People replace everything else so much faster that they are willing to change from XP to ANYTHING else.12 or 13 years for the O/S is far too long.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[turgid]

All the people at Microsoft who knew how XP worked were probably "let go" as part of a cost-cutting restructuring years ago under hubristic management tactics which assumed everyone (customers and the general public) would just upgrade to something newer, just because that's the way it's always been, and there's no reason to believe that this time it would be any different. I bet support for legacy products got outsourced without proper Knowledge Transfer (as if KT ever happens properly).

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

[Runaway1956]

So - where does one go to have his Studebaker updated or upgraded? How about a DeSoto?

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

I moved my Dad to Linux Mint because it was easier than teaching him how to use Windows 8. I've gotten basically no complaints from him and he was up and running within a few minutes of getting his new machine.

I was really not looking forward to having to teach him how to use Win 8 only to have to teach him Win 9 when MS completely changed the UI again.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[Threni]

> Sell patches at $5 a pop for XP user's, or a one Year Security Update Subscription
> for $20.

The problem with that (other than the horrific apostrophe abuse) is that no-one (or only a very small number of people) will pay. It needs to be zero-maintenance - just pushed out as usual as it is now. And if people don't pay, then get infected, it's going to make Microsoft look bad ("I've been a user for years....why do I have to start paying now....punishing the poor/students....last Microsoft product I ever use"). They should have thought of this earlier. They're a huge, profitable company. They can afford to keep a few people on to maintain and backport security fixes to the last product they produced which people actually like instead of forcing them to use shit like Windows 8.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[Nyder]

Microsoft should extend support for XP...but only on a cash-for-patch basis. Sell patches at $5 a pop for XP user's, or a one Year Security Update Subscription for $20.

It's a win-win situation....

Not sure it's a win-win situation.

While maybe business with legacy programs or hardware that can't upgrade would be cool with that, users, ie the poor people, who can't afford to buy OS's, let alone a computer that could run Windows 7, that are stuck using Windows XP aren't going to be paying for updates. Thus that makes a lot of vulnerable OS's that are not patched, that will be exploited by botnets, which then causes problems for the rest of the internet.

I guess it's a choice of bottom line or responsibility to it's consumers on which sort of path MS will go.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[ihtoit]

the reason Microsoft will never opensource XP is that the kernel code contains trade secrets. What those trade secrets are exactly, we'll never know - because they're secret. On top of which, because the platform is used by the DoD in live fire environments, custom code tied into the kernel is doubly protected as a National Security matter, which rolls back into the kernel itself. We don't know what that code is or what it involves or how it interacts with the standard 5.1.2600 NT kernel, because it is all SECRET.

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:The Solution is Obvious

[nabsltd]

One problem with supporting XP, is the old 32 bit thing. Some of the security features available on 64 bit systems just don't work so well on 32 bit processors, or with 32 bit operating systems. http://www.howtogeek.com/165535/why-the-64-bit-version-of-windows-is-more-secure/

So how does that explain Microsoft ending support for XP x64 at the same time as for the 32-bit version?

One of the reasons I haven't upgraded to Windows 7 on my primary desktop is because I run XP x64, so one of the features of WIndows 7 that has really caught on with the masses isn't really a big deal for me.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[smpoole7]

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

> What are those?

Plenty of reasons. Khyber's comment below about hardware drivers is one. If you have a sweet server that's still chugging along, you feel no need to replace or upgrade it. If you did, though, you'd have a time finding drivers for it.

Another reason is if you're using a very expensive software package that simply won't work with anything newer than Windows XP. Then it's not just a simple matter of upgrading Windows, but having to shell out tons of money for other software upgrades at the same time. Until the economy turns around, that ain't gonna happen.

We've run across cases where a software vendor will say, "don't install anything newer than service pack 2." We handle it by completely isolating these machines from the Internet and disallowing the use of external, user-supplied storage (which most smart admins do anyway, on general principle).

Here's a piece of trivia for you: one of the key audio streaming companies* for broadcast radio stations, as late as last year, made it clear in their contract that they would ONLY support Windows XP. We dropped them for that reason, but folks, this was in 2012. That kind of stuff still happens, too, and again, blame the economy.

This admittedly won't affect most users, but it does affect some of us.

(*actually, to be technically correct, they're an ad-insertion company -- they insert commercial inventory in your online stream -- but I figured everyone's eyes would glaze over if I tried to get that detailed.) :)

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[Bing Tsher E]

A Studebaker or DeSoto that is running well enough to warrant an 'update or upgrade' is worth enough money on the Collector's Market to net the owner enough money to buy a decent KIA or maybe even a Toyota.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[ColdWetDog]

Actually XP mode doesn't work for a disturbing amount of software. Especially the networked Enterprise level software that is really a cast iron bitch to replace.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[Deathlizard]

They did it for Windows 2000. I read somewhere that MS charged a big company running windows 2000 at the time over $10000 for a single patch after windows 2000 expired.

The best option is to get rid of it. I dealt with this issue back when windows 2000 went EOL (primarily with scientific equipment that would lose certification if tampered with) and believe me you don't want to go there if you can avoid it. You can avoid it if the system is not network facing and you don't use media like USB drives on it. But any level of network from Internet to Sneakernet puts you at risk.

The only major problem I've run into compatibility when it comes to transitioning programs windows XP to 7 is 64Bit and UAC. Disabling UAC, enabling the Administrator account, and using the 32Bit version of 7 will 99/100 times get an old program to run in 7 using XP compatibility mode, and if it still doesn't work, then there's windows XP mode (although that can get infected, you can minimize the impact with NAT or Disabling Network support.)

Hardware is a different story. Many XP drivers will install in 32bit 7 but they can cause bluescreens and the like. I've honestly had better luck with Vista in this regard. Again with UAC Turned off.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[bill_mcgonigle]

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

Who wrote the initial drivers? Microsoft or third parties? If third parties, are they still around? If so, why aren't they supporting Win7? Does Linux support that hardware?

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

Fine, just don't connect your machine to the Internet and put others' at risk.

Microsoft's big "problem" is "free updates". They should have a yearly subscription fee and that should increase as the OS gets older at some predictable rate. That's how to properly price ration an old OS's updates. They simply can't be expected to support XP forever, for free.

On the other hand, they thrive on piracy, so I understand why they have this arrangement.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[Bengie]

If you have a sweet server

I have no *nix machines at home or work, but even I know Linux and FreeBSD run on nearly every server. You almost have to try to build one that doesn't work. Nearly every HBA and server grade NIC has *nix support.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[hairyfeet]

What reasons are those? If its money you should know those old Pentium 4s (which in my exp at the shop is the majority chip when it comes to old XP boxen) are sucking up power and blowing through your cooling like a drunk hitting a free minibar so they are COSTING you money, not saving it.

I have had excellent luck replacing those aging P4 boards with AMD Bobcat boards. They are faster than a P4, gives you an APU that will do 1080P over HDMI, and most importantly for your wallet uses less under 100% load than a P4 does idling, just 18w under full load. Use that PCI slot to add a PCI to IDE and you an even keep your old drives if you wish, thus saving even more money.

Old software? Win 7 Pro has XP Mode and the Bobcat supports hardware VM acceleration so that isn't really an excuse. In fact the only software I've so far run into I couldn't VM was a customer's Macromedia Xres and that is because that ancient POS is soooo old (1997) that it doesn't seem to like anything above a 2.5Ghz or above an IDE HDD, something about the way it swaps.

So there really is no excuse to keep XP, the old boxes didn't care about power wasting or heat while a modern chip uses a tiny amount compared to the useful work you get, there is plenty of software out there that will turn that old XP install into a much safer VM, and most software will run better even on an ultra cheap like the bobcat over those cycle wasting power pigs of the mid 00s.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[roc97007]

Microsoft should extend support for XP...but only on a cash-for-patch basis. Sell patches at $5 a pop for XP user's, or a one Year Security Update Subscription for $20.

It's a win-win situation....

I don't see Microsoft doing this. Their business model since the beginning has depended on the user community paying for regular OS upgrades. They will cling to this, just as they still cling to the idea that the industry will just accept whatever they choose to crap out. I'm sure there are business meetings where they're forecasting the revenue from huge sales of Windows 8 licenses before the XP cutoff date.

But to the users, they'll click on Word on April 7 and it'll come up fine, and they'll click on Word on April 8 and it'll still come up fine. And they'll ask themselves, why pay $199 to upgrade to an interface that I don't understand when all I want to do is click on Word?

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[roc97007]

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

It's their business model. Microsoft doesn't make money from advertising (like google) and doesn't make money from end users via service contracts. They make money when you upgrade your OS, or alternately when you purchase a new machine. Of course XP can still be supported. But why do that for free when they can sell Windows 8 licenses instead?

> (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...?)

The impression I get is that this has *always* been a problem with XP, it's just that the number of patches has driven the issue to the breaking point. But you're right, it does tend to drive people to upgrade. I don't expect Microsoft to fix it although probably for media purposes they've made noises that they're working on it.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

Microsoft should extend support for XP...but only on a cash-for-patch basis. Sell patches at $5 a pop for XP user's, or a one Year Security Update Subscription for $20.

It's a win-win situation....

Do you realize just how dumb this suggestion is.
Imagine Ford announcing they have this car that starts on fire if it has a rear end collison, but it's OK. For $500 they will replace the gas tank with a safer one that won't catch fire in a rear end collision.

You can bet the first time MS announces "there is this bug in XP that allows hackers to come in and own your computer,.the fix will cost you five bucks", 20 State Attorneys will be filing consumer protection lawsuits in a New York minute.

I think MS has been sued enough.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[Anne Thwacks]

People who are still using XP day-to-day are idiots and Microsoft shouldn't encourage them.

I have a computerised embroidery sewing machine that cost about $3,000 and the software that controls it only runs on XP.

There is a newer version of thes ame machine that has win8 drivers, but it costs near $7,000 and my existing pattern library would not migrate without huge amnounts of work. The sewing machine is good for another 30 years (will outlive me) but I have to keep XP to run it - of course XP is on a T series Thinkpad, and is not connected to the internet. However, the lesson is learned - no one in MY house will every buy into Windows dependency ever again, and if I ever buy another embroidery machine, it sure as hell won't rely on closed source software. My 86 year old mother just migrated to Apple because she found Windows unuseable. Both my sons use Apple, and most of the in-laws use Ubuntu. MS is losing support rapidly inmy family :-)

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[WaffleMonster]

No more support. XP needs to die and everyone needs to get over XP. People replace everything else so much faster that they are willing to change from XP to ANYTHING else.12 or 13 years for the O/S is far too long.

Why? Looking back lack of meaningful progress over these 12 or 13 years has been shamefully depressing. Why should anyone care about your declarations? What is the value prop to the average user in upgrading? Security? ha ha h h a h aha

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[WaffleMonster]

the reason Microsoft will never opensource XP is that the kernel code contains trade secrets. What those trade secrets are exactly, we'll never know - because they're secret. On top of which, because the platform is used by the DoD in live fire environments, custom code tied into the kernel is doubly protected as a National Security matter, which rolls back into the kernel itself.

Lots of countries contractually have access to Windows source code. It has also been leaked on a number of occasions throughout the years. Assume anyone who wants it has it because this is much closer to the truth.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[msobkow]

Maybe they should bring back support for WinNT, Win2K, and Win98, too, hunh?

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[Pentium100]

Yes, they do. However, using a Linux server as domain controller and smb server is weird - I might as well use a Windows server and have better compatibility. Also, I might want to run graphical software on it, like uTorrent or bitcoin-qt and not want to run X.

I am a Linux admin, so it's not like I don't know my way around a Linux server. I have a few Linux VMs at home (and one real host - bitcoin miner controller), but I also use Windows (2003) servers.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[GumphMaster]

Download and manually install Microsoft Security Bulletin MS13-097 - Critical, Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer (2898785) for IE8 and turn updates back on

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[puto]

Apparently the googles does not work in Vancouver. Here is from HPs own support page on how to do it. The LaserJet 1015 x64 printer driver that ships with Windows 7 works just fine with the 1012. Install it explicity with "Add A Printer", it won't be detected by plugging in the printer.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[Nethead]

Back in the early 90's I built broadcast automation systems using PC-XT clones and QuickBASIC. Before the PCs it was a box of relays and tricky use of cart decks, and prayer.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[Mikkeles]

FTFS:

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.""

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[shutdown -p now]

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

The cost of paying wages to all the developers whose time is then spent debugging and fixing XP?

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[shutdown -p now]

If you want it to work the same with software, then be prepared to pay car-like prices for it. People are complaining that $120 is too much for Windows; well, how about $12k? Because that's probably what it'd take to design software that is engineered to the safety standards that cars are, and to provide margin for any future "free" recalls/fixes.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[another_fanboy]

Out of curiosity, for what reason would you rather run windows (which includes a graphics subsystem) but not x11?

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[richy freeway]

Doesn't fix the problem, believe me, I've tried. I run a small computer repair business and we must get 20 or so XP machines in a week with this issue. It's worst on single core CPUs as it completely ties the system up. If the machine will support it, we look through our trays of pulled CPUs and just throw in a dual core chip which helps a lot.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[Billly Gates]

I agree on principle, but at the end of the day money talks shit walks.

If it costs money my bosses do not want to hear about it.

XP has a higher maintance cost and is a security nightmare but getting vms is expensive. Last I checked XP mode is not available to push via active directory. This means a Citrix solution with Windows Server 2003. More $$$$ and now a burden as they need to hire an additional admin, hire a consultant, test the shit out, and have help desk have a call every 2 minutes asking where that icon for shitwareCRM gone? ... but this says Citrix Recieve.

Ok I shut off my newer Windows 7 machiney thingie but now Citrix says something about not logging off and shitwareCRM says I am still logged in and wont display anything on my Google bluey E for internet 6 browser etc.

You can tell I support corporate users can't you? It can be done and is more secure but it is a damn pain in the ass to upgrade and yes those reasons above are a big excuse to upgrade something that already works.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[jbolden]

That's not a win-win situation. They need to get their ecosystem to move on. So for example developers can safely target Windows 7 only. They don't want people on XP it is hinderance to their ecosystem.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[jbolden]

It doesn't cost that much. And yes they want people to upgrade. If customers upgrade, then developers can upgrade their applications to take advantage of new Windows 7 features and the whole ecosystem gets better. They want people who need to use XP to mostly be using the XP box in Windows 7 or Hypervisor in Win8.

They understand that some machines can't update. Then those machines get isolated like any other legacy system and are used like unsupported legacy systems not general purpose desktops.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[jbolden]

That's exactly the soft of thing that Microsoft wants to undermine, people not regularly updating. Why would Microsoft want to encourage you to run old unsupported versions of applications? The kinds of people who do that are harming not helping the ecosystem.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[fisted]

The ``remote control progam'' is called ssh.
If for whatever weird reason you actually need graphical ``remote control'', well, X11 is, you know, designed to be network transparent.

xauth, xhost, $DISPLAY.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[jbolden]

Sure he might very well take it. And he'd be part of the problem in holding back the ecosystem. He along with tens of millions like him fragments the user pool and makes it so developers can't target Windows 7 as a minimum OS. Why would Microsoft want that?

As an aside the HP 1012 has IEEE 1284.4 support so there are drivers just none by HP.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[jbolden]

OK so what's the problem? That's a dedicated legacy piece of equipment you treat it like an embedded system. Just don't use it as a desktop.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[GumphMaster]

Absolutely fixes the problem every time here.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[GumphMaster]

Just to qualify, this is on virtual machines that are mostly up-to-date but get bitten by the 100% CPU once a month on patch Tuesday. I've not tried on a clean XP SP3 install for a while.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[jbolden]

Once there are huge numbers of infected machines the telcos will shut them down automatically. We had a similar situation with this where the FBI had to deal with a virus that pointed people to an infected DNS. They shut it down and people upgraded.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[jbolden]

The value prop has been low because Microsoft has let the cost of the average machine fall and has let applications stay on old OSes. But just to name a few features:

a) Huge integrations with Microsoft server and online service suite
b) The ability to seamless switch between table and laptop mode
c) Universal communication compatibility.
d) Integrated notification systems.
e) new graphics standards, especially scalable graphics.

If you look at say OSX software over the last dozen years where there has been a policy of forced upgrades you'll see much more.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[jbolden]

And then 5 months later they will have a virus / botnet. Their ISP will shutdown their outgoing internet. They will go to their local Staples... store and get a new computer with Word. Problem solved.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[roc97007]

And then 5 months later they will have a virus / botnet. Their ISP will shutdown their outgoing internet. They will go to their local Staples... store and get a new computer with Word. Problem solved.

Or maybe they won't. If you're behind a firewall using an unroutable IP, (default on most routers) run an antivirus, and (this is the important part) don't download warez and spend a lot of time on pr0n sites and don't click on every damned thing you see, your chances of infection are significantly diminished. Of the people I support, I know which ones are going to be clean at any given time, and which will be "infested with the viruses", based on their browsing habits. What you do with the machine is much more significant than what OS its running and whether it's patched to current.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[upuv]

Absolutely not.

This just makes the whole thing worse. Extending XP will simply result in more infections for longer.

Absolutely the death of support for XP will result in a spike on infections. This is with out a doubt. However it is a spike. Basically XP machines will become so un-usable the spike will end. With the machines death.

What MS should do is offer an amnesty and allow people to download and install a scaled back version of Win 7 or 8 for no charge. With the option of buying a 1 year subscription every year for it for next to nothing.

That way MS looks better and with luck security gets better. Also MS might actually retain some market share as a result. Otherwise it's all going to poorly maintained linux distros. ( Yes linux can be up to date. But lets face it most people never run updates of their own free will. Linux package managers in all the distros still require consent in order to proceed. Which people don't like or understand. )

XP needs to die. OR infections will keep spreading.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[fisted]

Stuff like this makes me glad to be running a unix network. I don't share your pain, I don't share your costs, oh, and BTW I get vastly superior software for free, including source code.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[jbolden]

That's an even smaller group. The doesn't run any new software and doesn't use the web much. OK so they get another 4 years or so. Nothing Microsoft can do to get them to upgrade until they are ready. But they aren't a meaningful part of the ecosystem either.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[dbIII]

There's that and a combination of DLL hell plus inhouse VB stuff that keeps some stuff on old MS Windows systems here. Meanwhile legacy SunOS stuff from 1995 or before runs on the current Solaris/Oraclething with no tweaks more complicated than environment variables.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[roc97007]

Wait, let me understand this. People who don't download warez or spend time on pr0n sites are not a significant part of the ecosystem?

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[jbolden]

People who are

a) On windows XP
b) don't upgrade hardware
c) don't upgrade software
d) don't buy online services

aren't really part of the ecosystem meaningfully at all. They don't engage in commerce. They don't constitute a target for developers and thus they don't hold anything back.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[dbIII]

However, using a Linux server as domain controller and smb server is weird

Although in a lot of cases it can outperform the MS one because that's all it's doing, a different filesystem with less overhead and you can get it to run just what you want instead of a big pile of LDAP/ActiveDirectory quirks. What's left is going to be just as compatible as an older MS server apart from bugs like a short maximum path depth which was on those older MS systems (and probably still there).

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[fast turtle]

Worse, XP supports legacy 16 and 8 bit stuff, which is far more insecure than a rational 32 bit system.

Hell Win7-64 supports 16bit Win95 software. What it doesn't support is the god damn 16bit installer but seeing as how that's an expansion pack to the game, I don't have a problem simply copying over the files to the folder and replacing the game engine. I've even been able to install the game engine update as it's a true 32bit app, not some borked/braindamaged 16bit installer. For those interested, game is Total Annihilation and the Expansions are the Core Contingency and Battle Tactics (Core Contingency uses the fucking 16bit installer and was released well after Win98 was available).

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[hairyfeet]

Because server OSes typically get 10 years (which is what XP X64 really is, its just WinServer 2K3 64bit with an XP shell) so its right on time for EOL?

And I too ran XP X64 from RTM - Win 7 RTM, skipping Vista on my home system and it is WELL worth the upgrade friend, Win 7 runs rings around XP X64. For one thing win 7 has a sane memory manager, like XP XP X64 will start pimpslapping swap even with plenty of memory left while Win 7 will try to avoid swap and will use unneeded memory for caching to help speed up response. There is the increased security of low rights mode browsing and running everything under user instead of admin, breadcrumbs and jumplists make it trivial to get back to what you were doing previously and its more in depth performance tools make it a lot easier to hunt down bottlenecks.

All in all I'd say Win 7 X64 is a worthy upgrade, certainly a hell of a lot more than "LULZ I Iz a Cellphone LULZ" Windows 8.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[AmiMoJo]

Your grandparent is exactly the sort of person who should upgrade. XP has terrible security. Considering how old machines designed to run XP are now it seems like a reasonable upgrade cycle. Don't you have any hand-me-down machines you could give him?

His printer must be truly ancient not to work on 7. How does he even get cartridges for it?

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[Billly Gates]

Stuff like this makes me glad to be running a unix network. I don't share your pain, I don't share your costs, oh, and BTW I get vastly superior software for free, including source code.

Well let me know when there is a unix admin position at your company?

It is really the users who do not like change and more importantly the managers who fear change who get write ups when the employees productivity goes down for being stupid like my above example.

Unix admins and most users are not idiots and can figure things out and know how to type the name of a terminal in ssh for an ancient system. Unix systems can run older software much easier as well.

Too bad shitware CRM requires IE 6 and a ton of administrator level COM+ hacks to work and is so ingrained in the business process side that the company would cease to function without it etc.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[Holi]

Really, how many other Software companies still support anything they released 12 years ago. Does Apple? Does Sun? Does SGI? How many Linux distros still use the kernel from 2001 (2.4 I think)?

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[Holi]

And driver support for XP 64 sucks. It always has and that is the reason it was never widely used.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[PlusFiveTroll]

>no one in MY house will every buy into Windows dependency ever again ... Apple ...

HAHAHAHAH. Out of the frying pan in to the fire.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[petermgreen]

the problem is while there may be some people who would either keep the systems away from the internet and other infection sources or pay the fee for updates the vast majority of home and small buisness users wont. They will just take the risk and keep using those systems on the internet.

Which brings us back to the problem, on the one hand it's not reasonable to expect a software vendor to support something for free forever, on the other hand the realistic alternative to supporting it free forever is an internet full of machines with no security patches making life easier for botnet operators.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[PlusFiveTroll]

There is not a 1 to 1 comparison here.

If the plumber uses good materials 100% to building code and later it it is found the building code is wrong, it is likely you have to pay for the damage.

If a plumber uses pipes rated for 10 years usage and your pipes break at 11 years, you likely have to pay for the damage.

A whole shitload has changed in how we view security in the last decade, saying MS is at 100% fault is one of the dumber things I've read today.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[PlusFiveTroll]

Again, this is one of the dumber things I've heard. WHY THE FUCK would Microsoft ever sell an operating system again if the law forced them to do that? No, instead they would push to operating system rental with monthly check-ins to see if you got to continue to use your OS (have you payed your monthly/yearly payment).

It is not Microsofts fault you are using old crap.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[PlusFiveTroll]

You think you're smart, but in many places you wouldn't be able to get inspection because it wouldn't pass emissions testing. Next, you cannot buy a new car with '93 safety and emissions standards. Lastly, the manufacture has no responsibility to sell you parts at this time.

And if it has a computer it in, it is very likely there are optional computer updates for it, and possibly have been manufacture recalls.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[CohibaVancouver]

Apparently the googles does not work in Vancouver

Patronizing much, Puto? Read on some more with your 'googles.' That driver does not 'work fine.' You need to power-cycle your printer constantly with Win 7, otherwise it just prints 'unsupported personality' at the top of the page.

...and by power-cycle it I mean unplug it and plug it in again, then wait through a warm-up cycle.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[CohibaVancouver]

XP has terrible security.

Not if you keep it patched, it's NATed and you don't run stupid attachments. All apply here. He's never had an issue, AFAIK.

Don't you have any hand-me-down machines you could give him?

Not with a Win7 license, no.

How does he even get cartridges for it?

The HP 1012 runs the 12A cartridge. Available everywhere.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[upuv]

This argument keeps coming up.

"What if something doesn't work after?" Thus less than some small minority of the populous is inconvenienced.

How about What if the world is exposed to increasingly harmful malware infections that threaten financial, systems control, hospitals etc.

Guess what. This is exactly the same ridiculous argument that occurred in the 1970's when seat belts were made mandatory around most of the world. "You can't make seat belts mandatory the pensioners can't afford to install them" And yada yada and such. Seat belts are now mandatory in most regions of the world. Where ever this law went in we saw a dramatic reduction in injuries and fatalities.

Windows XP is the seat-belt less world of desktop computing.

I really do not feel any remorse for siding with a policy that will bring far more good than it will bad. Seriously it's not like there wasn't enough warning. Those of you out there caught with software that won't operate on something newer are just plain lazy, cheap and quite frankly stupid. You have been warned about this for years. YEARS.

Frankly I think MS should be working on Ending VISTA as well very soon. Also putting a kill switch out there for older browsers.

Operating systems are the consumables of the desktop computer. They have use by dates. Printer ink has a use by date. Food has a use by date. Even bloody gasoline has a use by date. This is the mind set we need to be in.

Apple has some how made it cool to buy the upgrades. ( I haven't quite figured our how they did that. ) Despite my hatred for all things Apple you have to respect that they get people to upgrade.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[LeoHat]

Ok OK. You win. I'll get off your lawn

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

I think the biggest problem is this: the millions of copies of XP in other countries, which many are already running unpatched. It's already been established that black hats and cybercriminals are just salivating at the chance to test the upcoming non-xp patches to look inside of XP for said unpatched (and now will never be patched) vulnerabilities. Once the ball drops, 99% of XP machines across the planet will be owned. It could be horrifying to the Net, when suddenly a large part of the nodes start attacking the rest. Microsoft's final implementation of this could crash the Net itself.

This could turn into a world-wide issue of cyber-security. One of my clients (National Grid US) is just starting their field refresh but I have yet to actually see one, they haven't even upgraded the VMs. There is SO much "critical software" that has to work is insane, and what I work on isn't even associated with control systems. My last call was some guy from IBM India who had a 1.8ghz thinkpad with 1gb of RAM, working on projects on three continents. On the opposite side of that coin is a major pharma who deploys new tech so fast that the apps go up and down like ocean waves in a hurricane. iOS 7 broke three apps overnight. They are always pushing new apps and new tech out, but when it breaks it doesn't cause gas plant explosions.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[smash]

They already offer a for-money patch. It's called Vista, 7 or 8.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[smash]

A basic "Linux firewall" without a competent admin to do deep packet inspection, http content inspection, etc. is not worth shit in today's threat landscape. Unless the XP box in question is headless and never used to retrieve content from the internet (in which case, firewall is superfluous)....

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[smash]

Windows 7 x64 does not support 16 bit Windows software. The 16 bit subsystem is REMOVED. Most true Windows 95 software is 32 bit.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[smash]

I have literally thrown out Windows 7 capable hardware. 12 months ago.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[kthreadd]

No it doesn't. It used to initially but the situation was vastly improved once 64-bit Windows became popular with the advent of Windows 7.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[EngnrFrmrlyKnownAsAC]

People who advocate "just replacing their PC with a newer one" as some catch-all solution are idiots and Slashdot shouldn't encourage them.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[mcgrew]

There really are only a tiny number of people for whom such a subscription would make sense.

A third of computers on the internet still run XP. Many if not most of them are running XP because their seven year old computer still runs fine, and nobody wants a phone OS running their computer. W8 is universally hated and W7 computers are scarce; I was shopping for a new notebook but they all run W8 and Chrome now..

It' not only irresponsible of MS to EOL XP now, it's fiscally stupid. Ten bucks a year for one in three computers on Earth is some serious money. Thos who have heard of Linux will surely be installing that rather than landfilling their perfectly good hardware.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[mcgrew]

Microsoft's big "problem" is "free updates". They should have a yearly subscription fee and that should increase as the OS gets older at some predictable rate.

So I should pay to fix Microsoft's poor programming? There is no excuse for MS to end support for an OS with a 30% market share. It's as if you can't get new tires for a 7 year old car (even though tires wear out and software doesn't).

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[mcgrew]

it's not reasonable to expect a software vendor to support something for free forever

True, but hardware doesn't last forever. It's not reasonable to expect your hardware to outlast your software. Computers running XP are as little as 7 years old. EOLing those PCs is neither reasonable nor responsible.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[mcgrew]

How many Linux distros still use the kernel from 2001 (2.4 I think)?

The patch for 2001's Mandrake is today's Mandriva (or kubuntu). A modern Linux distro will run on those machines, a modern MS OS won't.

Plus, new XP computers were being sold just seven years ago. You think it's fine to withhold patches for a 7 year old machine? Remember, the patches are for fixing MS's mistakes.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[kermidge]

Nifty solution; thanks for the tip. Alone or with the case, it's a sweet deal.

This approach seems as though it could help out a bunch of people who regard themselves as stuck. Unless they're using some very intensive graphics stuff, I'm gonna guess that the emulated display might could work just fine for them. XP in a vm wouldn't need to ever connect to the Internet. Files could be handled via a shared folder and if needed could be scanned by local or online AV. Use of image copy and snapshot would let one always have a clean sys if anything went wonky anyway.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[upuv]

If you express the reason in this forum you might actually get some assistance between the flames to solve your issues.

There really is no good reason what so every not to upgrade.

You actually admit you stopped updating an OS so it stays in the same state. The only way this is going to happen is not to network it. Even then Entropy in the OS will eat away at it's stability. I really can't think of any good reason why not to upgrade. The only reason that holds any sort of water is cost. But guess what you you saved just $10 a month for the last 3 years you could buy a whole new computer with Win7 or 8 on it. If you are a pensioner you can get even more discounts. Which is still a few years after MS announced it's killing off XP.

Your computers are just breeding ground for virus's. Please unplug them from the net.

The cost of supporting windows XP is actually climbing. As the architecture ages it gets harder and harder to duct tape over the issues without a whole sale re-architecture or evolution. Which by the way is exactly what VISTA, Win7 and Win 8 are. All of which have better architectural foundations making support cheaper.

WinXP can be thought of as 3 generations older. It's done it's service. The vast majority of the net would be safer and benefit greatly if XP was removed from the net. There would be a considerable drop in Virus/Malware related traffic.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[flappinbooger]

Most people who are on XP are either on it because they are stubborn sticks-in-the-mud who like XP and think anything newer than XP is crap, or they are on it because their computer still works and they don't know what OS they have let alone why it's an issue.

You folks on here say "just upgrade to linux!" but there are people out there who don't know what an operating system IS, they don't know the difference between an operating system and a web browser. All they know is to click on the E icon to play hearts on yahoo and click on the envelope icon to see pictures of little Timmy.

I don't know how MS would successfully communicate the concept of subscribing to an extended XP support contract to these people. They won't understand.

Microsoft are really in a bind on this and it could really be a disaster. I have been moving people to 7 as much as possible.

Thankfully many PCs from the XP era have died due to the cheap capacitor issue.

The IT manager here is one of the sticks in the mud and he purposefully has many computers here still on XP and has been putting XP on new machines. Even in the last 6 months. Intentionally. He will buy new PC hardware that can still run with XP and put XP on it.

I know of IT professionals who were putting copies of 98 on machines well into the tenure of XP because "it's just better" and they thought they were smart and clever for doing so.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[P-niiice]

One example of XP machines that generally don't get updates is ATM's.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[V for Vendetta]

[...] a coincidence that this happened just before XP is retired.

Yes and No.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[V for Vendetta]

[...] plus inhouse VB stuff that keeps some stuff on old MS Windows systems here

All of our VB(6) stuff runs without problems on Win7 without me having done anything special to make it run there.

I'd go so far to say it's even better now, because Win7 (and Vista before) have the VB runtime included, so installation has basically become a copy & paste of the EXE.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[dbIII]

Well you are lucky then. Older stuff runs into DLL hell since there are so many versions of the vb libraries and executable with the idiocy of the same name and not version numbers as in some things that predated MSDOS let alone VB.
I've got Win2k and even 98 systems to run some VB stuff put together by scientists that moved on to other places over the decades. That's why the current batch of coders is using python. If it won't run in a decade at least somebody can read it instead of some obfiscated VB binary blob.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[TheOneFreeman]

Actually that's one of the reasons why I would not recommend anyone with a PC produced in the past 5 years to even consider XP as a main OS outside of a virtual machine, there just aren't any drivers for it! I tried installing it on a fairly recently purchased desktop and the lack of SATA drivers and other installation issues ended up messing up my recovery partition. XP is just popular for compatibility with old hardware and software as far as I can see, I think that for the vast majority of consumer users, 7 is a much better choice as it has matured and is not only a better user experience but has definite security, usability and productivity features built in (and funnily enough part of that comes from a shared kernel with Vista and the software compatibility established over 2006-2009).

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[MooseMiester]

You can buy a whole new Computer WITH Windows 7 installed for $399.

Windows 7, $300? Not even the Ultimate version costs that much...

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[thevirtualcat]

Actually, XP x64 just used WS2K3 x64 drivers. So hardware you would find in and connected to servers and high-end workstations (network cards, RAID cards, office and enterprise grade printers and scanners, workstation video cards) tended to work just fine while consumer gear (cheap printers, scanners and multifunction devices, gaming video cards) tended to be quite hit-and-miss.

The situation improved when Microsoft started forcing hardware manufacturers to support 64-bit in order to get the "Made for Vista" branding, but only for devices where the driver interface didn't change significantly. I could install Vista x64 drivers for my scanner on XP x64 by modifying the INF file and forcing it to install. That wouldn't work so well for a video card.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[CohibaVancouver]

Windows 7, $300? Not even the Ultimate version costs that much...

As I said above: Win 7 + new laser printer that supports win 7 + sales taxes = ~$300

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[hardwarefreak]

Microsoft should extend support for XP...but only on a cash-for-patch basis. Sell patches at $5 a pop for XP user's, or a one Year Security Update Subscription for $20.

It's a win-win situation....

Nobody would pay $5 per patch. That would be hundreds per year and Microsoft would abuse it with extraneous patches that don't address vulnerabilities. Users would have no way to verify if they needed a given patch, so they'd pay through the nose.

I think the $20/year would be reasonable, but if they did it I'd bet they'd ask for more, probably $35-50/yr, to incentivize folks to upgrade. It would be a cash cow for Microsoft given the number of XP machines still kick'n. If MS did this, and only 20M of the tens of millions of XP users signed up, that's an extra $400M in revenue per year. Maybe $400M/year means nothing to the execs at Microsoft which did $75B in revenue last year. The net profit on that $400M would likely be well over $350M. Regardless of his company's size or revenue stream, any other CFO on the planet would sacrifice his offspring for an extra $400M/$350M/year in revenu/profits. And he'd face a firing squad if/when his investors found out he took a pass on it.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[MooseMiester]

Oh, sorry! I failed to catch the printer part.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[yuhong]

FYI, I actually suggested it to kurtsh of MS using twitter and this is the response:
https://twitter.com/kurtsh/status/365353602195275777

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[niftymitch]

Obvious yes...
Given the generations of hardware many would do well
to load Ubuntu or another Linux distro...

selling patches... heck patches would quickly show up
on bit torrent sites... with no verification....

Cut it down to monthly or bi monthly and make a
big RED download screen... You can get them
but you must work equally hard as a Publisher Clearing
house sweepstakes entry to get there from here.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[akozakie]

Microsoft's big "problem" is "free updates". They should have a yearly subscription fee and that should increase as the OS gets older at some predictable rate. That's how to properly price ration an old OS's updates. They simply can't be expected to support XP forever, for free.

Except this is actually the one good thing that MS does. You buy their software - you get updates for free for quite a long time (not forever though).

Why is it so nice? Because the only updates that really matter here are security updates. And they are not worth even $5 per year for Joe Sixpack. No amount of educational actions are going to fix that, as people just tend to ignore threats or assume they won't hit them. The fact that they are free and automatic are probably the only reason why not every home computer is part of a botnet. This is actually a valuable service for the society as a whole.

Make it optional and non-free, far more than 50% of users will not buy it. Then deal with the massive botnets in a world where most of the machines are never updated.

Now excuse me while I go take a bath. /me actually defending MS... Saying that something they do is right... The horror... The HORROR...

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[bill_mcgonigle]

No amount of educational actions are going to fix that, as people just tend to ignore threats or assume they won't hit them.

Liability sure would. :resists urge to make car analogy:

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[bill_mcgonigle]

the other hand the realistic alternative to supporting it free forever is an internet full of machines with no security patches

Not if people are liable for the damage their unsecured computers cost. This is the basic liability/insurance solution for the same general problem that exists for every risk in meatspace.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[bill_mcgonigle]

So I should pay to fix Microsoft's poor programming?

Yes, all programming that you can afford is poor.

OK, I'll go there: just like you pay to fix Toyota's poor engineering. For only $240K you could buy a car that lasted much longer.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[Khyber]

Camfrog has been around over a decade and is still going strong.

Full support.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[Khyber]

" I tried installing it on a fairly recently purchased desktop and the lack of SATA drivers and other installation issues ended up messing up my recovery partition."

Anyone with a brain knows XP doesn't have native SATA support (let alone native SSD support) and you need drivers installed first (or in the case of an SSD, you need EHCI/XHCI up and running first, then the textmode SATA/RAID driver.)

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[akozakie]

Yeah, sure. Imagine the outcry. That would be seen as just another tax.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[rhalstead]

There are many corporation with thousands of computer each. The medical industry and in particular hospitals and clinics with custom software based on. or integrated into XP and many of these are little more than a year old. Industry tends to be a bit pragmatic. If what they have, does what they want, they aren't going to change. They hjave a lot of protection between them and the outside world. I was a project manager at a large, multinational corporation. We had thousands of PCs. We only changed software when we changed hardware. Both were multi-million dollar projects. Add to that, training many thousands of employees (most of whom knew little about computers) and we can add another million or two. Then there is the economy. Why on earth woul anyone expect companies to spend millions to upgrade when it adds nothing to the bottom line in an economy where every cent counts? As for that, If what you have, does what you want, why change. As a consultant, that is my first question. Or in the old parlayance, If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I would expect there will be millions of PCs staying on XP for years and MS's reputation still rests on that old, outdated OS. If it causes a massive problem, they will be the ones to take the blame with the fallout costing them far more than continued support of the old system.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[qubezz]

Frickin brilliant!

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[upuv]

I've been in IT for 25 years. I'm a consultant that is often retained by some of the largest organisations around the planet. I have degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. My speciality is performance Engineering of distributed systems. And I don't live with my parents.

I can confidentially say I do know what I am talking about in this regard. :)

Here is the current estimate of installed and running XP systems. In excess of 500,000,000. You have stated that you believe there are hundreds of thousands of systems that as you say can not be upgraded. Lets out that at an even 500,000 systems. That is 0.1% of the install base pessimistically can't be upgraded. Now world wide the estimated number of PC operating is, 1,630,000,000. So that 500,000 is now actually 0.03% of the world wide PC install base can not be upgraded.

This is considered an edge case in my profession. And extreme edge case. One of the principles in making large distributed systems ( The internet being the biggest ) faster, more efficient, more robust, less error prone is to remove far flung edge cases. As the cost of maintaining edge cases is ridiculously huge. It's because you are not just maintaining the edge case in isolation. You are also maintaining all of the potential interaction points associated with the edge case. The cost being almost invisible on a per node basis becomes and astoundingly large cost when you take into account the whole system. These costs are worn by everyone involved, not just Microsoft. Even those with up to date systems still pay extra to fund the maintenance of ageing architectures.

And you are correct, newer does not mean better all the time. However if you restrict your vision to just the function of the device you care about. It is easy to say newer is not necessarily better. The problem is you took a far too narrow look at the problem space. You need to accept the fact that the function you care about in the device is not the only function it is capable of doing. In the Case of windows XP the number of "other" potential functions is very large. If you include in the list of functions, malware, virus's & trogans that are designed not only to disrupt that system but to spread and further disrupt others you realise that if you replace the device with all it possible functions with a more robust device you will see that the sum total of the negative functions drops. Which in turn reduces overall impact on adjacent systems. So now we clearly see that the impact of the 0.03% of systems is vastly greater than it's diminutive count. In some cases 0.03% of cases it is possible that the cared about function when upgraded is either dimensioned or non-functional. But the net impact is still positive.

I have done analysis after analysis and I have very very rarely found a system that can not be migrated. The cost is no that much usually. Dramatically less that what is thought to be the cost. It's just that people are just too afraid to try. For what every reason. Almost always they are afraid of failure.

You know what would be sensible. How about placing all the code of your un-upgradable application in the public domain as well as the OS. I'm very much in favour of that. Linux being a huge success in this regard.

What you have to start really worrying about is the physical age of the system you so dearly depend on. If it's pushing 5 years plus I would start to worry. If it's 10 years I would start to panic. Once system components start to burn out you are really faced with a stop the presses kind of challenge. Because that's exactly what's going to happen, business stops. In most of these cases backups and proper documentation of the critical system are also missing. Now you are really screwed.

If you are in a business that is purchasing customer software or highly specialised software for a purpose you have to be including in the contract that the source of the software is to be handed over in the case w

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[hairyfeet]

Well I can tell you that I have built several systems using the E350, both as media tanks and as office boxes and they frankly run rings around the P4, especially the late 478 and early 775 units that most offices have and honestly they use less power with the whole board at 100% load than the P4 by itself does. I liked the chip enough I got rid of my full size laptop 3 years ago for a EEE netbook running an E350 and its great, I can just plug an HDMI cable in and turn it into a portable HTPC in seconds and even after 3 years I still get over 4 hours on the battery, it just sips power.

That said this chip is NOT for graphics processing, playing 3D shooters and the like, its just not got the horse for that. A much better choice if you want to go with the heavier programs would be a socket FM2 setup but those will also cost you more than double what the Bobcat does, both in price and power usage. But if you simply need to replace aging XP units with something that 1.- Has support for Win 7/8 OOTB, 2.- is VERY affordable, 3.- Does all the jobs your average office box does and does them well, and 4.- Saves electricity? You really can't go wrong with the Bobcats, they are a sweet deal few know about. And as far as XP VMs go it has native hardware virtualization as well as XP drivers for all the hardware so its really trivial to use either XP mode or just turn their old XP installs into VMs and run them on the Bobcat.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[Decker-Mage]

Thank you!

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[Decker-Mage]

That needs a real answer. For close on a decade, the first thing to go on any Windows system here was the desktop. I can tolerate Windows 8 and 8.1 enough to use it. And on the Server side if they had a bunch of apps that displayed useful information, it'd be usable over there but that's a lack of foresight and also the fact most people don't even look at a server most of the time. [I use the high-end servers for my workstations as the memory management just works.] But I'm an old Amiga heretic, so ....

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[mcgrew]

I'd hardly say any auto manufacturer has bad engineering (although I question their design). My car is older than XP but it runs fine. Can't say that about the XP tower I'll have to upgrade to Linux. A computer with an out of date OS is like a car with a blown engine. Microsoft should support the OS until the hardware it powers fails. There is no excuse for hardware to outlive software.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[Rich0]

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

Probably no more than it would cost Ubuntu to support 4.10, which was released a full 3 years after XP, and de-supported 7.5 years ago.

Look, I love Linux as much as the next guy, but I don't think absolutely complaining about the length of MS's desktop OS support has a leg to stand on. MS supports their desktop OSes from 10 years after the next version is available - they don't even measure from date of first introduction.

What other OS releases from 1999 still get full security backports? I can't think of one. XP is STILL supported today (goes back to 2001), OSX only goes back to 2007, RHEL goes back to 2007 (though they promise that the current release will get 13 years, which is comparable to Windows), and Ubuntu promises 5 years now, but they don't currently support any desktop OS released more than 1.5 years ago (previous LTS releases did not get as much support).

Sure, it would be nice if XP were supported until 2100, but you can't really fault them for drawing a line SOMEWHERE.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[bill_mcgonigle]

My car is older than XP but it runs fine

There are exceptions, but 90% of vehicles on the road are less than ten years old. XP is 12 years old. Additionally, the median new car is $30K, the median price paid for XP is $30.

And new car warranties never last longer than 10 years. Economics matters.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[bill_mcgonigle]

Yeah, sure. Imagine the outcry. That would be seen as just another tax.

Why is it not a tax in every other facet of life?

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[kermidge]

That's good to know about the XP vm hardware and drivers - makes it an even more compelling solution.

I can dig it about the graphics - the laptop I'm using is an late '09 Toshiba Satellite with a Turion II 520m. It's not bad for what it is (and onboard Radeon 4250, I think). It's running Ubuntu 12.04.3 (drat, 'cuz that broke my Crossover install of Steam/Civ V, with the shift in labeling 386 libraries) but when I still had Win7 64-bit on it it did manage to run Civ with DX11, albeit not all that quickly. But I got it on sale for more general use anyway, not expecting to run anything too demanding. Works fine for an older machine.

If I can get out from under some of my medical-related costs this coming year so's to be able to get components, I'm gonna have to dig into the Bobcat; I keep running across folks using old machines, and not all of them because they can't afford to upgrade a bit. But I tell you now, after an initial setup and security guide*, if they're going to stay with XP I will _not_ do Windows washing for them. I had enough of that when I helped out at my buddy's store a few years ago. (In the rush to profit, the computer industry did 'most everyone a great disservice by marketing PCs in the manner of appliances, IMHFO, even if it did give the AV biz a huge boost, spawn the help-desk end of things, and created some jobs for those with the stomach and patience to clean a dirty system. After a while, one could well understand the "reformat and re-install" answer to most any problem - it was often the simplest and least time-consuming solution.)

*Although, on reflection, if I found an easy way of setting XP up as a vm on either Win7 or a basic Linux host and then giving folks a "reset" button on their desktop to wipe the vm and re-start from a clean snapshot, that'd mean mostly no maintenance - just a short list of tasks for the user to do for themselves on a par with checking the oil level and tire pressure (if you're asked to update, then click yes kind of thing for the host OS.)

One thing I do miss about helping at the store - I like fixing stuff, and I really like being able to help folks out - when they come in to pick up their restored system and you watch their eyes light up 'cuz it works, and it's faster, and I could give 'em a price they could afford... kinda makes one's day.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[mcgrew]

90% of vehicles on the road are less than ten years old

Between 48% and 83% of cars manufactured before 2003 are still on the road.

Additionally, the median new car is $30K, the median price paid for XP is $30.

Few buy auto engines and few buy operating systems. You buy a car with the engine already installed, a computer with its OS already installed.

And new car warranties never last longer than 10 years.

Seven year old computers had XP installed. My car is long out of warrantee, but if a dangerous factory defect is revealed they will recall and repair the car at no cost to me. Poor security in an OS is a factory defect and Microsoft should do the responsible thing, the same responsibility as car manufacturers have shown for a century.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[jonadab]

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

It's not straightforward to convert the cost into dollars. There's an opportunity cost, because the people who are working on the XP codebase could be doing other things. If they're at all good at what they do, Microsoft would much prefer to have them working on other things (say, on bug fixes for Eight).

Part of the problem with maintaining an old code branch is that at some point you have to decide whether you actually want to maintain it or not. At some point the answer is always no, the newer versions are better, we no longer want to mess with doing X on the old version. Over time, the value of X escalates. There's an inherent progression, because as you do less work on the old code branch, it becomes not only more obsolete but also less familiar and less well maintained. When you stop doing new feature work on the branch because you're getting ready for release and want to sort out the bugs, you have entered the "Golden Age" for that branch of the code and started an inevitable progression. Without feature work, there is no motivation for infrastructure work or refactoring. With nobody doing feature or infrastructure work or refactoring on the codebase, the level of familiarity with it fades. Bugs take longer to track down and fix. Worse, the consequences of any changes that you make are not immediately obvious to anyone (because, remember, nobody is intimately familiar with this branch of the code any more), and furthermore users have come to expect a certain level of stability, and so the level of testing needed for each change increases. At some point bugs that aren't security relevant and don't cause loss of data no longer seem worth fixing. So you don't bother any more. Now your developers spend even less time working with -- and are even less familiar with -- the code. You go from "bug fixes only" to "important bug fixes only" to "critical and security-relevant bug fixes only" to "security fixes only" and eventually "critical security fixes only", and sooner or later you throw in the towel entirely.

This is not specific to Microsoft. Ask the guys at Debian why they no longer provide security updates for sarge (which is newer than XP by several years; in fact, I think it's newer than SP2). They no longer provide security updates for etch or lenny either. Updates are available for stable (currently, that's wheezy) and oldstable (currently squeeze). The precise economics of how security updates are provided and what resources are expended in providing them are of course very different for Debian as compared to Microsoft. But certain things are the same, and one of those things is, producing security updates for old no-longer-actively-maintained branches is proportionally more resource intensive than producing security updates for current and still-actively-maintained branches. Given the tendency of old branches to accumulate, at some point you have to have a cut-off date.

I say this as a network administrator who still has a number of Windows XP systems on the network at work, and not enough budget to replace them all in 2014. My current plan is to replace as many as possible of the remaining "front-line" Windows XP systems (i.e., the ones that are connected to the internet and directly used by ordinary users on a day-to-day basis). Non-internet-connected Windows XP systems will not be replaced in 2014, nor will ones used mainly by IT personnel, and a couple others might get converted to Debian wheezy (which runs better on old hardware than Seven -- we are not deploying Vista or Eight at this time). That'll only buy them an extra year or two, but it might allow our replacement hardware budget to stretch just far enough. Not every system is eligible to be considered for conversion to Debian, for various reasons, but it's a possibility for some of them.

Nonetheless, I don't begrudge Microsoft the privilege of discontinuing support for XP. You know when you deploy a new system that eventually it's going to be end-of-lined. If anything we artificially shortened this timeframe for ourselves by choosing NOT to deploy any Windows XP systems until after SP2 came out. If I had to do over again, I wouldn't change that.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[vandamme]

It would be easier, safer, and cheaper to install Zorin or Mint. The interface is familiar, no viruses to worry about, and all his peripherals will work. And if you're his tech support, less work for you.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[hairyfeet]

Actually as long as they are not on windows 8/8.1? Old Hairy can show you how to make "Windows Washing" as you call it trivial. It'll only take you a few minutes to clean and about an hour to do initial setup. Its so easy that for those whom I've set up this way I charge a flat $40 for any windows washing they need on the unit, its so quick and easy...ready?

1.- Install Comodo Internet Security and be sure to say YES when it comes to having it install Comodo Dragon, you'll see why in a minute. Set Comodo IS to "paranoid mode". 2.- Install Comodo Time Machine and lock the first snapshot. also in the options set it to make a snapshot daily and have it set to dump snapshots older than 30 days. 3.- Toss any links to IE, making sure its nowhere to be seen. For extra performance turn off system restore.

Now what this setup has done is make an encrypted backup with a daily snapshot (in case something manages to get through) while every process and the browser is run by default in a sandbox and treated as suspect. Using this system I've had customers that USED to get every bug, the FBI bug, the Security Tool variants, all the nasties, now? I maybe hear from them one every 6 months (when they refuse to listen to the AV and try to install something dodgy) and it takes less than 20 minutes to restore them back to health. watch how easy it is, I have even walked some over the phone when i didn't have time..1.- reboot system, 2.-When you see the big clock on the screen? Hit the home key, 3.- Pick a day before they screwed up...its THAT easy.

As for the E350? I consider it one of the great little secrets, its like the raspberry pi of X86, you can do so many different things. You can use something like the OpenELEC Fusion Build to make it into an instant HTPC/Roku/Media tank, slap a PCI to IDE? You can pop them into just about any old office box for an instant upgrade. Need a cheap file server? Media Server? Netbox? Not a problem. Hell I even play some light gaming like Torchlight II, GTA Vice City, The Portal games, there are even YouTube vids of guys playing Crysis on E350s with the bling lowered and getting playable framerates.

If you do get one? The one bit of advice i can NOT stress enough is get the fastest RAM the board will take because with an APU the RAM speed DOES matter, you can get as much as 30% more oomph out of one by pairing it with decently fast RAM. I swapped out the 2Gb of 1066 mine came with for 8Gb of 1333 and it was like upgrading the whole system, everything that was skippy went smooth and the things that were choking became usable. Also be DAMN SURE to use the latest drivers, especially in Windows and take the optional codec installs. AMD has optimized codecs that will move a lot of the heavy lifting to the GPU and with the E series it does make a difference.

Anyway I hope your medical situation works itself out and any questions feel free to shoot me an email, but I would have no problem recommending a Bobcat to a member of my family as they really are great little chips.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[nabsltd]

For one thing win 7 has a sane memory manager, like XP XP X64 will start pimpslapping swap even with plenty of memory left while Win 7 will try to avoid swap and will use unneeded memory for caching to help speed up response.

I've never seen this, but then with 12GB of RAM, I don't often get close to using that much for apps (cache, etc., of course). Maybe with less memory or a much larger workload than I have (which includes VMware Workstation running a couple of local VMs and displaying 4-5 remote VM consoles, audio and video editing and encodling, and non-bleeding edge games).

There is the increased security of low rights mode browsing and running everything under user instead of admin

If you don't use IE (which I haven't for years), and you constantly have to run full admin tasks, you don't get any advantage from either of these.

, breadcrumbs and jumplists make it trivial to get back to what you were doing previously,

Breadcrumbs are only a fraction of a second faster than just clicking "back" a few times or editing the path manually. Also, you lose the "up" button, which is the navigation I use more than "back to the last place". Jumplists would be great if you could edit and create your own without arcane knowledge of the filesystem. There are so many apps where the jumplist items are insanely stupid, like VMware Workstation, with the only item being "Create a new virtual machine". Outlook (a Microsoft app) doesn't have any jumplist, where things like "new eMail" would be insanely useful.

I have Win7 at work, and nothing is pinned to the taskbar, because I rarely have apps that need only one instance (which is the default if you just click the pinned app). Pinning to the start menu, the old "quick launch", and "Classic Start Menu" with custom shortcuts to give me back a nested, organized structure do what I need. I do like the "search" on the new start menu, though. And, don't get me started on the uselessness of "Libraries". I want to know where all my files are stored...I don't want the GUI shell to hide that info from me.

The actual OS of Windows 7 really doesn't offer a lot more than XP, although it does have some nice things that keep you from having to download something to do the job, like real-time TRIM support for SSDs (in XP, a scheduled job using the manufacturer's "toolbox" does good enough for real-world use), built-in UDF 2.5 support, built-in CD burning (although ImgBurn is still much better), etc. Notice that most of what both you and I list are user-space items that can be added to XP.

As for negatives, some of the extra security (like TrustedInstaller) makes for a pain in the butt if you want to customize some things (like standard MMC layouts). And, although it is easy to move an individual user's profile directory from C:\Users, moving all user data that can get large (C:\Users, C:\ProgramData) to another disk isn't nearly as easy as in XP. The tools to do the move in Win7 assume you are deploying many installs, so the task is much harder if you are just doing one machine.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[Pentium100]

Not graphical admin interface (though it is useful, for example, I usually prefer the Web UI of D-Link switches rather than CLI - unless I want to paste a bunch of commands - then CLI wins), but graphical software.

Like uTorrent for example. Or some other Windows app.

Yes, it is possible to run X over network, though currently I do not know how to switch an app between local and network displays without restarting it (if I start it on the local console then it's there, if I ssh into the machine and start the app from ssh it's displayed over the network, though I do not now how to make the app that was started locally, be displayed over network or just display the entire desktop over network - essentially what VNC does but faster). Oh and it has to be compatible with my Windows main PC.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[hobarrera]

The cost for supporting a single machine that uses XP is equal to the cost of an unsold Windows 8 license.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[hobarrera]

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

Who wrote the initial drivers? Microsoft or third parties? If third parties, are they still around? If so, why aren't they supporting Win7?

Because that's not profitable. If company X writes windows 7 for old hardware, they can't sell you new hardware as easily.
Mind you, I don't approve of this, I'm merely explaining their rationale.

Does Linux support that hardware?

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

Someone wrote the driver for linux, most likely (a) for free, because he needed it, or (b) payed by the company. However, since the linux kernel is far more stable (in terms of API) than windows, the driver just kept on working until today. I've got a webcam that supported up to windows 98. Yes, 98. It works fine on Linux.

Fine, just don't connect your machine to the Internet and put others' at risk.

Microsoft's big "problem" is "free updates". They should have a yearly subscription fee and that should increase as the OS gets older at some predictable rate. That's how to properly price ration an old OS's updates. They simply can't be expected to support XP forever, for free.

On the other hand, they thrive on piracy, so I understand why they have this arrangement.

Morality aside, and thinking just about money: yes, a yearly subscription is what's best for them. I think that's their goal as of Windows 8.1. Buy yearly payments and upgrades would not haved worked 10-15 years ago.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[hobarrera]

There's Windows XP 64bit edition. That's what my mother actually uses, and it supports all the amd64 architecture features.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[Gallomimia]

Yes the solution *IS* obvious. It's called linux.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[FlyHelicopters]

Does your 7 year old car come with free maintenance?

That's just the thing, you want MS to support Windows XP forever, for free.

Or am I mistaken and you're willing to pay $20 per machine, per year, to have MS continue to support it?

If the latter, then never mind my post.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[FlyHelicopters]

My car is long out of warrantee, but if a dangerous factory defect is revealed they will recall and repair the car at no cost to me.

For how long? What period of time is Toyota or GM expected to do this?

Clearly a 1955 Chevy is outside of the recall/support period of GM, if such a defect were to be found now, I highly doubt GM would be required to fix it.

So how about a 1975 Chevy? 1985? 1995?

10 years is probably a reasonable support period for most cars.

Something else to consider... Windows works fine when you don't actually install anything on it. Expecting Toyota to support every aftermarket mod is absurd. Yet we seem to expect Microsoft to fix and support everything broken by third party driver companies, third party software companies, third party hardware companies, etc.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[FlyHelicopters]

Yes, and that $30K new car isn't under warranty after 7 or 10 or 12 years, so while Toyota or GM will "support" it in terms of parts, they aren't free.

Another point to consider is that even the car companies stop making parts at some point for older models, and not always after 15+ years. Some low demand models lose support after 10 years.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[FlyHelicopters]

Because that's not profitable. If company X writes windows 7 for old hardware, they can't sell you new hardware as easily.

True, but revenue booked for selling hardware 7 years ago doesn't matter to a company. Revenue booked this year is really what counts.

Mind you, I don't approve of this, I'm merely explaining their rationale.

I understand your lack of approval, but if the company doesn't sell new hardware today, then they won't be in business to write drivers for old hardware anyway.

Look at the sorry state of Creative Labs, once a powerhouse in the business. I still remember when I installed my first SoundBlaster into my 386DX-25... wow, what a difference it made...

Mind you, this was in 1991 when a lot of games had crappy support for it, Adlib was still the standard, but when games used it (looking at you Wing Commander 2), it was amazing.

But those days are over, and have been over for a long time. Once decent sound on the motherboard came out and Windows 95/98 and finally XP did decent enough support for it, Creative Labs was doomed.

Yea, they are still kicking around, but you don't hear much about them anymore.

This entire business has built in obsolesce, the whole industry is designed to have everything replaced every 3-6 years.

We could debate if this is a good thing or not, but it is what it is and it isn't going to change until the pace of technology slows down and companies figure out how to get ongoing revenue from existing products.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[FlyHelicopters]

Why are you running physical 2k and 98 machines instead of VMs?

This is the whole point of VMs, to not have to keep the old hardware around, it can all be emulated in software, and you can run the older OS and firewall it in the VM from the Internet while allowing the actual OS under it to do what it needs to do.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[FlyHelicopters]

Yes, and when you have to do all that, isn't it worth asking why you don't just install Windows 7 from a USB stick and be done with it?

Need XP? That is what XP mode is for. Need a "real" XP that doesn't know it is on a VM? Then run a full VM.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[FlyHelicopters]

Apple hardly supports anything over 3 years old, they support almost nothing over 4 years old.

Look at the new Mavericks they just released, it supports a few machines from 2009 (4 years ago), but not everything, and nothing before that.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[FlyHelicopters]

We've run across cases where a software vendor will say, "don't install anything newer than service pack 2." We handle it by completely isolating these machines from the Internet and disallowing the use of external, user-supplied storage (which most smart admins do anyway, on general principle).

How is this Microsoft's fault and why does everyone keep blaming them?

The fault is with your software supplier that doesn't even support SP3 on XP. Blame them, not MS. Even if MS kept supporting Windows XP, they aren't going to support Service Pack 2, they have required SP3 to be installed for some time now.

So really you're shooting arrows in the wrong direction.

Follow up question: Why can't you run Windows XP in a VM on a new machine? You can firewall the VM from the Internet, run XP SP2 if you want, but have modern and supported hardware.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[FlyHelicopters]

You think it's fine to withhold patches for a 7 year old machine?

How many patches is Apple putting out for their 7 year old machines?

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[hobarrera]

They wouldn't go out of business. They'd just shrink to their natural size.
Supose 100millon webcams get sold per year due to non-funciononness on new OSs. If they wrote drivers for new OSs as they come out, they'd probably sell way way less (10M?). But that's the size a that company should have, artificially inflating it with programed obsolecense is a waste of resources for humanity as a whole.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[FlyHelicopters]

But that's the size a that company should have, artificially inflating it with programed obsolecense is a waste of resources for humanity as a whole.

I don't disagree with you in theory, the truth is reality has a funny way of shooting a big hole in that plan.

For example, nothing stops you from creating a web cam company and doing exactly what you describe, except that the company that isn't doing it and selling 100 million web cams can do it for less due to volume, they can sell for less and the average consumer just doesn't think about this as an issue.

Result: you're run out of business.

Is that good for humanity? Ehh, does it really matter? It isn't going to change as long as human beings are... well, human beings. :)

Unless you think we need a law for that... however I'll refer you to the old quote, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[mcgrew]

I have no idea, but if they're not patching them they're as irresponsible as Microsoft.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[mcgrew]

For how long? What period of time is Toyota or GM expected to do this?

The newer the model, the more expensive the recall. If a safety defect were found in a '57 Chevy it would be cheaper to recall the cars than to pay damages in a lawsuit after someone was badly injured. That's why Ford let people burn, the bean counters figured that the lawsuits would be cheaper than the $10 per Pinto retrofit.

I'm hoping the coming massive botnet targets and takes down a powerful organization's website, and that organization sues the hell out of Microsoft. If that happens, software houses will act more responsibly.

Windows works fine when you don't actually install anything on it.

So, when XP support ends all users have to do is reinstall XP and they can safely surf the web with IE6 and not become part of a botnet?

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[mcgrew]

Does your 7 year old car come with free maintenance?

Some do, no computer does. But if a dangerous defect was found in my 12 year old car they'll repair it for free. Not if, but when, a dangerous vulnerability is found in 1/3 of the computers on the internet is found, that too should be fixed.

If Windows cost $20 for activation and $20 per year to license and MS kept supporting it for those who renewed their licenses, that would be acting responsibly and would be worth it to anyone who actually needed Windows. It would also raise Linux's "market" share quite a bit.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[TheOneFreeman]

The very fact that I mentioned the SATA drivers already answers the less savory part of your comment, meaning I know and tried injecting them and even then no dice. That's something "Anyone with a brain" can deduce from the sentence.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[TheOneFreeman]

Which is exactly what I ended up doing, XP is not worth the bother anymore, it is completely outclassed by modern operating systems as far as the consumer space is concerned. Any enterprise solution relying on it really needs an upgrade, it's become clunky and is limiting progress to continue supporting XP, even MS breaks XP compatibility for XP in VS2013.

Re:The Solution is Obvious

[zwarte piet]

Yeah in winter, my P4 keeps my office nice 'n cozy.

So upgrade already

[Anonymous Coward]

You can run XP in a virtual machine if you have software you must absolutely run that cannot run under Windows 7 or 8.

If your business cannot support the cost of an upgrade, you really aren't doing it right and probably aren't making much money anyway.

Windows 7 has been out for over FOUR freaking years. Quite the whiny bitching already.

Re:So upgrade already

[murdocj]

You can run XP in a virtual machine if you have software you must absolutely run that cannot run under Windows 7 or 8.

If your business cannot support the cost of an upgrade, you really aren't doing it right and probably aren't making much money anyway.

Windows 7 has been out for over FOUR freaking years. Quite the whiny bitching already.

This. People are complaining about a version of the O/S that came out 11 years ago.

Re:So upgrade already

[Anonymous Coward]

Support runs out for Windows XP, whether it's on actual hardware or in a virtual machine. A disconnected system doesn't need to upgrade to a more modern OS and then run XP in a virtual machine. A connected system can't run XP in a virtual machine or it's at risk just the same. Virtualization thus offers no solution.

Re:So upgrade already

[Anonymous Coward]

We still run XP on a few remaining machines and we don't really have the money do upgrade the. We aren't really making that much money, because that's not really the aim of the company - we essentially provide serviced offices* for self employed people (including the two directors). In essence, the company's aim it to provide employment for a whole bunch of people. Sure making a bit of money is nice, but at the moment, as long as we break even and the brokers make money, we're happy.

* Not just serviced offices - completely bespoke systems to do their job - we're the only company in the UK to do what we do.

Re:So upgrade already

[linebackn]

You can run XP in a virtual machine if you have software you must absolutely run that cannot run under Windows 7 or 8.

Not if the software you need to run is a device driver for special hardware.

And you still have the issue that the VM may need to talk to the outside world and therefore be as "vulnerable" as real hardware.

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:So upgrade already

[gigaherz]

Because it takes many man-hours to backport the fixes, build the code, test the build, Q.A. the build, sign the build, and then push it through the distribution system. They have been doing it for over 10 years, and they simply don't want to continue spending resources in supporting it that could be used to build better, newer software.

Re:So upgrade already

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 7 is surely a no go for my Lenovo T61 - skipping sound issues, etc.
Although a bit old, form 2007, it's still a rather capable PC but... for the above mentioned reason it can't be my only computer and I need a Windows XP machine to run some old Siemens software. Depends on ones use case... I would say.

Regards!
AC

Re: So upgrade already

[Anonymous Coward]

You remove the gateway ip address in the TCP/IP settings. A single entry. Duh.

Re:So upgrade already

[drinkypoo]

Not if the software you need to run is a device driver for special hardware.

If you've made yourself dependent on hardware only supported by one OS, an OS which sucks, then you've set yourself up for failure. All that's left is for the rest of us to grab some popcorn and watch the fallout.

It's a real objection, but it's a situation you've created yourself, or that the business entity you work for has created.

Re:So upgrade already

[realityimpaired]

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???)'

You're wrong. Every single one you listed has the ability to set up a LAN between VM's without bridging that LAN to the Internet. They're configured out of the box to allow Internet access through NAT, because that's what most people using a VM want with it, but it's trivial to set up a non-bridged LAN between VM's. You can even allow the host to connect to that LAN so it can access shared services while still preventing the VMs themselves from accessing the 'Net.

If you want a VM to access your external LAN without accessing the Internet itself? That's a different story, but that's a firewall configuration thing, not a VM thing. And if you *really* can't figure out how to configure your firewall for that, just install a 2nd NIC in the host system, and bridge the VM to that. Once you've done that, you can take care of the rest at a physical connections level instead of software.

Re:So upgrade already

[tepples]

A system can have an Internet connection to the bare metal operating system, such as Windows 7 or GNU/Linux, but no NIC in the virtual machine that runs Windows XP. How would such an XP virtual machine even know that the Internet exists?

Re:So upgrade already

[Khyber]

"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"

Disable the gateway address on the router or in your TCP/IP settings, and everything remains inside the local network.

You seriously don't belong here, go away with your ignorance.

Re:So upgrade already

[berashith]

also, they are acting like microsoft isnt supporting customers. If you havent purchased something in 11 years, you arent a customer.

Re:So upgrade already

[berashith]

the easy way is to pay someone. They can pay for a new OS, they can pay for someone to configure all of this stuff, or they can pay with giant security holes. No one ever said technology is free.

Re:So upgrade already

[BUL2294]

You just proved my point. Most people won't want to set up a "non-bridged LAN between VMs" (then try to get that bridged LAN talking to their real LAN), they want their VM to connect to their actual LAN. If I'm a small office running an old-school Workgroup, a HomeGroup, or even a small domain, how do I get my XP (or W2K or Win9x) VM to be able to connect & access those internal networked resources without going out to the Internet--without jumping through serious hoops. Adding a 2nd NIC & wiring then configuring--to every machine that could host a VM? Are you f-ing kidding me???

The virtualization software should make it easy to do this, yet none of the ones I mentioned do. So, with NAT, I get everything internal & external, but all I want is for the virtualization host to sandbox the networking in the VM... (I guess I could install a firewall in the VM that disallows Internet access, but we're talking about really old OSes, so really old & unsupported firewalls--and I'd feel safer if that could be done by the virtual network stack. Something like a simple slider in the VM settings with 3 options: "Allow Internet & LAN access", "Allow LAN access only (no Internet)", "Allow no network access"...)

Re: So upgrade already

[BUL2294]

I'll be the first to feign ignorance with Windows networking, but do tell me how I "Obtain an IP address automatically" without automatically getting the gateway? Or am I now setting up a static IP in the virtualization software network settings, then hardcoding that static IP and a false gateway in the client VM network settings? (Yes, it's easy for me as a computer geek, not so easy for others...)

Re:So upgrade already

[realityimpaired]

So submit it as a wishlist to those vendors.

Personally, it seems redundant, when the guest OS has its own firewall built-in (we're talking about XP, right?), the host OS has its own software firewall, and I have a hardware firewall. You're asking for an application-level firewall in addition to all of these.

Insert picture of that guy from Pimp My Ride....

Re: So upgrade already

[ColdWetDog]

Set up some other box as the DHCP server.... Hell, my NAS has that capability....

Re: So upgrade already

[Nkwe]

I'll be the first to feign ignorance with Windows networking, but do tell me how I "Obtain an IP address automatically" without automatically getting the gateway?

The same way you would solve the problem with non-Windows networking: Configure your DHCP server to have specific reservations for the computers that need special handling. (DHCP Servers don't need to have a single pool of settings handed out to clients, they can have different settings (such as gateway address or lack of gateway address) that applies to separate pools or individual machines.)

Re:So upgrade already

[berashith]

and all of those people that downgraded knew what the length of time was going to be for available support. So either people werent willing to buy upgrades, or they bought the upgrades and chose to use the old stuff even though microsoft was telling them that " you CAN do that, and as a customer we will allow it, but we do not recommend it" while being totally open with their timeframes. I am not a microsoft supporter or user, but I still cant find where this is there fault.

Re:So upgrade already

[WaffleMonster]

You just proved my point. Most people won't want to set up a "non-bridged LAN between VMs" (then try to get that bridged LAN talking to their real LAN), they want their VM to connect to their actual LAN. If I'm a small office running an old-school Workgroup, a HomeGroup,

I'm still trying to process the part where the clueless dentist office runs virtual machines as SOP. Is that actually happening?

All this talk about bridging and default network settings for virtual machines seems like the joke to me. You go on about how simple network options are so hard to change by default while totally oblivious to the complexity of the clueless running systems within systems.

Re:So upgrade already

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a boombox on my desk that is older than me. Still works. Take a musical instrument that is 50, 100, 300 years old, if someone has cared for it, it still works. Where did that design philosophy go? Oh yeah, we fucked it up completely and traded it for throwing everything we own in a big pile in two year cycles.

Yeah, you can keep your opinion, and I hope you choke on it.

Re:So upgrade already

[berashith]

those arent remotely similar cases. Do you expect the manufacturer of the boom box or the instruments to handle all maintenance of the items FOR FREE, forever? If you just dont treat xp poorly, it will keep working. Dont change the hardware to anything that wasnt available 10 years ago, and it will keep working. new problems and functionality are not MS responsibility anymore. They are addressing all of this with new products. makes no sense to keep things going forever.

Does that boom box play mp3s off of a DVD. Does it have a USB port , in or out? How about bluetooth? didnt think so.

Re:So upgrade already

[DavidRawling]

That comment in no way changes what was said in the GP post (though for clarity, while you could still buy WinXP about 4-5 years ago you are still not a current customer). The other point to consider though is the customer (company) who has 20x WinXP machines, 100x Win7 machines and 50x Win8.1 machines. They still are a customer, obviously, but IT moves so much faster than most older industries - it's like complaining your 1955 Studebaker isn't getting new parts made any more because it's 2013, and the original moulds/specs have been lost. The only difference is that you can't even retro-fit a cloned part.

Re:So upgrade already

[Fishchip]

Not if the software you need to run is a device driver for special hardware.

If it's USB, at least, the driver will work in an XP VM without the device being recognised in the host OS. My anecdotal evidence: old HP scanner with XP being the latest driver. No functioning driver in Win8, passed through and recognised and used in VirtualBox XP VM with zero issue.

Other pinned interfaces I can't vouch for but that's my cool story bro for USB.

Re: So upgrade already

[PlusFiveTroll]

Depends on the size of the network.

ROUTE ADD 192.168.0.0/16 MASK 255.255.0.0 GW 192.168.0.1

on that machine would give you access to your local subnets via your router (of course you have to put in the proper subnets).

Re:So upgrade already

[dbIII]

Typically someone buys a bit of industrial or scientific equipment or some communications gear. After some years it becomes apparent that it's only supported by one OS, an OS which sucks. That's when the IT people hear about it with a request to replace the computer portion of it with a deadline of last week.

Re:So upgrade already

[bingoUV]

If they had built better, newer software, it wouldn't share bugs with a 13 year old software, would it? And if they haven't been able to build better, newer software, why are you so sure they will after discontinuing XP support ?

Re:So upgrade already

[gigaherz]

Why not?! Reusing existing code is a perfectly valid option! Heck it's the whole idea behind posix: to be able to reuse most existing code by providing a stable API. Of course if you reuse old code you also reuse old bugs.

On the other hand, you are right: freeing themselves from XP doesn't mean they will build a better OS afterwards. They might, but if their goals have changed to "devices and services" for good...

Re:So upgrade already

[bingoUV]

A NEW car salesman cannot afford to say that reusing cars is a perfectly valid option. And that of course if you reuse old cars, they don't start easily in winters, and rattle a bit when you drive, and leak in rains. That it is all perfectly normal for the car industry.

If Microsoft reused code, why am I being sold a NEW software ? I expect used software prices. Microsoft skimped on effort (code reuse), resulting in a poor product (shared security bugs with ancient software). Why does that not result in much cheaper software, or at least a sticker "Refurbished"? Why is this perfectly normal for the software industry? Why are you defending it?

Re:So upgrade already

[kermidge]

Or, maybe, use shared folder as is or as LAN network share, with appropriate sharing permissions, between vm and host. Could that work OK?

Re:So upgrade already

[gigaherz]

You are comparing apples to trees. A new car will not use old parts, but it WILL reuse the same design of the engine and the transmission, and possibly the same door locking mechanism. If you find a bug in the way the doors are locked that lets you bypass the lock and enter the car, chances are the same bug also exists in older models. You don't reinvent the wheel with every single model of a car. You may improve it, but the design is pretty much the same now as it was 15 years ago.

Re:So upgrade already

[bingoUV]

A new car will not use old parts, but it WILL reuse the same design of the engine and the transmission, and possibly the same door locking mechanism. If you find a bug in the way the doors are locked that lets you bypass the lock and enter the car, chances are the same bug also exists in older models.

Components of goods : When I buy a car, I pay for the thought gone behind implementing the lock (and engine, transmission, putting it all together etc.) AND the steel / plastic / ICs that the car physically consists of. Cost (not price) of building a car is about 90% (+-20%) for the material / labour used in building the car directly or indirectly, and 10% the thought behind it and expression into physical machines. If older lock has a vulnerability and newer car shares the vulnerability, I fully expect a huge discount in the 10% thought portion of the car, and "Refurbished" sticker on the thought sold separately (if).

It is this 10% (+-100%) that is identical in Microsoft's software and cars which is why I made the analogy.

When I buy a software (download), the cost of the item I buy is ALL in the thought and expression into machine code. So I expect the same huge discount and Refurbished sticker on 100% of the item.

Expectation from security : In physical locks, there is also the impossiblity of having a perfect lock - that comes from a near impossibility of remote exploit as well as the impossibility of a lock being secure in spite of physical access to the device (car). So the lock is little more than keeping honest people honest. It is NOT so with Software, where remote exploit is very feasible. If vulnerability exists because of physical access to a computer, Microsoft for its OS is off the hook because it doesn't sell most conputers itself. So expectations from security in Software "goods" is very high.

A car with remote exploit across models over multiple years would expect to lose more for the manufacturer than they ever spent on the "thought" behind ALL of the car.

I also mentioned that Microsoft

skimped on effort (code reuse), resulting in a poor product (shared security bugs with ancient software). Why does that not result in much cheaper software, or at least a sticker "Refurbished"?

Which is the point that stands regardless of the suitability of the analogy, and which you didn't address.

Re:So upgrade already

[gigaherz]

I was trying to write some other better analogy to explain why you shouldn't expect new software to be written from scratch, but then I thought it was just pointless. Almost all subsequent versions of ANY product (software or not) are "refurbished" design-wise. The sticker is not necessary because it should be your expectation that they reused most of the code or part designs. That's what it being a new version implies. They revised the old design, polished some aspects, changed other parts, assembled it, and then put it in a store so you can buy it. This is not just Microsoft, it's not even just software. This applies to EVERYTHING.

You want discounted price because you already own part of the same software? No problem! Simply buy an upgrade license instead of a new one. Microsoft has been offering them all this time. At launch Windows 7 Pro was $240 for the full edition, or $140 for the upgrade edition. Windows 8 had a special offer at launch, where they offered upgrade copies of Windows 8 for $40. The offer ended so it's now $100 instead.

I'm not a car owner so I don't have experience with buying cars, but I'd expect a car dealer to laugh at me if I tell him to give me a discount simply because my old car already had 4 wheels and a front engine. And as far as I know, car makers stop making parts for old models after a certain amount of time, so you have to buy them from 3rd parties. But you don't expect them to keep supporting your very old car just because you feel like buying a new one is unnecessary, do you?

By the way, Google Shopping Search found me a Windows 7 Pro license for just $26: http://www.dealscube.com/detail.asp?id=32580#page=description

Re:So upgrade already

[Wolfrider]

> 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.

--AC already replied to you, but how many dentists do you know that are using VMs? Dentists and the like usually hire consultants/tech people to do their networking stuff, AFAIK.

--Another way of doing what you suggest is to put the office PCs on a Class A network, and put (1) machine running a Squid proxy on the DHCP/Class C that talks to the Router. Every machine/VM talks to Squid to get their Web content, Win updates, etc.

--Bonus: You get caching AND filtering, PLUS you use less Internet bandwidth overall. :-)

Re:So upgrade already

[FlyHelicopters]

Well then, frankly, you aren't really a concern of Microsoft then, are you?

If you don't make much money and you're doing this for charity, then collect donations to pay for the upgrades.

Or raise your prices so you can run your business properly.

Or if you can't do that, perhaps it isn't a viable business. Plenty of businesses are really just community service, I get that, but if you can't make it in the economy, then perhaps you don't deserve to remain in business?

Re:So upgrade already

[FlyHelicopters]

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.

Have their computer networking consultant do it for them?

If this is a real business and have a real business need to keep running something on XP this time next year, and don't have the internal technical skills to make it happen, then they'll have to pay for it.

Cost of doing business. HIPPA laws for a dentist office in the US are serious, a data breach due to failure to secure computers could cost them a lot of money in fines and have the state licencing dept breathing down their necks.

My wife is a doctor, HIPPA is serious business and patient data file security is serious business, you spend whatever it costs to make sure you don't screw that up, or you may be out of business.

Re:So upgrade already

[FlyHelicopters]

Thank you!!!

Why some people think you should be able to buy a piece of equipment for your business, use it for 10 years, and never, ever, EVER have to spend a penny on it, is beyond me.

News flash, ongoing maintenance is something you have to budget for. The building's AC system won't last forever, neither will the computers.

This is one reason why many companies just lease their computers, every 3 years they get new ones and keep them current enough that they don't end up 10 years out of date having to replace everything at once.

Slashdot Poll ?

[Lennie]

I feel a Slashdot Poll might be in our future:

Number of Windows XP security updates Microsoft will release in the first and second year after they said they wouldn't:
- 0
- 1-5
- 5-10
- 11 or more

Re:Slashdot Poll ?

[lukeshep]

- 1-5 - 5-10

I hope your overlap on 5 was intentional comment-bait, likewise the lack of comedy option

Re:Slashdot Poll ?

[antdude]

Nah, my current http://aqfl.net/ poll is better. ;)

Re:Slashdot Poll ?

[jbolden]

I'm going for 1-5. I think they would like to do 0, but something will happen that will force a security update or two. For example something that is damaging to existing server products.

Re:Slashdot Poll ?

[Rich0]

I suspect 0. They didn't do it for NT, so why would they do it for XP? Lots of companies were stuck with NT machines they couldn't easily get rid of when that was no longer supported.

Can't complain

[DogDude]

Although Windows XP still works wonderfully for me, and although I'd like to continue using it (with security updates of course), I really can't complain. It's one of the longest supported OS's in PC history. Nothing else has come even close, and no vendor is talking about having anywhere near a decade+ of support in the near future, either.

Re:Can't complain

[wonkey_monkey]

Stop being reasonable. This is Slashdot, man!

Not really

[Anonymous Coward]

The fundamental flaw here is this is all assuming that Microsoft is somehow better at identifying vulnerabilities than the hackers themselves. All evidence suggests that this is not the case.

Re:Not really

[PlusFiveTroll]

I'd say your correct. A hacker only has to find a crack. Microsoft, on the other hand, has to make a working commercially successful operating system with a large amount of backwards compatibility.

Re:The funny thing is...

[murdocj]

This is absurd. Yes, Vista was a disaster, but Windows 7 was a huge upgrade from XP.

And?

[Anonymous Coward]

Stick to plan and put millions of customers at risk from malware infection

Not trolling, but sticking with XP - even with continued support - is still putting millions of customers at risk from malware infection. Win 7 is much more secure (I assume 8 is too but I won't touch Win 8).

One of my clients is going to stick with XP (it's on about 1/2 their systems) and only upgrade to 7 if the workstation needs to be replaced. Some of their workstations have been running for 8 - 10 years and still meet the needs of their users. If it ain't broke why replace it?

Re:And?

[drinkypoo]

That's a bit like saying it's ok for one of your clients to stick to a fleet of cars and trucks that lack modern safety features such as seat belts, air bags, engineered crumple zones, etc. Sure it works and they could make deliveries with it. But it be very bad if one of those trucks got into a collision. Also, there would probably be issues finding affordable accident insurance.

When it comes to the cars, you'd be right. But when it comes to the trucks the metaphor breaks down entirely because they aren't required to have any of that shit. It's only passenger cars. Light trucks are required to have some of it now, but not all.

Re:And?

[PlusFiveTroll]

I'd say you're partially incorrect. Commercial vehicles fall under different DOT regulations then cars. DPS isn't going to pull over your car and pull out weights and measures.

Re:And?

[drinkypoo]

I'd say you're partially incorrect. Commercial vehicles fall under different DOT regulations then cars. DPS isn't going to pull over your car and pull out weights and measures.

Well, maybe DPS won't, but CHP will. CHP regularly looks for stuff like farm diesel or illegal nitrous kits. Further, light trucks aren't commercial vehicles, I'm talking about automobile-class pickup trucks. You're thinking of heavy trucks, which use heavy-duty engines and brakes. These systems don't lend themselves well to the same kind of control that the cute little engines in autos do. But in the grey area there are light pickups, which often have car engines in them and which most certainly can have ABS, TC, YC, etc. But they aren't required to, because lobbying.

Microsoft isn't Putting Customers at Risk

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft isn't putting customers at risk by not patching what will then be a 13-year old operating system. They had a full life cycle plan in place and customers have had many years advance notice to plan their transition. The lack of resources placed on transitioning legacy software to something other than an end-of-life OS is squarely the fault of the customers. The people in charge obviously don't place a great deal of importance on security or support. They have made their decision, let them suffer the consequences.

Re:Microsoft isn't Putting Customers at Risk

[LMariachi]

On the one hand, quite true, fuck ’em. They brought their problems upon themselves. But on the other, their problem becomes everyone else’s when several million corporate PCs are added to the world’s botnet population.

Re:Microsoft isn't Putting Customers at Risk

[linebackn]

Microsoft isn't putting customers at risk by not patching what will then be a 13-year old operating system. They had a full life cycle plan in place and customers have had many years advance notice to plan their transition. The lack of resources placed on transitioning legacy software to something other than an end-of-life OS is squarely the fault of the customers. The people in charge obviously don't place a great deal of importance on security or support. They have made their decision, let them suffer the consequences.

What do you mean you've never been to Alpha Centauri? Oh, for heaven's sake, mankind, it's only four light years away, you know. I'm sorry, but if you can't be bothered to take an interest in local affairs, that's your own lookout. Energize the demolition beam. I don't know, apathetic bloody planet, I've no sympathy at all.

Re:Microsoft isn't Putting Customers at Risk

[jkrise]

It is 13 years since MS started selling XP. Even as late as 2010 when Windows 7 was just released; XP was still offered to enterprise customers since Vista was shit.

Windows 8 does not run many applications developed using tools that came with and later supported XP. And these apps are not even 2 years old.

So please cut out the "13 year old XP" crap. MS is still officially selling XP for some enterprise customers. They better support it for 7 years AFTER they stop selling XP. Say 2020.

Re:Microsoft isn't Putting Customers at Risk

[WaffleMonster]

Microsoft isn't putting customers at risk by not patching what will then be a 13-year old operating system.

Countless millions of customers will be put at risk. Pretending otherwise with word games or philosophical theories have no effect on reality of what will actually occur.

They had a full life cycle plan in place and customers have had many years advance notice to plan their transition.

Oh really? What was the announced plan for XP *prior* to release of XP?

Re:Microsoft isn't Putting Customers at Risk

[jbolden]

I don't think corporate PCs will be the problem. Corporations have IT departments and stuff they don't want getting destroyed. They will be carefully monitoring their systems. I think the problem will be home users and those botnets will be handled by ISPs shutting down service.

Re:Microsoft isn't Putting Customers at Risk

[jbolden]

How is that analogy remotely appropriate? I don't see any connection between a system with a published expiration date that got extended and your Alpha Centauri analogy. People get the idea that milk has a date on it.

Re:Microsoft isn't Putting Customers at Risk

[jbolden]

They aren't going to support those customers. Those customers were told the day they bought it when they needed to be upgraded by. They expect enterprise customers to be responsible.

Re:Microsoft isn't Putting Customers at Risk

[jbolden]

Prior to the release of XP support was scheduled to end in 2008. It got extended.

Re:Microsoft isn't Putting Customers at Risk

[LMariachi]

I figure the majority of home users still on XP are not the sort to be assiduous about updating (When they see “Important updates are available” they just click whatever makes the annoying notification go away) and are therefore already infected.

And IT departments vigilant enough that they carefully monitor for any signs of compromise are likely the same IT departments that are not being taken by surprise (or laziness) by their OS being EOLed. The ones that have been in denial are probably not going to suddenly improve.

There’s a children’s joke about a skydiver who ignores repeated warnings from passing aircraft, blimps, helicopters, people on skyscrapers, etc., that’s it’s time to open his chute. Someone warns him one last time as he’s ten feet from the ground and he replies “It’s okay, I can jump from here.”

Re:Microsoft isn't Putting Customers at Risk

[jbolden]

And IT departments vigilant enough that they carefully monitor for any signs of compromise are likely the same IT departments that are not being taken by surprise (or laziness) by their OS being EOLed.

Laziness. And yes. This year they finished upgrading department of labor to Win7. Had a few more things gone wrong.... Pfizer last year was on XP with no clear upgrade path and all sorts of IE6 dependencies. Both of them had fairly good IT departments. They just allowed themselves to get stuck on a particular version of Windows.

Those in denial are going to gradually improve though, they already have. Microsoft's not backing down has finally forced them to start spending again on desktop infrastructure, particularly application conversion, at a faster rate. Those ISVs that didn't want to migrate their product have heard from their most stables customers, now or never. It is working.

Re:Microsoft isn't Putting Customers at Risk

[Kijori]

Surely an enterprise customer who buys XP now has made his own bed in terms of software support?

It's hardly a secret that support for XP is being discontinued, and if you're running a business you have to take responsibility for your purchasing decisions.

Red Hat 10 year Extended Support

[iYk6]

Red Hat offers 10 years of support. And new versions of Red Hat are generally better than previous versions, so there isn't as much need to hold on to old versions.

Source: http://www.serverwatch.com/server-news/red-hat-extends-linux-support.html

Re:Red Hat 10 year Extended Support

[DogDude]

That's a server OS. Any server OS that isn't supported for at least a decade is bullshit, anyway, in my opinion.

Re:Red Hat 10 year Extended Support

[Anonymous Coward]

10 years PLUS optional (extra cost) 3 year extension for RHEL5 and newer ("Extended Life Phase"). For OS older than that it's 7+3 years ("ELS").

Note that they handle sources differently for ELP/ELS, so I suspect none of the free rebuilds will be able to extended beyond the core phase. The Oracle (OL/OEL) RHEL rebuild also only talks about the main 10 year product cycle at the moment.

Ref: https://access.redhat.com/site/support/policy/updates/errata/

Re:Red Hat 10 year Extended Support

[ghjm]

New versions of Windows are also generally better than previous versions.

Re:Red Hat 10 year Extended Support

[fisted]

two reasons:
a) Microsoft is marketing a ``server'' edition of their ``operating system''
b) As a windows user, you're basically operating a black box. You can become arbitrarily knowledgeable with respect to navigating the UI, but you don't, and can't, learn shit about how operating systems work on a conceptual level.

BTW, there's a third class of operating systems - the ``media center'' OS.

Re:Red Hat 10 year Extended Support

[vandamme]

Every odd numbered Windows release is better than the preceding version. As for me, I'm not waiting for 9, I just installed openSuSE and I'm not looking back.

Re:Red Hat 10 year Extended Support

[FlyHelicopters]

Windows 7 is generally better than Windows XP.

Re:Red Hat 10 year Extended Support

[FlyHelicopters]

Something else to consider about that 10 years of support...

It is really to the same level and attention that Microsoft provides? Given how many people run Red Hat, plus how many run 10 year old versions, what is the rate of patch releases for that 10 year old version?

Maybe it doesn't need many, but with a small userbase, how would you know?

Re:The funny thing is...

[ericloewe]

What an idiotic statement. Windows 7 is superior to Windows XP just as Windows XP is superior to Windows 9x and just as Windows 9x was susperior to 3.1...

I challenge you to name those downgrades you experienced.

Re:The funny thing is...

[Joce640k]

If windows 7/8 wasn't a downgrade from XP in every respect,

Wrong. Windows 7 is better than XP in every way

(For the pedants: "Except size on disk")

If your statement is correct...

[tlambert]

If your statement is correct...

This is absurd. Yes, Vista was a disaster, but Windows 7 was a huge upgrade from XP.

then why won't all XP software run on Windows 7, and why hasn't everyone seen the error of their ways, and upgraded their XP systems?

My dad owns a number of companies which all went out and bought extra XP systems and stuck them in a closet for future deployment because of the software compatibility issues between XP and Windows 7 and later. Specifically, they don't want to have to re-buy all their machines, and re-buy all their existing software, and rewrite from scratch all their Microsoft COM component based glue code the next time they hire a new person into the office.

Microsoft is out of its teeny little mind if it believes small cash flow based businesses have the available capital to enable them to do this; the incompatibility is killing adoption of anything later than Windows XP for almost every business I know that has 100 or less employees, which is 95% of all businesses in the U.S..

Re:If your statement is correct...

[Anonymous Coward]

They can't afford the capitol to upgrade their systems, but they can afford to stockpile machines in closets.

Re:If your statement is correct...

[Goody]

You're conflating compatibility and technology upgrades. In general, considering the usability, user interface, and functionality of 7, it is an upgrade from XP. Compatibility with applications written for previous OSs is a totally different item. If you really want to support an application that works with only one end-of-lifed OS until the end of time, then you're going to have issues to deal with. It's either update the application or embalm the OS environment you're bent on sticking with. Run XP in a VM on new machines with a modern host OS.

There are plenty of reasons to criticize Microsoft, but I don't think OS application compatibility is one of them. You can run DOS apps from the 1990s on Windows 7. If your business can't afford to update that XP-dependant app, you probably shouldn't have written such a specialized app to begin with or used the development environment and libraries you chose.

Re:If your statement is correct...

[gigaherz]

Chances are the software won't run on Windows 7 because said software was making use of "features" of XP that were actually not supposed to be used that way, be it internal features, undefined behaviour, or implementation errors. The bigger issue is driver compatibility, where it is not so easy to keep supporting old driver models.

Re:If your statement is correct...

[realityimpaired]

then why won't all XP software run on Windows 7, and why hasn't everyone seen the error of their ways, and upgraded their XP systems?

Two questions asked, two answers given --

1st -- Some XP software won't run on Windows 7 because the software was not written to be compliant with Microsoft's published security standards. Stuff that's compliant with the standards runs, stuff that isn't compliant, and which relies on some undocumented feature/bug, may or may not run. Or did you mean ActiveX controls? That's a completely different animal, and can still be made to run on a Windows 7 system with the help of XP Mode. You may also want to ask your web designer why they haven't updated the design/layout in 10 years.

2nd -- People haven't upgraded their XP systems because of opportunity cost. Either you need to worry about updating your ActiveX-based corporate intranet to work on a modern browser, or you have to worry about the cost of purchasing a new set of licenses for a more recent version of Windows. While I could forgive a large corporation which may have to pay tens of millions of dollars to upgrade (though my own company has already upgraded its 85,000 employees' systems to Win7), I have a harder time forgiving a home user whose cost would be effectively nil if they were to purchase a new(er) computer. You don't even have to buy a *new* computer any more to get Windows 7 -- it's been out for long enough that I've seen computers in used computer store or on kijiji for the $50 range which would be an upgrade to anything that was sold with XP, and which come with Windows 7 as well. The savings in electricity alone from such an upgrade would probably pay for that within a year -- remember that while the P4 did boast speeds at 3.4GHz, they did it by using several times the electricity that a modern i3 or i5 uses for the same clock speed.

And the re-buy existing software argument doesn't wash. At the absolute worst case scenario, they can run it in XP Mode, which is a full fledged virtual machine which can run anything that ran on XP.

Re:If your statement is correct...

[drinkypoo]

You can run DOS apps from the 1990s on Windows 7

It's actually better at that than it is at running 16-bit windows programs (still crop up now and then, believe it or not) or even older 32-bit ones. I'm not sure that's actually a mark in their favor.

Re:If your statement is correct...

[flyingfsck]

I take it that the IT idiots at your Dad's companies never heard of Virtualbox or VMWare?

Re:If your statement is correct...

[Nyder]

They can't afford the capitol to upgrade their systems, but they can afford to stockpile machines in closets.

Considering how cheap computer hardware is compared to the price for software, I can understand this.

You bought some special software for your company, it cost you a bunch. It works great on XP, but doesn't work on Windows Vista or Windows 7. So you have a choice. You buy a new version of that software (providing there is a new version) that works with Windows 7, or you hire someone to program the software to work with Windows 7.

Guess what is cheaper? Stocking up on a bunch of $200-$400 computers to insure you can keep running the software for years still.

Not the smart solution in the long run, but when the bottom line counts, it's the move people make.

Re:If your statement is correct...

[RR]

then why won't all XP software run on Windows 7, and why hasn't everyone seen the error of their ways, and upgraded their XP systems?

This is partly AMD's fault. They decided that 64-bit mode would not include Virtual 8086 mode.

My dad owns a number of companies which all went out and bought extra XP systems... they don't want to have to re-buy all their machines, and re-buy all their existing software, and rewrite from scratch all their Microsoft COM component based glue code the next time they hire a new person into the office... the incompatibility is killing adoption of anything later than Windows XP for almost every business I know that has 100 or less employees, which is 95% of all businesses in the U.S..

I don't personally know any small business that has such custom software. They just use Windows and Office, which can be replaced with GNU/Linux and LibreOffice. Or ChromeOS and Google Drive. But I'm more familiar with the 10-or-less business demographic.

I do know some labs that have Windows XP attached to expensive machinery. They definitely can't upgrade. But they really should not be on the Internet, anyway.

Re:If your statement is correct...

[ColdWetDog]

You can run DOS apps from the 1990s on Windows 7.

But not complicated mission critical business software from the 1990's. Oops.

If your business can't afford to update that XP-dependant app, you probably shouldn't have written such a specialized app to begin with or used the development environment and libraries you chose.

Yes, I've discussed that with our vendor. The people responsible for that decision have been sacked a while back. They still can't get it to run on Win 7. Nor can they get their new version to do half the things we need it to do. Sucks, to be us, I suppose, but this little problem appears to be endemic in the system.

Re:If your statement is correct...

[ColdWetDog]

At the absolute worst case scenario, they can run it in XP Mode, which is a full fledged virtual machine which can run anything that ran on XP.

Except when it doesn't run anything. We have three (3) mission critical software packages that won't run under XP emulation. The vendors have all agreed that they won't run. One of the vendors (our primary EHR) has a fix - their beta level new system that works just fine on 7, when it works at all, which is infrequently. The other two just don't say anything at all. I suppose they will introduce a new version in April that costs another 30K (just like the one last year).

We just love this ecosystem, we do.

Re:If your statement is correct...

[Bing Tsher E]

I remember seeing a Tektronix Oscilloscope that ran an embedded version of Windows 98. It would power up to a modified Win98 desktop. Perfectly acceptable in a system where it is entirely captive and no additional software will or should be added.

Re:If your statement is correct...

[ColdWetDog]

I take it YOU will guarantee that their software WILL run under emulation?

Re:If your statement is correct...

[dcollins]

"You can run DOS apps from the 1990s on Windows 7."

I actually just tried that and it failed. You mean in an emulator?

Re:If your statement is correct...

[Immerman]

>Not the smart solution in the long run, but when the bottom line counts, it's the move people make.

Actually it may even be the smartest long-term solution, right up until the OS stops getting security updates (if that's even relevant)

Consider -
* so long as everything is working find OS upgrades are a wasted cost - getting everyone a second monitor is going to do far, far more for productivity than upgrading the OS.
* A general software upgrade isn't a one-time thing, eventually you'll need to do it again when the same situation repeats, if not sooner. Given that, it may well be worth skipping as many cycles as possible. After all, the companies that have put off upgrading from XP until now have managed to avoid 100% of the cost of the "upgrade" to Vista, and the upgrade to 7, instead skipping straight to the upgrade to 8. And what is the down side so far? Of course once maintenance is actually abandoned then there do start to be costs in the terms of increasing security risks, but until that moment there's precious little reason to upgrade a "good enough" system.

Re:If your statement is correct...

[shutdown -p now]

You need a 32-bit version of Win7. 64-bit one has 16-bit DOS/Win3.x compat layer completely ripped out.

But, yes, at this point it's often much easier to run all that stuff in DOSBox.

Re:If your statement is correct...

[jbolden]

Microsoft is fine with XP being an unsupported legacy operating system used to run old applications. They aren't fine with it being a mainstream desktop OS. So your dad's company has to put two computers on people's desks soon. What's the problem for Microsoft?

As an aside, windows 7 has an XP mode builtin and Windows 8 has a VM manager builtin.

Re:If your statement is correct...

[jbolden]

So why not run the system in a VM on new desktops? If it is just libraries just run virtualized XP. What's the problem?

Re:If your statement is correct...

[murdocj]

I'm baffled by this stuff about massive changes from XP to Windows 7. I know that Vista had some serious device driver architecture changes, but it doesn't sound like that was your issue. When I worked on Windows software we had to handle changes to how settings and user data was saved, but that was pretty minor. I can't recall the last time I saw a major issue going from XP to Windows 7. Just what kind of code were you writing that you needed to completely rewrite it for Windows 7???

Re:If your statement is correct...

[murdocj]

Yeah, it really depends on how long you intend to be in business. If you figure you'll be done in 5-10 years, fine. If you plan on going longer than that, you are really buying yourself a world of hurt by locking into ancient tech. And the whole "proprietary vs open source" issue doesn't even matter... if you are locked to a 10 year old version of linux, you are still screwed.

Re:If your statement is correct...

[PlusFiveTroll]

>networking under xp was much easier.

You much mean much less secure, I mean like, turn on and get pwnt insecure.

>copy dialog was bad, now it is a total disaster

Huh? Hell, you even try it on Win 8, it's pretty nice.

Most of the problems in 7/8 are not operating system problems, but stupid user interface choices. The reason so many people are pissed at 8 is you cannot turn on classic mode with a set of scripts.

Re:If your statement is correct...

[PlusFiveTroll]

I don't know about his case, but what I see in the industry is this.

ABCorp buys Softapp 2.0 that depends on JKLibrary.dll 3.0 that doesn't follow Microsofts API to the spec and does some rather odd magic for copy protection purposes. Softapp 2.0 is *very* expensive so ABCorp sticks with it for years.

Years later Softapp 6.0 is out, but no longer does what ABCorp needs it to. JLKibrary parent company doesn't exist any longer and has disappeared so there are no modern versions.

Sometimes it is easy, as you say to change registry keys or directory permissions, but many times it is not. Actual function calls that no longer exist or are now in the wrong context are passed and cause windows to throw access violations.

Re:If your statement is correct...

[petermgreen]

This is partly AMD's fault. They decided that 64-bit mode would not include Virtual 8086 mode. [wikipedia.org]

That is true and would have made it difficult to support DOS apps.

It does not affect running 16 bit windows apps. AIUI the only reason 16 bit windows apps are not supported on 64-bit windows is because microsoft could not be bothered debugging the compbination of WoW64 with WoW. Amusingly 64-bit linux can run 16 bit windows apps.

I don't think that is the big issue though, I don't think there is that much win16 code still floating arround and if you really need it you can get 32-bit editions of up to date versions of windows. The real problem afaict is that app developers tied into bits of the OS that were never supposed to be public interfaces or relied on undocumented behaviours or ignored guidelines on how to work with windows security. MS put in a lot of hacks in win7 to support such applications while improving the general security situation but ultimately those hacks were not perfect and there will often be something in a large and poorly coded application that doesn't work. If that something is something you rely on you have a problem.

Re:If your statement is correct...

[PlusFiveTroll]

No, it sounds like your boss(company) was an idiot for not signing a contract saying that their next version WILL support the next version of Windows. They didn't really expect it to last forever?

Re:If your statement is correct...

[ColdWetDog]

You don't seem to understand how this works. Their actually isn't anything in the contract that puts the vendor liable for anything - pretty standard in the medical field. Yes, if we had to go back, we would not have used that software - for a variety of reasons. But the software is here and the costs to switch vendors is unacceptably high.

The real world is sucky a lot of the time.

Re:If your statement is correct...

[aNonnyMouseCowered]

"In general, considering the usability, user interface, and functionality of 7, it is an upgrade from XP."

In terms of security and stability, yes, I'd consider Win 7 to be a significant upgrade for XP. But as far as usability and UI are concerned, there's not much to recommend 7 over XP, unless you think the graphical bling greatly improves usability. For all its faults, MS practically pefected the desktop WIMP (Windows, Icons, Mouse, Pointing Device) environment with Windows XP. That's why many users are rebelling against the mutant Win 8 tablet interface.

Re:If your statement is correct...

[dcollins]

Thanks for the clarification.

Re:If your statement is correct...

[Decker-Mage]

Frankly I'd resign before working with an EHR system on XP that was also even remotely (pun intended) facing the internet. The penalties from the government alone are frightening and should a patient be harmed or di?. No way. I've done every kind of engineering and analysis that even remotely touch the medical field and I also know the laws around medical systems. If what you represent is true, run. now. Maybe you'll get far enough away.

patches ?

[Anonymous Coward]

New features for life on XP - no.
      Security features for 5 more years, if it means back porting them - yes.

Re:patches ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I working in health care, our PRIMARY robotic pharmacy dispenser runs DOS 6.x
It works, vendor has not mentioned any intent to replace the code so why should we.
I drive to work in a 14 year old - it works, so ... ?

If you think I am joking ask your hospital about ( McK..... )

Re:patches ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I drive to work in a 14 year old - it works, so ... ?

I'm pretty sure that's illegal in most states.

Re:The funny thing is...

[prajendran]

I still use XP and Windows 7. As a user. I don't find one much better or worse than the other, making a voluntary upgrade unlikely.

XP a Time bomb?

[mseeger]

No, the time bomb are people still running XP....

Re:XP a Time bomb?

[EzInKy]

Stupid question probably, but if people like XP why wouldn't Microsoft continue to sell and support XP? The market for it is obviously still there.

Re:XP a Time bomb?

[bill_mcgonigle]

The market for it is obviously still there.

Two reasons:

1) that market is huge for a small/medium business. At Microsoft they can't do anything that won't generate hundreds of millions of dollars. Big multinational corporations suck in terms of nimbleness / addressing the long tail.

2) I think they always should have charged $19/yr for updates, and past 10 years that should have been increasing at $10/yr. That would address the market, but screw all the pirates who keep Windows as a standard. There's not a provable "market" now because nobody is putting their money where their mouth is (except perhaps Munich, et. al.).

If they did #2, all the corporate customers who "simply can't upgrade because X" would find themselves rolling out Win7 within six months because they no longer have a freeloading option.

Have a $16M CNC machine that has to run XP for its control software? Fine, stick it on a VLAN, stick the VLAN behind a firewall, and null route its access to the Internet and only allow SFTP out to the LAN. Keep using XP forever, for all I care.

But that's not the use case most people are bitching about - they just want to run XP forever because it works fine as a program launcher for Outlook 2003 and IE6, and screw the world if their machines get pwned for a botnet.

Re:XP a Time bomb?

[jbolden]

Not really. Anyone on XP is pretty cheap.

But more importantly they want their developer community to be able to target Windows 7 and have the applications evolve. They want the PC space to go back to a world of rapid improvement.

Re:XP a Time bomb?

[PlusFiveTroll]

> they just want to run XP forever because it works fine as a program launcher for Outlook 2003 and IE6, and screw the world if their machines get pwned for a botnet.

Yes, these are the people that are going to create security problems for everyone else. Oh, you want to disable old SSL/TLS versions because they are now somewhat hackable, sorry, the dinosaurs can't get their email any longer.

Re:Mac has superior model

[DogDude]

You're under the false assumption that everybody buys new hardware every year or two. I have hardware that's been running for over a decade, and is still working just fine.

XP is a vulnerability itself.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, it's 12 years old. If you're using 12-years-old Linux kernel today, nobody would give a fuck about your problems. Because you using 12-years-old shit is the biggest problem itself.

Re:XP is a vulnerability itself.

[CronoCloud]

And don't even get me started with the piece of shit that is windows 8, linux users are not forced to use a half-tablet OS

Gnome 3 and Unity would like a word with you.

Re:XP is a vulnerability itself.

[RaceProUK]

KDE

Re:XP is a vulnerability itself.

[Anonymous Coward]

And don't even get me started with the piece of shit that is windows 8, linux users are not forced to use a half-tablet OS

Gnome 3 and Unity would like a word with you.

KDE, Afterstep, Enlightenment, Windows Maker and XFCE would like a word with you.
No such options on Windows Tablet 8/8.1 I'm afraid.

Re:XP is a vulnerability itself.

[Teun]

But the KDE port to Win8 is on it's way.

Re:XP is a vulnerability itself.

[Runaway1956]

Yes, you can upgrade for free, or damn near free. Simply upgrade to Linux or a BSD. Seriously. I here all sorts of nonsense about how hard it is to switch to Linux, and to Gnu. Screw all of that. Have you noticed that our economy sucks? A common refrain heard by the working class, is that we are now competing with labor markets from around the world. We have to adapt, or go out of business. Do more with less, retrain to do new tasks, yada yada yada.

My answer goes right along with all that other nonsense. If you can't be retrained to run Linux, then you're out of the workforce. And, no, I don't really give a damn that you might lose your home as a result. No one gave a small damn when coal miners were foreclosed on. Or auto workers. Or construction workers.

The "ticking time bomb" isn't Windows XP. The time bomb is America's inability to adapt to a changing reality. Windows is so 1990's. This is the 2010's now.

Re:XP is a vulnerability itself.

[Sique]

I am daily using a software that doesn't run on WINE, not on Windows 7, but surely runs on WinXP. Sadly, it's the tool to report my work to the central server for bookkeeping and billing the customers. Thus it has a) to be run on an Internet facing WinXP and b) means that I have to have at least one system I can't upgrade and c) can't easily be replaced by any other software.

Re:XP is a vulnerability itself.

[flyingfsck]

Well, at the very least you could make a WinXP virtual machine, then you can easily restore it when it screws up. You could also make WinXP into a BartPE CDROM and run it in an uncorruptable form.

Re:XP is a vulnerability itself.

[squiggleslash]

It's not 12 years old. 12 years (or is it 13?) is when the first version of XP was released, but XP continued to be sold for nearly the entire decade. And unlike GNU/Linux, where you can just download a newer version of the effected component and expect virtually everything to work, upgrading to Vista/7/8/8.1 requires paying money and upgrading the entire system at the same time, pretty much expecting breakages, and new hardware requirements.

Which is not to suggest Microsoft should be supporting it. With proprietary operating systems, I kinda feel there needs to be a greater understanding of the consequences of handing your testicles to a company that has to make a profit to survive.

Re:XP is a vulnerability itself.

[MightyYar]

You are too hung up on a product name. XP has been continuously updated since its introduction.

Re:XP is a vulnerability itself.

[CronoCloud]

While it's true that those are always options, (I run XFCE myself) what I was implying that Linux isn't immune from having tablet-ized UI's.

Re:XP is a vulnerability itself.

[Bengie]

... because they can upgrade for free, which is not the case with windows...

That is not the case for anything. NOTHING in this world is free. Everything costs at least time and time is money. In the case of servers, Linux is mostly free because automation, but when it comes to end users, any changes at all require training.

Re:XP is a vulnerability itself.

[Bengie]

100 engineers cranking away 40 hours per week of code for the past 10 years, all targeting MS-SQL, ASP.Net, Windows, and several other MS specific services. Yes, that's easy to just switch over. /sarc

Strangely enough, as we move more into RESTful services, the easier it will get to whole-sale replace MS in modules, but this is a more recent change. Maybe we can switch to a Mono+nginx setup.

Re:XP is a vulnerability itself.

[zippthorne]

What is everyone else in your company doing?

Re:XP is a vulnerability itself.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, you can upgrade for free, or damn near free. Simply upgrade to Linux or a BSD. Seriously. I here all sorts of nonsense about how hard it is to switch to Linux, and to Gnu. Screw all of that. Have you noticed that our economy sucks? A common refrain heard by the working class, is that we are now competing with labor markets from around the world. We have to adapt, or go out of business. Do more with less, retrain to do new tasks, yada yada yada.

My answer goes right along with all that other nonsense. If you can't be retrained to run Linux, then you're out of the workforce. And, no, I don't really give a damn that you might lose your home as a result. No one gave a small damn when coal miners were foreclosed on. Or auto workers. Or construction workers.

The "ticking time bomb" isn't Windows XP. The time bomb is America's inability to adapt to a changing reality. Windows is so 1990's. This is the 2010's now.

Yes, you can upgrade for free, or damn near free. Simply upgrade to Linux or a BSD. Seriously. I here all sorts of nonsense about how hard it is to switch to Linux, and to Gnu. Screw all of that. Have you noticed that our economy sucks? A common refrain heard by the working class, is that we are now competing with labor markets from around the world. We have to adapt, or go out of business. Do more with less, retrain to do new tasks, yada yada yada.

My answer goes right along with all that other nonsense. If you can't be retrained to run Linux, then you're out of the workforce. And, no, I don't really give a damn that you might lose your home as a result. No one gave a small damn when coal miners were foreclosed on. Or auto workers. Or construction workers.

The "ticking time bomb" isn't Windows XP. The time bomb is America's inability to adapt to a changing reality. Windows is so 1990's. This is the 2010's now.

This 'solution' you so adamantly declare is short-sited, moronic, and, IMO betrays a marked lack of industry knowledge on your part. When you have a company like Boeing, or Raytheon, or well, pick ANY company within the DoD space, or a very large educational system (Stanford, Yale, Harvard) a huge part of their internal structure is based on old systems. Many reasons, some of which are well-known technical scope, compatibility with IE6 (yes this still matters and don't spout any bulls**t about "well upgrade" or "use Chrome Frame" or anything else. That's not an option.), and a defined usage structure, along with simple inertia, are what cause companies to stay on old systems.

And I can assure you; these companies, even though they are not always constantly updating, are very high on MS' priority list of "let's not let them fall".

Re:XP is a vulnerability itself.

[Anne Thwacks]

With proprietary operating systems, I kinda feel there needs to be a greater understanding of the consequences of handing your testicles to a company that has to make a profit to survive.

Print this, frame it, and nail it to the boss's door (or pin it to his back).

Re:XP is a vulnerability itself.

[Runaway1956]

More idiocy. The companies you mention are in the business or research and development. Let them research replacements for a failing computer infrastructure.

IE6? You expect to garner some sympathy from me, because corporations still rely on IE6? Let me be blunt here. Fuck 'em all. My dad had some witticisms that he tossed around all the time. Mostly, they were annoying when he tossed them around. But, the annoyance value didn't detract from their validity.

The only thing that never changes is, that everything keeps on changing. IE6 is history. It's time to move on. Those who can't or won't adapt can just fail. I don't care one whit whether you choose to be a failure - you have the right to be a failure. Just don't whine and snivel to me when you discover what a failure you truly are.

Re:XP is a vulnerability itself.

[Waccoon]

I kinda feel there needs to be a greater understanding of the consequences of handing your testicles to a company that has to make a profit to survive.

You mean like practically everyone?

Maybe you should yell at those vendors that sold you a $10,000 piece of equipment, but refuse to update a driver to work on Windows8 because it would take them a whole, suffering week.

Re:XP is a vulnerability itself.

[jbolden]

Boeing, Raytheon... need to learn that Microsoft's expiration dates mean something. Microsoft may not let them fail. But they should change them such a ton that they learn their lesson and build a 3-4 year upgrade policy into their desktop infrastructure.

As for IE6, IE6 runs fine in the XP mode of Windows 7. That's not a reason not to upgrade the desktop.

Re:XP is a vulnerability itself.

[jbolden]

Yes. Absolutely. Supporting XP like that was a huge mistake. Microsoft's trained their userbase not to be on a regular upgrade cycle. Not to plan for upgrades as part their infrastructure. They need to break users of that habit.

Apple has their users so well trained they can roll out an OS feature and by 6 months developers can release software with it as a hard dependency.

Re:XP is a vulnerability itself.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now you're just being fucking ridiculous. You may not have given a damn when the aforementioned groups were foreclosed on, but some of us did lament those happenings. You're just a fucking prick, and you can go the fuck to hell. Busy working people don't have time to learn how to spoonfeed Linux or fucking BSD into doing what they need to do. They need tools that just fucking work. You're the out of touch fuckface whose only friend is a computer and/or hasn't left the basement in 10 years. You can fuck straight off.

Re:XP is a vulnerability itself.

[upuv]

I'm a UNIX person and I have to agree. What horrible fad was happening when gnome3 and Unity came out. Some sort of cult mental infection leading normally very intelligent people down a garden path. To a garden filled with snakes, spiders and die flowers.

Someone sees an iphone and all of a sudden it has to be the UI of the desktop? Gnome 3, Unity, Win 8 all caught the bug.

That one two punch of Unity and Gnome 3 set back the Linux UI at least 2 years I reckon.

OK X has to go. I can understand that. But X isn't the window manager.
Yes UI designs have to start adapting for other input metaphors.

But to completely disregard 2 decades of UI design in one non-negotiable release, was just plain idiotic. Note all of them did this by the way. It's like all the design people at once fell into a cauldron of apple sauce.

No real attempt was really made at all to construct a bridging metaphor between windowed, mouse-keyboard fullscreen, touch UI design. Just screw we are now touch only.

Thankfully there is now the early taste of sanity building in UID design again. We see both camps take baby steps toward each. A more sensible evolutionary path is taking form. At the same time as fundamental graphical engines are being rebuilt from scratch to be natively friendly with alternative input metaphors.

Re:XP is a vulnerability itself.

[Dutch Gun]

Someone sees an iphone and all of a sudden it has to be the UI of the desktop? Gnome 3, Unity, Win 8 all caught the bug.

IMO, it was a desperation move to keep PC desktop software relevant in a "post PC world", where smartphones are the hot new shit, and "PCs are dying", etc. PCs are a saturated market, so of course they're not going to experience the explosive growth of the smartphone and tablet market, and this freaked out out of traditional desktop OS vendors. Bolting a ridiculous phone-like interface onto the desktop doesn't make a PC into a smartphone. It just makes it more annoying to use.

I'm longing for the day that the smartphone and tablet market becomes just a saturated as the PC market, and we can stop with the constant "The PC is dying" nonsense. PCs are just vastly overpowered for some computing uses, so better form factors are now filling those roles. But I see nothing about a smartphone or tablet that can replace the PC for any sort of computing task that requires significant data entry (i.e. "work").

Like you mentioned, Microsoft, by some indicators, may have realized what a bonehead misstep the metro UI was for desktop computing, and could introduce some major reversals on some of the more idiotic UI blunders they made.

Re:XP is a vulnerability itself.

[Rich0]

Boeing, Raytheon... need to learn that Microsoft's expiration dates mean something. Microsoft may not let them fail. But they should change them such a ton that they learn their lesson and build a 3-4 year upgrade policy into their desktop infrastructure.

I doubt that the bulk of the complaining comes from companies the size of Raytheon and Boeing. The issue is likely more with medium-sized companies that don't have a huge IT function and volume licensing agreements. I work at a Fortune 500 company and we've probably had the option to upgrade from XP since Vista came out - the choice of when to do so was more about logistics and internal costs than licensing.

A 3-4yr OS upgrade policy was not really feasible going back 10 years with the huge reliance on stuff like ActiveX and Win32 applications. Many of those applications have capital costs in the millions of dollars (when you look at the costs of licensing and customization), and you can't just amortize those costs over 4 years and have them make sense - not to mention the army of IT workers you'd need to mange the increase in project volume to oversee all those replacements.

However, there is no need for a 3-4yr policy - MS supports its OSes for 10 years from the date that a replacement is available. That usually works out to something like 13 years from date of introduction. An 8-10 year replacement cycle seems completely adequate and lets you also cherry-pick OS releases since MS tends to shoot themselves in the foot every other iteration.

Longer-term companies should try to move as much as they can to pure web-based or at least thin-client software. To the degree that this can be done you greatly reduce the complexity of upgrading client OS or the need for standardization. If you really could get all the software to run in a browser you could even just roll out something like ChromeOS, or give every employee a choice of what they want and have a support policy of reimage first, ask questions later.

Re:XP is a vulnerability itself.

[jbolden]

I doubt that the bulk of the complaining comes from companies the size of Raytheon and Boeing. The issue is likely more with medium-sized companies that don't have a huge IT function and volume licensing agreements. I work at a Fortune 500 company and we've probably had the option to upgrade from XP since Vista came out - the choice of when to do so was more about logistics and internal costs than licensing.

I agree. Though I have seen fortune 500 companies that are rather lazy about their multiyear plans. Raytheon and Boeing were GP's examples. I don't know enough about either to have an opinion.

A 3-4yr OS upgrade policy was not really feasible going back 10 years with the huge reliance on stuff like ActiveX and Win32 applications. Many of those applications have capital costs in the millions of dollars (when you look at the costs of licensing and customization), and you can't just amortize those costs over 4 years and have them make sense - not to mention the army of IT workers you'd need to mange the increase in project volume to oversee all those replacements.

You don't have to replace them just upgrade them. And we did this in the 1990s. Applications had associated with them a stable in house team that slowly improved them over time. Versions shifts were not a big deal because there was stable staffing. And yes that meant a lot more IT workers, but that wasn't a huge burden. It can be done and at reasonable cost.

However, there is no need for a 3-4yr policy - MS supports its OSes for 10 years

I agree there is no need for companies. That's a bad thing for the ecosystem. Let's use your numbers. Apple has their developers using new OS features almost the moment they ship an OS. So Apple ships a feature in year X, application that could benefit from that feature releases a version in year X+1 and company picks up that version in year X+2. If you have a 13 year cycle then it is more like. Microsoft releases a feature in year Y. Application that could benefit can't use it till year Y+12. Company doesn't pick up the new version till year Y+18. That's a 16 year technology spread. Even if the application is only getting 10-15% better that's a spread of 4.5-9.5x better applications for OSX than Windows given that long a frame. It is unlikely that Microsoft is ever going to drive their ecosystem down to weeks or months like Apple but on a 4 year cycle you would be looking at: Z, Z+2, Z+4. 4 years behind is tolerable 16 is not.

So Microsoft needs to break companies of that habit.

Longer-term companies should try to move as much as they can to pure web-based or at least thin-client software. To the degree that this can be done you greatly reduce the complexity of upgrading client OS or the need for standardization. If you really could get all the software to run in a browser you could even just roll out something like ChromeOS, or give every employee a choice of what they want and have a support policy of reimage first, ask questions later.

That was Sun's position. I think they were right. The problem was always that some percentage of applications were thick client. Usually rolling into enterprise from the home/small business space or needed performance. So in practice it was too hard to do, since thin client needs to be true for 100%.

With the rise of mobile applications the home/small business space is moving back towards a rich client experience. With the rise of touch interfaces performance matters tremendously humans are disturbed by latencies above 1ms with touch / visual (no system is that responsive yet). So I don't think this is going to happen. I suspect IT budgets are just going to go up as the point of least resistance. And that's a very good thing.

Re:XP is a vulnerability itself.

[vandamme]

You forgot the most popular, and most XP-like: Cinnamon. Not for everybody....if you like plainer, there's LXDE.

Re:XP is a vulnerability itself.

[Rich0]

Microsoft releases a feature in year Y. Application that could benefit can't use it till year Y+12.

Sure, but about the only thing in the Windows world that really are OS-version-dependent are device drivers, and even those are remarkably portable. MS supports APIs forever, and I couldn't tell you what APIs any particular program I have uses as an application written for Windows XP generally looks/behaves the same as one written for Win7. Sure, MS did do something fairly new with Metro, but unless you're writing applications for tablets/netbooks I don't think there is really anything you desperately need to use there.

So Microsoft needs to break companies of that habit.

Lots of people say this, but the day that MS breaks companies of this habit is the day MS breaks companies out of being dependent on MS. If a company needs to completely retool its application landscape every 3-4 years in order to stick with Windows, then they really don't need to do all that much more to ditch Windows. That isn't a great position for MS to be in when it comes time to negotiate licenses.

Being able to upgraded once a decade is one of MS's biggest selling points. Then, even if you do upgrade they provide backwards compatibility at the application level basically forever - I wouldn't be surprised if you could run calc.exe from Win3.1 on Windows 7. In practice it doesn't work quite that well, but you can go much further back on Windows than you can on virtually every other OS out there. I can't count the number of times glibc's ABI has been changed in the time that I've been using it, and I'm not really what I'd consider a Linux old-timer.

That was Sun's position. I think they were right. The problem was always that some percentage of applications were thick client. Usually rolling into enterprise from the home/small business space or needed performance. So in practice it was too hard to do, since thin client needs to be true for 100%.

For all but the most performance-intensive operations Citrix works just fine. Companies have cut down on travel so much that many of the traditional demand for offline access is going away as well (plus, being completely offline is becoming increasingly rare). However, on the other hand there is AJAX/etc and it isn't really clear whether the future looks more like Sunfire or Chromebooks.

With the rise of mobile applications the home/small business space is moving back towards a rich client experience. With the rise of touch interfaces performance matters tremendously humans are disturbed by latencies above 1ms with touch / visual (no system is that responsive yet). So I don't think this is going to happen.

True, though one of the things that is also helping with mobile applications is the ditching of a lot of legacy practices that caused all kinds of problems. Mobile apps don't generally have dependencies other than the OS API, which makes them very easy to install/remove/etc. They're highly contained, though at least in Android there is the ability for applications to interact on more SOA-like ways. There is no support for adding device drivers, so the need to maintain OS compatibility really is limited to the API. Oh, and whoever makes the device gets 1/3rd of the application revenue - not sure how well that will go over when a company wants to buy a $2M automation platform with 100 installs...

Re:XP is a vulnerability itself.

[jbolden]

any particular program I have uses as an application written for Windows XP generally looks/behaves the same as one written for Win7.

I agree. That's part of the negative culture that Microsoft has cultivated. That's not true for example of OSX applications. I'm can see Apple releasing a new API feature and it showing in my say 20% of my applications within 3 years. For example .NET 4.5 has much better IPv6 handling. Can I safely use it? Or if I have to do asynchronous communications can I use the cool new subsystems or should I am for backwards compatibility. I do a lot of work with CRM, can I assume Dynamics 2013 and assume a good quality cross browser system or do I need to use 3rd party? In the Windows of the early 1990s and before and OSX today the answer was use the new stuff. In the Windows or 2013 the answer is use the old stuff. And that's why you don't care about Microsoft's new APIs.

Lots of people say this, but the day that MS breaks companies of this habit is the day MS breaks companies out of being dependent on MS. If a company needs to completely retool its application landscape every 3-4 years in order to stick with Windows, then they really don't need to do all that much more to ditch Windows.

I agree with you. Companies that are aggressively and actively upgrading their application stack and monitoring it, are the same companies that could switch 80% of their users to a Linux in 3 years or less. I don't think Windows licenses are in the scheme of things very expensive but I agree that Microsoft in training their customers not to be lazy does fundamentally change the landscape as far as competition.

- I wouldn't be surprised if you could run calc.exe from Win3.1 on Windows 7.

Better than that in many ways. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPnehDhGa14
Microsoft used to care greatly about compatibility. DEC, SUN, IBM... cared more but for the desktop no one was close. Microsoft has cared less in the last decade but no question it was one of their primary advantages. But it wasn't something they cared about nearly as much in the 1980s during a period of rapid improvement. Right now I think the environment is more like the 1980s in home/small business because of mobile / touch technologies, big data analytics and social networking, cloud...

Mobile apps don't generally have dependencies other than the OS API, which makes them very easy to install/remove/etc.

Again very much like the 1980s. It wasn't uncommon for the 1980s apps to ship with their own printer drivers or video drivers for example. In the early 1990s I used Lotus' wonderful Office suite in part because of the terrific font subsystem it used in place of Windows'.

Oh, and whoever makes the device gets 1/3rd of the application revenue - not sure how well that will go over when a company wants to buy a $2M automation platform with 100 installs...

I'd say we know from Apple. If you run your enterprise server and buy those application directly from the ISV then Apple is fine getting 0. If you buy from Apple then they get their 30%. Also more companies are creating web services tied to mobile and apple isn't freaking out as much as they did.

Anyway you are raising a good counter argument. Let me just close with a video from almost 3 years ago showing where Microsoft sees themselves as heading: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6cNdhOKwi0

Re:XP is a vulnerability itself.

[Rich0]

Let me just close with a video from almost 3 years ago showing where Microsoft sees themselves as heading.

Ah, everybody loves charts and hates numbers, but videos like these never show the poor guy playing with page after page of endless numbers and tweaking formulas until the charts look nice, and then sitting there tweaking colors/fonts/etc so the slide looks good. Oh, sure, the autoformat will pick a bunch of colors, but if you're making anything of any complexity you probably want the colors to mean something so that the clip-art over here matches the color of the line over there. This stuff is really tedious, and good luck doing it with a touch-screen...

Re:XP is a vulnerability itself.

[jbolden]

Watch the video completely. You'll see a keyboard being used.

Re:XP is a vulnerability itself.

[Rich0]

Watch the video completely. You'll see a keyboard being used.

I did watch it before commenting. However, I saw very little tedious playing with numbers/colors/formatting/etc, and a lot of click/drag/copy/paste. I don't think I saw more than a sentence typed using a keyboard.

That just isn't the reality of how presentations get made. That is, unless you actually give the computers enough AI that they can create the presentations entirely on their own, and if they did that there would be no need to pay all the people to tap the screen.

Re:XP is a vulnerability itself.

[jbolden]

Well yes, they do show data input and tweaking. So they do demonstrate the interface. I'd agree a major overhaul of the presentation like what happens in the video would in practice involve a major overhaul of all the slides and hence a lot more keyboard work. They don't indicate how long the keyboard guy starts end up working on that presentation after the meeting. Could be days.

Regardless, my point is they show the keyboard interface as existing.

Re:The funny thing is...

[Opportunist]

For varying definitions of "upgrade".

So far, I have not identified any benefits for me from using 7 compared to using XP. But I have trouble with a few pieces of software that refuse to run. Now, please explain to me again why I would possibly WANT Windows7?

An easy choice...

[tambo]

The key to this dilemma comes down to one word:

"Microsoft will face an unenviable choice: Stick to plan and put millions of customers at risk from malware infection,"

I don't think that Microsoft actually considers these people "customers." I think MS very distinctly considers them non-customers of their flagship product, since they have not purchased any of the four latest versions (Vista, 7, 8, 8.1). All of Microsoft's customers should have followed its exhortations over the last five years to spend a few bucks and upgrade dump their now-13-year-old OS.

It's indisputable that across the computing industry, the perceived mandate of legacy support for next-gen OSes is increasingly feeble. In non-desktop markets - e.g., consoles and phones - the presumption was never there to begin with (starting with the Super Nintendo!) Web programming exhibits similar tendencies - how many Java applications from back in the day won't run on modern browsers? And won't that include the entire Silverlight platform in a few years? The tendency is that the river of upgrades will carry all projects of significance along in its current, and the projects that gather on the banks (i.e., don't receive newest-OS upgrades) are... detritus. For right or wrong, that's the view.

Re:An easy choice...

[ColdWetDog]

You do realize that the desktop OS isn't the only product that MS sells?

We're stuck on XP until our EHR vendor gets it's new system out or goes tits up (the more likely scenario at this point). But we've upgraded to Server 2008, the new Office (may His Noodliness crush the designer of the Ribbon through the Colander of Might and reduce him to naked semolina), a bunch of CALs and a whole raft of keyboards (from some bizarre reason).

Microsoft is doing very well with us, thankyouverymuch.

Re:An easy choice...

[Barlo_Mung_42]

Also, a great number of them didn't buy XP either but are running pirated copies.

It is cheaper than programmers at 100K/year

[Anonymous Coward]

And then there is the overhead expenses (roughly the same as salary).

And then there is difficulty in layoffs...

Re:Mac has superior model

[ArcadeMan]

ThinkPad 760XL forever! It's running Windows 98SE, but still running fine.

Re:The funny thing is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Vista was a public relations disaster

Fixed that for you. I ran Vista for years.

99.9999% of the bullshit surrounding Vista was just that. Pure, fucking, unadulterated bullshit, spewed by the same mewling retards who still don't understand why their shitty operating system from well over a decade ago needs to die.

XP is over. Fucking deal with it.

After 13 Years

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, after 13 years, an operating system just starts to wear out. The colors fade, the sounds get scratchy, the error messages use dated language, it starts burning oil and eventually, the tranny goes and you're stuck with a heap.

But hey! I like classics! I'd still be on DOS if the hardware didn't give up the ghost. (The computer's engine went and I couldn''t get a new one - it was like having a Karmann Ghia).

Anyway, Windows is like a Detroit automobile: loaded with bugs and after the warranty period, you are on your own.

So, in January or February I'm gett'n a MacBook and pretend I'm rich.

wga will lose ms 'customers'

[sjwest]

More of linux shop here but the one remaining ms os pc which had updates until november has just been deemed illegal by somebody last month.

I briefly tried to deal with the issue - the supplier hp told me to get lost, and once through to the right region (hp's website royally sucks) the human blamed ms and gave me a wrong phone number for buck passing.

I have put the machine on a list for debian upgrades for next year.

Re:wga will lose ms 'customers'

[sjwest]

Yes i guess it got duplicate keygen'ed by something. Since nobody wants to 'help' loading linux will be my solution

Re:wga will lose ms 'customers'

[Bing Tsher E]

You can always go here and generate an offline-update image. I'm keeping a set of ISOs current regularly, and will be making sure to make the last possible XP update ISO before Microsoft pulls the plug. If you can chase down an ISO of a 'corporate' copy of XP it doesn't need to be 'validated' at all. My machines all have OEM copies, but I still update them offline. It just makes sense to archive away an update set for that day when Microsoft pulls the plug on everything, or even goes out of business.

I also have CP/M-86 installation media, of course. I haven't used the PC-DOS 1.0 disk in over a decade but it probably still boots (original media, box and manual, thankyou) The Windows 1.03 I haven't installed in years either, not since I put it on that Compaq Portable last decade.

Re:wga will lose ms 'customers'

[Bing Tsher E]

I created the anchor tag but then omitted to past the link into it. The Offline Update tool I use is located here .

Re:wga will lose ms 'customers'

[sjwest]

Its been ten plus years since i personally last used a microsoft os.

It will happen to you one day

Re:The funny thing is...

[murdocj]

Faster, smoother, better UI, better supported, easier to use... need more?

Really

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have the $6.5 million Microsoft wants from our organization to upgrade our workstations to Windows 7? $6.5 million is a damn good reason not to upgrade.

Re:Really

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right. Better to save that $6.5 million and invest it for the inevitable $50 million malware cleanup.

Re:Really

[DrLang21]

$6.5 million? Even if you had to pay the retail price for all of those (which you don't) that would mean that you have nearly 22,000 workstations that are connected to the internet. What the hell does your company do that it has that many computers operating but doesn't have the easy ability to invest $6.5 million???

Re:Really

[Immerman]

It's not necessarily about not having the ability, there's the opportunity cost to consider - do you have any idea what more profitable investments they could make with that $6.5 million?

Re:Really

[Anne Thwacks]

OTOH think how much you could get opensource programmers to do to Linux with that much money :-)

Re:Really

[goodmanj]

Do you have the $6.5 million Microsoft wants from our organization to upgrade our workstations to Windows 7? $6.5 million is a damn good reason not to upgrade.

Oh look guys, it's Target's CTO posting to Slashdot! Good to see you man, but I'm surprised you found time to hang out with us.

Re: Really

[Immerman]

I think you may be misunderstanding the term. I have the resources to do either A or B, but not both. If I do A then the value of B is the opportunity cost, if I do B then the value of A is. So the opportunity cost of an OS upgrade is all the profits that could have been generated by a business upgrade, and the opportunity cost of doing something else with the money is an increased risk of a malware disaster.

Also, your question is making the implicit assumption that an expensive malware disaster is a foregone conclusion if they don't upgrade, and that the risk is completely eliminated if they do. The reality is that the risk exists in either case - an upgrade is just one method of reducing (not eliminating) the risk, and it must be decided on a case by case basis whether it's a cost effective one.

Really? A gigantic corporation is one of the *first* ones I would expect to complain. Firstly they understand the risks not upgrading better than most, and secondly they are accustomed to being able to throw their weight around to get at last some of what they want. So, faced with extensive costs to upgrade their infrastructure from XP they have a few options:
1) shut up and swallow the costs
2) don't upgrade, and deal with the costs of increasing other security measures
3) Complain loudly and publicly, and perhaps convince Microsoft to extend the EOL for another few years, thus getting a few more years of return on their existing IT investment. (hey, it's worked a couple times already).

Seems to me (3) has by far the best return on investment, so it's *exactly* what I would expect corporations big enough to throw their weight around to do. Only if that fails does it make sense to upgrade. And if they have to replace their infrastructure anyway then maybe they should be looking at moving to Linux and avoiding this scenario in the future. Even if they have no intention of actually moving in that direction, officially looking at it may help win extra concessions Microsoft.

Re:Really

[jbolden]

Why would Microsoft want to assist you in not paying them $6.5m?

Re: Really

[jbolden]

They are going to fail. Microsoft has made it clear they are not backing off. It is important that Microsoft establish that the extensions game was special for XP and that the days of staying on one OS for years and years are over. Microsoft needs to establish their dates have credibility and their product roadmaps have credibility. Go back to leading the ecosystem like they did in the 1990s and not be led around by large customers.

The large client doesn't really have any weight to throw around. The cost of an upgrade is a fraction of the cost of a platform switch.

Re:Really

[EngnrFrmrlyKnownAsAC]

Oh, please. The cost of upgrading a fleet of workstations isn't just the licen$ing. You've assumed total cost of ~$300/station which seems pretty low-ball.

And just because you operate a huge fleet of workstations doesn't mean you can "easily" invest $6.5M to upgrade them all. My home town's school district probably has tens of thousands of workstations across their 50+ schools. You think they have a few million sitting around somewhere?

Re: Really

[jbolden]

I've been doing upgrades for companies for two decades. I understand what's involved. I also understand that prior to XP it was an expected reoccurring expense. As does Microsoft.

As for people switching platforms. A platform switch is 20x the cost or more quite often. Reread your own arguments and consider them in light of a platform switch.

Re:Really

[DrLang21]

That's a pretty damn big school district if they have that many workstations. They should have started planning for this years ago doing it in phases. But that kind of short sightedness is typical of government. Alternatively they could cut the internet or switch to Linux. It is much easier for high school lab computers to migrate to Linux because of the lack of need for highly specialized software.

Re:Really

[mikael]

I'd imagine they are running animation or CAD applications like Maya or PTC Creo Parametric for the design of cars and aeroplanes. In which case the purchase of the hardware is factored into the budget of the project. The PC's have to be officially approved by the software vendor for support reasons. So you then have to make a purchase of a several thousand PC's to make sure everything remains consistent for the engineers.

The craptastic Windows 8 is Microsoft's time bomb

[JudeanPeople'sFront]

The problem is that you can't upgrade to Windows 7 anymore. Also, you can't buy a new computer with Windows 7. You have to go to Windows 8. Which it's crap, compared to Windows 7. Whoever upgraded to Windows 7 is holding on to it and isn't going to move to Windows 8 until... never.

What I would do if MS

[jmccue]

Sometime in Jan or Feb 2014, MS should send a patch to XP with a nag popup. The popup will state "XP End of Life April 8, 2014. Please upgrade or you will loose internet connectivity". The number of times this popup appears increases the closer you get to Apr 8. Come April 8, all ports on XP are closed permanently. This illustrates why Open Source OSs are preferable to closed OSs. With Linux/*BSD... one can, if desired and have the knowledge, patch it themselves if they need to run a very old release of a system.

Re:Mac has superior model

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an iMac that I actually really do like. Its used primarily, now, as my TV / Media Center.

I haven't been able to upgrade OS X for 2-3 versions now...my video card isn't supported. I can replace that, though, right? Nope.

The last OS "upgrade" I did get got rid of Front Row. This was the software that lets you use the little mac remote control to operate a full screen menu system, access and play all your media, etc. Think XBMC but quality. That was pretty much how I controlled the thing. Now I have to use mouse and keyboard and zoom in using accessibility features to see the screen to find media.

Thanks, Apple!

Re:Mac has superior model

[nojayuk]

I have hardware in a cupboard that failed after a year or two or in some cases even earlier but I never bothered to jump through the hoops to get it fixed or replaced under warranty. I also have working computing gear that dates back to the 70s. That fact that some hardware has survived a decade doesn't mean that all (or even most) hardware will do so.

Businesses usually replace a desktop box every four or five years, laptops maybe every two or three. Any five-year-old desktop running XP or similar will have ageing components, hard drives wearing out mechanically, fans dying etc. which makes them ripe for replacement. They also probably don't support affordable amounts of RAM (typically 8 or 16GB) which can make a serious difference to performance in 64-bit operating systems -- nearly all XP installs were for the 32-bit version which limits out hard at 3.5GB. XP also has the 2TB drive volume limit and no TRIM for SSDs. Older boxes have no hardware support for SATA-3 and usually poor support for SATA generally. They may still be AGP rather than supporting any version of PCI-e, no USB 3.0 ports, the onboard video is crude and slow etc. etc.

Re:Mac has superior model

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just so wrong... Apple supports only their last two versions of OS X. 10.6 will be unsupported very shortly, and has been out less than 5 years. Combine that with the fact that newer machines often REQUIRE the newest Apple OS, and that puts Enterprise in a situation where they either fragment the hell out of the OS their userbase is on, or constantly do OS upgrades every year on the entire fleet.

Re:The funny thing is...

[linebackn]

If windows 7/8 wasn't a downgrade from XP in every respect,

Wrong. Windows 7 is better than XP in every way

(For the pedants: "Except size on disk")

On the other hand there is the abomination known as Windows 8.

And that is all one can easily find in most stores these days.

Microsoft doesn't have to do anything.

[techvet]

The procrastinators need to get off their a** and upgrade their systems, replace them with *nix/MacOS boxes, or whatever it takes to get off Windows XP. Windows XP is an 11-year old OS and users have known for years that this date was coming. For users to be upset at Microsoft is the height of absurdity. Apple gives their operating systems significantly shorter support and yet nobody complains about them.

Re:The funny thing is...

[CronoCloud]

(A couple of days ago I tried to install Linux on a 7 year old office machine which runs office apps just perfectly under XP, and my first experience on reboot was a login screen where you had to wait about half a second for each character to appear. Not good.)

Should have installed a 7 year old version of Linux.... I kid, I kid. The thing was probably trying to use accerlated X on the desktop. Which distro was it? Try an XFCE based variant/spin, that should do the trick.

Give away free upgrades to Vista

[jfdavis668]

They must have a copies sitting around, no one bought them when it was released.

Alternate solution

[wbr1]

Open source XP and let the community patch it. And I am only half joking!

Re:The craptastic Windows 8 is Microsoft's time bo

[flightmaker]

This netbook I bought nearly two years ago arrived with windows 7 on it. I tried it out, just for fun, and oh boy what crap it was. I seem to remember it being so sluggish it was a bad joke to ever install it on this computer. Today, I'm running Linux Mint Maya 64 with Mate on it, which has turned it into a truly excellent, very portable, responsive little computer. It even fits inside a hotel room safe. I just can't think why anybody uses Microsoft.

Re:First...

[Mister Liberty]

First...

to upgrade!

To Linux, I hope?

If you think Win 8 is crap

[Anonymous Coward]

...you haven't used it.

Re:If you think Win 8 is crap

[rubycodez]

Used it for two months at work, it is indeed crap.

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.

Re:If you think Win 8 is crap

[0123456]

Troll rating: 1/10.

Re:If you think Win 8 is crap

[TheGoodNamesWereGone]

My 100k employee company is rolling out Windows 8.

You mean Microsoft?

Re:If you think Win 8 is crap

[toddestan]

I've used it. The interface is crap. Under the hood, it seems be a leaner, meaner version of the Windows 7 kernel with a bunch of honestly good improvements over Windows 7. It's too bad about the interface.

Re:First...

[Runaway1956]

Not if you've just completed upgrading. I upgraded to Suse Linux long ago. Has it been a decade? Yep, more than a decade actually.

So, which flavor of Linux are you using? Or, did you go with a BSD? We're all curious, I'm sure!

As for myself, I've left Suse behind, currently running Sabayon.

uname -a
Linux sabayon.home 3.11.0-sabayon #1 SMP Tue Nov 26 08:21:55 UTC 2013 x86_64 AMD Phenom(tm) 9850 Quad-Core Processor AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux

But our princess is in White Castle

[tepples]

There will be no second act here if the protagonist solves the dilemma in the opening minutes sir.

Of course there will. Various ways for this to happen include the man behind the man, minor crime reveals major plot, etc.

Re:But our princess is in White Castle

[DangerOnTheRanger]

Linking to TVTropes? Some of us had things to do today, man.

What 8-bit software on XP?

[tepples]

XP supports legacy 16 and 8 bit stuff

What 8-bit stuff are you talking about? The only 8-bit software that runs on Windows XP runs in an emulator such as FCEUX. The 16-bit software runs in a virtual machine anyway, called NTVDM (for MS-DOS software) or WOWExec (for Windows 3.x software).

Re:What 8-bit software on XP?

[Runaway1956]

Every emulator introduces risk. 8 bit is insecure, but XP runs it. 16 bit is insecure, but XP runs it. Today, 32 bit is relatively insecure, compared with 64 bit, but Win7 maintains an emulator to that it can be run. Windows on Windows.

At least, they have dropped support for the 8 and 16 bit stuff.

Re:What 8-bit software on XP?

[Holistic Missile]

I actually ran Visicalc directly on Windows thru XP and even Vista, at the beginning of any Excel training that I've done for the last 15 or so years, until I no longer had a 32-bit OS to run it on. The copyright notice says (c) 1978-1981; I'm pretty sure it was 8-bit PC XT software, and it ran directly on Windows thru Vista, as long as it was a 32-bit OS.

It is an interesting way to start out the class, and it's fun to point out that what you get for ~$100.00 has sure changed! Now I have to run it on an emulator, due to Windows 7+ only being offered in 64 bit versions.

Re:What 8-bit software on XP?

[tepples]

Every emulator introduces risk.

When Nintendo used an emulator to run NES games in Animal Crossing, e-Reader, Classic NES Series, and Virtual Console, what risk was there? When Atlus and Jaleco used the PocketNES emulator to run NES games in compilation rereleases for Game Boy Advance, and Konami used the PocketNES emulator to run NES games in Contra 4 for Nintendo DS, what risk was there?

What 8-bit stuff are you talking about?

8 bit is insecure, but XP runs it.

You didn't answer my question. What 8-bit software are you thinking of that 32-bit Windows XP runs and 64-bit Windows 8 does not?

Re:What 8-bit software on XP?

[Runaway1956]

I may be mistaken. I had emulators in mind when I mentioned 8 bit, but I can't find any documentation that the emulator itself is actually 8 bit. The emulator can run 8 bit code, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the emulator is 8 bit, now does it?

How exactly do Atari and other emulators work on XP?

Re:What 8-bit software on XP?

[ImprovOmega]

At least, they have dropped support for the 8 and 16 bit stuff.

Not so. Basically all consumer desktops are shipping 64-bit by default, but Windows 7, and even Windows 8 come with 32-bit editions that still include the 16-bit emulators to run legacy software.

Re:What 8-bit software on XP?

[spire3661]

Yep, have 32-bit windows 8 on my wife's Asus T-100.

Re:What 8-bit software on XP?

[hairyfeet]

Uhhh..Win 7 comes in 32 bit as does Win 8.1, not that anybody actually buys win 8 on purpose,just to illustrate the point.

Re:What 8-bit software on XP?

[Pentium100]

At least, they have dropped support for the 8 and 16 bit stuff.

And one of the first things I installed in my new PC (with Win7/64bit) was XP Mode, so I could run the 16bit programs I need.

Re:What 8-bit software on XP?

[dbIII]

What 8-bit stuff are you talking about?

Evil fucking security dongle stuff that needs to run before the application you've paid for will run. There's even 8 bit code in some of the USB stuff! Also braindead installers that were still coming with new software when Vista was the latest thing.

Re:What 8-bit software on XP?

[toddestan]

Furthermore, it's not really an XP thing anyway. You can still run all the old 16-bit stuff on the 32-bit versions of Windows Vista, 7, and 8 anyway.

Install Classic Shell

[tepples]

Well maybe if Microsoft would quit fucking with the GUI

Then unfuck it with Classic Shell already.

Re: Install Classic Shell

[DigiShaman]

For home or personal use, ok. Though I would never deploy any 3rd party mods to the core GUI in a corporate setting. It's just one patch away from getting the ban hammer by Microsoft. That, or an unintentional compatibility rift is now formed. Either way, it's not something you want as an IT manager to be responsible for. Then again, I wouldn't be deploying Windows 8 in the first place.

Re: Install Classic Shell

[Clsid]

I would deploy Windows 8 for the same reason I would deploy the latest Office. They both suck in my humble opinion, but the whole world seem stuck with Microsoft solutions and Windows 8 is noticeable faster than Windows 7, so there is that at least.

Classic Shell is good for personal use, but even the weird Windows 8 interface still does the job. After certain point in your life you realize that you are being a geek for worrying too much about petty stuff like how an OS looks or feel. The world would be a lot better off if everybody used Linux and OpenDocument to save their stuff, but that simply won't happen on a large scale, so just go with whatever the industry is using and be done with it. Seriously, in the end most of your users could not care less.

Re:Install Classic Shell

[MightyYar]

Classic Shell is wonderful, but does not totally unfuck the GUI. It also does not un-gimp the formerly useful Windows backup.

Re:Install Classic Shell

[Pentium100]

While Classic Shell makes Windows8 usable, the UI still looks awful with the borderless windows. And unlike Win7, there is no "classic" UI anymore. I have tried WindowBlinds - even that software cannot properly replicate 2000 or XP look.

Copying the explorer.exe from Win7 and disabling the compositor results in a Windows 7 basic look, which I would be OK with, however, disabling the compositor disables the metro UI (not a problem) and some configuration UI (problem).

Windows 7 will be the new XP...

Re: Install Classic Shell

[kermidge]

"....worrying too much about petty stuff like how an OS looks or feel...."

Excuse me, but, no. The 'look and feel' were mostly developed at Xerox PARC and continued at DRI with GEM. The windowing GUI was entirely fact-based upon years of careful research done at universities around the country, from basic psychology/human factors outward, and often using grants from DoD and DoE (AEC, I think, at the time); it started with the fundamentals of perception, of visual- cortex shape and color acquisition (icon development), of hand-eye coordination (mouse, light-pen, etc.; menu style and list length, conceptual grouping), control - click, scroll, drag, and the whole shebang analyzed to a fair-thee-well for real, live, measured usability, all feeding into a synthesis that gave us the desktop metaphor with the then-standard classes of icons (file cabinets, etc.) in the computer space.

Much of the original research was done in search of more effective display and control presentations for operators at nuclear power plants and for pilots, as some examples (and along the way the "seven digits for seven steps can be remembered" was validated). For a while Navy and Air Force were largest customers - split roughly twixt HUD/glass cockpit and engineering (nuke ops and missile control; the HUD for sensor integration, target acquisition and fire control for Abrams came out of this as well.) [I don't know how much of the background on all this is still out there, I haven't looked for any of it in almost fifteen years.] All told, nigh twenty years of various pieces of research from myriad sources coalesced to give us, among other things, a basic useful way of handling user-facing chores at the computer.

Current GUI - excuse me, UX design - is willy-nilly throwing much of this hard-won knowledge and fact-based, carefully-crafted interface design parameter set overboard based on.... well, I really don't know what it's based on, but it's not done for greater ease of use by the end user.

Look and feel is precisely the issue for those who spend the workaday in front of a computer working with it. Do whatever it is that needs doing under the hood; the focus ought always be the easiest and most pleasantly effective experience by the person using the software on the machine - and this includes being able to readily and comfortably see and use those parts of the OS they interface - larger window borders for easier re-sizing, scalable fonts, easily-apprehended icons, what have you, for just the simpler elements to start with.

I've watched for forty years and more the widening disconnect between those who spec, design, and build stuff and those who have to use the crap that's churned out - from the location of a drain plug in an oil pan to menu selection of a popular word mangling program.

If somebody is gonna design something new and useful and good, go out in the world and use what's already there, until your knuckles are bloody or you've got eyestrain - then go make better. Please do not gift me with the aftermath of what you pull out of your nethermost because "oooh, shiny."

Forget that XP is software. Pretend it's a table

[quixote9]

Or something. For people with zero brains about software, security doesn't register. There's this object they need, and so long as they don't kick the legs out from under it, it should work.

Then along comes the seller (the whole "licensing" concept doesn't register either) and says "I'm gonna let people into your office to smash up your table. And all the crazy stuff you put on top of it."

That's just Not Done in the world of tables, and likewise for software in a lot of people's minds.

Add something about, "Pay up. I wouldn't want anything to happen to that nice little business you got there." and to plenty of people it's going to look like extortion, not the obvious result of the fact that software is not actually like a table.

(Personally, I'd want to say, "Move to open source. You can do what you want there." But I know that's even stupider than Microsoft. What are the chances someone who doesn't want to move from Windows to Windows is going to move all the way to some extrasolar weirdness?)

Xubuntu

[tepples]

When I became fed up with Un(usabil)ity in the Ubuntu 11.04 days, I did sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop and never looked back. So what AC wrote is true: the owner of a PC running GNU/Linux isn't forced into a particular GUI in the same way that iPad and PlayStation owners are forced into the selection that those platforms offer.

Re:Xubuntu

[Clsid]

But if you need to manage an engineering office, wait until users start crying out for their AutoCAD, or even worse, propietary software created with god knows what outdated version of Visual Basic. Then the whole advantage of deploying Linux suddenly disappears. Now if you are in a software company, that's a whole different story.

Re:Xubuntu

[tepples]

Users who require proprietary software not compatible with Wine get either Windows 8 + Classic Shell or Windows 7. Their labor is probably more expensive than the Windows license anyway. The rest get GNU/Linux.

Re:Xubuntu

[dbIII]

I've got a version of AutoCAD "lite" running under WINE on linux which won't even install on MS Win7. I'm not sure about old versions of full AutoCAD but they probably have the same stupid 8 bit code problem. The whole advantage of upgrading MS software disappeared for a few things (eg. propietary software created with god knows what outdated version of Visual Basic) some time ago. That's why I still have a win2k box in storage that gets brought out every year or two. Parallel port "security dongles" and draconian licence rules get in the way of virtual machines.

iTunes Store

[tepples]

it's been a very long time since I've seen a piece of software that runs on Windows XP that doesn't run on WINE as well

You mean like the client for the iTunes Store? You can't buy media in an Internet-disconnected VM, and the last time I checked AppDB, iTunes was rated "garbage". I've already checked Google Play and Amazon MP3, and the song I want to buy isn't there.

Re:iTunes Store

[SeaFox]

The music isn't locked to computer. Buy it on another machine and just copy the files over.

Hey, if you're running this in a VM wouldn't it be possible to make the Music folder a shared folder on the host machine? Buy on host (or another VM), it gets added to the shared folder, then you just have to add it to the library on the playback VM.

Re:iTunes Store

[tepples]

The music isn't locked to computer. Buy it on another machine

iTunes won't run in Wine on the other machine either. One would have to install a virtual machine and buy a copy of Windows to run in it.

Re:iTunes Store

[NoImNotNineVolt]

Have you tried The Pirate Bay? I hear web browsers and bittorrent clients run fine under Linux.

Re:iTunes Store

[tepples]

A Mac would be cheaper than the $750 to $150,000 fine for copyright infringement.

Re:iTunes Store

[NoImNotNineVolt]

I think that in reality you'll find that the fine is much closer to $0 for most acts of copyright infringement.

Re:iTunes Store

[SeaFox]

Wasn't the problem to start with that we didn't want to keep a certain Windows XP box on the network because of lack of updates? Sounds like you already own a copy of Windows.

You at some point here you're gonna have to decide which you want more: this one song you can only get on iTunes, or to keep an unpatched Windows XP machine off the Internet forever. It's not like having it online for 10 minutes while you use iTunes is going to doom the entire thing.

Re:First...

[SuricouRaven]

"AuthenticAMD"

I'm struck by an image of the AMD logo materializing a hand just to give the finger to GenuineIntel.

Peripheral compatibility

[tepples]

Perhaps stockpiling machines compatible with existing paid-for peripherals and paid-for proprietary software is cheaper than re-buying multi-thousand-dollar peripherals and multi-thousand-dollar proprietary software.

Re:Peripheral compatibility

[dbIII]

I suspect it didn't happen since XP had a very long tail of software sales and a lot of current hardware is still coming out with WinXP drivers.

Re:Peripheral compatibility

[Rich0]

You don't expect >10 years of active support for IT systems unless you're running a freaking nuclear power plant.

Not entirely true. Granted, things today have gotten a bit better due to all the pain companies felt back in the early 2000s getting off of NT, but there still are a lot of software packages out there that only support a single operating system.

Story usually goes like this. Company buys a $10M ProGadget 7 which comes with a PC running FooOS 3 and ControlSoft 12. Then 5 years later IT says that FooOS 3 has got to go and you need to upgrade to FooOS 5 within two years. The guy who uses the ProGadget 7 calls up the vendor and the vendor tells them that ControlSoft 12 only works on FooOS 3. So the guy who needs the ProGadget 7 to do his job tells IT he can't comply. IT then does some homework and tells the gadget operator that there is no problem - they just have to get a ProGadget 9 which works with ControlSoft 17 and that works fine on FooOS 5. The problem is that a ProGadget 9 costs another $10M and the original purchase only made sense when amortized over 10 years. The competition is just living with FooOS 3 so they can either raise their prices and go out of business, or not use the ProGadget and go out of business.

Re:The funny thing is...

[TubeSteak]

So far, I have not identified any benefits for me from using 7 compared to using XP. But I have trouble with a few pieces of software that refuse to run. Now, please explain to me again why I would possibly WANT Windows7?

Just because it seems to be the elephant in the room: How about you'd want Windows 7 for improved security.

Windows Vista SP1 was fine

[tepples]

Windows Vista was fine as of the first service pack, but it never recovered from the PR disaster despite Microsoft's attempt to rebrand SP1 as Mojave.

Re:Windows Vista SP1 was fine

[Luckyo]

I suppose it was fine in the "it's not longer a gangrenous limb, it's just crippled after the operation and hurts like hell, but it's not longer life threatening" kind of way.

Re:Windows Vista SP1 was fine

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it really was pretty shit too. Vista had a lot of under the hood improvements that were great for sysadmins and it had good 64bit support, but it still sucked.

Source: I ran Vista from the launch of SP1 up until the RTM of 7 (Even got it early because of a volume license)

I ran 64bit Vista for the only reason you should - You wanted a computer that had access to more than 3.5GB of ram, and in reality take advantage of more than 2. (32bit windows can't use more than 3.5ish GB of memory because of reserved memory ranges for PCI Express. Also, the split user/kernel memory model made pretty much only the lower 2GB useable for use applications. PS - If you're going to argue about PAE on 32bit windows. Stop. You have no idea what you're talking about. It does not work like that and it doesn't do what you think it does.)

That said, Vista SP1 is still a piece of garbage. About 2 years ago I found my old Vista DVD and I thought I'd throw it on to a system I was putting together for light duty occational use. Why buy another 7 license? I fell in to the same trap. "Vista was OK after SP1, right? Yeah, that was just bad PR" Holy shit was I every fucking wrong. Clean install, SP1, fully patched, all current drivers..

Complete, utter shit. Takes forever too boot. Sluggish UI, hard drive pages nonstop with nothing running, totally unresponsive. This is on a 3.0 ghz core2 duo with a nice hard drive and a current Nvidia GPU. Not new machine by any stretch of the imagination, but it should not have run like garbage. After being completely disgusted with wasting my time I thew on 7.

Night and day. No UI lag, system boots quickly, no issues whatsoever. I was reminded of why the 7 launch was so exciting. Windows 7 works /really/ well. There was a reason windows vista achieved a business adoption rate of less than 9%

Re:The funny thing is...

[Khyber]

Are you fucking stupid? In Windows 7, right click your program 'Run As Administrator' is right fucking there. and works without any issues.

run it in a VM

[Anonymous Coward]

Use a firewall on the host to protect network access.

What's the alternative?

[tepples]

If you've made yourself dependent on hardware only supported by one OS, an OS which sucks, then you've set yourself up for failure.

Then what's the alternative to setting oneself up for failure? I was under the impression that multi-thousand-dollar printers, multi-thousand-dollar CNC machines, and the like typically weren't sold with OS X compatibility or compatibility with forthcoming versions of Windows as a bullet point. Peripheral manufacturers would prefer that end users re-buy peripherals.

Re:What's the alternative?

[drinkypoo]

Then what's the alternative to setting oneself up for failure? I was under the impression that multi-thousand-dollar printers, multi-thousand-dollar CNC machines, and the like typically weren't sold with OS X compatibility or compatibility with forthcoming versions of Windows as a bullet point.

Those systems tend to include a Windows machine. If the vendor doesn't promise updates, you have to treat it as a black box and prepare to exclude it from your network in the future, with an air gap. Sad, but predictable. You can compare to earlier CNC machines which ran DOS. Those didn't try to do as much, though, so the OS wasn't as much of a problem.

Re:What's the alternative?

[NIK282000]

So maybe its a bad idea to do business with peripheral makers who's long term plan is for you to have to re-buy their devices rather than offer long term support to let you use them with modern systems. The idea that you will never have to upgrade your OS is just plain stupid, since computers started they have never stopped being updated. When you pick a system have FORWARD compatibility in mind.

Re:What's the alternative?

[Rich0]

So maybe its a bad idea to do business with peripheral makers who's long term plan is for you to have to re-buy their devices rather than offer long term support to let you use them with modern systems. The idea that you will never have to upgrade your OS is just plain stupid, since computers started they have never stopped being updated. When you pick a system have FORWARD compatibility in mind.

Sometimes you just don't get a choice. For companies that make state-of-the-art instrumentation/automation/etc the PC used to control the thing is almost an afterthought, and for the buyers that is just as much the case. When you are spending $500k on a scientific widget capable of doing something no other vendor offers, are you going to decide to not invest in the capability simply because the OS will be obsolete before the investment pays for itself? If so, you'll find your place as an industry leader usurped by somebody who does.

Typically in these cases my company will firewall the living daylights or air-gap the equipment. Sure, we do look at the OS support when we buy equipment, but that only helps if you have a viable alternative. If you need some piece of equipment to be relevant then you're going to buy it warts and all.

Re:First...

[webmistressrachel]

I've been using Lunix / BSD variants for decades; it's a sarcastic first post, motivated by the empty discussion thread I was presented with. Sorry to disappoint...

Re:The funny thing is...

[Luckyo]

It was significantly worse on many fronts and better on some others.

Minuses:
1. Abortion of a start menu (luckily they kept the old one in the system files for most part so it could be restored with applications like classic start menu).
2. Slow and a huge memory hog, requiring at least 1GB of extra RAM for overhead than XP. Especially noticeable in games where official system requirements for 7 where almost always "XP requirements + 1GB RAM".
3. New click-based rather than old icon based system menus. It's like jury-rigging web interface into desktop with all its problems.
4. UAC being utterly retarded in spite of all the fixes. Luckily it's easily turned off or at least reconfigured to have some sanity.

Pluses:
1. DX11. Jury rigged to not support XP to sell the OS. It worked.
2. Functional 64-bit OS.
3. Improved search functionality. The only significant improvement in OS over XP in terms of usability. Some argue it replaced tree style start menu with some success. Considering the existence and wide usage of applications like classic start menu, I'd argue that it didn't.

Then you have some things that are pretty much unknown, like the supposed under hood improvements (it's pretty scary to think that 7 requires a boatload more ram and noticeably better CPU to run as well as XP even with all the supposed improvements, just how slow would it be without them?) Some also like the Aero look, though that was axed in 8.

Re:The funny thing is...

[Runaway1956]

"Except ability to run about 20 years' worth of software and on far older and newer hardware, since it has had such a long service life and represented the pinnacle of backward compatibility before MS decided DOS-based software (Win98) has surely all been retired."

PLEASE! Just give up on all that 20 year old software! All that backward compatibility, and legacy support, is exactly what crippled XP more than anything else! Without all that legacy support, XP would have started out more secure than it did. JUST GIVE IT UP!! I don't want or need 20 year old software running on my system. If you really, truly believe that you need software that old, then rebuild it!!

It's not like software development is a forgotten art from 5000 years ago. Hire someone, or hire a team, to rebuild the functionality that you need. Or, do it yourself.

Stop expecting the world to operate in some twisted time warp that suits your own particular needs.

Re:The craptastic Windows 8 is Microsoft's time bo

[PPH]

If there was a way that you could transfer that Windows 7 copy and license to some disgruntled Windows 8 user, you could probably turn a tidy profit.

Re:The funny thing is...

[flyingfsck]

"A couple of days ago I tried to install Linux on a 7 year old office machine which runs office apps just perfectly under XP, and my first experience on reboot was a login screen where you had to wait about half a second for each character to appear. Not good."

Note that the install program was Linux and it worked just fine - you installed the thing didn't you? So your problem is likely that you installed a desktop system that requires a modern graphical card. If you would choose LXDE or XFCE then it will be OK.

Windows 3.1

[tepples]

If your 16-bit code is as 16-bit as you think it is, why can't you run it in Windows 3.1 in DOSBox?

Re:Windows 3.1

[tepples]

Buy a floppy drive and a set of Windows 3.1 install media on eBay.

Re:The craptastic Windows 8 is Microsoft's time bo

[slashmydots]

Hey genius, basically every netbook in the world ships with 1GB of RAM and Win7 needs 0.9 to boot. Also the chip is equivilant to a 2001 Pentium 4. So maybe you're just an idiot for buying it and it's not Microsoft's fault. Hmmmm.

Nearly 15 years of free (as in beer) upgrades

[tepples]

no vendor is talking about having anywhere near a decade+ of support in the near future, either.

Canonical offers free (as in beer) upgrades from one version of Ubuntu to the next. So just starting from 4.10 (Warty Warthog) through five years after the next LTS (14.04, Trusty Tahr) includes nearly fifteen years of support from October 2004 through April 2019. Paid upgrades don't count.

Become an iFanboy

[Lawrence_Bird]

This never happens to any of the iCult as Apple obsoletes them completely every two years. The iSteve is laughing in his grave.. "13 years of support!?! Are you fucking crazy?"

And not for nothin I had XP until this past year and did not have one virus and did not run any active virus protection. Once or twice a year I would download one and do a full scan only to have cookies removed. I'm still amazed at how some people seem unable to keep their pc clean. Probably a good reason not to have sex with them either!

Re:Become an iFanboy

[steelfood]

Probably a good reason not to have sex with them either!

I imagine banging your PC would cause certain irreparable harm to your nether regions.

Re:The funny thing is...

[Nyder]

For varying definitions of "upgrade".

So far, I have not identified any benefits for me from using 7 compared to using XP. But I have trouble with a few pieces of software that refuse to run. Now, please explain to me again why I would possibly WANT Windows7?

Since I am a big PC gamer and I have to run Windows to play the games I want to play, I run Windows 7 because it's supports my DX11 video card. Windows XP only supports up to DX9.

But that being said I don't pay MS anything for their OS's. I never will.

Re:There is no difference..

[rubycodez]

that's an absurdly ignorant statement. In the realm of MS Windows, there are huge differences between the desktop and server versions. Resource and user limits, management applications, and advanced internetworking applications.

Re: Mac has superior model

[rubycodez]

we have an old e-mac at home, no malware on it yet and its used to watch movies and anime on sites all over the world. try that with a windows box that has no firewall, antivirus, antiadware...

What's the defference?

[BringsApples]

Maybe this is a naive question, but why worry so much about "hackers" anymore after MS stops supporting XP? Hackers are there to hack (right? doesn't "hack" mean to try, try, try, try, try, BINGO! ?) And if it's malware that's you're worried about, isn't that what antivirus/antimalware software is for?

Also (tongue in cheek), what's the deference between a malware-ridden XP box and a Windows 8 box?

Re:Wine is fine - seriously

[rubycodez]

wine is far too difficult for a typical home user with XP to set up.

The 8086 is 16-bit

[tepples]

I'm pretty sure it was 8-bit PC XT software

I thought the 8086 CPU in the IBM PC XT was 16-bit. What makes you think it's 8-bit?

Re:The 8086 is 16-bit

[Bing Tsher E]

The 8088 in the IBM PC-XT was 16 bit, but it was limited to an 8-bit external IO path. That made it easier for it to use the existing 8 bit expansion chips (8255, 8253, 8251, etc.)

It's the same as the 80386sx, which was a full 32 bit processor interally but had limited 16-bit external IO to reduce cost.

If IBM had used an 8086 processor, they would have either had to use an expensive 16-bit EPROM or twice as many 8-bit EPROMs for the BIOS, as one example of why the choice was made. Back at product introduction (the plain PC, not the PC-XT) the PC sold with as little as 16K of DRAM on the motherboard, with sockets to upgrade to the full 64K.

Re:The 8086 is 16-bit

[Holistic Missile]

I was thinking it was still an 8088 - too long ago to remember, too lazy to look it up! :-)

Re:The 8086 is 16-bit

[Futurepower(R)]

The 8086 was Intel's first 16-bit processor.

Re:The 8086 is 16-bit

[Holistic Missile]

Thanks for all of that information. In any case, it is kind of fun running 30 year old software at the start of a class to show the beginnings of the spreadsheet...

By the way, you can download a working copy of Visicalc from Dan Bricklin's website: http://www.danbricklin.com/history/vcexecutable.htm

(It is really just a curiosity at this point...)

Re:The 8086 is 16-bit

[tepples]

They had an 8088, a strange beast with internal 16-bit registers and 8-bit I/O.

So does that make the TurboGrafx-16 and Super NES likewise 8-bit because of the CPU's 8-bit data bus? Does it make the Nintendo 64 8-bit because of its 8-bit-wide interface to RAM?

Re:The 8086 is 16-bit

[Bengie]

8bit IO is just the width, kind of like how modern Intel CPUs use a 4bit interconnect.

Re:The 8086 is 16-bit

[Osgeld]

they did use the 86 in XTs the 88 was in the previous PC model like the 5051

Re:The 8086 is 16-bit

[Fencepost]

Back at product introduction (the plain PC, not the PC-XT) the PC sold with as little as 16K of DRAM on the motherboard, with sockets to upgrade to the full 64K

And DIP switches to indicate the amount of memory installed.

Re:The 8086 is 16-bit

[pipedwho]

You're right the XT was definitely an 8088. It wasn't until the PS/2 came out that they used an 8086.

I remember, because I replaced the 8088 in my XT with an NEC V20. The V30 was their 8086 variant.

Re:The 8086 is 16-bit

[smash]

In other words, yes, the 8088 was a "16 bit" CPU,albeit with a slow external bus.

Re:The 8086 is 16-bit

[smash]

not so strange. the 68000 was 32 bit internally with a 16 bit IO bus. As was the 386SX.

Re:The 8086 is 16-bit

[Douglas Goodall]

Actually the decision to use the 8088 was mostly about the Display Writer, which was a well selling 8086 based word processing system that IBM sold for over $10,000 each. The Display Writer blazed in comparison with the PC, and also IBM picked EasyWriter because it was a word processor, but not any real competition for the DW. The PC was created by IBM's "Entry Level Systems Division". Their goal was to get people started, then sell them something that actually had more power such as the subsequent AT.

Re:The last patch Tuesday from Microsoft should be

[rubycodez]

that project is in alpha. It is not suitable, stable or useful for running any real application, and won't be in the next five years.

Needless expense

[sjbe]

People who are still using XP day-to-day are idiots and Microsoft shouldn't encourage them.

Really? People are idiots for not spending money on new equipment that adds precisely zero additional feature that they need? We should be forced to upgrade to Microsoft's latest software because not upgrading doesn't add to Microsoft's profits? My company uses XP on the majority of our computers and there is nothing whatsoever in Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8 that is necessary for us. So we're idiots for not spending money needlessly? Thank $diety we don't let you make our purchasing decisions.

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

Except for the millions of people whose actual computing needs are perfectly adequately filled by XP.

Re:Needless expense

[LMariachi]

My company uses XP on the majority of our computers and there is nothing whatsoever in Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8 that is necessary for us.

Your company doesn’t consider security updates necessary?

Re:Needless expense

[Bengie]

Yeah, Microsoft should have to support XP for all of eternity. Pay $100 once, get 10,000,000,000 years of support. Get $100 ever!

From Microsoft's position, supporting XP is not only costing money in the form of programmer time, but it is taking away programmer time from new projects. And once you get to the size of Microsoft, you can't just hire more programmers, because you get negative scaling from management overhead.

Re:Needless expense

[Nkwe]

People who are still using XP day-to-day are idiots and Microsoft shouldn't encourage them.

Really? People are idiots for not spending money on new equipment that adds precisely zero additional feature that they need? [...] My company uses XP on the majority of our computers and there is nothing whatsoever in Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8 that is necessary for us.

No, people are idiots for believing that security isn't a feature that is needed. People are also idiots for believing that a for profit company (like Microsoft) is obligated to provide free updates to a product forever.

You appear to be saying that there is nothing in post-XP versions of Windows that is necessary for your company. Do you really believe that security of your systems is not necessary? Do you really believe that Microsoft should spend the money (in either direct or opportunity costs) to provide those updates to you for free forever?

Re:Needless expense

[sjbe]

Yeah, Microsoft should have to support XP for all of eternity. Pay $100 once, get 10,000,000,000 years of support. Get $100 ever!

I think you ought to read what I wrote again because you will find nothing that states Microsoft should never charge support.

From Microsoft's position, supporting XP is not only costing money in the form of programmer time, but it is taking away programmer time from new projects.

So charge for the programmer's time. If Microsoft were to charge, say $5 per license per month for ongoing security updates to XP, I'm pretty sure they would get a lot of takers and easily cover the cost. But they have elected to force my company to "upgrade" to a completely different version of their software with new bugs and no needed features while incurring lots of cost for new hardware, data migration, training and software updates. There is no technological reason why security updates cannot continue to be provided. Their "solution" is not an economical one and frankly it makes me more likely to look for ways to move us away from Microsoft's platform towards other options like Linux.

Re:Needless expense

[Pentium100]

XP was designed and built using much older standards of thought about usability

Yea, it was designed for desktops and not tablets like Win8.

Take the 64bit drivers - 64bit Windows need signed drivers. This means that you need to pay Microsoft to sign the driver and not everyone can do it (open source developers for example). Also, this means that if I found an old driver that's compatible, it may not work just because it is not signed. Well, at least I can put Windows in test mode, but what if a new version no longer supports it?

it has grown up tremendously in that time. imagine someone honestly wanting to run a ten year old version of Linux at this point and wanting patches.

Doesn't CentOS get patches 10 years after release?

to use the seemingly needed car analogy: there is a reason the Panther platform was retired by American auto makers

Yet, I can still use an old car. In fact, I am using a 1982 car that has an engine with a carburetor and no computers. Unlike Windows, though, anybody (who knows how to weld) can patch a hole in my car when it appears, I do not need to ask the manufacturer to do it.

Re:Needless expense

[LO0G]

Microsoft DOES charge for extended support for old products. It's called a Custom Support Agreement (CSA). I believe it's expensive, but you CAN get support for really old products.

Re:Needless expense

[AmazingRuss]

That's great for all of you, but why do you think Microsoft should keep supporting you forever? I seriously doubt that they'd be able to break even on some monthly subscription for XP support, because the people still running XP are obviously pretty tight with money. What is the business case for Microsoft to lose money supporting something that prevents people from purchasing their products?

Re:Needless expense

[jbolden]

Microsoft wants you on an upgrade treadmill again. That kind of conservatism is undermining their entire platform. Because of companies like yours their developers can't target Windows 7. Your needs may be well met, but they have new experiences they want to give you that they believe will boost your productivity.

Microsoft after letting people stay on XP has to train their users again that upgrades should be a regular event, part of the TCO.

Re:Needless expense

[jbolden]

Take the 64bit drivers - 64bit Windows need signed drivers. This means that you need to pay Microsoft to sign the driver and not everyone can do it (open source developers for example).

An admin can install there own key and self sign the driver. There is no problem for admins capable of using source.

Re:Needless expense

[fisted]

the idea that no one "needs" a new operating system is, frankly, stupid.

Please name one thing in the last decade which has changed sufficiently to justify a new OS.
Microsoft obviously wants you to buy a new product every other year, but if you think about what an OS is supposed to do, it's pretty stupid, and you're falling for it.

Re:Needless expense

[hairyfeet]

No you are idiots for sticking with a badly creaky OS that was NEVER designed with a thought about security that is about to be abandoned. That is pretty damned stupid any way you slice it. I mean if MSFT still put out patches for Win98 would you HONESTLY be standing here and arguing for keeping Win98, really? So why shouldn't people be pointing fingers and laughing when you advocate for an OS just 3 years removed from 98SE?

Look XP was good back in its day, but its day was pre slammer, pre netsky, pre code red. it was a completely different landscape then, where the biggest nasty you'd find on a system is that big purple monkey being annoying. Today malware is a billion dollar business and your hacked system can be turned into anything from a bitcoin miner to child porn server....and you want to keep an OS from 2001 designed to run as admin and which didn't even have its firewall turned on by default until service pack 2? An OS that will happily run anything from anywhere with the same credentials as the user because nobody thought to be fine grained when it came to permissions? Well considering the fact that they cooked up ActiveX, which let pretty much any page on the web have low level access to the system it really shouldn't be a surprise, but people fighting to keep that old POS and actually betting million dollar companies on it? That part IS surprising.

So yeah I think calling someone who has hundreds of XP systems in Dec 2013 an idiot is frankly being a little tame, suicidal stupid and a lawsuit waiting to happen? Much better choices I think.

Re:Needless expense

[Billly Gates]

I disagree.

I agree that upgrading to Windows 7 makes sense for some home users, but not businesses.

The upgrade treadmill for TCO was important because 15 years ago being left behind meant 16 bit apps and huge limitations on a terrible OS combo compared to Windows NT. Upgrading to Windows XP and Server 2003 later meant managed paradise that could save a fortune in admin cost and finally a modern real OS not designed as a quick and dirty OS for hobbiest underneath it!

Upgrading to Windows 7 .... well let me think about this one?? What about the software that already works? Well it is so ingrained as a business process that it can never be upgraded. To do so would shut the company down and cost millions! - Eg. Cost of moving product from the wharehouse and gas mileage calculated by a weekly bases rather than trip. Since ShitwareERP can do the accounting automatically the CIO laid off all the book keepers and let this IE 6 app do their job and viola $$$ saved.

ShitwareCRM uses BI macros in VS 2003.net that only work in Excel 2003 to automate the reports. ... it only works in Access 2000 which is not compatible with the later versions of SQl Server etc.

No one ever knows how this is calculated. Also it generates reports and bills to clients. So new software that does this differently you say? ... uh oh now the BI is fucked up, no accountants left to fix it, no one had a fucking clue, no bills, contract violation with trucking company and tons and tons of pissed off people and cancelled contracts!

Keep what works and the hassle goes away.

In the past automated things were seperated and not so depedent with each other. Upgrading keeps going up and benefits go down. Sure there is virtualization but that is a big pain in the ass. Users will call helpdesk when they do not see their shitwareCRM and do not know what Citrix Receiver is. Worse they will whine they can't email, then whine about not finding print, performance suffers, and the managers get yelled at and threatened with termination due to the upgrade as their metrics were not meant etc.

It is a high risk thing to do and never needed. I can upgrade trucks too. Restaurants can shutdown and throw out perfectly good working stoves and walk ins for slightly more effecient ones, but why??

This software wont die. Windows 2003 in a VM will live fucking forever with these IE 6 apps and it will never be the hassle to upgrade again.

Re:Needless expense

[PlusFiveTroll]

>Please name one thing in the last decade which has changed sufficiently to justify a new OS.

If you honestly cannot answer that question yourself without more then 30 minutes of research please put all your computing devices down and step away from computers, forever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Address_space_layout_randomization#Microsoft_Windows

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security#TLS_1.2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit_computing

Just to start.

Re:Needless expense

[fisted]

None of the things you listed justify a 'new OS', but rather added features to an existing OS, which isn't what i'm talking about.

Also, that you list TLS, something happening entirely in userland, demonstrates how little clue you have - yet you're arrogant enough to suggest that was the case for me.

Windows people.

Re:Needless expense

[jbolden]

How does Microsoft benefit from allowing a business to contribute less to the ecosystem financially and hold development back? I understand the benefit to the company but how does this behavior you've outlined benefit Microsoft? Microsoft very much wants to break the habits this company has formed of seeing their desktop platform as stable and moving towards a low cost support model. That's precisely the business model that existed among IBM, DEC, Unisys customers that caused PCs to replace mainframes and minis at the individual worker and department level.

They've allowed there to exist an expectation that IE6 is going to exist forever. They need to break that expectation.

Re:Needless expense

[Etcetera]

Doesn't CentOS get patches 10 years after release?

Don't be a tool. CentOS "gets" patches by recompiling and redistributing a product whose said patches are delivered via PAID subscription -- exactly the model that would probably need to be used by Microsoft if they continue support. CentOS is a free lunch riding on RedHat. That's part and parcel for the open source movement, but you can't expect a closed source, enterprise company to do the same thing.

Furthermore, even RHEL didn't decide on a 10-year cycle until relatively recently... and for EL3 and EL4, the final 3 years (Extended Life Cycle Support) are an additional charge, and only supported hardware-wise in Virtualized environments.

https://access.redhat.com/site/support/policy/updates/errata/

Re:Needless expense

[Billly Gates]

Windows has matured to the point where progress is not impeded by staying behind. Mainframes and minis hit the sweet spot too. They work just as good as last version.

MS is screwed. The cloud and renting ancient apps is the way out.

Re:Needless expense

[jbolden]

You understand that Microsoft's goal is to get "unscrewed".

Look at your syllogism:
Increases in technology don't save money
therefore companies have no reason to invest in new tech
therefore Microsoft is going to see falling revenue and profits

The best thing for Microsoft to do is shatter the first premise. Increasing the cost of remaining on XP helps them create a reason for people to move to newer technology. That's my point. The more IE 6 costs in effort and money the more business sense it makes for the customers to revise those applications. That is it is in Microsoft's interests to drive up the cost of legacy software. It isn't in their interests to keep them low.

I happen to think that Microsoft has the potential for another generation of technology based savings for most of their customers. But for those customers to realize that they are going to need to start spending on IT again, not living in a world where the choice is between doing little and doing nothing.

Re:Needless expense

[MooseMiester]

Correct, and how many of the REAL developers on Slashdot aspire to work on old outdated technology?

Imagine you're interviewing for a tech job, and they are offering COBOL-74 for the same salary as Objective C? Which job are you going to take?

Re:Needless expense

[nephilimsd]

It doesn't add zero functionality, it adds continued support. When a company decides not to spend additional resources supporting an aging product line, you have two choices: Choose an option that is supported, or continue using the old, now unsupported version. It's not as though MS is introducing a kill-switch for currently running machines. They simply will no longer spend employee hours or company resources to maintain their software. And they are under no obligation to do so, for free, forever, which is what people seem to more-or-less want.

Re:Mac has superior model

[darronb]

You've got to be F-ing kidding me.

I've got a macbook pro retina 2012. I took the free upgrade from Lion (which came with it) to Mavericks... the NEXT POINT RELEASE.

It removed all third party drivers (even ones that were compatible with Mavericks). I was extremely lucky my USB 3.0 Ethernet hub had a driver on release day. Some I just installed right back on.

It removed command line tools breaking my build setup... and when I added that back I find there's no gdb with Mavericks. My build environment is crippled on lldb until the third party stuff can sort that out.

There's apparently been quite massive application platform changes, and a whole lot of software is now broken.

Apple quite obviously doesn't give half a shit about breaking anything that's not Apple software. That's the massive, space-elevator sized mindset fuckup that will keep them out of any significant share in corporate environments that actually need shit to not break any more often that absolutely necessary for... well... forever, until Apple gets the message.

Apparently, I was pretty spoiled growing up with Microsoft. Most third party stuff worked across updates... unless there was actually a real reason for it (driver level changes, etc). You know... because that's what USED to be purpose #1 of any operating system... be a platform to run crap reliably. Now, it's apparently be-the-ENTIRE-platform, and other software is apparently just a bunch of annoying freeloaders along for the ride.

The real tragedy is that this lazy mindset is infecting some Linux platforms (well, okay.. Ubuntu). They seem highly enthusiastic to duplicate Apple's boneheaded modus operandi.

Re:The funny thing is...

[0123456]

If you're going to give up on backward compatibility, why would you run Windows? There's no reason to pick it over Linux or Mac unless you need to run crusty old Windows software.

Re:First...

[Penguinisto]

So it's somehow Linux' fault that your IT department wasn't competent enough to at least do some research and testing with the users first?

You do realize that a complete OS and app suite change is not as easy as just downloading a distro and installing it everywhere, right?

If Vista had been more like Windows 7 - BULLSHIT

[bazorg]

If Vista had been more like Windows 7

This is such bullshit! In the alternative universe where Windows 7 was ready on the day Vista came out, software drivers for W7 would have been as unavailable as they were for Vista. All sorts of software that required users to have full admin permissions would have been broken by W7 UAC as it was by Vista's UAC. All PCs sold with 512MB or 1GB RAM would have still be slow compared to XP.

Only 1 or 2 years down the line when OEMs had caught up and released proper drivers, when PCs were being sold with 2GB+ RAM and when people learned to separate normal from admin users did Windows Vista/7/8 become less of a nuisance. It had very little to do with Windows 7 being so awesome.

Is software ever free from vulnerabilities? Yes.

[Futurepower(R)]

When Windows XP was released, it was VERY buggy. It wasn't until Service Pack 2 that some of the major bugs were fixed. For example, the first version and the Service Pack 1 version of Windows XP had serious problems with USB connections.

Now, after hundreds of fixes, Windows XP has become what it should have been when it was first released. Is Microsoft claiming Windows XP is STILL buggy? Is Microsoft claiming that, after all these years, there are still extremely serious vulnerabilities in Windows XP?

If so, think of the problems people have had with Windows Vista and Windows 8. Would it be reasonable to expect that Microsoft has released only carefully written software in Windows 8.1, after it has, in my opinion, habitually released sloppy, bug-ridden software during the entire history of the company? (The first Microsoft product, Microsoft Basic computer language, was seriously buggy and came with a poorly written manual.)

Would moving to Windows 8 merely expose your family or your staff to a set of new problems? Will Microsoft, in a few years, say Windows 8 is too buggy to support any longer, and try to convince people to upgrade to something else? In the past, that's how Microsoft has made money, by convincing people to pay for a new version of Windows. Not by paying an upgrade price, but by paying for what Microsoft calls an entirely new version, even though there may be minimal important changes

Vulnerabilities and frequent security updates are part of Microsoft's marketing plans.

Re:First...

[Immerman]

Really? I've been using Linux on my desktop for years with no complaints. So has my barely computer literate father (and incidentally I get far fewer tech support calls now). No, it's not "just like Windows", but if you really love everything about Windows then you should stick with that, obviously you're not Linux's target audience. Of course if what you really mean is that it's not supported by 100% of the software you need/want to use, and you can't find suitable alternatives... well that's not really anything to do with Linux's readiness is it? Ask the people making your software when they are going to release a Linux version, because that's the only way that *they* will know that anyone in their customer base cares.

Re:If Vista had been more like Windows 7 - BULLSHI

[Anonymous Coward]

Incorrect. They released an operating system that greatly drove up expensive hardware upgrades due to storage space needed and this stupid thing nobody cared about called Aero. They also released an operating system without ensuring proper driver support buy-in from other companies, many of whom they screwed over and over throughout the years. Vista was utter crap from start to finish and the overall reviews (both user and professional) prove that.

Is Windows 7 XP mode free of bugs?

[Futurepower(R)]

"Windows 7... XP mode"

Is XP mode free of bugs? Will it get fixes for vulnerabilities?

If Microsoft can supply and fix XP mode, why not fix Windows XP?

Re:Is Windows 7 XP mode free of bugs?

[shutdown -p now]

"Windows XP Mode follows the same support lifecycle as Windows XP—extended support will end April 8, 2014."

However, because it is effectively a VM with XP in it, it's easier to isolate it from the network, and if it's compromised it doesn't affect the host.

Re:Is Windows 7 XP mode free of bugs?

[jbolden]

Is XP mode free of bugs? Will it get fixes for vulnerabilities?

No. It will be sandboxed like any other dangerous untrusted applications. Don't allow the XP VM to do anything but run the few apps you need.

Re:The craptastic Windows 8 is Microsoft's time bo

[flightmaker]

Not an idiot, but being an idiot is way better than being an offensive git.

Re:Why spend on something for no extra value?

[reikae]

Could you give an example of a feature that you (or your business) would consider big and important enough to upgrade?
And if you remember could you tell which XP feature was the Big One that made you upgrade from Windows 2000 (unless you were running something else before and XP was merely the standard choice at the time you bought the machines).

(I might sound like I'm just arguing, but I'm genuinely curious.)

advice on Linux alternatives?

[gaiageek]

I've got a couple 70-something members in my family who are running XP laptops just to run a web browser: email and the basics. Having moved to Linux myself and being the family computer guy, I'm wanting to switch these two laptops to some lightweight flavor of Linux that will work for them and require little or no support from me. I've tried many different lightweight distros in the past year, but I thought I'd ask here for input from any of you who have actually done what I'm about to do.

Requirements:
- fast and light: will run fine on a Thinkpad T41 (which doesn't support PAE kernel)
- Windows-like interface (I'm thinking LXDE, definitely not Unity)
- easy to use Wi-Fi manager (some of the Wi-Fi managers in lightweight Linux distros are way too technical for a novice)
- once a year if any on-site maintenance (remote maintenance is fine if necessary)
- auto updates in background but with very low chance of system breaking with an update (maybe no auto updates is better?)
- ACPI support (at least lid closed = suspend)
- printer support

Chromium OS seems like a good option, and it will run on one laptop (Thinkpad T61) but I'm pretty sure it uses a PAE kernel, ruling out the T41. I've been looking at Lubuntu, Peppermint OS, Porteus, Slax, Puppy Linux. All seem like viable options with a 30-minute test drive, but this is where I'm seeking feedback: on how some of these distros might be good or bad choices in the long-term, especially given that I won't be able to be physically present if something goes wrong.

Re:advice on Linux alternatives?

[sshir]

My T41 runs lubuntu 13.04 just fine. So yes, you can! :) Google for "fake-pae"

Re:advice on Linux alternatives?

[mybeat]

Just pick debian netinst and go with whatever WM + login manager you like.
I'd recommend xfce4 + slim, my grandma find it easier to use than LXDE.
wicd-curses is an easy to use wi-fi manager.
I dont have any auto-updates configured and they are done when I come over.
Can't help you with other points as I've have none/too little experience with that.

Re:advice on Linux alternatives?

[Wolfrider]

--Lubuntu is prolly a good place to start; you might also want to look into AntiX and CrunchBang.

See also:
http://www.wikihow.com/Revive-an-old-PC-with-Linux

Re:advice on Linux alternatives?

[vandamme]

The new openSuSE, if they like KDE. ?ubuntu 14.04, if you can wait that long, for a long term solution. Or Mint Cinnamon, a month later (you have to upgrade now by reinstalling; safer but annoying). Cinnamon has a simple menu, which I like. Zorin is nice, familiar anyhow.

Re:advice on Linux alternatives?

[BadDreamer]

Mint. Works well, easy to keep updated and troubleshoot (in the rare case of a problem) and very good package and driver support.

Re:The funny thing is...

[Runaway1956]

Why would *I* run Windows, or you're using the plural, generic "you"?

I don't run Windows, except in virtual machines. Fact is, it's been a long time since I bothered with a VM.

Most people will choose Windows because, A: all the readily available commercial offerings come preinstalled with Windows. B: Years of indoctrination leave people unprepared to explore other choices. C: A lot of folk probably don't even know that there IS a choice. D: Most people believe that they HAVE TO HAVE Microsoft Office, and/or believe that Office only runs on Windows.

Or, I could sum all of that up with three letters. FUD

Re:The funny thing is...

[ericloewe]

1) The start menu is there, like it always was. The difference was that the first pane was much more useful and the second didn't stack, instead scrolling.
2) Slow? No. Memory hog? No. It's just bigger than XP - there's no way around that. XP was bigger than 98, but you sure as hell wouldn't stick with 98 over XP.
3) What? The new option is better, but the old one is easily available.
4) UAC is generally a good thing, but if you don't want to deal with it, as you said, you can disable it. Windows 7's default setting is invisble unless something was started without apparent direct user interaction.

As for your complaints about the plusses:
1) Vista (and thus 7) have completely different driver models. It's only normal that they wouldn't port something that complex - it's a complicated undertaking. You'll notice that 7 is much more stable than XP.
3) Some people will always blindly hate something because it's new. That someone is catering for them is no surprise.

Re:The craptastic Windows 8 is Microsoft's time bo

[reikae]

I wonder if it's a settings issue (which would make it PEBKAC) but on my computer Windows 8 is more responsive than the latest version of Linux Mint I tried was (fairly sure it was version 14). The much-hated start screen appears instantly after pressing the super key, while there's a tiny but still noticeable delay until the Cinnamon start menu appears. Firefox also runs smoother on Windows than Linux in my experience.

There are many valid complaints to be made of Windows 8, but responsiveness is not one of its issues.

Re:The craptastic Windows 8 is Microsoft's time bo

[dcollins]

Almost 3,000 results at Amazon for New Windows 7 Desktops at the moment...

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_nr_p_n_condition-type_0?rh=n%3A172282%2Cn%3A541966%2Cn%3A565098%2Ck%3Awindows+7%2Cp_n_operating_system_browse-bin%3A2287320011%2Cp_n_condition-type%3A2224371011&keywords=windows+7&ie=UTF8&qid=1387734401&rnid=2224369011

Microsoft should off load to open source

[kawabago]

Microsoft should transition all those XP users to a linux distro made to look and behave more like Windows. If Windows really is better then those customers will come back when they buy a new machine. In the mean time, Microsoft will have off loaded maintenance onto open source and freed itself to innovate. No doubt they will do something else, that will turn out to be stupid.

Re:Microsoft should off load to open source

[roc97007]

I'm still trying to wrap my head around "Microsoft should transition" and "linux" in the same sentence. Microsoft wants all those XP users to upgrade to Windows 8. Nothing less will do.

easy fix

[ArchieBunker]

You know it can be fixed in seconds right? http://sourceforge.net/projects/wgaremover/

Re:easy fix

[sjwest]

Good to know, - but not the outcome wanted.

Re:The funny thing is...

[Billly Gates]

Ok Mr. Smarty Pants.

For you software that is 20 years old isn't something you use but what about someone else?

No upgrading that 40 year old pic database (predates SQL) is not option. Why? Decades of data that can't be exported is in there. Upgrade and the company goes out of business as customers go elsewhere. Management MUST meet metrics and deadlines or people get fired! The risk is too great and metrics won't be met if data can't be imported.

Would you close a restaurant too because newer models of their walk ins and stoves are available too? What they have works fine and are not impressed by new GUIs and change for the sake of change. At the end of the day they only care about customers and not getting fired. A lot of business processes are mapped directly to the software purchased from the defunct company. A new one offers all risk and no benefits and new processes that workers do not know and no data customers need from a system that already works?! ...meanwhile if it fails you are fired! If your users don't meet those magical metrics they are fired. Your grand children will still be using FoxPro, IE 6 & IE 8. Many just can't be upgraded at all ever.

The good news is as a geek you can play with your latest toys. Just don't be surprised if your upgrade rants meet stiff resistance at work. Life will go on for everyone else.

How emulators work in a nutshell

[tepples]

An emulator on MS-DOS, 32-bit Windows, 64-bit Windows, Linux, or any other platform starts with a bytecode interpreter that reads an opcode from the emulated machine's ROM or RAM and uses a 256-entry lookup table to find what to do on each cycle. Then it simulates what the other components (video and audio chips, input devices, etc.) do on each cycle. Sometimes the components are only simulated approximately if an emulator is designed for limited hardware, such as an old 486 PC, a Game Boy Advance, or an entry-level smartphone. In your Atari 2600 emulator, there'd be a 6502 interpreter, TIA (video and audio), and RIOT (for joysticks). In an NES emulator, there'd be a 6502 interpreter with BCD mode removed, APU (audio on the 6502 die), PPU (video), and a pair of bit-banged SPI ports for joysticks.

Oh I used it

[ArchieBunker]

At work we set up a new Dell box that came with 8 and a touchscreen. Right off the bat it wants to calibrate the screen. Ok it says to move the mouse to the upper right corner. Except they mean to use your finger to move the cursor, you never touch the mouse. What the fuck...? Everyone agrees 8 is great on a phone or tablet but on a desktop its a crippled ugly mess. People used to call XP the Fisher Price interface. 8 looks like it was designed using ASCII graphic blocks.

Least among evils

[tepples]

Because solutions from other providers cause even more problems than those from Microsoft. For example, LibreOffice Calc and Impress have trouble interoperating with Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint software used by other organizations with which your organization does business. It gets worse with alternatives to Microsoft Access, which cannot even start to run off-the-shelf ERP and accounting programs written in VBA for Access, such as Stone Edge.

of course

[roc97007]

> ....says Tim Rains, the director of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing group.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but it's his job to say that, whether it's true or not. Windows 8 needs a shot in the arm, and upgrades from a bunch of panicked XP users is literally money in the bank.

Re:of course

[bloodhawk]

whether it is his job or not it is true. There will ALWAYS be new vulnerabilities discovered, even the best reviewed, best written software will have bugs and XP isn't either of those. if people are still using it to access the internet they SHOULD BE doing panicked upgrades.

Re:of course

[roc97007]

whether it is his job or not it is true. There will ALWAYS be new vulnerabilities discovered, even the best reviewed, best written software will have bugs and XP isn't either of those. if people are still using it to access the internet they SHOULD BE doing panicked upgrades.

...it depends. People who take precautions and practice Safe Computing will not be any more likely to be pwned than anyone else. People who will click on any damned thing are going to be pwned eventually on any version of Windows. What we're talking about here is a difference in degree, not a difference in kind.

I saw a Point of Sale machine reboot not too long ago, and it displayed a Windows 98 splash screen.

This is a slightly different variation to the old adage, it's not what you have, it's what you do with it.

Re:of course

[roc97007]

This is Windows we're talking about. You aren't ever safe.

Re:of course

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

your absolutely correct! I haven't had malware on my network in years, until a friend was over and clicked on a "java upgrade" from a site at java.info...installing a worm that spread to two other computers, both XP, but didn't get into anything else. v Took a bit for cleanup, he's not allowed to get on any of my computers anymore, and I've upgraded them to win7 now anyway with restricted users...but the java.info looked EXACTLY like Sun's updates.

Re:of course

[roc97007]

Similarly, my mother-in-law practices safe computing, and calls me if she sees anything unusual *before* clicking on it and for years has been trouble free. She's had viruses on her computer exactly twice, and both times her (visiting) nephew was at fault. Which just shows to go, any tool can be used to poke your eye out.

Re:Run DOS/XP in virtual/emulation

[roc97007]

Get on with the new world. In fact, do it on a Mac & switch between or run XP, Win7, etc simultaneously. Get real.

...and most of us here could figure out how to do that. But Fred and Ethel next door aren't going to know where to begin.

Built in death

[petes_PoV]

Stick to plan and put millions of customers at risk

People who bought a product once. They've been told their support will end. They've been told it will become less secure (if they understand what that means). It's not Microsoft's problem any more.

It would be better if commercial software was sold with a ticking clock built in. After "X" number of years (or months for Apple), the product just stops. Wont boot, won't run. No getarounds, hacks or fixes - just dies. Obviously there will need to be a totally "in your face" way of reminding customers that this will happen and for the advertising to be absolutely unequivocal before the product is purchased, but you don't expect a packet of cereal to last forever, why should you expect software to, either?

Re:Built in death

[EvilSS]

I kind of agree with this. It should be a long clock (decade?) but it should be there and should be in big bold letters in the license. Companies hang on to old software out of habit, necessity (vendor/internal devs suck), or due to financial reasons. The problem is that it becomes harder and harder to support internally as time goes on. What happens is that eventually the company gets to the point where they have to move, no choice. Then it turns into this gigantic and very costly endeavor where practically every software package is upgraded or replaced at once, instead of a gradual progression over time.

Re:Built in death

[Anti-Social Network]

I'm going to have to object strenuously to this. All software? All operating systems? You're talking about planned obsolescence - Microsoft will love the idea if they can avoid the user-fed blowback. But, you're talking about not only forcing upgrades at regular intervals, you're talking about the end of software entering public domain as its copyright expires. The copyright will obviously still expire, but if it's un-hack-ably prevented from being able to run, it might as well cease to exist altogether. And that's ignoring the utter impossibility of such draconian DRM being so bulletproof and usable before the cutoff date.

Granted, it takes a long time for copyright to expire even as it is, but what would have happened if Pong, Super Mario Bros., and other classic games that people still look back to were to just up and vanish? Maybe you don't play games, and that's OK. But to say that future generations could not look back at what was created before, and learn firsthand the joys and sorrows of early game design and see how it affects modern game development is asking digital society never to learn from its past, to say nothing of more serious applications that are created every day. Not to mention business-critical software tied to industrial machinery. The only way to make this practical is to put exceptions in the policy big enough to invalidate the whole concept.

Re:Forget that XP is software. Pretend it's a tabl

[Immerman]

If you're talking about security, where there are independent third parties aggressively undermining the stability of your "table" at all times, it's probably better to use a more security-minded analogy. How about locks. Lets say you buy a popular high-end lock for your front door, and a while later the burglar community finds a weakness in the design that lets it be picked easily. Is the lock maker required to upgrade your lock to something more secure on their own dime? Continuously? For more than 12 years? Or at some point should they be allowed to say "Enough! We make newer, better locks now. Buy one of those if you want to keep getting free upgrades." ?

>What are the chances someone who doesn't want to move from Windows to Windows is going to move all the way to some extrasolar weirdness?

Better than you might think I suspect. For most people still using XP I suspect it boils down to cost. Either the cost of the upgrade itself, or the cost of replacing hardware and/or software that won't work with newer versions. Or just why should they replace something that's working fine? I commonly tell people who come to be with a seriously borked computer that they have three options if they want me to fix it:
1) I can try, but it may take hours and there's no guarantee I'll be successful.
2) I can reinstall Windows from scratch if you have the restore disc or an upgrade
3) or (and this is the cheapest option) I could install this completely free alternative operating system that I just booted off my USB stick to confirm that all your hardware works (here, try it out). It will let you do all the basic internet stuff just like Windows, while being much more resistant to viruses and other malware. I can even leave Windows in place so that you can easily switch back and if you change your mind, or just want to keep it limping along for that one Windows-only program you just have to use. Why is it free? Well have you ever heard of Linux? No? Well basically...

I was actually rather surprised at how popular (3) was, and how many people later made a point of expressing their satisfaction with the change.

Re:If Vista had been more like Windows 7 - BULLSHI

[roc97007]

If Vista had been more like Windows 7

This is such bullshit! In the alternative universe where Windows 7 was ready on the day Vista came out, software drivers for W7 would have been as unavailable as they were for Vista. All sorts of software that required users to have full admin permissions would have been broken by W7 UAC as it was by Vista's UAC. All PCs sold with 512MB or 1GB RAM would have still be slow compared to XP.

Only 1 or 2 years down the line when OEMs had caught up and released proper drivers, when PCs were being sold with 2GB+ RAM and when people learned to separate normal from admin users did Windows Vista/7/8 become less of a nuisance. It had very little to do with Windows 7 being so awesome.

Um, except, Win7 has a Windows XP compatibility mode. When I upgraded from XP to 7, everything worked. Some things in compatibility, some native. With the single exception of an old scanner that wouldn't work in Vista either. (I gave the scanner to my daughter, who still runs XP.)

As far as drivers are concerned, I think Vista was Microsoft's first indication that their hold on the industry was starting to slip.

Vista had more problems than just drivers. Even simple operations like file transfers were buggered up. They did eventually fix it, but it shouldn't have happened in the first place.

Windows 7 isn't awesome. It's an incremental improvement over XP and what Vista should have been. Especially considering the development time.

Re:First...

[roc97007]

First...

to upgrade!

To Linux, I hope?

Certainly not Windows 8. I won't be Vista'd again.

Re:The funny thing is...

[Luckyo]

1. You do not understand the concept of tree-based menu. Google it.
2. It's a lot slower and a massive memory hog. No way around that. Even games have to print that you need more RAM for it, and machines that run tasks on XP fine crawl under 7. Basically you need a significantly more powerful PC to get as much performance out of 7 as you could get out of XP.
3. It's a whole lot worse. There's a reason why web-based interfaces are essentially always worse than native interfaces. Microsoft sacrificed usability for familiarity of next generation that knows nothing but links.
4. UAC is generally an awful thing, that is only desired because many people do not know how to use computers all that well and need to be protected from themselves.
To those of us computer-literate enough not to need a padded room it's a nuisance at best and massively harmful system at worst.

1. DX11 features have NOTHING to do with new driver model. Essentially all of them have been implemented on openGL on XP. "But we need this because of WDDM update" is the sales pitch. If you actually are big enough of a sucker to swallow this pitch at face value, surely you would like to buy some cheap land on the moon?
In reality, it would have been trivial to implement DX11 without WDDM support on XP. But MS knew that openGL was a mess (which they helpfully pulled it into) and wasn't enough of a competitor so they could brute force their way riding on their de facto monopoly.
3. Some people blindly hating because people don't like people pointing out obvious flaws in their favorite company's latest product is nothing new.

Re:First...

[germansausage]

Authentic - A marketing word used to sell blue jeans and spiced rum to tattooed 20 somethings.

Re:The craptastic Windows 8 is Microsoft's time bo

[GrBear]

The problem is that you can't upgrade to Windows 7 anymore.

I wish I had mod points left, so instead I'll comment.

I don't know where you get your information, but it's wrong. You can downgrade to Win7 if you bought a Win8 machine with your Win8 license code (just get a copy of an OEM Win7 disc). You can also still buy Win7 OEM from stores.

Parent's post should have been modded up insightful, because it's FUD.

Re:Mac has superior model

[Osgeld]

yea free upgrades that totally reinstall your os for new itunes... they used to charge upards of 130 bucks for that but no one would pay

Re:Horseshit!

[WaffleMonster]

You wanna take a swipe at Microsoft for useless change? Go ahead and bash them for forcing Metro onto the desktop. Or, choose any of a number of other utterly pointless and detrimental changes that they have made over the versions.

Well now that you mention it they even managed to fuck up calculator. The "programmer" mode (formerly "scientific") is what I always used as occasionally have to convert hex. Now in Windows 7 when I divide 3/4 in programmer mode the answer is 0. No decimals.. perfect storm really screwed me up first time I used new version was looking for factors to check layout alignment and had no clue until days later answers I was getting out of it were "horseshit".

Re:The craptastic Windows 8 is Microsoft's time bo

[Bing Tsher E]

You info about Netbooks is pretty obsolete. I bought an Acer Aspire One at Radio Shack(!!) last year. I think it qualifies as a NetBook because it's the same form factor and was only $300. It sports a 64 bit Dual-Core AMD Processor (slow at 1GHz, but fairly capable) and came with a 4GB SIMM installed. I found an unsupported post on a forum for upgrading it to 8GB so now it even runs XP with Virtual Box. It has native Windows 7. It also has NetBSD in the VM.

The old NetBooks had the 1GB RAM limit that Microsoft imposed, but that went away at some point.

Re:First...

[Smauler]

Vista isn't bad... it's just pretty big, and was sold on hardware that couldn't run it. Also, lots of previous Windows software assumed administrator privileges, so failed in unexpected ways. I've had getting on for a year of uptime on my Vista box, which I still use as my main machine. It's about 7 years old now, and has had graphics card and HD replacement, but is still running my E6850 core 2 duo.

FTFS : "If Vista had been more like Windows 7". Windows 7 is basically Vista, like XP was basically win2k. I don't understand the hate really.

Re:The funny thing is...

[RR]

So far, I have not identified any benefits for me from using 7 compared to using XP.

Windows 7 is just a bunch of little improvements.

1. Finally got the vendors to update their drivers...
2. ...so 64-bit mode works, and it can use more than 3 GB of RAM.
3. Fewer reboots and crashes, because audio and video drivers are in userspace.
4. Working with multiple windows and multiple desktops is more convenient because of new keyboard shortcuts and window snapping.
5. It feels smoother to me, I suspect because of SuperFetch and a better-designed architecture.
6. It supports TRIM on modern SSDs.

Anyway, those are the reasons I switched to Windows 7.

Re:The funny thing is...

[Runaway1956]

So, you are trying to justify a business that has staked it's very existence on a single bit of software. To do so, you make reference to walk in freezers, and kitchen ranges? Puh-LEASE!! The restaurant in your scenario hasn't tied it's very existence to one particular model of walk-in, after all. If/when the freezer fries, due to an electrical storm, or whatever, it can readily be replaced with newer hardware. Jeeez, Louise. The various cooking utensils? Those are replaced much more easily than the equipment for the freezers. What would be really, really, REALLY stupid, is for the restaurant to deify their one computer, convincing themselves that if the computer goes down, the restaurant is finished. No matter how much their software may have been tailored, they can always replace it with another set of software to keep track of inventory, sales, expenditures, wages, etc.

Mr. Smarty Pants says that if you have tied the success of your business to one particular piece of software, then you're an incompetent fool who doesn't deserve to be in business. And, that remains true whether you are a small town Mom & Pop business, or a Fortune 500 corporation.

Yes, you can indeed find idiots draped in expensive imported suits. And, you cannot justify or defend their idiocy.

Re:Why spend on something for no extra value?

[goodmanj]

Microsoft has provided not provided a single new feature in Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8 that we actually need or want

Instant search of file contents was reason enough on its own to switch to 7. If you don't think you need it, it's because you haven't really used it.

age

[Anonymous Coward]

Age doesnt increase the attack surface of a computer, maintenance and the environment does. Today's attack vector is no longer scanning and throwing a malicious packet at tcp/139. its the crap users bring on themselves browsing bullshit sites, fake keygens, actually reading spam etc. I would argue that the person running XP has less opportunities to get infected with less supported client-side applications supported today, less targeted application versions, and also the mindset of maintaining a system that long is likely not at the same level of ignorance as one who treats their computer as a disposable dumpster of one use apps.

Re:age

[PlusFiveTroll]

>Age doesnt increase the attack surface of a compute

The experts tend to disagree.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/12/security_vulner_3.html

Re:First...

[roc97007]

I see what you did there. "I don't understand the hate" has risen to meme status. I don't waste time hating vista, anymore than I would waste time hating broccoli. Vista and win8 share the traits that they were unusable on first release, vista eventually became tolerable but wasn't truly fixed until win7, and win8 is following a similar path. We have some machines still running xp, but the driving force to upgrade is not some artificial Microsoft deadline, but when there will be something reasonable to upgrade to.

Herd immunity

[Latent Heat]

There are a whole lot of folks out there running XP. Out of inertia (reinstalling all my apps would be so . . . hard!), cheapness (those P-III Intel Coppermine boards ran better than P-4's, and they are limited to 512 K).

So how 'bout Microsoft offering, i.e. selling for coin, a 32-bit in-place upgrade OS that works on 512M? Nah, fuggetabout!

So you can call the great masses of XP users rubes, idiots, and reservoirs of software infection. But guess what, there are rubes, idiots, and people not practicing good tech sanitation. But this will be like the people who won't vaccinate their kids. It isn't just their kids at risk, it is your kids, and maybe even you for getting chicken pox as a 50-year old.

So idiot, idiot, idiot, let's shame people, but what is this going to do? Is Congress going to pass a Computer Protection and Affordable System Patch (CPASP) law? Provide subidies to persons too poor to upgrade. Provide free computers to persons qualifying for Medicaid?

Security updates are not a feature

[sjbe]

Your company doesn’t consider security updates necessary?

Security updates are not features. While (unfortunately) necessary they are fundamentally a correction of a defect in their product. You are looking at it backwards. What you are saying is that I'm supposed to pay endlessly for Microsoft for their defective product.

Now in realistic terms if they wanted to charge a modest (emphasis on modest) fee for security updates to those who want to keep XP in place after a decade of use, I don't really have a problem with that. But I do have a problem with a pointless upgrade treadmill that gives me no additional capabilities for my needs over what I already have.

Re:Security updates are not a feature

[PlusFiveTroll]

>Security updates are not features

I'm guessing you don't know what TLS/1.1 and 1.2 are. It's ok, the chinese are already probably capturing your SSL sessions.

Re:The funny thing is...

[WaffleMonster]

"A couple of days ago I tried to install Linux on a 7 year old office machine which runs office apps just perfectly under XP, and my first experience on reboot was a login screen where you had to wait about half a second for each character to appear. Not good."
Note that the install program was Linux and it worked just fine - you installed the thing didn't you? So your problem is likely that you installed a desktop system that requires a modern graphical card. If you would choose LXDE or XFCE then it will be OK.

This is a perfect snapshot of a longstanding problem with disconnect between coders/advocates and users. It simply does not matter how well reasoned your response was it might as well have been written in Klingon.

Re:The funny thing is...

[RR]

Fully patched and upgraded Vista is basically Win7.

It isn't terrible, but Vista SP2 still doesn't have the window snap feature from Windows 7. I like that feature a lot.

Install the original release version of Vista and see if that machine can run even a single year.

I don't understand. Do you mean keep using Vista, or keep running without rebooting?

On the first point, it's inadvisable, because Microsoft ended support for Vista without service packs back in 2012. Otherwise, people have put up with horrible computer systems for longer periods of time. Vista is no Windows ME.

On the second point, if my computer hasn't malfunctioned and forced a restart before, then it reboots every month for Patch Tuesday. It's a rare month when critical updates don't force a restart. This is the same for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8.1. Otherwise, if you keep it isolated, on stable hardware with ECC, and interact with it very little, then I don't see why it couldn't run for a few years.

Framing the issue wrong

[sjbe]

No, people are idiots for believing that security isn't a feature that is needed.

No one is arguing that security isn't necessary. HOWEVER, security updates are a correction of a defect in the product. They are necessary in the same sense that insurance is necessary. Security updates could be provided for XP by Microsoft for a (reasonable) fee but that is not an option Microsoft has put on the table. There is no technological reason why I need to "upgrade" to Windows 8.

People are also idiots for believing that a for profit company (like Microsoft) is obligated to provide free updates to a product forever.

Microsoft can do whatever they want. However what they are accomplishing isn't to make me want to upgrade to their latest products. If anything it makes me want to use their systems less. I can get linux security updates for free so Microsoft needs to add more value if they want my continued business. They don't have to make security updates free but that isn't what they chose to do. They want me to buy an entirely new product with new and different defects, additional hardware, software migration and training costs. This instead of merely offering to continue security updates for a nominal fee for the system I already have which I already know works. I'm guessing you've never run a business because only an idiot spends money to change something that is working just fine when the change is not actually necessary.

You appear to be saying that there is nothing in post-XP versions of Windows that is necessary for your company.

That is correct. There is no new feature in any more recent version of Windows that will add to the bottom line of my company. Other companies situations may be different but I do know for a fact that thousands of companies and individuals are in the same situation as I am.

Do you really believe that security of your systems is not necessary?

Wrong question. Of course security is necessary but security updates are nothing more than corrections of a product defect. Security is nothing more than a cost to me. It is like insurance - necessary but it does not ever add a penny to the bottom line. I have zero interest in throwing out a working production system just because it does not add to Microsoft's bottom line.

Do you really believe that Microsoft should spend the money (in either direct or opportunity costs) to provide those updates to you for free forever?

I never said anything about how they should provide updates or whether they should charge for them. Frankly if Microsoft were to charge a modest fee (and I do mean modest) to continue security updates for XP, I'd consider paying it. I have very good reasons why our company still uses XP based machines, not the least of which is that we have some critical software that CANNOT be ported. (not my fault - some idiot before me bought it) While I will fix that in due time, it isn't going to happen in the next 6 months and the expense is considerably larger than a new PC with Windows 8 on it.

Re:Framing the issue wrong

[jbolden]

Sjbe, Microsoft could force you to upgrade annually and it wouldn't come close to the cost of a platform switch if you haven't been preparing. Your threats to switch based on being cheap aren't going to work.

I have very good reasons why our company still uses XP based machines, not the least of which is that we have some critical software that CANNOT be ported. (not my fault - some idiot before me bought it) While I will fix that in due time, it isn't going to happen in the next 6 months and the expense is considerably larger than a new PC with Windows 8 on it.

When XP was released they announced support would terminate in 7 years and the extended 5 years after that. You've been out of fully supported since 2008. They extended it once which and you are on the extended support time frame. Your deliberate failure to upgrade when instructed is not their failing.

Re:Framing the issue wrong

[AmiMoJo]

XP is old. Over a decade of support is pretty good. Do you expect them to support it forever? MS has basically said that it's broken and can't be fixed. Sorry, but there are limits to product support.

Re:Framing the issue wrong

[elmer at web-axis]

I can get linux security updates for free

Kinda! Using Redhat as an example they have a limit on how long they will support a release. Even Extended life support has limits..

Re:Why spend on something for no extra value?

[goodmanj]

Again, why? They aren't providing anything new to us so why should we spend money on their new products?

The whole point of this article is that you *do* want something new: continued bug fixes and security patches. Which you apparently want forever, for free. I'm no MBA, but I'm not sure that works as a business model for Microsoft.

Re:The funny thing is...

[Billly Gates]

So, you are trying to justify a business that has staked it's very existence on a single bit of software. To do so, you make reference to walk in freezers, and kitchen ranges? Puh-LEASE!! The restaurant in your scenario hasn't tied it's very existence to one particular model of walk-in, after all. If/when the freezer fries, due to an electrical storm, or whatever, it can readily be replaced with newer hardware. Jeeez, Louise. The various cooking utensils? Those are replaced much more easily than the equipment for the freezers. What would be really, really, REALLY stupid, is for the restaurant to deify their one computer, convincing themselves that if the computer goes down, the restaurant is finished. No matter how much their software may have been tailored, they can always replace it with another set of software to keep track of inventory, sales, expenditures, wages, etc.

Mr. Smarty Pants says that if you have tied the success of your business to one particular piece of software, then you're an incompetent fool who doesn't deserve to be in business. And, that remains true whether you are a small town Mom & Pop business, or a Fortune 500 corporation.

Yes, you can indeed find idiots draped in expensive imported suits. And, you cannot justify or defend their idiocy.

Right, you can tell that to the other 999 out of the fortune 1,000 companies who do just that every day. Every business process is aliagned with each piece of software. To not do so would be to go back to paper and book keepers and filing cabinets and hirng tons of paper pushers.

It is not incompentence. It is part of business to use a particular piece of software which of course will store the data in its own format. I can't find any piece of software that guarantees it will work for 100 more years?

I do not see Windows 10 or Linux kernel 5.0 compatibility certified software anywhere?

The productivity gains by using computers is incredible even if it is not perfect and old. We wont change and like our software the way it is.

Go into a McDonalds and look behind the counter? See green screens? That is MS Xenix/SCO Xenix from 30 years ago. It still works fine. Why upgrade? To go with an expensive Windows 7 solution and guess what ... 2020 is here and now that expensive app is no longer compatible as a HTML 6 applet for Metro tablets or whatever the hell will be the new standard. Problem is not solved ever by upgrading. Only temporarily extended. And paper tickets and manually putting each item into a file cabinet for asset and inventory trakcing SUCKS so not using anything doesn't make sense either.

Go play with your new computer. Business does not care. But until this solution is solved people will keep using older outdated software if it works and will keep buying software that will eventually be obsolete as it helps their business.

FYI I think anyone still using XP is incompentent ... as a host OS. But Windows Server 2003 will be extended way past EOL with or without MS blessing in a VM. Computers will be tailored with custom XP drivers for decades to come too but will just not be connected to the internet. Taco Bell still buys 486 chips for its DOS based POS system. They work. XP POS and controller equipment will be served by niche hardware even without MS updates.

I wont risk my job nor the jobs of those I replace software with by buying newer versions and having our metrics fucked up. Remember customers do not care and just like new stoves which maybe better than old ones, well the old ones work and are already paid for in my original example.

Re:The funny thing is...

[RR]

I can not really think of any industry that simply resigns when it becomes difficult and just blame it on users not being smart enough. if car manufacturers could get away with that, imagine the roads...

I wish car manufacturers could do that! Tens of thousands of people in the US die because of cars every year. As I get older, I'm increasingly amazed that we consider high-speed operation of multi-ton machinery to be normal for people of all ages (above 16 years) and ability. Driverless cars can't come soon enough. Imagine the roads...

Re: Mac has superior model

[RR]

My iMac G4 begs to differ. It's stuck on 10.4.

And that's why I like Linux. When Apple discontinues support for that old machine, Linux is there for you.

Re:First...

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? I've been using Linux on my desktop for years with no complaints. So has my barely computer literate father (and incidentally I get far fewer tech support calls now). No, it's not "just like Windows", but if you really love everything about Windows then you should stick with that, obviously you're not Linux's target audience. Of course if what you really mean is that it's not supported by 100% of the software you need/want to use, and you can't find suitable alternatives... well that's not really anything to do with Linux's readiness is it? Ask the people making your software when they are going to release a Linux version, because that's the only way that *they* will know that anyone in their customer base cares.

It's the apps, stupid. No one but total geeks give a shit about the interface or any of the rest of it. The computer is there to do something that they want to do. Either the computer can do that or it can't. And the key is the apps. Most of the shortcomings of an OS can be dealt with by utils....so long as it is stable and doesn't prevent you from doing something. That is where the modern everything is a critical update OS fails. It doesn't allow you to get the job done. Metro UI is a disaster. Moving things around every version of windows requiring retraining is a disaster....a host of features most people don't even know about let alone understand is a disaster....breaking app compatibility is a disaster. Like it or not it doesn't matter WHY the new computer can't do what the last one did - if it can't it is worse. If it's less stable it's worse. End of story.

Re:First...

[Mikkeles]

The only decent spiced rum I've found (for sale) has been that produced on Saba. They also put it in used bottles, so there's no real labelling. Hence, I suspect that it will never be available elsewhere :(

Re:The funny thing is...

[Opportunist]

That's like trading a 1998 SUV for a 2007 SUV because you want to get better mileage out of your car.

xp is just better

[TrueRecord]

New versions of windows have less features than XP. For example, you could easily access your webcam from the explorer with no additional software to install for that.
Then again, I HATE ribbon which is implemented almost everywhere.

Re:Forget that XP is software. Pretend it's a tabl

[jbolden]

People who are compute illiterate deal with systems all the time that require upgrades. For example milk and eggs go bad after a while. In the 1990s forced upgrades were an expected part of the expense of owning computers. Microsoft can reintroduce the concept and make it a norm, "this will break in a few years" isn't too hard to understand.

Re:The craptastic Windows 8 is Microsoft's time bo

[sremick]

"Also, you can't buy a new computer with Windows 7"

Very much NOT true. Where I work we buy plenty of Dell computers with Win7 all the time. Just placed another large order this past Friday in fact.

Re:First...

[dbIII]

Vista WAS bad for the first year, and since there still two Vista things lurking around here I can say that vast improvements after release still resulted in something miles behind MS Win7.
Having to fuck about with the command line in an MS system to join an an MS network domain is a pretty good symptom of how bad it was.

Thank GOD no one is responsible for themselves

[gelfling]

They've had years of advanced notice. Do something or don't do something. But stop whining about it.

Re:The funny thing is...

[jbolden]

a) A really nice integrated suite enterprise productivity. Windows -> Office -> Sharepoint document manager. no one else has that.
b) Windows -> Lync -> Universal communication is available from a handful of vendors but for most of them only for Windows.
c) Ubiquitous computing (i.e. same apps on phone, tablet and laptop).
d) Project Server.
e) Excel for windows integration with many data warehouse applications
etc...

I'm an OSX user. But there is some stuff I wish we had.

Buying the software all over again

[dbIII]

I've still got a couple of people on XP that have a wide variety of applications which either no longer work on Win7 or work differently (not better) on Win7. On a fairly recent machine with an SSD you can get very good performance out of WinXP.
When they hit the point where memory limits them forcing a change to win7 they are going to have to change a lot of their workflows, will have to buy a long list of applications all over again and will have to select new software to do the tasks their current stuff does on XP.
Virtual machines have a few drawbacks especially when you run up against software that needs those evil dongle things before it will run

Re:Mac has superior model

[NotBorg]

I'm running a modern, full featured, OS on my decade old hardware. What's even more remarkable is that I have binaries from 2004 (coming up on a decade) that run just fine too. If I looked around I'm sure I could find older binaries that still work despite being built so long ago. I am considering switching to a lighter weight desktop environment, however. I won't trouble you by using the L word, but it seems to work fine for me without all that loud ticking.

Re:Mac has superior model

[jbolden]

Apple drops support for machines after about 3-4 years. They mostly drop support for OSes usually about 2 years after release.

I use OSX but Microsoft gives far better long term support.

Re:Mac has superior model

[jbolden]

It removed command line tools breaking my build setup... and when I added that back I find there's no gdb with Mavericks. My build environment is crippled on lldb until the third party stuff can sort that out.

port install gdb
If you are using gdb you should be using macports or fink.

until Apple gets the message.

Apple will never get the message. They expect their developers to get the betas and release updates for the new OS. They do not want to encourage a culture of backward compatibility like Microsoft has. They want developers to be able to use new features and new standard immediately.

Re:your an idiot dude

[PlusFiveTroll]

Too bad you have not learned a damn thing about security in the past 15 years, rather then just brushing it off as a side duty of a modern operating system.

Here's the thing, if you operating system needs to talk on the web, yet presents a serious security risk to its users when doing so, it is not the right tool. I mean, if using a 60 year old milling machine on new modern steel cause it machine to blow up injuring the user, who in their right mind would consider it the right tool for the job.

Re:Is software ever free from vulnerabilities? Yes

[PlusFiveTroll]

>Is Microsoft claiming that, after all these years, there are still extremely serious vulnerabilities in Windows XP?

Yes, because the definition of secure has radically changed in the past 10 years. See ALSR

>Will Microsoft, in a few years, say Windows 8 is too buggy to support any longer, and try to convince people to upgrade to something else? I

No, even Microsoft realizes the gig is up and is looking for an operating system 'rental' model.

>Would moving to Windows 8 merely expose your family or your staff to a set of new problems?

Yes, But it is the same with Linux, Apple, whatever else. Security is not a place you reach, it is a target that is carried on the backs of the attackers. If you think anyone sits around and engineers security holes (well other than the NSA), you don't know anything about the industry.

Re:Is software ever free from vulnerabilities? Yes

[PlusFiveTroll]

Not ALSR, I mean ASLR.

Re:The craptastic Windows 8 is Microsoft's time bo

[ducomputergeek]

Um say what? I just ordered a new computer for gaming purposes pre-installed with Windows 7 Pro. You most certainly can find vendors out there who will ship windows 7 on a new PC.

Re:The funny thing is...

[PlusFiveTroll]

>- Faster: I think they are exactly the same "speed", however you wish to measure.

What you think and what benchmarks and usability shows, especially with a few apps using a lot of memory show are completely different things.

>I do have a license for SolidWorks 2011 32 bit, which just won't run under Windows 7 64 bit.

And you didn't call their support? Because that should surely work.

>- Easier to use: WinXP is easier to use than Windows 7.

"Citation needed". As a support tech Windows 7 is much easier to manage these days.

Re:The funny thing is...

[PlusFiveTroll]

TRIM/SSD support

ASLR

TLS1.1/1.2

Memory support over 3GB (64-bit versions)

Pretty much any security at all.

I could go on, the problem is, from what you've wrote, you are incompetent admin. I run hundreds of linux and windows VMs on Xenserver and the only time I reboot them is for security updates. If your Windows VMs need rebooted more often that sounds like a problem with the admin, not the operating system.

Re:The funny thing is...

[PlusFiveTroll]

>2. It's a lot slower and a massive memory hog

Slower, no. Massive memory hog, Yes if you use the 64 bit edition, which is true for EVERY 64 bit OS, not just Windows.

3. Interfaces. Could be very easily turned off, what are you bitching about?

4. UAC. That could be very easily turned off, what are you bitching about?

Re:here's a downgrade

[PlusFiveTroll]

>We upgraded our DSL router to the new whizzybang UVerse DSL router

That thing is a steaming peace of shit.

>at least the networking was rational.

Christ, you have no idea what you are talking about.

Re:No viable upgrade path for Business Users.

[DavidRawling]

So what you're saying is that it's Microsoft's fault your business held out for post-Win7, despite the knowledge that the end date was 2014 (and heck, that's been moved out by 2 years from the original date!). And it's also Microsoft's fault for not planning your app upgrades (what, you thought Win8 would be more compatible than Win7 for your XP apps)? Sounds to me like you think your lack of planning should constitute an emergency on my part. Bzzzzzt. Wrong. You made your bed, now you get to lie in it.

Did I miss something?

[dbIII]

Does iTunes for MS Windows actually run well now? Garbage seemed a pretty good description of it running on win7.

Re:Did I miss something?

[tepples]

Running poorly is still better than "This item is not available in your country", which is what I get when I navigate to the Google Play page of the song in question ("Bück dich" by Rammstein, accessed from the United States).

Re:Did I miss something?

[dbIII]

I suppose that's an improvement to something that seemed to be designed to make users angry at their MS Windows PC and buy a mac.

"This item is not available in your country"

IMHO that sort of artificial regional scarcity and price fixing bullshit should die. If they don't want to take your money they shouldn't be selling it on the internet.

Get real

[dbIII]

I bought a new shrinkwrapped copy of WinXP and installed it on new desktop hardware less than two years ago. Nobody needed to stockpile the thing years ago and if anybody did they were needlessly wasting money.

Re:The funny thing is...

[dbIII]

Now, please explain to me again why I would possibly WANT Windows7

That game that just will not run anywhere else. Oh wait - that's what consoles are for. Should have got one of those instead of a piece of crap that reboots without warning in the middle of a game to apply updates.

OS readiness

[fyngyrz]

Of course if what you really mean is that it's not supported by 100% of the software you need/want to use, and you can't find suitable alternatives... well that's not really anything to do with Linux's readiness is it?

Please finish this sentence: "An OS without the applications I need is..."

The thing is, it's not a linux problem. It's (mostly) a GPL problem. The GPL is a poison pill for many commercial operations; it becomes problematic to utilize existing work and bootstrap commercial products. Well, that and the lack of a standard, unencumbered GUI. Which *is* perceived as a linux problem. You may have noticed that highly expandable and flexible applications like Apache under linux are in very wide use commercially. Reading the Apache license is also very interesting as compared to the GPL. Coincidence? Not as far as I can tell.

But, as linux users have told me many times, they don't want those nasty commercial types in there, using code and not giving back more code. And this is exactly what they got. So... :)

Re:OS readiness

[Immerman]

Define *need*. Most people when they say "I need MS Office" mean "I need an Office program that preferably can work with MS Office files". Linux has that, you could even switch to something like LibreOffice on Windows and get that part of the learning curve out of the way now. Ditto for most other "needed" programs.

As for the "poison pill", that's a flat out lie in this context. There's absolutely no need to incorporate GPLed OS code into your app, hell you don't even have the *option* of incorporating OS code into your Windows app. Both OSes provide a set of APIs to access OS functionality through an interface that you are explicitly permitted to use - the only difference is that on Linux you *do* have the option to incorporate OS code if you're willing to pay the license fee - sharing your own modifications and incorporated code on terms at least as generous.

Don't want to share your source code? Fine, just don't incorporate other people's GPLed code into your program. That is after all the industry standard practice with non-open code. Plenty of Microsoft (and other companies')code has been stolen and released on the web - you could easily use that to "bootstrap" your own projects, but nobody does so because it will trigger the poison pill of "you are illegally distributing proprietary code without a license". The only difference is that if it's GPL code you've been caught illegally incorporating then you've got the option of dodging the legal bullet by complying with the license that has already been offered to everyone.

Basically the whole idea of "bootstrapping" your project by starting with somebody else's code is (almost) entirely an open source concept - the licenses were explicitly created to encourage growth of the open source ecosystem in such a way. There are sometimes ways to do the same thing in the proprietary world, but you have to pay for that code in other ways - for example if you wanted to create a program game starting from the Unreal Tournament codebase you were free to do so, for the bargain price of one million dollars (IIRC) paid in advance. If you wanted to instead build off of, say, MS Office... well good luck with that.

Re:OS readiness

[Optali]

You are completely right!
You just put my whole current employer out of the bussiness (I currently work for Comscore Inc). I will tell our CEO to thrash all the GPLed code that makes our servers work and change them for Windows Server 2008 R2... and you will come over to make the migration, right?

Thanks for offering yourself as a volunteer mate. And later you can tell your GPL discovery to Google, they will LOVE it ;)

Thanks for enlightening us mate!!

Re:The funny thing is...

[dbIII]

Until you want to run something that won't on Win7. Sadly there's still a lot of that about. It was only last year that a stupidly expensive geophysical program used in my workplace was upgraded to work on anything newer than WinXP.

More TV Commercials

[mbstone]

To get users to upgrade their systems to Windows 8, MS should run lots and lots of TV commercials featuring the beautiful, awesome Windows 8 splash screen.

As soon as people realize how breathtakingly beautiful the splash screen is, they'll run out to Best Buy or wherever and buy a Surface.

If that doesn't work, buy more TV commercials with tighter close-ups on the beautiful, beautiful, utterly awesome Windows 8 splash screen.

Re:The funny thing is...

[danknight48]

This is absurd. Yes, Vista was a disaster, but Windows 7 was a huge upgrade from XP.

Whats more absurd is that you believe:
- 6x memory footprint
- 2x number of processes on boot
- 4x number of handles and threads
- 3x number background services
- Kernel filled with over the top security checks, instead of being optimized for the end user.
- 5x + Increase in explorer delay (hello DWM.exe)

Is a huge upgrade? If your working for a bank, maybe, but as a home user, its not an upgrade. Its a downgrade in every respect from XP, that is, if you care about the performance of your hardware.

I honestly challenge you to run a program like Prime32 on a clean XP and Windows7 system on the same hardware. Let me know how it goes. Still feel it was an upgrade?

"Flamebait", fucking hilarious.

Re:The funny thing is...

[Luckyo]

1. You have to be really dense to call it something other than slower. I've had it running on the same machine with 4GB of RAM and E8800. Even when RAM was clearly sufficient, machine was noticeably slower under fresh 7 install than under old XP one. OS overhead is clearly much greater both in terms of RAM and CPU. That means OS is in fact slower.
3. Impossible to turn off. Hard coded part of OS. Unfortunately.
4. Can be turned off, yes. Will it make you to jump through hoops to do it? Yes. Will it be on by default and one of the biggest problems I hit when coming to fix someone else's computer? Yes.
Hence, problem.

Re:Is software ever free from vulnerabilities? Yes

[Futurepower(R)]

ASLR: The purpose of ASLR is to provide protection against vulnerabilities. The idea is to make it far more difficult to exploit those vulnerabilities. ASLR is always good to have.

However, if software has no vulnerabilities, then ASLR has no effect.

Software rental, rather than sale: Those who buy software are usually not prepared to fully understand the issue. So, software companies like Adobe are taking advantage of that ignorance, and renting software rather than selling it. For many users, that will make the software FAR more expensive. (Adobe's CS6 is the last for sale version, Adobe says.)

Software vulnerabilites: Software can be checked for vulnerabilities and fixed before the software is released. Microsoft doesn't do that intensely because vulnerabilities make more money for Microsoft, in my opinion.

Re:If Vista had been more like Windows 7 - BULLSHI

[bazorg]

this stupid thing nobody cared about called Aero.

Aero was eye candy and a very much needed update at a time when Windows UI was looking tremendously dated compared to OS X and a variety of Linux distros. If they had not made Aero, they would have had to make something else to replace the UI of the 90's.

Re:The craptastic Windows 8 is Microsoft's time bo

[petermgreen]

Windows 7 is still available. You can still buy retail, retail upgrade and system builder copies of win7, you can also downgrade from OEM and volume license copies of windows 8 pro/ultimate/enterprise (IIRC for some silly reason you can't downgrade from retail or retail upgrade copies).

Re:The last patch Tuesday from Microsoft should be

[kthreadd]

One could argue that once XP becomes unsupported it won't be suitable, stable or useful for running any real application, and won't be in the next five years.

Something of note...

[dacarr]

I work in technical support for an ISP. One of the things I must know, natch, is what OS they're using. In cases where it's XP, I will inform (or, as the case is sometimes, remind) them that Microsoft will be ending all support for their OS of choice, and that now is the time to upgrade. My one regret is that these users have waited so long, resulting in that they must now upgrade to Windows 8.1.

Well, OK, they can probably get a copy of Win 7 from Newegg or somesuch.

Re:Sure! Switch to Windows 128 bit, for security

[upuv]

The number of bits for the processor has nothing to do with security. Never did.

XP architecture has major security issues. And it's purely irrelevant that's it's both a 32 and 64 bit OS.

But 128 bit does solve a few other architectural issues :)

Re:The funny thing is...

[murdocj]

Wow... so the incompatibility is that the O/S that came out 10 years later uses more resources? Yeah, OS X doesn't run on my Apple II, I guess that means OS X is a huge downgrade.

Re:If Vista had been more like Windows 7 - BULLSHI

[EvilSS]

Actually, while the driver argument is valid, Vista did have noticeable stability, compatibility, and performance issues that were addressed in Windows 7. Ditto for Windows 2008 server. Granted, these could have been addressed in service packs but that's not the way it went down. If you compare the two, fully patched at the time of release for Windows 7, Windows 7 performed better on the same hardware and with the same drivers than Vista.

Re:Mac has superior model

[grep -v '.*' *]

I have hardware that's been running for over a decade, and is still working just fine.

(Can't .... resist ... Sorry, not meaning to play the one-upmanship card, but in this case I just have to.)

Just one decade? One? I've got a friend (Hi George!) who runs his local accounting software on 8080 CP/M systems with multiple 8" floppy drives. Really. (I think the media is DSDD -- LARGE amounts of storage.)

He's also got current systems to play games and do what-all with, but he's got a working accounting system that doesn't break, he knows how to use and support both the software and hardware (at the chip replacement desoldering level), and doesn't feel the need to migrate.

And, well, plus: *I* think he thinks it's just fun doing it that way.

Like people, just because they're old doesn't mean they can't work or are worthless.

Re:If Vista had been more like Windows 7 - BULLSHI

[bazorg]

I agree, at least in part. I don't know about Vista being generally unstable, but I remember it felt slow. I remember that when XP was released, it was common for PCs to have 256MB or less of RAM. When people stopped moaning about how bloated XP was, it was because they already had replaced their PCs of 2000/01 with something that had 1 or 2GB or RAM, as well as CPUs and graphics cards that were much better. SATA interfaces for their HDD also pushed the performance up considerably. With XP "surviving" 1 or 2 hardware upgrades, it's only natural that it felt super-fast.
With whatever optimisation and bug fixing they did at MS, W7 was indeed faster than Vista. However, the perceived performance gains were certainly affected by having more RAM, which had become significantly cheaper. I'd be surprised to hear about people buying computers in 2009 that had W7 running on 1GB (or less).

Nice FUD you’ve got there...

[Aaden42]

The GPL is a poison pill for many commercial operations; it becomes problematic to utilize existing work and bootstrap commercial products.

That’s lovely FUD. What you meant to say is more like, “It’s problematic for companies to steal others’ work to create derivative commercial closed source works from freely available open source.” It’s not “problematic” to bootstrap commercial projects from GPL source. It’s denied by design because the original authors (who gave you their work for free) didn’t want you to do that. It’s really a shame that you can’t take something you didn’t pay anything for any turn around and charge other people money for it. Give me a minute to mop up the river of tears I’m crying for these companies.

There’s nothing the least bit problematic about using Linux as a platform to build closed source solutions. Nor is there a problem with using open source packages as building blocks in what will ultimately be a commercial solution. You need to release source for your changes to GPL projects, but boo hoo.

If you want to keep your source closed, that’s easy. Don’t use someone else’s open source project as a source code starting point. That still doesn’t bar you from using open source projects to help you deliver a final product. Just don’t link to them. It’s really not that hard.

I’ll grant that this gets somewhat more difficult with GPL-3 or the Affero variations, but this started out as a FUD fest about Linux which is plain-old GPL-2, so none of those issues apply.

Re:First...

[Immerman]

If you *need* a specific Windows-only app, then yes, you're stuck with Windows. If you don't care for the perpetual string of critical update reboots, the upgrade treadmill, the instability, the viruses, the secret NSA backdoors, the new "different because we say so" interfaces, etc,etc. then you should talk to your app vendor, then maybe in a couple years you'll have the option to switch to a platform that doesn't suffer nearly as badly from those shortcomings.

For most apps though there are plenty of perfectly adequate alternatives, both free and commercial. So what you're really saying is "The shortcomings of Windows aren't bad enough for me to be bothered to learn some new programs so I can switch." And there's nothing wrong with that, but you should be aware of your real complaint, because that may well suggest a more profitable response. Need MS Office? Really? Or do you really just need an office suite that can handle MS Office files? So maybe next time MS decides to "improve" the interface, forcing you to relearn your work flow, instead you say to heck with this and move to LibreOffice with it's nice traditional interface, in the process saving yourself the cost of an upgrade and shedding one of the chains that binds you to Windows and whatever silliness MS may decide to force down your throat in the future.

Because honestly, there's precious little a Windows system can do that a Linux system can't. The apps you use to do it may be different, but even that is largely your choice. One of the beauties of open source is that most popular Linux programs make their way to Windows and OS X as well, so you can wean yourself off your chains one at a time on Windows, and eventually be free to use any OS you choose while still having all your old familiar programs at your fingertips.

Just stop. Really.

[bitterblackale]

What if somebody were to develop an FOSS operating system that's free to download, will be supported for indefinite years to come and runs most XP software or equivalent applications? That'd be great! Oh, yeah, that's Linux.

Re:First...

[steelfood]

Win8's problems are not quite the same as Vista's problems. Time is not going to fix Win8's problems.

Running on Square Wheels

[bbsalem]

I am sympathetic to all those with legacy issues. I just clobbered an XP install and replaced it with Knoppix 7.2, Linux, but I am not still running Visucalc, although I did download the zip to see if it will run on DOSemu on Ubuntu. I'll bet it does.

Given with potential security problems with unpatched XP, if M$ decides to drop support, is like running on square wheels, If you run fast enough, you may not notice the rough ride, unless you slow down. It was been my experience that the latest Linux releases will tun on configurations that are too small for later releases of Windows. I actually run Knoppix 7.2 in 1/4 Gb on a vintage 2000 system that had been running Win2k. Yes, I had swap areas, but it worked without a hitch and reasonably fast. I think the processor was Celaron.

Of Course, people are going to have issues with finding drivers for really old hardware, and maybe they are afraid to chance it on new drivers, but I have run devices of vintage 2000 on recent Linux with generic drivers, and if you are resourceful you can figure out how to wrote a river for that HW that absolutely has to be supported. That sounds like an opportunity for Opern Source advocates, to support legacy hardware with Linux drivers. Sounds to me that M$ is creating opportunities for Linux device driver writers to support legacy hardware, if it isn't already supported. I guess that also applies to software that needs Wine or DOSemu support.

Re:The funny thing is...

[rastos1]

Can you run Windows Explorer with "Run as Administrator" ? Nope.

Re:First...

[roc97007]

Win8's problems are not quite the same as Vista's problems. Time is not going to fix Win8's problems.

There's part of me (the part that wants Microsoft quick fried to a crackly crunch) that wants to agree.

But there was an article in The Register not long ago about a credible rumor that Microsoft now has plans (post-Ballmer?) to split Win8 into three versions: (a) the current version, appropriate for handhelds, (b) a desktop version, which would essentially be (mostly) Win7 look and feel with Win8 performance improvements, and (c) an Enterprise version, which is (b) except using the Enterprise patch mechanism instead of relying on the Windows Store for patches (which has apparently been a sticking point for Enterprise acceptance).

The article made it clear that this was only a rumor from "a credible source", but if for the sake of argument we take this utterly on face value, I'd be forced to say that yes, this really does fix Win8's problems. Mind you, I'm not a Win8 apologist -- I'm the guy who has complained bitterly about the Win8 touch screen convertible I paid good money for that nobody (including me) will use because Windows 8 is so damned hard to do anything with. But fair is fair, and if the above really does happen, it would eliminate pretty much all of my objections. (Except, of course, why didn't you do that in the first place??)

Of course, this could all be wishful thinking. I guess we'll have to wait and see. But what this meant to me is that I stopped dinking with Windows 8.1 and put the machine back on the shelf. I can afford to wait.

Re:The craptastic Windows 8 is Microsoft's time bo

[Anti-Social Network]

Just a fine point of detail, here: Windows 8 Pro has the downgrade option to Windows 7 Professional/Ultimate. Core edition has no downgrade rights. So, chances are, the machine you're purchasing will not be downgradable. That said, there are several systems (Lenovo in particular) which are downgraded out of the box. As you note, Windows 7 is also available for purchase as well, although this will probably be eliminated as Microsoft's SOP is to keep the last-gen OS around as long as it's only 1 generation behind. Once Windows 8.2 or 9 or whatever its name will be comes out, 7 will vanish from the regular channels.

Re:The last patch Tuesday from Microsoft should be

[rubycodez]

XP will still run applications and be used

Re:There is no difference..

[rubycodez]

so you started to wise up to half the errors you made since your first posted.....

Having done kernel and system programming on several operating systems since the 1970s, I'm sure I know a wee bit more about the subject than most here

Re:Mac has superior model

[darronb]

Well, I would have agreed with you... but Jobs is dead now.

It will eventually get really hard to ignore the corporate world and continue to explain that to shareholders. There's no way they're going to capture say >30% market share there without actually listening to what corporations need.

The "We'll show you what you want" thing that works(ed?) so well for them in the consumer space is only going to get them so far into the corporate world. The corporate world wants a platform that is dependable, easy to administer, doesn't arbitrarily break, and continues running crap internal software written by monkeys as long as possible. It's the almost the opposite of cool...

Re:First...

[gronofer]

Yes, Linux would be fine for any number of users, many of whom need nothing more than a web browser. I suppose installing it would be too hard for most of them though (downloading an ISO, writing it to a USB stick and modifying a BIOS setting - tricky).

But if people insist that they need Windows, then they should accept the facts, and buy a new machine after Microsoft stops supporting their OS. Where do they get the idea that they can continue using a 10 year old operating system forever and expect a strongly profit-motivated company to help them for free?

Or

[NewYork]

Open source XP

Microsoft's MO

[Douglas Goodall]

Lets see... Microsoft writes a buggy, insecure operating system, then says we should update because the newer buggy, insecure system is better, rinse and repeat. I think Windows 7 wasn't horrible, but then Windows 8 came along and caused me much nausea. I used Windows 8 for four months full time, and after that, I still don't feel in control of the machine. Simply put, I hate "gesture computing". Were there problems so dire with 7 that it needed to be replaced? What an abortion 8 is. But will the day come that Microsoft says no more support for 7 and you MUST move to 8 now? Aren't we tired yet of being wagged around by these people?

Re:The funny thing is...

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

Personally I hate the snap window. Often I want a window half off the screen, or on two different screens...or some other type of alignment that 7 doesn't really like with the snap on. Same thing with "pinning" stuff on the task bar...the icons are 2-5 times larger than in the quick launch, do not stay in the same place...on all my 7's I turn off snap, enable quicklaunch...

Re:Mac has superior model

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

Apple also did something that totally hosed exchange/AD. For the past few months we've gotten more and more "account lockout" issues. I kinda traced it down to something to do with Activsync protocol, and it's getting stupid. So far the only solution implemented has been Airwatch...and the other major company still has XP on their laptops, so their upper-level IT isn't even aware it's an issue yet.

Re:First...

[Decker-Mage]

Got a chuckle here.

Re:Mac has superior model

[jbolden]

It will eventually get really hard to ignore the corporate world and continue to explain that to shareholders. There's no way they're going to capture say >30% market share there without actually listening to what corporations need... The corporate world wants a platform that is dependable, easy to administer, doesn't arbitrarily break, and continues running crap internal software written by monkeys as long as possible. It's the almost the opposite of cool...

Jobs may be dead but Tim Cook is very much alive. The entire group of executives at Apple agrees with Job's philosophy regarding enterprise customers. Moreover at least in phones and tablets their "we'll show you what you want" does seem to be working for enterprise as well. I agree longterm it may not. I suspect that corporations that are standardizing in iPhone have no idea what their longterm maintenance costs are going to look like.

But that doesn't bother Apple. Apple announced that effective Feb 1, 2014 any applications submitted not optimized to the iOS7 graphics standards will not be accepted. That is Jan 31st is the last day to even give them updates to iOS6 apps that haven't undergone a GUI overhaul. iOS 7 was released September 2013. Or another example Feb 2012 Apple released OSX 10.7.3. By October many standard OSX applications were written using iOS 10.7.3 features. Apple is encouraging this behavior in their ecosystem. Right now enterprises are dealing with that speed of upgrade and incurring costs whenever Apple wants them to incur costs.

  Obviously enterprises would prefer the world they have now. But they also seem to want a world of good software and higher quality. They are conflicting interests within an enterprise that have conflicting goals. Ownership may want maximum profits. Cutting administrative costs in IT may require a locked down unpleasant environment like many employees experience on their work Windows computers. But working in a locked down unpleasant environment might sap employee productivity so much that it doesn't make financial sense. That's what many companies are finding that encouraged a BYOD policy originally.

Moreover Microsoft is shifting towards Apple's model. Enterprises may not have any options. Enterprises by cutting their spend on desktops also reduced their influence. If they were pending $2k / desktop every 30 mo then more people would care about what they wanted. At $1k / desktop ever 60 mo there isn't that much money to be made (on selling them the desktops). I can easily see a cycle happening where enterprises have to boost their spend to become an influential enough market again for people to chase them as they cut their spend.

So I don't see the situation as that clear cut.

Re:First...

[webmistressrachel]

Thanks. My FP was shallow - but no worse than most, and I took my chance, it made me smile posting it! Saying that, I sometimes smile wryly at "Fr0sty P!ss" posts, too, so I can't claim much credit for wit, at all!

I rarely post aiming for moderation or credit, but if something makes people smile, why not share it?

Be real !

[cwsumner]

I realize that you are probably looking for a job, but small companies using specialized custom software can't afford to upgrade it in times like this. It's not a case of buying a new copy of Word or Excel, these programs take 5 years and 5 million dollars to build new. And thats if they can find a programmer that can do it -at all-.

Loosing the use of the existing software may very possibly cause the company to go out of business. That is not a choice.

And for machine-control apps there is a solution to lack of security updates. Disconnect it from the internet !

Re:The craptastic Windows 8 is Microsoft's time bo

[Wolfrider]

--I'm willing to bet you can still buy a new PC with Win7 - you prolly have to go to a local mom-n-pop shop to do it, though. Anyone willing to test this?

Windows 8 is no option at all!

[mtthwbrnd]

Microsoft have snookered us! We do not want to upgrade to Windows 8. So we have to migrate to another OS entirely. There is no way that the annoyingness of Windows 8 is outweighed by the annoyingness of learning a new OS. PLEASE MICROSOFT MAKE WINDOWS 9 NOW AND MAKE IT JUST LIKE WINDOWS 7 BUT A BIT BETTER NOT COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!!!!

Microsoft forcing us all to downgrade hardware ..

[systemBuilder]

Windows XP was released at the Zenith for hardware quality in some respects (think 4:3 screens, thinkpad keyboards). Microsoft forcing people to buy a computer is forcing people to downgrade their computer. It aint gonna happen!!

Microsoft isn't serious about denigrating XP

[systemBuilder]

If they were serious about asking people to upgrade from XP, they wouldn't be asking $90-$130 for a retail copy of Windows 7, the last Microsoft Operating System that worked ...