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Slashdot Asks: Will You Need the Windows XP Black Market?

Posted by timothy on from the undead-is-more-like-it dept.

NicknamesAreStupid (1040118) writes "As Whoever57 pointed out, there are some who will still get support for Microsoft Windows XP — the 'haves'. However, most will be the 'have nots.' Anytime you have such market imbalance, there is opportunity. Since Microsoft clearly intends to create a disparity, there will certainly be those who defy it. What will Microsoft do to prevent bootleg patches of XP from being sold to the unwashed masses? How will they stop China from supporting 100 million bootleg XP users? And how easily will it be to crack Microsoft's controls? How big will the Windows XP patch market be?" There are a lot of businesses still on Windows XP; if you work for one of them, will the official end of life spur actually cause you to upgrade? (And if so, to what?)

2 of 245 comments (clear)

  1. XP users don't care by msobkow · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Nobody in their right mind is going to resort to the black market for XP support for a business -- it'd be like *inviting* the crackers into your network.

    Home users either won't know how or won't care to bother. Most people I know who are still running XP have been virus-infected for months or even years. As long as it lets them play YouTubes, check their gMail, and surf Crackbook they just flat out don't *care* that the machine is infected.

    Hell, most of them don't even realize the adware popups they keep seeing are due to an *infection*, not "bad behaviour" on the part of the aforementioned websites. One fellow I knew used to complain about the "popups from YouTube" all the time, 'cause all he ever did was YouTube and Crackbook. As far as he was concerned, it was YouTube that was putting up all the porn ads.

    --
    I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
  2. Why? by fredprado · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The objective of applying security updates from Microsoft is to make your OS safer by applying fixes delivered by a trusted party. MS may not be perfectly "trusted" but at least it has to worry about the liability of any fishy piece of software they install in your computer. On the other hand any source from the "black market" can simply deliver rootkits and any kind of malware disguised as security updates which certainly defies the purpose of applying updates.