Posted on 03/12/2013 2:55:18 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
A large number of Microsoft customers are in for a rude awakening on 8 April 2014.
With less than 400 days to go, 15 per cent of those running Windows XP are still unaware that that’s the date Microsoft finally turns off all support for its legacy PC operating system, according to a recent survey.
After 8 April next year, Microsoft will no longer make bug fixes or security updates for Windows XP, meaning customers will be naked and vulnerable to hackers and viruses and on their own in terms of code updates and fixes. Support for Office 2003 also finishes on the same date, with the same implications.
The findings come from a survey of 250 strategic IT types by application migration specialist Camwood, which polled chief information officers, technology officers and IT directors at organisations that run more than 2,000 PCs.
Fifteen per cent is a decent chunk of the Microsoft customer base. Windows XP is still used on 39 per cent of desktops – just behind Windows 7 on 44 per per cent.
XP was first released in 2001. Since its release, Redmond has pushed out Vista (2006/7), Windows 7 (2009) and its most recent OS, Windows 8 (2012).
Where there is awareness of the end of support, Camwood found 32 per cent of XPers still have not started migrating to newer versions of Windows.
That means this group will almost certainly end up running Windows XP past Microsoft’s April 2014 cut-off, and be in exactly the same predicament in terms of vulnerability to hackers and malware - and of course won't be receiving any code fixes.
Kevin van Heerden, Camwood’s head of software, told The Reg there’s no chance that those who have yet to begin the process will be able to migrate in time. Even a basic migration of just 1,000 PCs would take more than a year, depending on application and data complexity.
“Windows XP is the hackers port of call in terms of trying to get a foot hold and establish botnets,” Van Heerden told The Reg. “They are opening themselves up to risk. It’s like letting your car insurance expire – the car won’t stop working, but you are exposed to a lot of risk.”
The application migration specialist blamed the launch of Windows 8 and Microsoft’s frenetic push for consumer adoption of the new kit for the fact so many customers still don’t know about the end of support. The same was not true for previous versions of Windows, said Van Heerden.
Some customers are confused about whether to go with Windows 8 or Windows 7. This, of course, has implications from the perspective of the PC hardware that they will buy – whether it’s touch-enabled or not – and application migrations. This is adding another layer of decision-taking to the Windows XP migration debate.
“One customer said if you are going to push a new UI on employees, you might as well go all in and go Windows 8 rather than Windows 7,” Van Heerden said.
The software migration specialist says that in other organisations, there has been a grass-roots rejection of anything that takes end users away from their beloved Windows XP. “In a large percentage, they have had staff resistance – a grass roots saying they want to stay on Windows XP because they are familiar with it,” he said.
Van Heerden also said that there had been an absence of leadership from Microsoft on migrations, which he believed was caused by Redmond’s focus on consumers instead of businesses with Windows 8 - adding that the emphasis on product launches during 2012 had diluted messaging.
“There was a lot more buzz around the turn of the century because people were rolling Windows NT 4 and Year 2000 projects together, and there was an immense amount of IT experience. The move to Windows XP was a huge exercise on Microsoft’s part but last year was largest year in Microsoft’s history.
"With new versions of Windows Server 2012, operating system (Windows 8) and mobile, [Window XP migrations] are getting lost in the confusion,” he said. ®
I find 7 to be pretty solid. My home computer had a lot of issues with Flash, then I uninstalled all things Adobe and it hasn’t crashed again, I rely on Chrome’s internal Flash for stuff. I actually find 7’s explorer to be superior, I really like the navigation bar, I don’t do much finding. 8 has some good stuff, but it’s a different way of thinking that I’m not 100% sold on, interesting ideas. It’s clearly oriented to the non-power user that generally only runs half a dozen apps, give them all a tile and don’t worry about anything else.
Drag Windows Explorer to the TaskBar and pin it. It works great as a stable file manager. I’m using it that way on 5 Win-7 Pro machines.
To get the File Menu back, download Ubit (English) and click on the idiot ribbon Menu, and you have the File Menu back.
Worth a try...
Disagree on both accounts. MS libraries makes searching your hard drive so vastly superior to XP to be laughable and makes XP archaic in comparison. Ribbon is much easier once you spend sufficient time on it.
I did that for my Win7 desktop, but the Win7 Windows Explorer could only find Win7 versions of Explorer.exe, not the WinXP version of Explorer.exe. Sigh!
This is a very interesting issue because, I agree with newfreep philosophically, but in the real world Leaning Right’s comments are worthy of consideration.
And I would say more there could be a national security issue as well.
They don’t know because they don’t want to know.
I find customers still using win 98, Win NT and Win 2000. They haven’t upgraded because they don’t want to spend the money.
Microsoft support is good if you pay for it.
Why do I view the Win8 Windows Explorer.exe to be inferior to the WinXP Windows Explorer?
Simple.
Because at work, we recently changed from WinXP Pro to Win7 Pro. When my desktop was XP, the XP Explorer.exe could find target data (we have huge amounts of data) readily for client requests. Now with Win7’s Explorer.exe, I no longer am able to reliably search and find target data. I know I have it on our server drives but rarely have successful search results any more.
But then what do I know? I’m just a professional programmer who has to deal with very large amounts of data. Unlike a casual home user.
Yeah imagine having to learn something new every 5 or 6 years. How terrible.
Have been using Firefox since it’s inception. Both Linux and Windows versions.
I built my first computer in 1982. Ran TRSDOS, NewDOS80, all MSDOS and Windows. I never owned a version of ME or Vista, both real dogs. Worked on a number of them and hated it.
My first Linux install was a UMSDOS version of Slackware in around 1995. Used Redhat, Mandrake, FreeBSD and Ubuntu.
Even if I moved my wife to Linux, I would still have the re-education when major changes took place in a release. Some are automatic, but others are not.
That is annoying. That’s why I right-click on the directory in question and “Open in New Window.” That keeps my blood pressure lower.
Actually the interface is designed for the user to transition between devices and for constant internet connectivity. Its designed for people with ADHD in other words.
I still run XP (on a 2 year old PC) and I have never had a problem running anything on it.
Windows 8 and windows 7 are functionally very similar. They added the new front end that works across pc platforms and mobile devices and touch screen functions . I don’t have any machines running 8 but I have read that there are ways to bypass the metro start up screen and third party software to replace it.
So I'll opt, as in years past, to pass.
A lot of issues you probably won’t even detect in this modern age of self updating apps. You can’t run the newest version of IE on XP (not such a bad thing, nothing makes a version of IE look better than the next version), but Windows won’t try. Don’t know if current Firefox supports XP, but again it’s self updating so if it doesn’t it wouldn’t try. I know we’re dropping XP from the stuff I work on, finally. You’ll probably start running into more things dropping XP now, .Net4.5 doesn’t support anything before Vista, so anybody that’s jumping to that has to drop XP.
Did you use the search at the top to locate the XP version?
I was using XP64 for some time, however there is much more that will refuse to run there.
I have an 2 xp systems for most things and a win7 box for the new games and not much else.
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