It shoud be illegal for Microsoft to withdraw support.
People clinging that hard to the past don’t really care about current events. It’s gotta be tough to stay on XP, there’s a lot of stuff that dropped support for it, actively rejects it even.
I guess it’s time for me to upgrade to Vista.
If I only ran XP in a VM and didn’t use it while online, would I be fairly safe?
On top of that, the percentage of WinXP customers will keep dropping as computers that XP runs on are failing, or otherwise removed from circulation. This will be a low interest target for hackers.
On top of that, what are those shops who run XP and are blissfully unaware? Those are car mechanics, pizza places, dry cleaners, and similar small businesses. They are not an interesting target for a hacker anyway, because they contain no c/c data and because they are connected to the Internet via the cheapest and slowest link; this makes them poor candidates for a zombie box.
My prediction is that those XP boxes will remain in use until their date of natural expiration - because the computer fails, or because the user buys a new accounting package that doesn't run on XP anymore. Boxes at homes will also remain in use because there is nothing wrong with XP as it is. As matter of fact, Win7/8 does not buy you anything. Win7 is a bit faster, but it runs on newer hardware too. Many XP boxes cannot be upgraded. Win8 is a poor choice for anyone, unless you are capable of finding and installing 3rd party software that restores usability.
I would be happy if Microsoft just released a decent file manager (like XP had, that Windows 7 doesn’t have) that doesn’t jump around when one tries to use it.
That piece of crap in Win7 is a piece of crap.
And dump the ribbon menuing and go back to the XP type menus and buttons.
Newer is NOT always better.
It's unlikely to be missed.
7 is better at picking up hardware .. otherwise XP is quite solid.
As with Vista, I'll most likely be skipping 8.
A good NAT router, Malwarebytes, MS Security Essentials, CCleaner, and not clicking on every link thrown in one's path = a happy box.
imho
Thank you Ernest, I really enjoy your article submissions, If you got a ping list could you add me.
Isn’t Vista being dropped also at the same time as XP?
Wife just had some auto updates to her Windows 7 machine that has made it almost unuseable. The browser simply refuses to go to some non-controversial websites and refuses to return some pages searched for.
If this continues to get worse, she might actually let me install Linux on her computer too. That would stop all the nonsense. Except for our local ISP who forced us to use Gmail with an alias to the old address. That system sucks too.
I will check out the Playstation 4 when it comes out and probably go with that. I can watch BluRay movies, surf the web, use email (gmail) and do documents (Google Docs) along with playing my favorite games, all at a fraction of the cost of a new PC, video card and OS just to run what I want. And let's not forget all the driver update maintenance that goes with it.
I never was a console "fanboy", preferring a PC with it's better graphics and much more in-depth games, but consoles are at a point where they can rival the PC, except for business and personal stuff, which is why my wife has a laptop.
/end-rant.
(1) Windows XP is superior in some ways to Windows 7, for example the XP Windows Explorer does a better job finding stuff on my PC than the Win7 Windows Explorer.
(2) Not all PC’s with XP can handle 7 or 8. Our older Sony VAIO with 1 gig ram was not able to be upgraded to Win7. But it is my business PC. And works fine otherwise. BTW Microsoft Office 97 is more trouble free than Office 2010. Despite a couple installs, when I open Word 2010, it insists on doing a very lengthy ‘activation’ of Office 2010, despite previous activations being successful.
(3) Be honest, Windows 8 sucks for professional-usage desktop PC’s. Win8 is a “One size fits all” OpSys that is annoying and awkward on a desktop PC. As a professional computer programmer, I find Win8 to be as satisfying to use as a toothache. Win8 makes Vista look great. And the saying was “Win7 was Microsoft’s apology for Vista”.
Anyway, Microsoft needs to keep forcing new OpSystems on the user base to keep its revenue stream up. New lamps for old and all that.
(4) WinXP came out in 2001 and it is now 2013...Microsoft has had how many years now to fix bugs and vulnerabilities in XP? One would think XP would be pretty bullet-proof by now. Assuming competence at Microsoft.........
Windows 8?! Barf! Who designed Windows 8? Was genius designers at Apple who wanted to drive users from Windows to Apple? Or did Microsoft hire the handicapped to design Win8? Yuck!
But don't forget to make recovery disks on your old box, before the vendor decides to turn out the lights.
You will likely need them.
Moved to Mac long ago.
I’m going to buy a copy of XP and get rid of Windows 7, I hate it!!!
“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.”
Microsoft bug fixes or security updates?
Is that the crap my computer used to download and then immediately afterwards things wouldn’t work correctly until the next download, and almost immediately I’d have some sort of virus problem?
I turned junk off in 2004, and haven’t had a problem since. We used to have 12 XP computers and after I turned Off ALL Microscam’s updates our problems dropped to nothing.
Gee whiz. Does this mean I won't be bothered by Automatic Updates anymore? No annoying, "You must restart your computer for recent changes to take effect" pop ups?
Bring it. I think I'll survive.
And isn't it odd that a company has to issue weekly security updates for a product starting on day one all the way until the EOSL date?
Support for xp embeded will continue for years. I think I heard 8 years. It’s found on tons of pos machines. Had ms dropped support for it it would have forced tons of retailers to replace already out dated pos equipment to remain PCI compliant.
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.
XP is STILL better than Vista, Win7 and Win8.
They don’t need to support it - the damn thing is stable and easy to use.
Our business knows. Problem is, they built a LOT of little programs that run on XP and have to be redesigned to run on 7. They’re getting there, but it’s taking time.