What's Keeping You On XP? 879
Hugh Pickens writes "PC World reports that Windows XP lost more than 11 percent of its share from September to December 2011, to post a December average of 46.5 percent, a new low for the aged OS as users have gotten Microsoft's message that the operating system should be retired. Figures indicate that Windows 7 will become the most widely used version in April, several months earlier than previous estimates. Two months ago, as Microsoft quietly celebrated the 10th anniversary of XP's retail launch, the company touted the motto 'Standing still is falling behind' to promote Windows 7 and demote XP. In July, Microsoft told customers it was 'time to move on' from XP, reminding everyone that the OS would exit all support in April 2014. Before that, the Internet Explorer team had dismissed XP as the 'lowest common denominator' when they explained why it wouldn't run IE9. The deadline for ditching Windows XP is in April 2014, when Microsoft stops patching the operating system. 'Enterprises don't want to run an OS when there's no security fixes,' says Michael Silver, an analyst with Gartner Research rejecting the idea that Microsoft would extend the end-of-life date for Windows XP to please the 10% who have no plans to leave the OS. 'The longer they let them run XP, the more enterprises will slow down their migration.'"
MS (Score:5, Interesting)
MS isn't giving away free upgrades and I'm not interested in paying for a really expensive copy or Windows just to play games.
When the security patches cease, I'll just uninstall XP and replace it with whatever the best version of Linux is at that point.
If It's Not Broken... (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't fix it. XP is a perfectly reliable platform. I can understand Microsoft wanting to shift more units, but no need for change-for-the-sake-of-it really. Or maybe I'm just an old codger :)
Isn't it obvious? (Score:4, Interesting)
Hazard (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm sure there will be plenty of posts here about how XP still works, how it fits the needs of some people, etc.
Even if you had a working Ford Model T, you couldn't safely use it on today's highways. Running Windows XP on today's Internet is far more dangerous, both for the operator and for everyone else, than running a more recent operating system. It will become far more hazardous after the patches stop flowing. There is a shrinking window for people to make the transition before the patches stop, and everyone still using XP would do well to take advantage of that window before it disappears.
Games, cost and familiarity (Score:3, Interesting)
1) All my games work (for the most part) and I don't have to beg for a port to Linux of said game or driver.
2) I don't necessarily want to pay the Apple premium for their rendition of problems.
3) I don't necessarily want to pay Microsoft more money for their rendition of Upgrade problems.
4) I'm familar with XP and all of it's quirks. Yeah I gotta reinstall every 6 months to keep it sane again, but imaging takes care of the worst of it.
Because I like to use my RAM and CPU myself (Score:5, Interesting)
To be honest, the only reason I eventually chopped in 2K for XP was that MS started shipping tools and SDKs that (arbitrarily) refused to install on 2K.
Windows is a operating system for hosting applications, generally ones written by someone else. Everything else that it insists on doing is completely extraneous to my requirements - that it just shuts up and gets into the background. MS has failed to make a compelling argument in favour of 7. I don't find "or else" particularly persuasive.
Two things: hardware and upgrade path (Score:5, Interesting)
Two things for me on my last XP machines.
1) The laptops I acquired that run XP can't run Vista or Windows 7. They are at their last Windows OS even per Microsoft specs.
2) You would have to be insane to try to upgrade an old XP box to 7 in place. I've seen enough toasted and flaky OS installations in my time that I've switched entirely to "lift and shift".
License cost? Meh - I haven't paid for Windows 7 yet or any of the other Server OS's around my house. Somehow Microsoft thinks I need lot of free samples (development editions, Windows 7 party packs, etc.) and who am I to dissuade them?
Re:It still works. (Score:5, Interesting)
And it doesn't cost any more money to keep it working. XP is tightly locked down for the few applications and few websites needed by those applications. The primary argument against staying on WinXP appear to be security issues. But if I only visit Symantec, Microsoft, Adobe and US Government sites, I suspect my risks are acceptable.
For everything else, I use MacOS, but that's of course just my opinion.
Re:Money (Score:4, Interesting)
Cheap PCs also run Linux, but that's not always a reson to run it.
I, personally, don't run XP except under a VM on my server at home for the rare occasions that I do need to run insanely legacy apps. I've been using 7 since RC2 & haven't looked back.
At work we have to run XP due to them refusing to upgrade legacy apps that refuse to play nice with 7.
The cheap PC excuse doesn't hold up when you look at the scalability of 7. It can run on cheap, even old PCs with no problems. Sure, your PIII from the 90's won't run it well, but it also won't run XP well.
If it's really that much of a problem, run Linux with wine or the like. Nothing worse than running an EOL OS with massive security problems.
Re:Isn't it obvious? (Score:3, Interesting)
I just don't care.
Yeah, it's a whole "meh" for me. I finally am running Windows 7, after buying a new computer in November which came with it installed. My old box still has Windows XP (and Ubuntu) on it, and it still works fine. My new box has Windows 7 on it, and it works fine too. I don't hate Win7, so I'm not going to downgrade the new box, and I don't hate WinXP, so I'm not going to upgrade the old box. Eventually, I'll just make it Ubuntu-only I suppose. In any case, I'm "meh" either way... they both do what they're supposed to do just fine. I do like 7's prettier look and improved taskbar, but not enough to pay for the upgrade on the other box...
Re:HP Universal Print Driver- thats why! (Score:5, Interesting)
He/She isn't blaming MS, I don't think. Merely pointing out that a significant feature set is not present on Win7, so upgrading completely isn't an option.
btw, I agree. The HP thing is a total scam. They've stopped supporting printers that are even just several years old. I've vowed never to buy another HP product again because of this (we got caught pretty badly in this as a small business).
Re:Virtual Machine (Score:5, Interesting)
Bingo. I'm running XP in a VM as well. Why?
1: No fussing with activation. I can radically change the hardware in a VM without having to deal with the "genuine-ness" of my OS each time.
2: XP has a small disk/RAM/CPU footprint.
3: I have some old 16 bit stuff I like running once in a while, and XP can run that.
4: I have a few special purpose applications that only run under XP. Especially some "antique" MP3 players such as the Nomad Jukebox. 32 bit Windows 7 might be able to run them, but likely not most due to the different driver model.
For a main OS, Windows 7 is light years ahead. However, for a VM guest, XP is still a good candidate because it still runs virtually everything.
Re:Nothing (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually..not really a troll.
Many business I know of are still using XP on their desktops. I guess often due to specially written apps, or just that the mandate to change has not yet come from upon high
We're one, dental office, 9 employees and struggling not to lay anyone off, if we upgrade to new computers, (we are due, 3 Mobo's had capacitor catastrophe this last year) with Win7, we would have to go with Win2008 and an extra 5 or 10 CALs, then upgrade the database on the server. I'm not sure if the client for the upgraded DB that will run on Vista or win7, will run on XP; so that'll probably be an all or nothing upgrade on the client computers. We're in a can't afford to upgrade and can't afford not to situation.
Re:Money (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Nothing (Score:4, Interesting)
What's really amazing is that the morons who designed these software applications and systems apparently never thought ahead and realized that at some point all the computers running this software would need to be upgraded to a newer OS, and that they should have taken this into account from the onset. No, you can't totally future-proof everything, but with this stuff it looks like they didn't even try.
Re:ASLR (Score:4, Interesting)
And Windows XP has DEP, they are both vulnerable
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Execution_Prevention [wikipedia.org]
ASLR and DEP bypass & attack:
http://www.whitephosphorus.org/sayonara.txt [whitephosphorus.org]