Please, let Windows XP die with dignity

Early next year, when Microsoft finally, officially, and unreservedly drops support for Windows XP, it won't mark the beginning of a new XPocalypse. XP is a relic of a bygone era. It's time to let it go.

Yesterday my colleague David Gewirtz delivered a fire-and-brimstone sermon on the coming XPocalypse, the date early next year when Microsoft stops supporting Windows XP.

Here’s Pastor Gewirtz, in a passage replete with Biblical references:

If you don't think that cybercriminals have marked April 8, 2014 on their calendars with a big star, you're crazy. If you don't think they're holding back on launching some of their bigger exploits until after the patching ends, you're naive. For cybercriminals intent on skinning our 500 million sheep, April 8, 2014 is D-Day.

By abandoning XP on April 8, 2014, Microsoft will cease being a good shepherd of its most loyal customers. Microsoft is just leaving them out there, exposed, and unprotected. On April 8, 2014, those millions of remaining XP users will be like lambs being led to the slaughter. To paraphrase Jeremiah 11:19, they do not know that plots have been devised against them.

Can I get a “Hallelujah!” I said, Can I get a “Hallelujah!”

OK, my turn at the pulpit. Spoiler alert: I don't plan to cite chapter and verse.

First of all, this should not be a surprise to anyone. If you use Windows XP, you are not sheep, you are a paying customer. You got one of the best deals ever, because Microsoft has been running this route, the XP local, for more than a decade. No one is being left at the station. This train has had a “going out of service” sign on it for two years.

The support lifecycle is a contract between Microsoft and its customers, one that’s been clearly described for many years. It is ridiculous to think that a software company should support a product indefinitely. That’s economically silly and technically unsustainable. In early 2014, Microsoft will be delivering security patches for five—count ‘em, five—major releases of its operating system that are still in mainstream or extended support.

Perhaps that is why Microsoft’s reliability record with patches has been getting a bit dicey lately.

If you thought you were getting a lifetime guarantee, you weren’t paying attention. XP’s end-of-support date was actually already extended once.

Read more at: Please, let Windows XP die with dignity | ZDNet

 

[PhyllisColeman]

how long one should follow the getting older technology as the XP is among them .. and if you are still complaining about the stopped support to this past version from Microsoft, you are denying the changes to come in your way .. and that is not expected

 

[pcRat]

By tradition, Microsoft tries to take old operating systems off the market six months after the release of a new one, but Windows XP continues to live on, almost two years following the release of Windows Vista. For the third time since Vista's release in January 2007 ... read more
Windows XP Gets Another Life Extension - InternetNews.

 

[Ex_Brit]

I'll miss that snuffley little dog in Windows search ... ;-/

BTW Office 2003 dies at the same time.

Here's Microsoft's page: Support ends in 2014 for Windows XP and Office 2003!

 

[CountMike]

Still don't see reason for all that crying about the end of support. It's not like XP will disappear from everybody's hard disks at that date. Computers running XP will not stop working. Parts manufacturers mostly stopped making drivers for XP a while ago. I still run into older computers running XP but no updates are going to make them better, time just run them over and that OS too. I personally, never do any updates except SPs and never had any problems. Time to go ahead, XP was a great OS but so is W7, so what ?

 

[DavidY]

I think part of the problem is that PC hardware is improving faster than the attempts of software writers to invent more complex software to slow it down.

The result is that I'm using a PC which is at least 6 , probably 7 years old, and apart from adding some RAM, it's still original; even in its day it was nothing special, just a middle-range laptop. And it runs Windows 8 fine, does everything I need and is fast enough for day-to-day tasks. Things would perhaps be different if I wanted to run games on it, but for browsing, day-to-day admin etc. it's good.

So whereas I wouldn't run a PC which came with Windows 98 (and hardware from that era) if you paid me (apart from for historical interest), there are now a whole lot of PCs out there which are a few years old but perfectly capable of doing what most people want/need them to do, so people just keep using them. (Why spend money upgrading if it does the job?)

It's interesting that Windows 8.1 is, according to Microsoft "not designed or recommended for devices running Windows XP or Windows Vista", and it seems there won't be an Upgrade Assistant to check out your old hardware either, so if people are considering upgrading that old PC, using the Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant now, while it still exists, might be a smart move...

 

[Rickkins]

Just another display of hubris, as well as unbridled greed on ms's part.

 

[Ex_Brit]

Technology changes and the OS's have to change with that. XP is an insecure system compared with later ones and is incapable of dealing with a lot of the newer formats, software, hardware etc. There's only so much they can do to patch it and then that's it.

It's called progress. Whether or not that could be translated into corporate greed is a debatable point. Most of progress happens because people want it to happen.

 

[lehnerus2000]

To my mind, "Progress" implies "Improvement".
Various XP features were stripped out of later Windows versions (e.g. built-in context menu editor).

That said, apart from a few minor quibbles (actually the "Read-only" attribute change is a big disappointment to me) I'm happy with W7.

I keep XP active, so that I can run Windows Live Photo Gallery and my old games.

 

[Mystere]

Just another display of hubris, as well as unbridled greed on ms's part.

Seriously? You expect MS to continue to support a product that's 12 years old? At what point is it Ok for MS to stop? Ever?

That would mean products would have to cost 10x what they do now, because you have to build in support for all eternity. You have to keep releasing security patches, you have to keep doing testing, you have to keep maintaining code very time a new CPU is released or a new chipset... Enough is enough already. Even General Motors is not required to make parts for their cars for more than 7 years.

 

[Frank1]

I first read the one by Ed Bott's colleague, David Gewirtzwho sees it with a different perspective. After thinking about it, I somewhat agreed withhim (Gewirtz). Now after reading what Bott had to say about it, he makes a lotof sense, too. So quite honestly, I don't know how I feel about it. Microsofthas the perfect right to discontinue support. On the other hand, would it be intheir best interest if they did. It's anyone's guess which way it will go, butI think that MS will do as they said they would.

 

[lehnerus2000]

Just another display of hubris, as well as unbridled greed on ms's part.

Seriously? You expect MS to continue to support a product that's 12 years old? At what point is it Ok for MS to stop? Ever?

That would mean products would have to cost 10x what they do now, because you have to build in support for all eternity. You have to keep releasing security patches, you have to keep doing testing, you have to keep maintaining code very time a new CPU is released or a new chipset... Enough is enough already. Even General Motors is not required to make parts for their cars for more than 7 years.

The irony is that this would be a perfect excuse to suck people into using a subscription model.
"If you want to keep using XP, pays for our XP update service."

There are supposedly 500 million PCs running XP.
They could charge $10/month (for example) for the update service.
There could be an additional charge/subscription fee for actual support.

Businesses would just claim the cost on their tax bills anyway.
I suspect that the ones still using XP, would rather pay $10/month, than install a new OS, hardware and retrain their staff (with the associated costs).

If only 100 million PCs were signed up, that would still generate $1B/month.
You can't expect me to believe that MS spends $1B/month on patches for XP.

It would also acclimatise users to the idea of subscription software (necessary for the coming "Cloud" operating systems).

The car analogy fails because car parts are physical items.
They have to be built and stored.
That requires presses, dies, molds, factories and warehouses (millions of dollars).

Actually it won't be long before I would expect GM to provide "eternal support", given the developments in 3D printing.
All parts would exist as data and could be easily created on demand.

Software support (patches) require existing PCs and HDD storage (a few thousand dollars).
To put it another way, MS already has PCs, Servers and huge numbers of HDDs, that they are using for Vista, W7, 2K8, W8, 2K12, Office, etc. patches.

They can't afford to buy a hundred 4 TB HDDs?

 

[fafhrd]

It's not just Microsoft stopping support - it's the whole industry that is moving on.

As an experiment I started installing Windows 2000, as an unsupported OS, in a VMware Player VM. Installation went without problems, and it was easy to find an unofficial SP5.1 rollup to load many of the updates that were delivered by MS before support finished for W2k. There are still several Microsoft KB fixes for stuff I did not have installed available, but the support for older browsers is missing on those webpages, which just don't function properly.

IE5 is a really bad experience on today's Internet, and it is even hard to get a workable IE6.0 to download and install, and then the browser experience is little better. Opera had much better support, and a good archive for previous versions, but current versions 12-16 support XP and later. Then there is Adobe Flash, DirectX 9, and all the updates that fix the vulnerabilities in those which have to be sourced. Antiviruses and Antimalware - we cannot expect 3rd party companies to support legacy systems forever, even if we can find ways around support for modern hardware.

Try to download older stuff using your modern host OS, and the stuff you are after gets filtered out, because it is not for your version of Windows. If you do get something that runs with your browser, the page you want does not want to play with the older stuff.

Because of the difficulties in finding working versions and plug-ins, and getting them from web-pages that do not function, search engines lead you to sites that may have the stuff you want, but are bristling with BHOs and PUPs, toolbars and adware, and misleading download buttons.

It will be difficult to stay alive, unless you live in a sandbox.

So far my W2k is still running, but I dread to think how it will be in a month or so...

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there
this issue has been done to death

You can run Windows XP in a Virtual machine until the END OF THE UNIVERSE if you want to - if your hardware runs that long. It's totally safe as well if you don't connect it to the internet too. - I can't see what all the fuss is about.

Look I'm still running Windows 98 on a Virtual machine !!! - so "Wots prob!"!!.

Cheers
jimnbo

 

[Frank1]

Hi there
this issue has been done to death


jimnbo

I disagree with you, Jimbo. How many people using XP have any knowledge of what a virtual machine actually is-- much less using one? Likewise, of the millions of people using XP, I wonder how many will be using it with an internet connection. Yes I know--they should know better. I'm not suggesting that MS has an obligation to continue with their service, because they do not. But I do not think that this issue has been blown out of proportion. I respect you for the knowledge you seem to have about computers, but not all people using computers have that knowledge.

 

[Lazure]

I find it odd how people think that Windows XP should just live forever, when the majority of OS in the history of computing have never stuck with a version for longer than about 3 years before upgrading it. Windows XP is over a decade old. It shouldn't live forever, it shouldn't be alive anymore today. It has, at the very least, one very respectable OS release that is way better than it in every single way except for silly luddite reasons where people are unable to handle even the slightest of changes.

If you're a home user using any machine that has more than one core in a CPU, more than 3-4GB of RAM, and basically all SATA/PCI-E hardware... you have no business holding that machine down with a 12 year old OS that cannot even utilize the modern standards and resources (at least not without third party hacks and bandaids).

• Windows XP suffers from security problems
• It suffers from "winrot" in a very terrible way (no XP install really ever lasts more than 6 months without starting to slow down or take longer to boot, etc)
• It lacks real and/or native support for modern standards such as:
♥ Wi-Fi : Vendors have to supply their own drivers, software for there to be a UI or tray icon, with dodgy performance at best.
♥ SATA : You have to slipstream drivers in to even install XP on any machine built past around 2005.
♥ AHCI : Goodbye modern disk performance and efficiency, especially in SSDs.
♥ 64-bit : Aside from some modern production software basically requiring it, you lose out on any RAM installed beyond ~3GB.
♥ SSD : Your SSD won't perform long under any moderate to heavy use without TRIM and without manually disabling defrag.
♥ DirectX 10/11 : Some of your newer games that support this platforms either won't run or will run in reduced graphics in XP.
♥ Laptop Drivers : Many new laptops with Win7/8 won't even have drivers for XP, causing an even more crippled experience.
♥ Video Memory Limits : Modern video cards have a lot of RAM built-in nowadays, further reducing your maximum RAM in 32-bit.
♥ Poor Audio System : XP does not support per-process Mixer and switching audio inputs/outputs is not as easy to accomplish.
♥ Multi-Core CPU : XP has limited support for multicore CPU in consumer use, the system doesn't use these cores efficiently on its own. The first dual core CPU was well after XP's release, after all.
♥ USB 3.0 : Got USB 3.0 and you are dumb enough to downgrade to XP? Say goodbye to these ports.

In any case, to this day there are STILL people who rip Windows 7 off their newer computers and put XP on instead. Why? "Oh because they're used to XP better". That's a really terrible reason to bring down modern hardware to neaderthal standards. Why not just get used to Windows 7 already and save yourself and the rest of the people who have to troubleshoot your problems the grief and misery. I've seen people ask how to get Windows XP to install on CORE i7 8GB RAM gaming machines, and 'they don't care' that only 2GB of their RAM (after factoring in their huge video card) would be usable after doing this... All because they like the way XP looks better. Seriously, using 7 is NOT that steep of a learning curve over XP. Windows 8 isn't even THAT bad once you get used to it.

 

[HippsieGypsie]

^ That just about covers it.

 

[fafhrd]

There's only one question that bothers me for XP users, and for users of Windows versions that follow, that might need to reactivate their installations after the end of support, will that still be available, or will people be stuffed?

 

[Ex_Brit]

I doubt phone activation will be available but you should be able to auto-activate. No updates will be forthcoming though. It isn't recommended for your own security.

 

[CountMike]

Just thought of another complication with keeping an old OS "alive", how many languages the support has to be in ? It would have to be a huge machinery to support all this, better used somewhere else.