Win XP usage down but not out as support cutoff deadline looms Windows XP usage on the web is decreasing as the venerable operating system edges ever closer towards its "end of life" from Microsoft support next week. Data from cloud security firm's Qualys QualysGuard shows that the percentage of XP on machines decreased from 35 per cent as of January 2013 to 14 per cent in February 2014. …
Industry specific software that would now often require thousands of dollars in licences, when the XP compatible license is valid forever....don't see my dad moving away from XP anytime soon. He doesn't have a bag of gold lying around handy and the software he uses is sufficient for his professional needs. Sadly, a number of niche programme developers are seeing the shift away from XP as an opportunity to frack people out of as much money as humanly possible. Some are happy to bend over and take it, some refuse to repeatedly pay for the same thing with prettier ui just because someone slapped a new version number on it, without modifying the functionality in any way, not counting the ever so trendy, "we're now in the cloud" only approach, we'll have your database now please, ty.
Yes,
Regarding VMs, I've tried running a lot of XP software we use in virtual machines running under Win7, Linux and MacOS X. Whilst it works, and we use some packages already in VMs, there are still issues (e.g. DirectX weirdies, OpenGL support not quite 100%, direct access to hardware devices on host system still a bit flakey as far as some software is concerned)
As to portable versions, I've had a play with Spoon studio, whilst it works as well (and it's a strange experience watching one of our CAD packages run off a USB stick, it was a nice trick to show the boss..) I found that the portable versions still didn't like running on anything higher than XP (the OS they was written for).
I forgot to add one thing, some of the software we run on the XP boxes is hardware dongled, mostly/all the old parallel port sort (with one serial dongle lurking somewhere), no updates available. I've yet to get one of these things to work properly under Win 7, in a VM or as a portable app.
..the OS they was written for..
Ugh!, 'they was'...I blame the painkillers for that one.
Even 10% (which seems a low estimate to me) of a very large number is still a large number. Come April 9th, when the sky hasn't fallen in, most XP users will just carry on as before, but without the nagware.
My 15-year old Toshiba laptop (upgraded from Win98 to 2k) was in use again last week, queuing up and playing sounds for a local theatre production, as it has done for a decade. I'll change it when it breaks.
The first sentence of this article was "Windows XP usage on the web..." I presume the local theatre group aren't surfing the internet and reading their emails with your laptop. (And if they are, and it does get infected, then it can be replaced because it's not a bespoke controller for an MRI scanner and doesn't contain data people will miss.)
There's bound to be some big scare story about gaping vulnerabilities found in XP, as soon as some business gets targeted. Probably blackhats already have stockpiled exploits, hoping that as long as they don't get discovered before the deadline, they will remain unfixed in XP. So maybe we'll see a wave of malware launched within a couple of days of EOL.
MS is under no obligation to support their ancient products.
I'd love to see that tested by someone with really deep pockets in a court of law. It's arguable that if Microsoft shipped a product that was defective in the first instance, and especially if they had been made aware of the defect at any time during the furst five years after they shipped it, then they *are* under an obligation to fix it.
This could be why they are giving a special deal to the UK govt and NHS. Are similar deals in place with other governments and huge customers? "We'll keep you happy just as long as you let us carry on screwing Joe Public and his small business".
Other big businesses won't rock the boat, because the precedent (if ever set) would hurt all of them.
I'm happy to report that my XP netbook (an Asus eeePC) is now running Ubuntu 12.04 as well as it did WinXP. WiFi, webcam, Bluetooth, touchpad, even the 3G dongle Just (F***ing) Worked. Most gratifying.
And for balance, the XP desktop (which does gaming duty) is midway through a transition to Win7 (hurray for eBay, and the Digital River official downloadable Windows ISOs).
Windows is much more secure if you stay below the MMT (Maximum Microsoft Threshold). This means no Microsoft Office or Flight Simulator and using XPLite to uninstall all the stuff "welded" to the OS that you don't need for your applications. This also means uninstalling Notepad, Wordpad, Calculator,Minesweeper, Solitaire and Windows Media Player and replacing them with any of the free replacements out there.
What you end up with after all this is the equivalent of a Linux PC that can run Portable Apps.
"Microsoft has announced that the Windows Vista code has been finalised, with Jim Allchin declaring it so safe that his seven year-old son doesn't need anti-virus software"
So how easy it is now to buy a PC without any MS installed system? WOuld that mean one ask price reduction proportionate to the MS tax (OS)?
I think someone in France managed to win a case in such a scenario. IF we all started adopting this practice ( Those who can use Linux, mainly) , surely these bloosuckers wii sit up and take note?
"So how easy it is now to buy a PC without any MS installed system?"
I bought a laptop in UK ~January without an OS, WIndows would have cost ~£60 more. OpenSUSE 13.1 installed in 7 mins without a hitch. This was a quad-core i7 with 8GB and a nice 1080 screen. Case is a little naff but otherwise everything works well. Just the Intel graphics but plenty fast enough for my purposes - will easily run 4 1080p/50 H264 videos simultaneously at ~15% CPU
£600 for 500GB version ( I save most stuff to a file server so I'm not bothered with SSD, with 8GB most programs I use regularly are in the cache anyway most of the time)
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