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Microsoft to spooks: WannaCrypt was inevitable, quit hoarding

A Non e-mouse Silver badge

I think you're being a bit hard on Microsoft.

XP Was released in 2001 and mainstream support ended in 2009 - that's 8 years of main official support. Then, there was extended support (Patches only) 'till 2014. So that's 13 years (give or take a few months) in which Microsoft supported XP. (I'm ignoring the custom support companies could pay large amounts of money for post 2014)

XP's successor, Windows 7, has been out since 2009. So companies have had around 8 years to move from XP to 7, with an overlap of five years between XP & Windows 7. (Corporate tend to have a three-five year refresh cycle for desktop hardware)

According to Google, it is estimated that around 400 million copies of XP were sold in its first five years. Estimates as to the total number of licenses sold appear to exceed 1 billion. And that's not accounting for all the dodgy versions out there. So even if there are "millions" of XP installations out there, that's possibly just a single percentage of all the XP licenses ever sold.

In this situation, I think Microsoft have been quite fair.

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