The State of Windows XP in Numbers

zedlipplin, I continue to use XP and am in no hurry to change. Fortunately my computer came with win 7 discs so even when I do decide to change, Microsoft won’t get one penny more from me.

If General Motors forced me to buy a 2015 Chevy Volt to replace my Toyota Camary 2000 LE with Fed. mandate back-up or not use Texas roads, I would bet a Federal Judge would probably find it UN-Constitutional. Here I am having to upgrade to 8.1 or have my computer be classified un- usable. I have no FEDERAL JUDGE siding with me. Microsoft really has a pair to force customers to upgrade or do without. As an owner of a 14 now 15 year old foreign car…I resent the power Microsoft has that Toyota doesn’t have.

Thank for your input, I am ok Mom. I am not in America I am in AU. You do have the right to choose as I do. I have clients , ex pat Americans, one of them. Don’t know where you got cyber bullying from from we in AU. are thick skinned, water off a ducks back. I am far from a geek.

Dude…. Unlike cars, operating systems need to be patched. Things go out of date. Security holes appear. After a while, you can’t bring the new features people need just by issuing patches. No one is forcing you to update, it’s simply for your own good.
Don’t like Microsoft? Go with one of the various Linux distros, or one of the BSD-derived Operating Systems (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonflyBSD, PC-BSD, DesktopBSD)
They’re free and open source, and they usually have a friendlier upgrade model.

Still, seeing as Windows 10 will be a free upgrade for anyone on XP, 7, 8, or 8.1, I fail to see what your gripe is. No one’s making you pay more. MS is moving to the Software As A Service (SAAS) model, similarly to Apple.

A lot of macho-men like you, who refuse to learn anything but football and make fun of people who spend time with their computers, run everyday asking us for help because their tablet/pc/iphone/whatever is not working and you dont have knowledge to repair it.

So if you refuse to move away from Windows XP when that people says that it has a lot of security holes, please don’t go to a ‘geek’ because your bank/fb/mail/girlfriend-pics where stolen, it will be your fault, not Microsoft’s or Apple’s.

I am running Windows 7, and as for my client’s still running XP, they are either on a pension and can’t afford the $120 AU it costs to buy an OEM copy of windows 7. Go to a retail store and all you have is Window 8.1 and new range of 2015 laptops and Apple products. Windows 7 will get no more service packs, just support for the next 3 years, so you will find yourself on Windows 8.1, and a rumour has it if you are using W 8.1 you get Windows 10 free, nice of Bill Huh!!! I haven’t looked at Windows 10 yet. Today being Monday 26/01/2015 Happy Australia Day

Window XP with 10 year+ of security updates , still vulnerable ? I think it is the safest out of all windows products.

Security must be kept up to date, since Microsoft said XP it’s no longer supported there has been big security problems affecting Windows (search for Heartbleed,Poodle, or Google’s Project Zero web). Security holes from 10 years ago doesn’t worry anyone now, but 0 days do.

This of course is why they make the software to need to be updated, this way they can continue making those 6 figure paychecks and who knows maybe they are the ones writing those viruses, they haven’t learned to do without like most of us real people….. lol

What a ridiculous argument. The correct argument would be this: You paid $10,000 for a car, then you expect the car manufacturer to continue to put petrol in it, service it and maintain it for as long as you want to use it. The manufacturer decided to stop supporting it after 12 years. You still own it and are free to maintain it yourself, but instead you complain because they have stopped doing it for you, despite the fact you have gotten plenty of value for that initial investment.

Microsoft it’s a company with shareholders, therefore it needs to make a profit. It cannot continue supporting an old operating system forever, patches are work and workers in a company need to be paid. But like I said its not as if they are taking your product away. If you want to hate someone why not hate the degenerates who make the malware. They are the ones who are vandalizing your old ‘camry’ making out useless. It’s not up to Toyota to stop the vandals forever.

As has been pointed out there are plenty of free options if you aren’t on the position to pay the upgrade to w7.

Here comes the constitutional scholar who has never read the Constitution.

It isn’t like releasing security patches is free (its actually really expensive).

If you want to use the car analogy (and I hate the car analogy) it would be Toyota stopped manufacturing parts for your Camary. You are still free to buy aftermarket parts or even try to make your own.

You’re free to install an operating system that is supported, for free I might add. You are free to use your computer as you see fit and you can still use Windows, they just won’t be updating it anymore so you are on your own.

Of course the huge, glaring difference is that you are required to register your car to drive on public roads and keep it maintained. There is no requirement to maintain or register your computer to plug it into the public internet.

trust me, you’d be far happier with win7. it’s an all around BETTER operating system, it literally beats xp in everything except support for older hardware and software.

Same here. No big rush to “upgrade”.

There is Windows9 it was just named Windows10 due to masses of buggy legacy code. Yes yes yes Widnows10 is the official name and it says that on all the internal and externals documentation but we know it’s still Windows 9

Some of these numbers either don’t make sense on their face, or are simply limited to countries outside China(where some 50% of consumers use XP and the entire Chinese government does so) which, if correct, makes them meaningless. The Chinese government overtly prohibited sales of Windows 8x there or above when Microsoft eliminated XP security updates. If you’re a fan of accurate, complete stats as I am, I would like to see some REAL worldwide numbers -including China. Are such numbers in fact available?

Me and the third parties will continue to support XP and are happy to help

I understand not everyone can afford to upgrade, and may not be able to use their old Software on new computers because it may lead to compatibility issues, or might not function at all.

Hopefully you have remote assistance turned off on XP.

I can understand why you would want to use the registry hack to try and boost your protection this way, but the hack hasn’t been tested on normal XP machines and at some point you never know when but each update could mount up, one of them leading to a bug , that could create unseen damage than before.

It’s a bit like The new Windows 10 Technical preview that has bugs and is in development you take a risk installing it , only Windows 10 is supported , XP isn’t, so if 10 goes wrong a bug will be fixed at some point, if you break your XP machine using the hack, and because XP isn’t supported anymore by them, Microsoft won’t issue an update, or give you Technical support to fix the Bug.

That’s right, Windows 10 will be free for a year after it’s officially released meaning people using Windows 7 Service pack 1 and 8.1 and windows phone 8.1 with the latest updates, will be able to upgrade for free.

There’s no one year trial to this at all the OS will be 100% free to everyone using these, for the first year, once you upgrade within the 12 months of release, the device with Windows 10 will get constant updates for the lifetime of the Device Microsoft said.

If you fail to upgrade after the 12 months of release, you will have to pay.

Microsoft has also said Enterprise versions of Windows 7 and Windows 8 won’t get the free upgrade, so businesses will have to pay whenever they decide to upgrade, and some of those businesses may want extra features.

Microsoft stated a pirated version of Windows 7 or Windows 8 will get the free upgrade to Windows 10, however Windows 10 will recognise it as non genuine, and will continue to be considered non Genuine, meaning that to get Windows 10 100% free they have to have a Genuine version official Windows that was originally activated for real.

A genuine/ official Windows 7 or 8 license will count as the Windows 10 licence, so it is likely Microsoft still wants those Pirates to pay.

XP users who want it will have to buy a new Machine and Vista users will likely have to pay aswell.

Of course there are risks. POS systems are not pure XP systems. But so far so good. I know how to back out an upgrade if I need to and have in fact done one so far. I do good backups so if my computer is unfixable due to a POS fix that breaks it ———– well that’s when I bite the bullet and get out my win 7 discs.

Still risky. But you might be able to restore back to an early stage using a restore copy of XP, booting from CD. keep up the good work backing up.

The only thing that would be an issue is if something corrupted the whole installation, but like you said, maybe then it’s time for a reinstall.

It’s very simple! If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! My XP system works great. It is NOT broken.

Windows XP was the best OS Microsoft made until 7 came out 8/8.1 are nice but not as good as XP. At lest people with the Windows 7 professional and up can still use XP

You’re wrong, and here’s why: One can’t possibly predict or anticipate the future. At some point, cyber-criminals will detect and exploit a Windows XP vulnerability that Microsoft won’t have anticipated, even with 10+ years of security updates in the past. Nonetheless, so far it seems that Windows XP has remained relatively secure compared to Windows 7. I still use Windows XP on some systems myself. But in theory, it’s becoming increasingly risky to run Windows XP.

1) I don’t know that all my software would run on it esp. the 2 programs I wrote in Visual Basic. 2) I just switched to win 7 and am fine with it.

Actually I finally made the jump about a month ago. It hasn’t been bad. It took a few days of solid work to get everything to where I was happy with it or at least could live with the changes. I keep all my data I generate in 2 folders on the C drive and just copied them over (I don’t use the system-generated My Documents folder). So as far as folder structure goes I just had to find the system things I backup in the new system folder structure (media player databases and firefox profile for example). I do have my win 7 system setup to be very much like my XP was. I was extremely lucky that when I bought my laptop in 2010 it came with XP loaded and discs for Win 7 Pro and they went in just fine. No license issues at all.

Please don’t get me wrong. I use and like Windows XP. And you make all good points, although I suspect that “lines of code” (I.e., complexity) will not statistically correlate with real-world security vulnerability, even though it “feels” like it should. Although the major security issues in XP may well have been with the active desktop and with IE, you can’t accurately state that’s where the problems “always” were. Perhaps “mostly”, but not all. And sure, the importance of using good safe-surfing practices can’t be overemphasized.

I’d make another point, too: Regression testing. You seem to assume that every line of code in Windows 10 is new and poorly-tested. But that’s probably not true.Not only has some well-tested code from Windows 7 likely been brought forward, but every time a vulnerability is detected in any older version of Windows, Microsoft adds a test for that vulnerability to its library of automated tests. When a new OS is released, you can almost be guaranteed that it’s been carefully tested for any and every vulnerability that has been detected and patched in the past.

My only point is still the same point I made in my original post: Over time, it will become too risky to continue using XP as a mainstream product, primarily because MS no longer patches newly-detected security vulnerabilities. It’s like having no fire insurance on your home: Nobody’s saying your house is going to burn down; it’s just needlessly risky.