Sorry I personally agree with the pro's

But I suspect that the consumers are going to not upgrade.

I know that it doesn't matter what I say to the boss he isn't going to upgrade the works PC's. If they die and the new one comes with Win8 on it so be it.

This is going to be the carrying factor I suspect.

Its going to end up being the pro IT admins who are going to suffer. And it could very well be that things implode but I honestly can't see a mass migration away from XP aka what happened over Y2K. And to be honest there is still a lot of feeling out there because of Y2K with a lot of people seeing the whole thing as a waste of time and money.

The longer it takes for something not to happen the less pressure there will be to change.

To be honest I wouldn't be surprised if something comes out about a month after the support finishes. It will be of a very high technical standard almost as if the had access to the full technical documentation to the OS. It will of course be fatal to the OS requiring it to be wiped and a new OS to be installed.

For those of us that have "normal" brains, as opposed to "IT"* brains, the fact that our man in Bracknell, our man of Apple, and sundry others all agree that XP will be a problem means that I, for one, will be off next year looking for a decent cheapo pc with something other than XP on it.

*
I never got beyond Heat, Light and Sound in the 4th year, and avoided science O levels. (The skool got its own back by making me take 3 maths O levels). And I'm still on p15 of Hawkins' book.

AO

There are tons of cheap laptops on that river place.

Well personally I don't have an XP system. So its fine for me.

The problem that will occur is when nothing happens and people continue to use out of date OS's with no problems.

In the main 99% of home users never upgrade an OS, the only time they will change is when the computer dies and they have to get a new one.

So something pretty major is going to have to happen to get people to move.

Mike-Bracknell
 

Good to hear from you - you're missed!

Mr Mike,

Our learned rev friend is right. Do come back more often.
ta
AO

New computer came with WIN 7 - did not look forward to the change but in the end I really didn't notice much difference from XP, except that is does appears to be more stable.

Upgraded 'er indoors' from Vista to WIN 7 and it was a definite improvement.

Still get the occasional glitch but I suspect that is the ancient hardware, certainly smoother & faster.

You should aim better next time ;)

Seriously, my support company's growing pretty quickly so I have less time to give away these days unfortunately.

Thanks for the well wishes though. :)

Glad to hear you're growing, Mike - so often we hear the opposite...

Anyway, what are you doing here? get back to work!!!

Will non-Microsoft anti-virus (etc) software still continue to support XP users after April 2014? This would include Avast, AVG, Norton, McAfee, etc.

It's 13 years since XP was released to a grateful world. Three service packs followed to get it Quite Right and since then it's been a useful tool.

Yet to read posts on this thread it still won't remain a viable proposition without those weekly and monthly updates, debugs and anti-malware releases. I'm glad my car was not sold to me on the same basis.

Seacue, I haven't asked them all but the ones I have researched say they have no plans to withdraw support for XP anti-virus and-anti malware..

Would you expect your car manufacturer to retro-fit the latest security system to your clapped out old banger? Without it you're easy pickings for any thief, car jacker or joy rider who happens along. You wouldn't drive that around the seedier parts of town and the Internet is all seedy.

Mr P., your remark not understood.

My car's had three annual services since I bought it and neither the ECC nor display/nav/bluetooth/net/security software has been updated (nor needed to be) as far as I can tell by looking at the version numbers on the screen.

How may updates have been issued for XP in that time ?

Cars age a lot more slowly than computers and operating systems. XP is like driving something out of the 60s. Your three year old car is like a 6 month old laptop.

My point was you wouldn't expect the manufacturer to provide anything for your 60s banger.

The difference between my old car ('70s actually) and an operating system is that there are third party manufacturers willing to support my car with spare parts. Particularly since it has become somewhat of a classic.

Ask Microsoft if they will place the XP code base into the public domain and let others support it. I can guess their answer.

Yeah, they'll tell you not to be so :mad: unrealistic. :cool:

If you want open source (Linux) or mostly open source (OS X), then go that way.

Microsoft never have been and never will be an open source developer, nor are many other major software developers (e.g Adobe, other than their open source file formats e.g. PDF).

Put yourself into their shoes, they are private for-profit company, perfectly entitled to make their own decisions about their own intellectual property and when they cease support for an obsolete product.

Mixture
 

In yesterday's podcast for a well known PC Magazine - the hoary chestnut of third party patches for the commonly used old XP Operating System - Read China ! came up as a proposition (I will confirm this - I need to listen again though).

XP's biggest limitation is its Memory address handling.

Microsoft could, if they had so wished, implemented 32 bit physical address extension. As supported by AMD & Intel on the Pentium Pro since mid the nineties.

Microsoft as a conventional profit orientated company (nothing wrong with that) chose the Win 7 & Win 8 route to "encourage" users en masse to purchase more kit.

Big problem - For many, functionality, familiarity and about good enough wins.

There are more XP - SP3 PC's around that Win 8 machines although this is changing.

Now the bad news for the PC tech brigade (me included) is that many users will make do with what they have for economic reasons.

A sensible route: but not the most profitable for MS is to continue to patch the Operating System for all until the XP user base is shrunk by inevitable attrition - say for three years. The working life for a traditional PC what ? 5 -6 years - I make them last longer.

If people think that the user base running XP are going to cease to run them on the internet after April 2014 are frankly deluded.

Many people just do not have the funds to buy the latest Tablets - The older PC's will be replaced in part by smart phone type devices in time.

Microsoft have set the deadline in their own interests - Come on folks I bet that the internal Patch infrastructure team, devoted XP; is only a small part of that allocated to Win 7, 8 and the Server products.

(This was typed on a system consisting of a: 2008 Advent Motherboard & case + Blu Ray DVD, Intel® Core™2 Quad CPU Q8200 @ 2.33GHz × 4 - 6 Gigs of old ddr2 -400 Ram: purchased for £70.00 - I've added a Power supply and a Seagate 1/2 TB Sata - £48.00 inc VAT. Running Ubuntu 12.04. Cobbled together on Monday last.)

Sounds like a bit of a conspiracy theory to me, I don't think you can view it as a "they could if they wished" type thing.....

- There's all the complexity related to coding of the actual operating system
- There's all the third party software and hardware developers to think about
- 32 bit PAE is a hack, not a fix. That's why 64 bit OS is the way to go. XP does actually have a PAE mode anyway, its just not recommended for solid reasons.
- Yes, Windows XP was released in 2001, but development started in 1999 and the planning for development probably started a couple of years before that. The IT world has changed substantially in that short period of time, it makes perfect sense for release Windows 7/8 with its memory and other features now.... back then, the world was a different place, IT was not yet the commodity it is today and I don't think you could expect Microsoft to foresee the IT world like it is today.

Microsoft announced end of mainstream support in 2009 and end of extended support set at 2014. You've had your five years of attrition. :ugh:

Still resource that costs money and could be better employed elsewhere. Also don't forget the associated resource associated with software development (lab infrastructure, testing routines etc)... it all consumes time and money !

Plus, the people moaning here on PPRuNe are people who've only made a one off payment to Microsoft for their XP license in the form of a minuscule OEM royalty fee. Those people have had astonishing value for money in terms of patches being provided free of charge for so many years.

Mixture
 

I can only agree re the warnings - 5 years.

You have guessed it: All three of my XP copies were purchased. One was an upgrade from Win ME (There lies a story), and the other two were new builds.

[Edit: Good point. re many users - They would accept the OS as just part of the PC package when purchased]

What set me thinking, were the comments on the Magazine podcast - by someone who should know what they are talking about, was the intimate relationship between the anti - virus prods and the Operating System (I suspect this does not only apply to XP). Bearing in mind your previous comments, re API vulnerabilities, could third party patches work (we would probably have to pay !!!)

The biggi is, for those of us with valuable (in work terms) legacy software.

The other biggi: the time and trouble, many of us have taken in setting up reliable and tested backup systems.

I have used an early Ver of Acronis 8. Very successfully. Others have had problems - Norton Ghost has worked well on the systems I've used.

Cloud backup: the obvious choice for many has been undermined by recent revelations - Encrypted or not.

For ordinary bods (me) the upload time for a smallish busy personal system say 25-30 Giga Bytes took ages -

Downloads were more practical.

I know there's a fundamental difference between a "System Backup" and a repository of critical personal work.

Simplicity is best for many people: Windows 8 really does complicate things and therein lies the problem.

CAT III

"Ask Microsoft if they will place the XP code base into the public domain and let others support it."

XP is a real mess, disentangling that code would be a total nightmare!

You'd do better supporting ReactOS - ReactOS Project

Win7 is much cleaner and more stable

Bite the bullet!

Mac

:cool:

PS: If you install Win98SE in a VM and strip it down you can make it pretty small and surprisingly stable - but of course it is totally insecure, don't let it near the 'Net!

To Mac
 

Yep - we can wish - Something I forgot to mention when replying to Mixture's advice, as he/she said, as users we only see the tip of a very complex iceberg (its a long time since I coded commercially).

I bet this seems obvious and perhaps we will never know - just how well documented is the XP coding base, given its age and the conventions of 12 years ago. I would imagine the documentation base is enormous as well as the master code archives.

This would be a very complex task to take on for the open community.

The head ache is the gigantic user base.

As said earlier, normal attrition will take its toll of the XP user base as well as changes in patterns of ownership.

OK I'm one of the awkward squad for now, but I'm in a small minority. Some will go Win 7 or 8, others Mac and a lot more "Smart multifunction computing devices" and the odd % or so Linux.

Any Win 98 users still Extant?

For the majority of home users they will only change when the computer stops working.

They will not pay to upgrade.

For a lot of small business users this will be the same.

You're kidding, right?

Did you ever try Windows XP-64? The issue there was not the memory address handling.

For a lot of Scottish small business users maybe. Personally, i'm down to my last 5 users (all of whom will move to a terminal services solution when their XP desktops die).

Mike any one that has taken on your services is not a normal small business user of IT.

And it doesn't matter how many go over the whole system is wide open because of the of the millions that aren't going to change until there computers fall over.

So they may have there terminal solution but if the whole internet gets swamped they are stuffed.

If everything continues working with millions of XP OS's out there its just going mean even more people aren't going to bother next time either.

A couple of months ago I read the MS thought / feared / hoped / expected that no more than 15% of the world would still be using XP at the drop-dead date.

Its still over 23% and has stayed that way over the last 3 months. Win 8 is gently rising and win 7 fallen slightly.

Go on....enlighten me?

Well they have a reasonable grip that they need a service provider and not some local knobend that bought a book off amazon.

Nothing I have read here has convinced me that my XP will stop 'working' (suddenly or otherwise) next year with the end of MS support.

That there will be a large increase in the frequency and severity of malware attacks I do believe, but looking back at records over the past year none of the previous attacks appear to have been picked up by MS /Defender; all have been either blocked or eliminated by my two antivirus programs running full time on the PC.

If I am wrong I will say so and some posters here can then revel in having been right (and offensive too, but there we are, can't have everything I guess).

I'm not one to stand on the parapets and pour scorn, especially if it turns out great for you in the end, but let me explain the theory for you to at least grasp why we're saying what we're saying:

- Your assertion that "tomorrow is going to be fine because today is fine" is flawed because today currently has a support infrastructure in place.

- That support infrastructure consists of security professionals (and amateurs/hobbyists) evaluating XP as a going concern, probing it's systems for weaknesses, and reporting these, either the courteous way (to Microsoft themselves, who then fix the vulnerability and report it afterwards), or the discourteous way (to the press who report about it, which is then picked up by hackers and used, creating 'zero-day' exploits which Microsoft then scramble to fix, often posting expedited patch downloads)....there's also obviously the hackers/foreign governments/etc that have their own clandestine vulnerability experts, who will exploit a security hole and it's only when Microsoft get wind of it that it's patched.

- The above framework is the reason you get all those damned Windows Updates. Not because they improve a product's functionality at all or fix operational bugs - those are very much the minority reason for updates.

- The whole framework described will stop soon, with Microsoft no longer releasing updates to XP. This means that the first hacker to discover a security hole in it can then create an exploit and it'll be unpatched, meaning that *everyone* using XP is vulnerable.

Now, you can think that nobody's going to be affected by anything, you can think that McAfee/Norton/etc are going to keep on manufacturing antivirus definitions until the end of time, but I can virtually guarantee that anyone currently supporting XP in a security capacity will soon announce that 'all bets are off' when considering their provision of 'security' to a platform that no longer has it's own inherent security.

This may have no effect, conversely you might find that the vast swathes of hookey WinXP licenses in China suddenly crash their economy when Japan launches their first virus targetting XP.

Who knows?

One thing I do know is that it's not that expensive to upgrade to a system which will remain supported by Microsoft AND all the other software companies writing software.

Hence the reason we're urging you, as friendly professionals, to do the right thing. We have no vested interest here, I make no money writing this to you today, in fact I could be doing other things that do make me money.

Take from this what you will, just don't ask for help on an XP system following April as you might find the resident IT experts won't be touching it with a bargepole either.

Mike.

Out of interest, do we have any figures for remaining 98 and 2000 users? When does Vista support end?

I have two programs on my XP box that are too expensive to renew and don't virtualise well - Adobe CS and Steinberg Cubase (sounds like a beer).

I have no need for 64 bit images or 64 bit music (if they exist) so the old clunker which has been spec'd to the max keeps on going - and is easy/cheap to repair when things go wrong.

So I'm kinda stuck at a place where the old clunker does everything I need it to do as it is right now.

My only option is to buy a super cheap Win8.1 laptop to use to access the nerdynet. The other option of forking out big dollars to update the two pieces of software mentioned above interferes with my plans to buy an elcheapo motorbike to putt about on.

You're no fun Microsoft.

Fine words and theory about those MS updates, Mike, but my Dell running XP SP2 has never received any of them over an eight year period, so why will it miss something it's never had?

Old PC and laptop user both with XP - like a good number of home users I have no intention to upgrade until they stop working

There's always eBay for a cheap laptop (from a reputable seller) - plenty running Win7. I love the moaning - you've had plenty of notice to put aside a dollar/pound/euro or three a week to cover costs.

Do any of you refuseniks take out insurance on your houses or cars on the off chance they burn down or get nicked? Same deal goes with running an up to date operating system. Sure, take your chances & you'll probably get away with it. The problem comes when you do get caught out. Fancy losing the contents of your bank account? Or having your credit card compromised?

Vista support ends April 2017: Windows lifecycle fact sheet - Microsoft Windows Help

your all taking it very personally that they aren't going to bother.

I can completely understand why they can't be bothered upgrading.

there is the embuggeration factor of installing it. Which is going to put 50% of them off.

And unless they get it for free they won't pay anything if the laptop still works.

Most don't care what the pro's have to say about it all.

If they press the on button and it turns on and all there programs work they don't give two hoots that its unsecure as hell.

Lets face it most are still running in admin user mode.

I have one 2000 machine still in use as it's the only one I have which has a SCSI port. I also have a laptop running 98 which was kept for a CD of Doonesbury cartoons :\. Can't speak for anybody else (which is unusual for this forum!) though.

No, of course they're not connected to the internet!

Oh, but it is personal. We get to clean up the mess caused by those who couldn't give a toss.

Perhaps a change of career might help? You already sound like a social worker.

Speak to Micorsoft then to give out free upgrades.

Your really think people are going to pay money just to give a load of IT admins an easy life?

there must be a dilbert cartoon about this

Nah, I'm just trying to get them to do something so they don't come crying in their beer when the Internet eats their hard drive :rolleyes: