Will Windows XP ever die?
It has been two years since support for the OS that we all loved had its support cut, and I am surprised to see that it's still breathing after all this time, though with a 10.9% market share as of last month. I wonder... will it ever fade away into nothingness, and why are some places out there, even in China, still use it? Those that still use it on their machines are more vulnerable to security threats and that many programs have already dropped support for it (though I recall that Firefox still supports it). It might take another two or three years to finally give up and for all its users to wean away from it. Even so, 7 would go the same way. It's just strange that something like this would still go on, given that Windows 2000's lifetime ended six years ago and I bet that perished pretty quickly.
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Usually what happened was as computers from the 9x era died off either due to failing hardware or poor performance, they were replaced with shiny new XP boxes.
And now the same is happening with 7... the XP boxes are starting to die off and get replaced with shiny new 7 boxes.
But here's the problem, since the world avoided Vista like the ME-plague, XP was installed on newer generations of hardware, including the core2duos which are still fairly capable machines and it's taking a while for those to die off, but it is happening.
Will XP ever die? Yeah, but it will just take longer because it was in service much longer than most other versions of Windows due to both how long Vista was delayed and bad public opinion of Vista.
And right after I made this thread, I came across this by chance.
In the late 90s most people would have maybe at most a desktop and a laptop for business or whatever, but by the end of the 2000s you'd find multiple machines per house. The sheer amount of systems kicking around plus the vast userbase that was exposed due to the long shelf life is pretty much why it's taking so long to go away.
And the main problem that arose with this was that people had gotten so used to XP that they didn't see any reason to upgrade to a newer version of Windows. After all, why should you replace something that works fine the way it is? Of course this argument is flawed because of XP's horribly outdated security (and the fact that it's no longer supported makes it even worse), but it's an argument that I've seen used by a lot of people in my direct surroundings who are still using XP.
Because as long as you can download a web browser on it, people will use it. Thankfully, it appears that Firefox and Chrome have announced discontinuation for XP if I'm correct.
No reason to continue use XP even using POS update hack, unless you build retro-computing or have Pentium III machines to play around.
I got vista machine and my Chrome browser noticed that Vista will be unsupported as XP too. Heck, Vista still supported today and will be unsupported on 2017.
Chrome has discontinued XP support. Firefox still supports it AFAIK. But that support won't last forever. The sooner they drop support for XP, the better.
as crap as it is still, or become more elite with a macOS or Linux.And soon, 7 could be next
There are still CNC machines running CP/M and MS-DOS. Scientific testing machines running Windows 98. Somewhere there is probably someone using a PDP-11 or OS/2 for some hidden production purpose.
Never underestimate the power of legacy equipment.
If they want to cry about "old" operating systems being a security hazard, let's talk about embedded Internet of Things devices that are only 2 years old and ALREADY TOTALLY UNSUPPORTED! What, talking about that doesn't sell new crap? Oh, I see, they just want everyone to run out and buy a new Dell right now.
Posted from Microsoft Windows 95.
I get nostalgic for the old stuff from time to time and sometimes it's a fun challenge to get things working again. But don't kid yourself, this is a very niche thing.
As for security, for the average home user behind a firewall, yeah, you'll probably be fine.
For the big company with lots of money to steal with a nice juicy target on their back? No. Security is absolutely a priority and it's not just about what you click on. Worms ran rampant because of XPs lax security.
As for security, a lot of that was patched in SP3.
No, Server 2008 still gets updates until 2023, and those updates mostly work on Vista (except for some .NET ones).
The 2008 R2 updates have to be paid for, right? Does that registry tweak still work? I haven't tried it.
What registry tweak?
"We do other computing discussions here as well...It's an old computer/abandonware forum."
Yes, that was my point. XP is still used.
I read recently, that MS released an XP security fix in 2019 for one malware exploit.
I just do not understand what relevance "market share" has in a "old computer/abandonware forum". In an IT sub-forum, yeah, I'd get it.