It's 2017 and over 9% of people use Windows XP!?
According to NetMarketShare, in January of 2017, Windows XP's market share went UP .10% and is now at 9.17%!
Just why? XP is basically obsolete and filled with a bunch of security holes. Even though I'm poor as fuck, I atleast made the effort to switch to Windows 7 years ago.
Just why? XP is basically obsolete and filled with a bunch of security holes. Even though I'm poor as fuck, I atleast made the effort to switch to Windows 7 years ago.
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No, really. And that Windows 10 is just the same crap with the start button put back. It turned off a lot of people to anything newer.
Of course, the fluctuations are mostly caused between differences in home and business browsing.
It does make me wonder what browsers they are using.
Performance is worse too. On Core 1 Solo (basically Pentium M w/ DDR2) hardware, XP performs worse than Windows 8.0. (There's technical reasons too - unused RAM is wasted RAM that could be better used for caches.)
I agree, but that's not an excuse to stay on an obsolete operating system. You can always use one of the *buntu flavors, which are very user-friendly. For old programs, Wine has amazing compatibility with older software. Wine even supports programs made for versions of Windows as old as Windows 2.
Agreed. I know that some people will make the excuse they can use the POSReady 2009 updates, but that doesn't patch everything and you basically end up with a mutant/Frankenstein configuration that will break some shit.
Yep, it's been shown newer versions of windows will generally perform better on the same hardware than older versions. Plus XP lacks proper SSD support.
To be honest, one thing I do miss from XP is how lightweight the OS is. It runs on old hardware perfectly, while something like Windows 7 would run horribly on said hardware. Though honestly, considering how most websites favour eye-candy over performance and efficiency nowadays, Internet on XP will die soon enough (Chrome already dropped support and Firefox will in April), and maybe that could push the remaining users onto a newer system.
And then in ten years the cycle will repeat with Windows 7.
I'm also supprised that it still keeps 9% on marketshare, hehehe.
"Internet on XP will die soon enough (Chrome already dropped support and Firefox will in April)"
This is not precisely correct about Firefox. From the Mozilla site:
In approximately March, 2017, Windows XP and Vista users will automatically be moved to the Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR).
Firefox is one of the few browsers that continues to support Windows XP and Vista, and we expect to continue to provide security updates for users until September 2017. Users do not need to take additional action to receive those updates. In mid-2017, user numbers on Windows XP and Vista will be reassessed and a final support end date will be announced.
Like others have said, it works. It'sl lighweight compared to later versions. It sits smack in the middle of earlier OS compatibility and later - meaning it runs almost all 32bit soft new and old. Plus it does have a 16bit sub-system.
Now as for your "security holes":Really? You are one of those that believe that the core OS is the most vulnernable aspect security-wise? Even though the primary cause of most malware issues in practical dayto day events occurs in the the browser?
Now, as to the speed issue: - W7 being "faster" than XP. Well, that was one of the selling points Microsoft pitched for W7. Yeah, they get you to the desktop faster. Meanwhile, stuff is still loading in the background. And unlike XP, W7 never "snaps" to whatever it is you are doing - it just kind of wallows aaround a bit - like a big old lumpy sedan.
I'm sitting here with machines running XP, W7, 8.1 and 10. By far, the most predictable, well-behaved version is XP.
They are all fine. W7 and 10 will let me load up more tools before chugging to a crawl. Of course, they have 3-4 times more ram too than my 500Mb XP machine.
All 32bit versions of Windows have the 16-bit subsystem, even Windows 10.
That's a good point, actually I meant to include in my original post that I'm slowly migrating to linux for most things.
I've been running Ubuntu 12.04 (about time for an upgrade now) on my main desktop since it came out and it's been running better than any Windows box I've ever had. I normally reinstall Windows once a year on my other systems just to clean them out, but Ubuntu just keeps on ticking.
I've ditched XP as a main OS around 5 years ago once I upgraded to 7, but as a vintage computer enthusiast I still have plenty of non-networked systems running XP and earlier OSes, those are systems that rarely get turned on and are only used for old games and applications that seem to be better on older systems.
As far as performance goes, I've ran both 7 and XP on a 2006 Toshiba Laptop, there was hardly any difference in performance, I also ran Windows 7-10 on a 2012 Dell Desktop, and 10 seemed to be the fastest on that system, As you've said, XP SP3 is bloated enough to make 7 worth using on hardware capable of a fully updated XP install.
The key is, and always has been, to run the OS for your hardware. Microsoft can't, and shouldn't, support every hardware platform ever released in every version of Windows. Frankly, it's amazing that Windows 10 works as well as it does on older hardware. Bottom line is, an OS's job is to give you and your applications access to the hardware. They're supposed to go hand in hand.
When it comes to my daily driver / production machines, I don't upgrade Windows unless I upgrade the hardware. My current desktop was built in 2011 and that's when I installed my OS. Will I upgrade? Sure, when I upgrade my hardware. The main exception to this is with dev / lab machines and servers. With servers, I keep the OS current for security. And most of the servers are VMs, so the hardware is kind of irrelevant.
Also, one notable except to this rule has been with my work machine. It had 7 on it when I first built it, which worked fine... but I later upgraded it to 8.1. When I built it, 8.1 hadn't been released yet and 8's lack of a start button just annoyed me too much to be productive. In this case, the hardware was actually meant for 8, but they also supported 7 and it ran well enough. But after working with 8.1 for a while (and learning how to use the start screen properly), 7 started to feel really dated. So I upgraded and I don't regret that at all.
Now 8.1 is beginning to feel a little dated, but there's just some annoyances with 10 that make me hesitant to switch to it as a daily driver. For example, when RDP'ing into a remote server, the credential dialog that pops up now requires me to click a "more options" link to enter a non-saved credential... whereas in 8.1, I can just hit the down arrow twice and get to where I need to be.
Really? Doing precisely that is how Microsoft came to dominate the desktop market.
Hmmm, let's go to the tape - one article from 2002 (XP RTM),and one from 2008 (XP SP3):
http://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-xp ... uirements/
http://thebackroomtech.com/2008/09/24/h ... ws-xp-sp3/
The answer is the same - approx 1.5 gig.
Yes, its officially obsolete. Yes, won't/can't know anything about new hardware unless the vendor specifically writes the support.
But not useful in a daily environment?
And this "windows 7, 8, 10 is faster". Ah, we didn't complain about the speed back when it was new - what happens - does the OS automagically slowdown?
So what if you can find a metric that shows a newer OS is signifacntly faster on the same hardware? Will that OS support the apps that one would expect to also run?
What comes to mind immediately is 2 long in the market apps - Broderbund's The Print Shop, and Serif's PagePlus - both have not been able to address compatibility issues on Windows 7 and higher so have ditched the old platform and re-written from the ground up.
Curiously, I've got some old 32bit software that ran miserably under XP, but is fine on Windows 7.
So it varies. There is no blanket statement, there is no "one size fits all" patent answer.
XP is obsolete, Vista too, W7, W8.0/8.1 as well - next year "10" will be obsolete. But they all do their job - it's not like suddenly you don't dare use them.
Too much fan boi, too few facts.
If you are talking about xp defenders being fan bois, you aren't wrong there.
I'm not going to make everyones mother look at their cat pictures with Windows XP. Without support that is not a valid business option for normal installs.
But if I'm running it on some industrial controller properly fire walled because the newer stuff Just Doesn't Work, and without it important work can not get done... well deal with it!
Perhaps you want to pay for the new Windows 10 (or Apple) computers to replace the XP machines the poor and unemployed are using? That is probably where a lot of this comes from. Buy a new computer or pay the rent? Hmm, tough choice.
And yes, there are a LOT of people who will simply keep running an existing machine until it visibly "breaks" in some way. Either getting pOwned, software refusing to run, or their cat picture web site finally breaks in their old browser.
Why? It is usually a headache for normal people to move everything to a new machine. And as I mentioned before the newer versions of Windows are "all different" so many people don't want to re-learn everything.
A good chunk of people out there honestly don't even know what a computer "operating system" is or why they should care.
This 9.17% or whatever still using XP are NOT fanbois.
I'm talking more about Microsoft's future and less about what they've done in the past. This recent skylake / kabylake support business just shows that they are slowly moving in a direction where they aren't going to bend over backwards to support new platforms on older OSes.
This is fine until a certain point, but eventually the risk of running an unpatched box on your network will outweigh the cost of upgrading. Depending on what it is, it could take decades for that to happen... but it will eventually happen. The problem is that a lot of these businesses just don't understand the impact of a security breach or just how risky an unpatched box is until they get owned and have to write that check that brings their company to its knees.
However, one of the most popular attacks these days is ransomware... so forget about your unpatched XP box, that crap will work on all of your workstations, from the old to the new. They're going for your data, to encrypt all the things and bank on the fact that you haven't had good backups in the last 10 years.
Old, from back when XP went EOL, but the message is still valid.
That's why Malwarebytes and clean, frequent backups.
Backups, yes. But Malwarebytes and other AV / Anti-Malware generally suck at stopping these ransomware infections until it's too late.
take those XP numbers from NetMarketShare with some grain of salt. Read this article by Ed Bott:
http://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-versus-windows-7-whose-numbers-do-you-trust/
Some important quotes from that article:
...
As for security, i have MalewareBytes and AVG Free,and i had not had a virus since 2011,when my then 6 year old brother tried to get minecraft
on a "4Free" type site and ended up uninstalling my antivirus programs in the process.
I'd forgotten what a sweet and understandable OS it was/is.
Once I got the wrinkles ironed out, I up-torrented a VHD that even on my pissant W7 box loads fast and shoots right to the desktop with no 3rd party softs involved.
AVG Free is a more of a joke, but yet in my experience does more harm then good. Also, It doesn't take much to run Windows 7. If anything else, why not try linux?