It's 2017 and over 9% of people use Windows XP!?

edited July 2017 in Software
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.
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Comments

  • dosbox wrote:
    Just why?
    Windows 8.

    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.
  • dosbox wrote:
    Just why?
    It works. It does the job. It is light weight, and people can play Youtube and browse their Facebook on their Pentium 4 1.7s. I'm using Windows 2000 as we speak, Avast 7.0 still gets updated definitions and works perfectly. It uses less than ~512MB of ram while playing 480p video on Youtube, using Firefox 45 with a Windows 2000 kernel extension for a Windows XP compatibility layer. It all works out.
  • XP and 2000 are still the two versions of Windows I use the most. Why? Because they're fast and lightweight, and I still use some software that won't run well on Windows 7. Plus Windows 8 was butt ugly and hard to navigate, and Windows 10 is too invasive for me. I don't want to be tracked, I don't want to see ads on my solitaire game, and I don't like the new "OS as a service" model they're pushing.
  • The lack of security patches for a daily driver internet OS is very, very bad.

    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.)
  • nick99nack wrote:
    .... and Windows 10 is too invasive for me. I don't want to be tracked, I don't want to see ads on my solitaire game, and I don't like the new "OS as a service" model they're pushing.

    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.
    ampharos wrote:
    The lack of security patches for a daily driver internet OS is very, very bad.

    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.
    ampharos wrote:
    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.)

    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.
  • Because it works, people hate change, and most people are clueless when it comes to security.

    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.
  • XP still use and Microsoft didn't remove XP from MSDN.

    I'm also supprised that it still keeps 9% on marketshare, hehehe.
  • garirry said:
    "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.
  • Not all that surprised really, and to be honest it will still prove to be immortal, probably for the next two years or so, you'll never know. Although, I might be wrong but I think most of XP's usage is coming from China. I don't know if computers in the US and even the UK are still hanging on to it. And even if XP does indeed have a lot of security holes all over it, there are ways to circumvent this.
  • Again, I think you people have some rose coloured glasses with XP. Once you have the patches installed, (a necessity as XP without at least SP2 WILL get pwned/lacks support for some things) the requirements go up quite a bit - enough that you could just run 7 instead. In fact, I tested it with hardware that's /old/ - 867 MHz P3, 512 MB RDRAM, with a newer GPU upgrade - 7 was snappy on the HW, though I really wouldn't want to run a browser on it.
  • dosbox wrote:
    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.

    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.
  • 02k-guy wrote:
    dosbox wrote:
    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.

    All 32bit versions of Windows have the 16-bit subsystem, even Windows 10.
  • dosbox wrote:
    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.

    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.
  • The one question I wonder about is how much of that 9% is on real hardware and how much of it is on virtual machines, I know some people like trying to get all Windows versions on VMs (i.e. upgrade chains) and I guess that's one of the only good uses for XP, And anyone who needs it for compatibility would be better off using it on either a VM or a retro system without internet instead of using it as a main OS.

    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.
    ampharos wrote:
    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.)
    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.
  • I still find it hilarious to read all the claims that XP is lightweight yet when it came out, people were calling it bloated.

    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.
  • "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."

    Really? Doing precisely that is how Microsoft came to dominate the desktop market.
  • "As you've said, XP SP3 is bloated enough to make 7 worth using on hardware capable of a fully updated XP install."

    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.
  • 02k-guy wrote:
    Too much fan boi, too few facts.


    If you are talking about xp defenders being fan bois, you aren't wrong there.
  • 02k-guy wrote:
    Too much fan boi, too few facts.
    dosbox wrote:
    If you are talking about xp defenders being fan bois, you aren't wrong there.
    ^This. 1000x this. Look guys, Windows XP was great in it's time, but I think most of us can agree that it's time is over. Don't get me wrong, I loved XP, but it is way beyond time to let it go. The OS is no longer being patched, none of the security holes are being covered anymore, and I almost guarantee you there are more found everyday, like every piece of software with a large user base. While browsing habits do play a big part in security of a system, patching helps out too. Anyone remember Code Red? Just being connected to the web made a PC vulnerable. Patches were released to remedy the buffer overflow exploit, but if something like that came out today, Microsoft would do nothing to protect XP users. Yes, I do know my example was of a Win2k worm, but my point is this: buffer overflow exploits and other shit are always going to be around and without patching the OS to protect yourself from them, they will fuck your world, plain and simple. If anyone wants to take their chances with a 15 year old operating system that by now probably has more unpatched holes than the socks I'm wearing, more power to you.
  • Their are fanbois on both sides of the fence. Personally I get tired of the "latest and greatest" crowd bitching because I'm not running their precious Windows 10 or whatever it is up to today.

    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 not all about the "latest and greatest," just trying to be realistic. Yes, If newer versions of Windows don't work well for a certain important enterprise program, securing it as best you can is really all you can do. And I know all about being poor and unemployed. That being said, I do plan on saving enough money within the next 5 years to upgrade my OS, if not my hardware. Maybe snag a newer system from my brother-in-law on the cheap. I agree with you on migrating is a pain, but that shouldn't be the only reason someone doesn't upgrade, that they can't be bothered. Aside from special industrial/enterprise problems or a true lack of funds, I just don't see any reason to defend Windows XP. Sorry if I ticked you off, SomeGuy.
  • BigCJ wrote:
    Aside from special industrial/enterprise problems or a true lack of funds, I just don't see any reason to defend Windows XP.
    Because at least it doesn't have all the gimmicky shit Windows 10 has and that when it was first out, computing back then was at least simple, and helped revolutionise computing further. That is why people loved it so much and will always have it in their minds, and will continue to adore it until the day they die. Just my two cents.
  • 02k-guy wrote:
    "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."

    Really? Doing precisely that is how Microsoft came to dominate the desktop market.

    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.

    SomeGuy wrote:
    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!

    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.
  • Bry89 wrote:
    Because at least it doesn't have all the gimmicky shit Windows 10 has and that when it was first out, computing back then was at least simple, and helped revolutionise computing further. That is why people loved it so much and will always have it in their minds, and will continue to adore it until the day they die. Just my two cents.
    I can't say much about "gimmicky shit" on Windows 10 because I haven't tested it myself. Several people on WinBoards slammed XP because they thought it was gimmicky compared to 2000 (ancient threads). Only thing I'm not cool with (that I'm currently aware of) is the complaints about ads everywhere. I can understand that people love certain anythings, but frankly, there has to be a line drawn somewhere between nostalgia and practicality. Windows 95 was revolutionary in it's day and I love it despite it's many faults, but there are reasons why I don't use it as an everyday OS. Windows XP's time in the sun has passed. Most everyone has left XP unless they can't afford to or that one super-important program doesn't play well with newer versions of Windows, and I believe that is for the best.
    stitch wrote:
    Windows XP is going to become a huge security risk in a month due to it's high usage as it is, and from an Internet engineering standpoint, we're looking at a giant zombie botnet in the making unless people start upgrading. We at WinWorld do not want to promote the usage of XP for your general day-to-day usage due to this
    Old, from back when XP went EOL, but the message is still valid.
    BlueSun wrote:
    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.
    That's why Malwarebytes and clean, frequent backups.
  • BigCJ wrote:
    BlueSun wrote:
    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.
    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.
  • On a side note I have noticed the vast majority of the rides at DCA are using XP on their underlying ride control systems. I sure hope it's airgapped.
  • dosbox wrote:
    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.

    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:
    Where the three sources diverge most dramatically is in their measurement of how many people are still using Windows XP, which has been unsupported for nearly three years. NetMarket Share says a staggering 9.1 percent of its visitors use XP, while DAP shows XP usage down near Vista levels, under 2 percent.

    So, who do you believe? Start by looking carefully at where the data comes from.

    DAP is a measurement of actual visits to US government websites. Roughly 95 percent of the traffic comes from outside the government, and 20 percent or so of that is from outside the US. The sites themselves are a broad mix of consumer-focused information (NASA pictures, National Weather Service forecasts, tax forms, and so on) and sites for business users.

    StatCounter and NetMarketShare, by contrast, report only aggregate numbers and not actual numbers of visits. The analytics are targeted to commercial, ad-supported websites.

    As I noted in my earlier article, there's a crucial difference in how the two companies measure traffic. NetMarketShare attempts to measure daily unique users, while StatCounter measures total traffic. If you visit a single page in the NetMarketShare network, you're counted, and then your visits to any other page on any other site in the network are (in theory) ignored for the rest of the day.

    In addition, NetMarketShare weights the data by country, whereas StatCounter doesn't.

    All three sources count billions of visits per year, so sample size isn't a problem.

    Those methodological details offer one highly plausible explanation for why XP usage appears to be so much higher on NetMarketShare (and to a lesser extent on StatCounter) than on the DAP numbers.
  • I still use XP, 'cause i can't afford newer hardware or software.i also don't have almost any of my program discs,floppys,ect.So unless someone would like to give me a brand new windows 10 laptop with office 2016,i CANT use a new OS.

    ...
    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.
  • The last few days have been spent re-learning Virtual PC and Windows XP SP3.

    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.
  • I still use XP, 'cause i can't afford newer hardware or software.i also don't have almost any of my program discs,floppys,ect.So unless someone would like to give me a brand new windows 10 laptop with office 2016,i CANT use a new OS.

    ...
    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.

    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?
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