
Microsoft ends support for Windows XP and Office 2003 - tweakz
http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2014/04/08/microsoft-ends-support-windows-xp-office-2003/
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jurre
Except for our government who are paying MS an exorbitant amount of money to
keep support up... [http://www.zdnet.com/dutch-government-pays-millions-to-
exten...](http://www.zdnet.com/dutch-government-pays-millions-to-extend-
microsoft-xp-support-7000028116/)

~~~
dorward
You are not alone. The UK government is doing something similar.

[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/07/uk-
governm...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/07/uk-government-
microsoft-windows-xp-public-sector)

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Looks like Microsoft dropped the ball on this one - it's a government, they
could probably have charged billions. Hopefully, the UK government will
realise this, and either a) go open source b) get their house in order much
earlier next time.

~~~
gtirloni
How open source will fix it for an organization that can't bother to move from
a decade old operating system? In 10 years we'll reading about the UK govt
having trouble moving away from Ubuntu LTS 14.04.

They only have option b) if they won't to avoid this in the future. Open
source or not.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Upgrading an OS OS is a lot cheaper than upgrading a proprietary one.

~~~
danielweber
Yep, if they run into any issues, just post to the Ubuntu forums, and lazer420
will tell you how to fix it!

~~~
skyebook
Or there's always the paid Canonical support. But the thought of David Cameron
hunched over a laptop having some tea and getting assistance from lazer420 in
saving the NHS from the next heartbleed is priceless.

~~~
jenscow
No, they ask their IT department. The difference being, they can fix issues
with the OS themselves (or hire someone to). With something closed like
Windows, there's only one place to go for support.

~~~
danielweber
If you are a major customer, like many national governments are, you can get
the source code to a lot of Windows.

~~~
drchaos
Access to the source code is one thing, but you'd need also developers who are
familiar enough with the source to be able to actually make changes. With OSS,
there is a large community from which you recruit these folks, with Windows,
not so much (outside of MS).

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herokusaki
Windows Embedded POSReady 2009, which is essentially a stripped down Windows
XP SP3, will be supported with security updates until 2019. Realistically, as
an individual you can't buy it but as far as I can tell you can use the
evaluation version ([http://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/download/details.aspx?id=1119...](http://www.microsoft.com/en-
us/download/details.aspx?id=11196)) for up to 120 days for free, which may be
useful for VMs and the like.

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jmnicolas
Where I work we still have business specific apps that run only on XP and our
suppliers have no plan on upgrading them (unless we fund the entire project,
which they will happily resell full price to over companies).

This is a clear example of what the lack of competition does

~~~
elnate
What makes them specific to XP instead of just Windows?

~~~
taspeotis
Probably code that relies on implementation details and only works by
coincidence.

We had a bug in our application that only manifested on Windows 8 and later.

The problem was that we were passing NULL instead of some other sentinel value
(MSDN said to use a specific sentinel value). XP/Vista/7 took NULL anyway and
the effect was the same as the sentinel value but in Windows 8 it did
something different.

~~~
rbanffy
I remember Microsoft had "strict" builds of libraries (and Windows itself,
IIRC) that did parameter checks. You would boot the machine with that software
and run your program (more slowly) and some functions that would work on a
consumer OS would generate errors on it.

Do they still do it?

~~~
taspeotis
Yes, you can download the checked build from the MSDN Subscriber Downloads.

But last time I checked the .NET Framework abused some Win32 API calls [1] so
if you had some WinForms application you'd end up with loads of errors in code
that wasn't yours.

Might be fixed, it's been a while since I looked.

[1]
[http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/3...](http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/306816/system-
windows-forms-control-wmpaint-always-calls-beginpaint)

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yuhong
Technically security updates are released at 10am PST on Patch Tuesday.
[http://amirunningxp.com/](http://amirunningxp.com/) got this wrong (they used
midnight instead).

~~~
xjh
It prints "You are NOT running Windows XP" on x64 XP.

~~~
yuhong
That is because it is actually based on Server 2003.

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johnchristopher
I would like to read an article about whether or not an up-to-date anti-virus
is going to protect users (how and why) as a lot of IT people defend that
position.

~~~
jenscow
Exactly. Any AV worth it's salt should pick up something that a security
update should have fixed.

~~~
johnchristopher
But that's the catch: I am not convinced AV vendors have the resources, the
complete knowledge and the access to Windows inner workings to fill in MS
role.

And what about the legal rights ? Would they be allowed to patch a security
kernel breach, or a lib, made up of closed proprietary code in binary format
(an extreme and unlikely case but that's what I read when IT people tell users
"we'll just use an anti-virus to circumvent the lack of MS updates") ?

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oneeyedpigeon
Which versions of Internet Explorer are supported on Windows beyond XP? Is it
now 'officially' impossible to support IE6 users anymore?

~~~
m_mueller
The IE6 compatibility issue should be mostly a thing of the past now, except
for some corporate settings and china. But I feel IE8 will stay with us for a
long time with a few annoying percentage points that can't always be ignored -
and by now it's almost as bad as IE6 was 8 years ago. The only thing that
makes the situation better than before is the much higher adoption of FF and
Chrome, which at least keeps IE8 users at single digit rates for consumer
websites.

~~~
mhurron
Why would 8 be a problem? There is nothing supported that can't run higher and
the situation that made IE6 end up being so entrenched, that MS sat on IE
development for so long and IE6 was the only IE for many years, didn't happen
with anything after that.

~~~
Ricapar
IE8 is a problem because many big enterprises still run it. I know of several
big US corporations that, even though they run Windows 7 now, still deploy it
with IE8 for compatibility with legacy applications.

Once you start dealing with big corporations, it's not as simple as "oh it's
time to update".

~~~
mhurron
Unless you're targeting enterprise customers, is that really much of a
problem?

~~~
m_mueller
It's not just enterprise. For consumer websites the usage is going to hover
around 3-5% (IE6,7,8 combined) for a long time - if you target less
technically inclined people probably more. Tablets and Smartphones probably
help more than Win7+ adoption in that area, but there's still going to be a
significant amount of people using browsers on older computers.

~~~
mhurron
> hover around 3-5% (IE6,7,8 combined)

I do not see the point of worrying about this. If enterprise (put forward as
the major user of these) is the worry then you might have to care. If it's
random users that just don't feel like running Windows Update, well, these
people aren't going to be spending much money anyway.

Worrying about [insert version of IE here] hanging around forever seems to be
nothing but complaining for the sake of complaining now that IE6 is completely
out of the picture.

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iLoch
> Internet Explorer 8 was released on October 25, 2001.

... That's not right.

~~~
yuhong
Yea, it was IE6 that was released when XP RTMed.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Was it? I thought XP used IE 5.5.

EDIT: My bad, it didn't.

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amits89
Today On April 8 2014, the decade long support from Microsoft for Windows XP
will be terminated. This means no more security updates, patches, or technical
support for the popular OS, which is still running on 30% of all computers.
It's very interesting to see how it affect the XP user who are using it, after
the end of XP support era. Research by EHI intelligence revels that 85% of
England’s healthcare system IT systems were still using Windows XP.

~~~
teh_klev
That's an English healthcare IT problem, not something you can blame MS for.
And let's face it, IT project management and risk management has never been
stellar in the NHS.

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jenscow
While I don't blame Microsoft for ending support (they have been very
accomodating already), but I find it strange of them to leave so many users
stranded. Especially now there's several alternatives to Windows, all
requiring a similar learning curve and migration pains to that of moving to
Windows 7 or 8.

Personally, when people have asked me about it I usually point them to Linux
Mint, using their existing computer - not because I'm a fan of Linux, but I'd
feel bad advising them to spend 100's on a new computer, when their current
one works perfectly (physically).

Apart from someone who plays The Sims 2, I've had no complaints.

~~~
FollowSteph3
Most people don't realize it but Apple does this all the time. Goos luck
running most 5+ year old mac on the latest Mac OS X ;)

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
OS X Mavericks today runs on some machines that are 7 years old. True, that's
still not great, but better than you claimed.

~~~
FollowSteph3
Define "some". The percentage is very low even at the 5 year mark ;)

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Seriously? More than the "none" which the original post implied.

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Ellipsis753
I've heard a few people saying that they're staying with Windows XP in their
company internally. The idea being that as the internal computers share a
single access point to the Internet that they can filter everything incoming
there.

This doesn't really sound correct and obviously it won't help for physically
bringing in USB sticks etc but I'm still interested to know what others think
here?

Is there about to be a large number of 3rd party firewalls trying to protect
internet computers from Windows XP exploits?

~~~
peeters
Malware detection in a firewall/proxy is already very common. See Blue Coat,
FireEye etc.

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pgrote
We have internal web based apps that require IE 7 and Windows XP due to Active
X controls. We've moved to Windows 7 with virtual XP machines. To prevent
internet access we've stopped any traffic at the firewall with the virtual
machines.

We think this will work to prevent internet based attacks, but realize we're
still vulnerable to physical attacks through media. It was the best we can do
given our reliance on the older system.

Any other holes in this other than the physical issue?

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smackfu
Interesting, the company I work for has made a real push to get off of XP, but
not a peep about Office 2003. I guess they don't want to spend that money.

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higherpurpose
Time to switch to Linux on old PCs.

~~~
Shivetya
uh, no.

Quite a few people on XP are there because its what they know. It also is all
they need. Personal example, I would love to replace my mom's computer but she
likes her version of Office which was the version we installed when she
obtained her PC, which runs XP. I suspect she isn't alone in not wanting to
change something that works.

For many people tech is just the annoyance they have to put with to do what
they want to do. Top that off with hundred dollar or more to upgrade and why
should people do it? At least Apple got it right, FINALLY, after many years of
charging for OS upgrades to not doing so.

Having helped organizations with donated computers I am not sure there is a
real alternative. Linux? Really? Its hard enough sourcing decent used machines
for people, I certainly am not game to loading Linux and then teaching them to
use it. Perhaps if there were one install and software was available at the
store... do you understand?

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
So you're going to leave your non-technical mom using an unpatched OS
connected to the public Internet? Let me know how that works out.

~~~
chris_wot
Yeah, that's pretty much the current situation anyway with a lot of folks.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Would be interesting to know. Based on anecdotal reports, I would guess that
we are now today in a situation in which more people than ever are running an
unpatched, Internet-connected computer - I'm hypothesising that XP is by far
the most 'un-upgraded' OS we've had since mass adoption of the Internet.

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nikanj
This should not be news for hackers

~~~
taspeotis
I believe there are a lot of people here interested in dropping support for
IE8 and this is just one more nail in the coffin.

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umrashrf
Dear Microsoft, please open source WinXP.

~~~
sigzero
That is never going to happen.

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arrc
Microsoft ends support for Windows XP to prevent noobs from using IE6.

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dewiz
"Alternatively, you can choose to use a different operating system, such as
one of the many Linux variants, or even purchase a new computer running OS X
or Chrome OS. If you prefer mobile operating systems as a replacement to your
machine, Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry OS are all viable
options, but you’ll naturally have to buy a new device."

I really appreciated this comment and the following part about IE8 and Chrome.
Well done MS.

~~~
ygra
The article isn't written by anyone at MS.

~~~
dewiz
You're right, my bad 😊 lol, that was a bit too open eh ?

