

Windows XP support is ending at April 8, 2014 - thefox
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/en-us/xp/default.aspx

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solo_
I think that Microsoft made a great example of long term support, but I have
to agree with the big red "Honestly, it's time for a change" at the top of the
page. It's a twelve year old product, I'm honestly amazed to find any users
left. Yeah, many businesses may be using XP, which sadly includes almost ATM
in the US, but this end of support has been coming for a long, long time and
upgrading to newer, likely better software is something that needs to be done.

Additionally, am I the only person who has no major problems with Windows 8.1?
Yeah, Metro isn't great on my non-touchscreen monitor but I'm not going to
avoid using it because I don't like the UI. (In all fairness, I only run it on
a gaming PC and my school/work machine runs OS X...) I'd love to see more
lower and middle end options that run Linux, but until then I think ending
support for XP is actually a good thing. You can't be hung up on old
technology forever.

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facorreia
Windows XP was an extremely successful product. I have great respect for
Microsoft for supporting it for 12 years. That's a great example of "long term
support".

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SeanDav
Linux, which is free, has been supported for longer, and is still being
supported. MS should either open source XP and/or provide support for a
further 3 years or so, which would be about 10 years of support after last
official sales.

~~~
sz4kerto
Please show me a couple of Linux distros which have/had been officially
supported for more than 12 years. As far as I know there isn't any.

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Touche
I assume you mean a specific release? Because several distros have been around
since the 90s.

XP isn't a specific release. It has had 3 service packs, the 2nd of which
could have been called a new version of Windows had they chosen, and has had
continual bug fixes through its 12 years.

~~~
sz4kerto
Forget about distributions, names, etc. Imagine you have a software that is
critical to your business. You tested it on a specific version of an OS.
Continued support means that you can keep using that OS and your software will
very likely continue running on the OS without problems, and if there is
something broken by a patch, then you can go and complain to them.

If your software runs on Ubuntu 7.04, you suddenly upgrade to 13.10 and your
software stops working, then I don't think Canonical will take any
responsibility or help you.

I know MS is not perfect in this either, and SP2 introduced quite significant
changes, but fundamentally it's the same OS, same look, same UI paradigms,
etc.; and they at least intended to keep themselves to the rules described
above.

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ahuth
This website is really well done. I love the 'Honestly...It's time for a
change.'

Not sure why ending support is controversial for some people. Support for XP
HAS to end at some point. It doesn't make business sense for them to keep
putting money into it.

I don't think anyone would suggest they should still support MS-DOS, so why
XP?

~~~
etfb
I still have a couple of clients using an accounting package I sold the first
version 1.0 copy of in 1988. Thank gods for DOSBOX, is all I can say.

~~~
noinsight
That's nothing, I know a company that uses a 16-bit DOS program from like 1985
or so to do their pricing. Mind boggling, since it even gives the prices in
the wrong currency (as in not Euros but a currency that went out of use in
2001)... You would also think inflation changes the prices...

~~~
etfb
Do airline booking agencies still use that weird mainframe-like program for
all their bookings? I heard it was impossible to replace because you'd need to
switch the old one off, and there's never a moment when there's not thousands
of planes in the air.

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jpswade
This is all very well for retail customers, but it's much harder in
enterprise.

Fortunately, there's Windows POSReady 2009 which is essentially Windows XP
under the hood as an absolute fallback as it's supported until 2019.

Although I agree with Microsoft's approach and using POSReady is not the best
option, it does bridge the gap for those businesses who are waiting on third
parties to make decisions on which options are to be supported or indeed find
a suitable option.

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weavie
I just bought an old ~2008 netbook that came with a fresh install of XP on it.
I was shocked at how slow and unresponsive it was. I really don't imagine
windows 8 would improve the situation at all, quite the opposite, I suspect
the machine would be completely unusable.

Reinstalling Arch with XMonad as a simple display manager and the netbook is
now seriously snappy. Boot time is just a few seconds from start to surfing...
and that includes typing 'startx'.

Obviously few people would be techie enough or want to go through the evening
it took to set it up. But really the difference between free for a working
machine and $199 for a pile of sludge is a bit much in my opinion. I imagine
there is a huge gap here for Linux to fill for all that old hardware that
still works but needs an OS that will still work with it.

~~~
sz4kerto
Windows 7 (and 8, and 8.1) are actually quicker than XP on most machines,
given that your PC has >=1G RAM.

Obviously it's difficult to beat XMonad's startup speed. However, the problem
with old machines is not the OS, as the OS itself barely consumes any
resources compared to browsers, for example. So you might save X MB of RAM by
using XMonad instead of Gnome or Windows, but it does not help if a Chrome tab
needs 100 MB (The Verge front page, for example).

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kristiandupont
I can understand why they are doing this but it is a bit concerning from a
security perspective. Vulnerable machines affect all of us. They can be
infected with DDoS bots and other things that aren't just damaging to the
owner of the given machine.

I guess the upside might be that this could actually be one of the few things
that will get some people to upgrade who would otherwise never have done so.

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Cowboy_X
Joking aside, I'm surprised more isn't being made of Balmer's hand in this
mess. Some of XP's staying power is surely due to it's being the first "good
enough" Microsoft desktop OS (win2k notwithstanding), but the back-to-back
failures or Longhorn and Vista had to have an enormous hand in a generation of
users never upgrading. That eight year chasm is breathtaking.

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darkhorn
Does that mean that existing updates won't work anymore? Or just there will be
no more patches?

~~~
robin_reala
There’s not going to be any more security fixes.

~~~
PeterisP
Well, since they're still offering paid support to some enterprise customers,
then there _will_ be security fixes to XP; the only question is how/if they
will be distributed to the general public.

~~~
yiedyie
Do you have any link for the paid support?

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yiedyie
I think they will have to reconsider retiring support, they will probably see
that not many users crowd for Win 8, by that time it would had been too late.
Many businesses along with XP may use some other services from Microsoft.

~~~
untothebreach
I believe businesses can purchase continued support from MS.

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yiedyie
I didn't see that documented anywhere.

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untothebreach
No, unfortunately I don't have a source for this claim other than, "I heard it
somewhere"

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PeterisP
Kind of interesting - that page implies ("Step 3" illustration) that their
recommended solution for Windows XP upgrade involves buying a new computer...

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glennos
Interesting that these pages avoid any direct reference to Windows 8. It's
only referred to as "the new Windows".

~~~
taspeotis

        the new Windows
    

Is there anything Micro$oft won't slavishly copy from Apple‽‽‽‽ [1]

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPad_(3rd_generation)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPad_\(3rd_generation\))

~~~
kremlin
I can't tell if this is facetious or if someone out there really thinks that
"The new X" is a unique marketing formula that Apple pioneered.

~~~
etfb
Can't you?

([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrobang](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrobang))

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Cowboy_X
What do a pair of grimacing women have to do with anything? Are they trying to
pack explosives into an old Gateway desktop?

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izietto
I hope Windows 7 support will never end, I refuse to put my hands on Windows
>= 8

~~~
Rubikan
Windows 8.1 isn't that bad. I actually never really see Metro if thats your
biggest problem with it.

Everything else (boot time, responsiveness etc.) feels like a direct upgrade
from 7 and it works great for me. Did you try it once?

~~~
izietto
I tried it a couple of times on my mom's pc; I really hate that phone
interface (is it called Metro?) because I use a pc so I want a comfortable pc
experience. About the performance point I can't say anything, but I'm fine
with Win7, so I don't care

