Tom's Hardware reports on an Avast Antivirus study which found that ~24% of their customers still used XP, and of those, 27% didn't plan to upgrade.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has cut the price of XP patches by as much as 95% for those corporations and governments that haven't yet moved on. The model now seems to be a "new ceiling is $250,000, according to several sources, although the $200-per-device price remained in place." That ceiling is down from $5 million just a few weeks ago. Those patches, by the way, are not available for the general public.
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(Score: 2) by Bartman12345 on Friday April 18 2014, @06:45AM
Avast is probably best known for being a free (as in beer) virus scanner for Windows.
So the story here is that people too cheap to pay for a virus scanner are also unwilling to upgrade their OS or purchase new hardware.
Who would have thunk it... :)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by moondrake on Friday April 18 2014, @08:49AM
Given that most of the news items about XP I saw recently were about various government branches paying millions to MS for continued support, I would say the real story is that MS found another cash cow.
How many times can you make them pay for the same patch?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 18 2014, @10:46AM
Indeed. They've never been too good at writing software but always been pretty darn good at making money, however ruthlessly. [1]
Just like they make probably more money on Android sales than on windoze phone sales thanks to their Linux software patent racket.
[1] http://wayback.archive.org/web/20120605103241/http ://www.msversus.org/ [archive.org]
Add to this newer crimes like "secure boot" (restricted boot) and the ooxml ballot stuffing episode to fuck the ISO.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 18 2014, @10:01PM
[M$'s] Linux software patent racket
Like everything that M$ does, it is under NDA--but it's not especially nefarious or labyrinthine.
Simply: M$ got its patented exFAT written into the Secure Digital Card spec.
If your **device** has an SD Card slot, you pay M$ a royalty.
Ever time you purchase SD Card **media**, you pay M$ a royalty.
If your stuff doesn't use SD Card, M$ gets zip.
It's not any more complicated than that.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Friday April 18 2014, @06:51PM
How did MSFT "do" anything? They had YEARS in advance notice, multiple warnings, hell MSFT even had XP do a little pop-up warning folks so there was NO way you didn't know it was coming. I'm sorry but if after all that you wanna stick with a 13 years old OS? Dumbass you, you deserve to be parted from your money.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by drussell on Friday April 18 2014, @05:49PM
It's certainly not always just people being cheap, though...
See my comment #33139 [soylentnews.org] below.
(Score: 2, Funny) by LukeSkywalker on Friday April 18 2014, @06:49AM
You can take my XP when you pry that floppy disk from my cold dead hand...
(Score: 2) by Bartman12345 on Friday April 18 2014, @09:02AM
I think the guy who submitted this story might have some concerns about this...
(Score: 0) by jbWolf on Friday April 18 2014, @11:43AM
You were hit too hard in the head, dude. It was your lightsaber. And be more careful. Next time, Vader might aim for the nads.
(And since we're off topic and talking about the absurd and Star Wars... I'll just leave this link here [jb-wolf.com].)
www.jb-wolf.com [jb-wolf.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by artman on Friday April 18 2014, @07:39AM
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2456135,00.as p [pcmag.com]
No Sig for me Thanks
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 19 2014, @09:12PM
Well that's dead on. He got some of his facts wrong, but he's not even trolling there. XP really is a more usable OS than Vista or 7 or 8.
I know I'm supposed to like 7, but it does NOT work significantly differently from the way Vista worked, and both are inferior to XP. (8 is such an atrocity as to be ignored in civilized company.)
(Score: 1) by toygeek on Friday April 18 2014, @07:58AM
And they don't plan on changing. The plan? Chrome browser, Web Of Trust addon (mywot.com), adblock plus, no java, and OpenDNS.
There is no Sig. Okay, maybe a short one. http://miscdotgeek.com
(Score: 3, Insightful) by drussell on Friday April 18 2014, @08:28AM
I suppose I should have thought ahead and made a proper local cache of all the downloads and updates I could think of for the beast before everything started to disappear. I don't run much of ANY Microsoft software here personally but I know I'll still be working on other people's installations for years to come, some of which can't be easily upgraded or replaced for a variety of reasons.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Bytram on Friday April 18 2014, @01:59PM
You might want to take a look at wsusoffline.net [wsusoffline.net]. I've not used it, personally, but I've heard good things about it.
Allows caching of windows updates.
(Forgive typos; submitted using Lynx)
(Score: 2) by drussell on Friday April 18 2014, @05:56PM
What's wrong with lynx? I use it all the time for all sorts of things.
It's frustrating when I'm at a shell prompt on some machine and instinctively type lynx [whatever] and just get a lynx: Command not found. Grrrrrr.... :)
(Score: 1) by Fry on Saturday April 19 2014, @01:02AM
What's wrong with lynx? I use it all the time for all sorts of things.
Uh, no spell checker I'd guess, based on what the GP wrote.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Friday April 18 2014, @07:03PM
I use it at the shop, works great and when combined with Ninite [ninite.com] can cut down the time for a new install to less than an hour and a half start to finish.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday April 18 2014, @09:01AM
So what happens when the authorization servers for XP go off line? I knew that whole "phone home" thing was not a good idea.
(Score: 2) by hamsterdan on Friday April 18 2014, @11:47AM
People stuck with expensive equipment that only runs on XP will either have to replace said equipment (if they can), or pirate XP. Guess which one ?
If MS would be nice, they would release a patch to authenticate a new XP install.
There's no problem running an old unsupported OS as long as you take some precautions (1- not hooked up if there's no need to. 2- only install what's needed on the machine 3- good security practices.)
That's what I'm doing on my 98SE install (older games that *don't* run on anything newer)
(Score: 2) by drussell on Friday April 18 2014, @05:35PM
Yup, though if you have a license for it and you just need to hack activation, I'd argue that's not wrong... They turned off the activation server! Imagine a car that refuses to run after you change the alternator if the odometer is over 250k. There'd be lawsuits.
I'm still supporting a couple of POS systems that are running NT 4.0 (though I did actually manage to get that version running on a Win2K server once with a bunch of manual manipulation, hacks to Sybase, etc.) and the touchscreen terminals diskless boot Windows 95! These systems are not connected to the internet at all or are only connected via a firewalled, encrypted and secured network for remote administration and can't access the internet directly themselves at all for security.
These are proper, licensed copies of the OS and POS systems and would cost on the order of $15,000 to $20,000 for the software alone to upgrade to a supported version, not to mention the hardware expense for newer touchscreen machines (you can't run much more than 95 or NT4 on a Pentium 133, 166 or 233 with a 32 meg hardware memory limit). That would be a MAJOR EXPENSE with absolutely no real benefit. (The systems work perfectly fine as they are; it's simply a big, multi-headed, glorified cash register FFS!) You don't need much computational power to display a few screens, read some touchscreen taps and send a few drink or food orders to some serial printers. Those older touchscreen tils are available on e-bay at dime-a-dozen prices so keeping them in parts is a cinch.
NT4 has no activation so a hardware failure on a server is just a matter of finding hardware compatible with NT4, installing and entering the license key. The newer systems use XP but eventually the same types of problems will crop up and things like re-installs will be necessary and there will smply be no choice but to hack the activtion. This isn't as much of an issue for the ones I'm already supporting as I have things like backups and spare hard disks for them, but I can pretty much guarantee that at some point, someone will call me up and say something like " HELP! These guys you support over at XYZ restaurant/bar told me you might be able to help us out of this pickle we're in because our whole POS system crashed and we didn't even know there was a computer for it behind this drywall... It's been inside that wall for at least 8 years when the renovations were done... Oops we didn't even know it was there... Can you please HELP!!!?? "
Yes, that actually happened to me already once :) It was literally drywalled off into part of a wall!!
I've always hated the whole idea of the phone-home-activation and just because it's been years since those worries started, doesn't mean that pain isn't going to come hit us eventually, and of course it always seems to be important, mission critical stuff that nobody maintains properly until something breaks.
As an aside, I had to fix the power supply in my computerized engraver the other day (the 510k 5% 1/4W resistor driving the main switching transistor was open) and that thing is built on a TRS-80 (1.774 MHz Z80) and it still works as`perfectly fine today (1/1000th of an inch accuracy on X and Y) as it did in the 80s. I even use it to route, cut, drill and engrave 19" rack chassis front and back panels for custom electronics, something it was never intended to do. That's another many-thousand-dollar-to-replace piece of equipment thatss long as I can keep the physical hardware running, I'm golden. It could use a good overclock, say to 4 MHz on the main Z80 (there are two, one runs the main TRS-80-based software, the other runs the serial-connected engraving table) though... Would make complex job calculations a bit faster. :) Would I like to have a fancier, more modern computerized engraver or CNC machine? Sure, but for the amount I use it there's just no way I could (essentially) waste that much money.
(Score: 2) by hamsterdan on Sunday April 20 2014, @03:02PM
"Yes, that actually happened to me already once :) It was literally drywalled off into part of a wall!!"
They probably misunderstood what a Firewall was :)
(Score: 2, Informative) by Silentknyght on Friday April 18 2014, @10:30AM
Because not linked in the TFA, the report is here, with a bit more info than present in the TomsHardware article:- sticking-to-the-os-despite-support-cutoff/ [avast.com]
http://blog.avast.com/2014/04/14/windows-xp-users
(Score: 2, Interesting) by number6 on Friday April 18 2014, @01:46PM
I still use XP; I love using it. I've got it tweaked nicely.
EXPLORER.EXE is customized with thin top toolbar containg text-menu and selected small icons, with thin address bar below that spanning the full window width....mmmmm, one day I'm gonna figure out how to hack-off/hexedit/eliminate the word "Address" from the left.
Details view, with vertical space maxed! ... And a nice *thin* informative status bar completing the view at the bottom.
Column headers move instantaneously as a group with mouse drag in real-time without lag or latency behaviors--like "bang" from a gun--and horizontal scrollbar does the same........does anybody here know the technical reason why column headers in some other software do not behave this way??
Dropping files into an open Explorer window WITHOUT auto-sort is 100% predictable/configurable and not an insult to my intelligence.
Selecting files WITHOUT full-row-select is 100% predictable/configurable and not an insult to my intelligence.
Bullshit annoying eye-candy such as pale washed-out colors, animating gradients, and overlayed transparency effects are NON-EXISTENT...GOOD!!!!!!
I don't use any anti-virus software; they all piss me off.
I use 'Sygate Personal Firewall' (greatest firewall ever made for NT5 systems !!!)...doesn't work on NT6...company got bought by Symantec/Norton and code got swallowed into their own bloated bullshit Frankenstein solutions.
I could continue to describe other features of XP that I like, but this will do for now.
If I was in charge of Microsoft, I would take the time to engineer a new version of Windows which allows the Desktop Environment and Window Manager to be COMPLETELY hot-swappable like a Plugin system. For an example of what I am talking about, have a look at the audio software "foobar2000".
If I was in charge of Microsoft, I would then package previous operating system and software products as plugin themes. These plugin themes would be sold as downloadable shareware addons from my "app store".
Finally, I would demand that all "UX Designers" working for the company shall bow their heads and suck the cocks of the software engineers, programmers, scientific geeks and kernel developers at all times.
-- P.S. --
The ONLY thing pissing me off about sticking with 32-bit XP is the memory and partition size limitations.
I don't care about any more graphics performance (aka DX10)...fuck that, I hope OpenGL kills it in the long run.
I'm not familiar with 64-bit XP; will it run most things from my 32-bit XP system? Can you install 32-bit XP drivers into a 64-bit XP system? Does it work in VMware Workstation?
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Friday April 18 2014, @07:11PM
XP X64, AKA Win 2K3 X64 Workstation, WILL run most of your 32bit software but will NOT run 32bit drivers. But as long as your hardware isn't rare you should be able to find 64bit drivers for it. Oh and it works great in VMWare as both host and guest, although for VMs I prefer the "Tiny Windows" versions.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by drussell on Friday April 18 2014, @07:19PM
Agreed.
I don't use Windows much around here but when I need it for something I generally just reboot my primary laptop to Win2K instead of FreeBSD... It's an old Pentium-M but with a nice 1680x1050 screen and 1.5GB of RAM and with virtual memory totally disabled it's still plenty quick and functional for my limited Windows needs. (It's an Asus Z70V... Actually, I have three of them here, all traded back in from customers when upgrading. It's one of my favorite laptop models I ever sold.)
The newer versions of Windows are basically just extra bloat and cruft slowing you down from doing real work most of the time, IMHO. :)
(Score: 2) by drussell on Friday April 18 2014, @07:27PM
No.
That was one of the major problems with XP 64 bit. All kernel-related stuff (like hardware drivers) need a 64 bit version and MANY simply don't exist.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Friday April 18 2014, @01:53PM
Why? TuxGuitar. I fire it up 2-3 times a week on my old (circa '07) laptop.
I tried installing it on my new laptop but evidently is's a 32 bit Java program that won't run in my 64 bit Windows environment. I have neither the need nor desire to learn Java to fix it, and no guarantee that upgrading the old laptop to something newer won't cause the same problem, so WinXP it is.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Friday April 18 2014, @01:56PM
To reply to my own post, the old laptop also has Ubuntu on it. But it's not stable, crashing often when trying to use Chrome. Then again, I installed the newest release on it last night, later today I'll see if the stability problems are fixed.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Saturday April 19 2014, @03:05AM
Ubuntu doesn't boot. Get messages along the lines of "serious errors mounting (all partitions here)". I can skip, ignore, or fix manually. Fix manually gives no hint of how to fix. Skip doesn't boot. Ignore doesn't boot.
As a guy who learned unix in the early 80's, adopted Linux in the mid 90's, has written device drivers for Linux, but who has been Windows/cygwin-centric for the last 10 years, I'm thinking WinXP will be on my radar longer than Ubuntu will :(
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 1) by elgrantrolo on Friday April 18 2014, @03:19PM
It turns out that 2 weeks after the extended lifecycle support thing that Microsoft promised, PCs running XP have not magically disappeared from the internet.
My opinion about Windows 7 and 8 is that they are significantly better than XP and I would not want to use or be seen in a professional setting using the old OS. I'm sure there's plenty of niggles in each new version, and that was also what happened when XP was released. It's time to quit the moaning and get on with it, use Windows if it's OK with you, or any of the alternatives if it's not. The way I see it, in 10 years most devices used as PCs will run whatever Android is turning into, so it's not like picking an alternative OS should be a big challenge for soylentsters.