Still running XP on all the computers the kids use in school – as I imagine is the case for a lot of schools, with lots of legacy software (some of which is a real ball-ache to get running on W7, let alone anything newer – in some cases the only option on the teachers’ laptops which have 7 is to use a VM). This is using a VM, so vulnerability to attack is only until the machine is rebooted.

We are looking into 7 (personally I have no wish to get into the issues with 8!) though another possibility is ReactOS – I wonder whether this will result in a significant increase in user base for that (and hence hopefully the project progressing a bit more).

It’s worth noting, that the longer you keep XP, the less vunerable it will become as it’s market share diminishes!

(ie. if you’re a ‘bad guy’ writing malicious functions to get peoples credit card info or whatever, then that game is one of probabilities, and that means the more people you target, the more successful returns you will have. If only 3 people are running XP, and 3 billion are running Win8, then you know where the effort is going to be put….

Am I effectively being forced into buying a new laptop even though the one I have is working perfectly well?

No you can continue but be aware that there will be no ongoing support or security. Also you can install a different OS on your computer if you wish to be supported.

Back on in 2001 when Xp was released this was what was going on
http://www.computerhope.com/history/2001.htm
USB 2.0 was introduced, mobiles didn’t have touch screens, IOS and Android were not happening, wikipedia was launched, 28 million people used AOL and they bought Time Warner. The first home Wifi routers were only 2 years old, napster was how people shared music and Microsoft finally killed clippy.

A lot has changed in that time, there are a small number of use cases where people still retain XP machines, but in any decent sized organisation if you are faced with what happens when XP Support ends your IT department need fired.

At home certainly carry on, just be aware that any security exploit will be getting exploited.

And frankly since leaving XP well behind I don’t seem to get all those crashes, the blue screens and all the other issues.

It’s worth noting, that the longer you keep XP, the less vunerable it will become as it’s market share diminishes!

It’s not going to become less vulnerable. Less exploits might be written, but the existing ones will never go away, and will probably become even better. Which will mean your XP machine will be done in the minute you put it on the internet. Bye bye internet banking details, hello zombie botnet spam relay.

the thing that I struggle with is the likelihood of a new zero-day attack on an old OS… similar claims were made for NT4 but it didn’t materialise, even though I agree that willfully ignoring the update path is daft especially for enterprises

If I had XP at home I would carry on installing all the updates for the IE browser (including silverlight etc and all the other relevant java and the like) but not using it. I would use chrome and have independant firewall and AV that is updated and regular scanning in place, I would also uninstall anything I didn’t need and clear out temp files, make sure nothing is running on startup unless strictly neccessary and back up files onto USB and dropbox; and I would not be attempting any dodgy downloads or going to naughty websites or blindly following any popups

but lets face it, the above advice would also apply to supported MS OSes

Unless of course you have a firewall.

the thing that I struggle with is the likelihood of a new zero-day attack on an old OS

You’ve still got the problem of indirect attacks. Say Oracle drop support for XP. Java 7 update 976 comes out for NT6 clients only. Older versions of Java will still be a very rich target for exploits as there will be a good number of unpatched clients on modern machines, however it won’t be possible to harden XP to mitigate it. XP might not be the primary target in future, but the risk of collateral damage will soar. That, IME, is a far bigger cause for concern than Microsoft discontinuing updates.

It’s worth noting, that the longer you keep XP, the less vunerable it will become as it’s market share diminishes!

I do my online banking with an os9 powerpc 128 meg of ram 🙂

even though I agree that willfully ignoring the update path is daft especially for enterprises

would agree when you’re talking about desktop office users mostly using word, excel, powerpoint etc.

some of us write (and use) an awful lot of custom apps., some native, some web/browser based.

migrating just one app might mean £10,000’s just for the s/w used by one team of 20. What’s the going rate for 1 s/w engineer to do the coding over 6 months, plus a good few man-weeks of engineers validating the delivered s/w,, and then on-site support for 3 months ? The cost of a new machine and latest OS version is merely “noise” on the team budget in comparison.

And in the case of M$ they pushed IE5.5 / IE6 so hard, that it’s no wonder that so many companies have operational apps running on what in their (marketing) eyes is legacy software, legacy OS and legacy hardware.

I saw a stat which said 30% of computers worldwide run XP, apically old windows machines which had never been updated. MIcrosoft’s business model is based on people buying new machines and thus paying for software upgrades that way via a new operating system purchase. Apple’s model involved charging people £15 to upgrade which is pretty cheap considering what you get. Apple made the last upgrade free which is smart as it keeps people in the Apple world and on the latest version. To be honest I think anyone worried about security and outdated XP would switch to Apple rather than spend more money on Windows, the days of being locked in because you had to have Office are rapidly diminishing.

mudshark – Member

No problem, just don’t access anything important on it incase nasty people are spying. I’d dual boot to Ubuntu for anything like that and just use XP when you have to.

I think the sort of home user that’s still on XP is probably not that likely to be using ubuntu tbh.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m on 7 and very happy with it but it’s only 6 years since they stopped selling XP- sure it’s 3 OSs behind the time but Vista doesn’t count. That’s not a long life for such a mainstream product.

Apple’s model involved charging people £15 to upgrade which is pretty cheap considering what you get. Apple made the last upgrade free which is smart as it keeps people in the Apple world and on the latest version. To be honest I think anyone worried about security and outdated XP would switch to Apple rather than spend more money on Windows, the days of being locked in because you had to have Office are rapidly diminishing.

except they do stop releasing patches for older software and new versions of their OS won’t run on some older hardware, apart from that and the massive apple tax on purchase I can’t see why big business isn’t breaking down their door.

Currently working on W2K3 server exit. Main worry post EOL is the instances being used as jump boxes for exploiting the important stuff, as it will become a static target after the end of patching.
Building a nice safe heavily firewalled and virus walled sandbox for what has to remain running to get moved too, but planning to not use it…
Change is a given. Think the worst you can say is that consumers don’t get a lot of warning directly, but I’m not sure how you’d do that without spamming the world.

If using Windows 8 then it comes with a client version of Hyper-V so easy enough to run XP as a virtual guest on it.

Shhh, please just let it die 🙂

To be honest I think anyone worried about security and outdated XP would switch to Apple rather than spend more money on Windows, the days of being locked in because you had to have Office are rapidly diminishing.

And what colour are the clouds in your world? And, if you want to be picky, the last MS OS upgrade (8.1) was free if you were already on Windows 8.

A blanket statement that equates to Apple = Secure | Windows = insecure is a dangerously flawed and incorrect thing to say and suggests lack of knowledge and understanding. To the point that the person issuing such advice should not be trusted to issue that advice.

Not saying that windows is perfectly secure. It isn’t. But the current version is almost certainly one of the most secure desktop operating systems available today.

I can’t see why big business isn’t breaking down their door.

Whether they are or not probably matters not one jot to them. They can barely manufacture their gear quick enough, and are one of the richest companies on the planet. My guess is that they’re doing something right…

some of us write (and use) an awful lot of custom apps., some native, some web/browser based.

migrating just one app might mean £10,000’s just for the s/w used by one team of 20.

I do take your point, but there has to be a line drawn somewhere. As I said earlier, XP is twelve years old and has been superseded for seven, it’s not like it’s a sudden change. How long can you realistically expect to be able to rely on that legacy software? Another twelve years?

For context; twelve years prior to XP’s release, Windows 3.1 was still two years away. Prevalent systems were the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga.

It’s a difficult situation. At work, we have an internal web-based system which won’t work on any web browser later than IE8. It’s been left as it’s a low priority, simpler to just avoid upgrading IE on the machines of people who require it. Now we’ve got The Powers That Be pushing us to support Windows 8 and beyond, and W8 comes with IE10 preinstalled (or IE11 with 8.1). So by ignoring a legacy system which Just Works, all of a sudden we’ve now got a Big Problem.

Point I’m getting at is, it’s worth considering options for the future, cos the future tends to creep up on you when you’re not looking. (-:

I like your style Cougar. You should ask for a payrise.

Point I’m getting at is, it’s worth considering options for the future, cos the future tends to creep up on you when you’re not looking.

.. and bite you on the ass.

This should be part of the job description for any IT work.

but still has less than 11% of market share
http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php?year=2014&month=2
http://www.netmarketshare.com/downloads/guest635303976654980000.pdf

They can barely manufacture their gear quick enough, and are one of the richest companies on the planet. My guess is that they’re doing something right…

Charging?

It’s a difficult situation. At work, we have an internal web-based system which won’t work on any web browser later than IE8. It’s been left as it’s a low priority, simpler to just avoid upgrading IE on the machines of people who require it. Now we’ve got The Powers That Be pushing us to support Windows 8 and beyond, and W8 comes with IE10 preinstalled (or IE11 with 8.1). So by ignoring a legacy system which Just Works, all of a sudden we’ve now got a Big Problem.

Aren’t there emulator plug-ins for browsers which get round this? You can run IE6 code inside newer browsers.

EDIT: Yep http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/04/browsium_mhrc/

Charging?

Value (or people’s perception thereof) isn’t always much to do with headline price…

we spent maybe a man year to migrate one piece of software from IE5.5 to IE7.

fortunately IE7 to IE8 was minimal.

That software needed to run for 12 years operationally, potentially another 2. Plus 2 years during testing. Plus development phase beforehand. It’s now mostly idle since the project finished, but still needs to be available until such time as someone says that’s enough. Probably 2-3 more years.

New versions, to do similar job for more recent projects, unsurprisingly don’t use Java, .net or any web based access. SQL database, and anyone can write what they like as a client. Oh and I’m failing to see M$ or Apple feature in the implementation. We are certainly not alone in needing systems that run on decade scale, not home user 5 year upgrade cycles.

It’s a difficult situation. At work, we have an internal web-based system which won’t work on any web browser later than IE8. It’s been left as it’s a low priority, simpler to just avoid upgrading IE on the machines of people who require it. Now we’ve got The Powers That Be pushing us to support Windows 8 and beyond, and W8 comes with IE10 preinstalled (or IE11 with 8.1). So by ignoring a legacy system which Just Works, all of a sudden we’ve now got a Big Problem.

So it needs doing? Fix it then, tell them how much it will cost and that it’s a consequence of leaving XP behind which will not be supported. It then stops being low priority and becomes high priority.

I like your style Cougar. You should ask for a payrise.

I should add, it a) predates me and b) is nothing to do with any of my departments anyway, it’s reliant on development by others.

Aren’t there emulator plug-ins for browsers which get round this?

I’ve not yet found anything that’s really robust enough to roll out on a large scale. Compatibility Mode fixes a few issues but it’s still problematic. I’ve found a thing called IE Tester which can run legacy browser engines and does largely work, but it’s pitched as a development tool and not really something you’d want to give to end users.

Hm, Browsium looks interesting. Thanks for that.

But yeah, it’s not as simple as “fix it then,” short of me turning up on the doorstep of the developers with a sturdy length of clue-by-four.

That was genuine praise by the way. It’s rare to find eloquent technical people.

As evidenced by my bumbling attempt.

Never seen fit to sink to the depths of talking work on here… but I’ll make an exception for this…
You would not believe the effort, cost and manpower involved in moving nn,000 machines in a business from XP to W7, and updating a server estate from 2003 to 2008 simultaneously, with n,000 apps sat on that estate and a significant number of these with W7 incompatibilities.
Welcome to my world.

updating a server estate from 2003 to 2008 simultaneously,

We were asked by manglement to move from 2008 > 2012 a little while ago.

Two days later, “have you done it yet?” Sure, we just popped the disc in yesterday and clicked “yes”…

All of the ATMs will be totally hacked and running a botnet DDoSing Russia (or whomever the Anonymous or Syrian Electronic Army fancy picking on) by the end of next week.

Possibly the biggest percentage of XP installations when compared to other OS? And despite knowing for years, they’re not exactly updating them in a panic.

Last time I saw an ATM crash, it was running OS/2…

Because the next big enterprise project is going to be moving application servers from 2003 as that goes out of support next year. I know we have drifted somewhat from the OP here but it is sort of related. 🙂

Think all the touch screen ticket machines for the buses/trams/trains here are all XP too. At least I’m assuming XP, since one I tried to use bluescreened.

Another area where you just want to install and leave for a very long time, not upgrade the app every 3 weeks like on other touch type devices.