Windows XP to live until 2020

Microsoft says 74 percent of work PCs still use Windows XP, extends downgrade rights until 2020

The latest Microsoft operating system may be selling seven copies a second, but it's no match for the behemoth Windows XP, still the most popular OS in the world despite recent nefarious attempts (we kid) to invoke spontaneous shutdowns, slow hard drives and trigger blue screens. In fact, a Microsoft exec admitted today that practically three-quarters of business computers still run the nine-year-old OS on hardware averaging 4.4 years old, and Computerworld's now reporting Microsoft will extend XP's lifespan through 2020 (you read that right) as a result. "Going forward, businesses can continue to purchase new PCs and utilize end user downgrade rights to Windows XP or Windows Vista until they are ready to use Windows 7," an official Windows blog post reads. We've heard the reluctance to upgrade is due to a reliance on older software and the cost of additional IT, but it probably doesn't hurt that Microsoft doggedly keeps distributing the OS despite the other choices on offer. Perhaps the futuristic Windows 8 will finally win the workplace over, but it seems Redmond's hedging its bets on this one. Look on the bright side: this way, when intelligent robots battle for control of the moon, at least the wrathful victors will still be vulnerable to the blue screen of doom.​

Microsoft says 74 percent of work PCs still use Windows XP, extends downgrade rights until 2020 -- Engadget

 

This is a terrible business plan for Microsoft. I don't understand it at all.

Businesses should upgrade to Windows 7 not just because it is newer and more flashier, because that is obviously not important to businesses, but the added security that W7 brings to the table.

Businesses are obviously relunctant to upgrade to newer hardware though, so that's probably why Microsoft is doing this, but still, what good does Microsoft kissing the corporate world's do?

 

All I can say is good lick finding 2000 era hardware in 2020.

Wait we won't be living past 2012 anyway so all is well; I kid.

If we're looking for people at fault, Microsoft themselves can be blamed because they let such a OS live for 6 years without any type of upgrade to keep people on their toes. As businesses became computer centric, everything businesses run on only run on XP, and so~

There's also programmers at fault for writing crappy coding that only works on one OS... there's lost of reasons.

 

These businesses need to get with the times. If they don't upgrade by early next year, the Canadian government will have beaten them to it... (as we're in testing now).

 

My company (Orbit Showtime Network) has all the PCs upgraded to Windows 7 Professional...heh..

 

:laugh: And as most 2010 hardware works well enough with XP, I say we're set for using XP for all eternity.

From a business perspective, I'm sure Microsoft has decided that this is a sensible move. They haven't extended support for XP, so the only costs are a few phone calls about downgrades, which ensure they keep customers who otherwise might not spend the money on new computers (and thus Windows licenses) at all. And if some large corporations do want additional XP support after 2014, I'm sure Microsoft wouldn't mind making a pretty penny on support. Businesses using XP instead of Windows 7 doesn't cost Microsoft anything beyond the downgrade call cost since the business is buying a Windows 7 license.

notyou, is the Canadian government infamous for being slow about computer upgrades? They aren't known for it in the U.S.

TSE, you're right that many companies should upgrade due to security, as a lot of companies have a lot lower security policies than they should. Really, though, if a company is serious enough about security, the difference between XP and Vista/7 in security should be irrelevant when it comes to business critical applications. At least, as long as they don't pull a Google and use IE6 as their primary web browser.

 

i still use xp, it fast, efficient, compatibility with almost everything. it does whatever i want. i play games on it. im never going to windows 7 unless they somehow stop support for xp.

i don't care about all that flash, and your "sexy windows 7 desktop" and your "directx 10 or 11". im a grown, no time for that bling bling . i have 4 gigs of ram and i still use my windows xp at performance mode, so my xp actually looks like win 2000 lmao

 

It's not the hardware that's the issue. It's the software.

Businesses use a lot of software that was developed for and will only run on Windows XP. Switching to 7 will require them to invest a lot of time and money on porting software, QA, and compatibility issues. Businesses are well aware of the security benefits that come with Windows 7, but switching over operating systems, especially after 5-7 years of XP is expensive and hard.

For personal use however, it's a completely different story.

If you're using legacy software, upgrade. There's not really a reason not to switch to Windows 7. I'm glad that you think you're grown up. Now take that grown up reading ability and learn a little about operating systems. XP's foundation is grossly outdated, and lacks critical features that are prominent in other operating system, the main one being the separation between normal users and the superuser. It's to Microsoft's credit that they've been able to patch the OS to be as secure as it is, but there's no reason to use a boarded up trailer when you can have a stable house.

 

With support still ending in 2014 I have to imagine its use will become pretty limited even with the downgrade available. The OS would only be safe to use in a closed environment

 

XP needs to die. If it dies, the 32-bit OS world will die with it. 32-bit programs will die, and the need to support 32-bit instructions in CPUs will die. Transistors that are wasted to support an aging platform can be reallocated to making computers better.

Microsoft is choosing a path that is going to slow down the computing industry. Fail.

 

Wait a second there - there are both "regular" and "admin" users in XP. Just because most users use the default administrator rights on their accounts doesn't mean that it isn't possible to use a "regular" (non-admin) account on XP if you want to.

I'm confused as to why you say, "If you're using legacy software, upgrade." - it seems like, "If you aren't using legacy software, upgrade." would make more sense. But I don't think upgrading makes sense for the millions of home users who are using XP and for whom XP is doing everything they need. Most people have better places to invest their money in than upgrading their OS from one that does everything they need to one that probably will do everything they need.

It will be at least a decade before there's a chance of Intel/AMD removing 32-bit support from x86-64 processors. Even if Microsoft sold all 64-bit OS'es from today forward, people and businesses would keep using their 32-bit software that's working now for a long time forwards. What might happen as 64-bit becomes ubiquitous is that 16-bit support could be dropped from most x86 microprocessors. As 64-bit Windows doesn't natively support 16-bit execution, and 64-bit becomes mainstream, whatever remains of 16-bit software usage should shrink considerably. Intel could continue to offer some processors with 64/32/16 bit support, much as they continued to offer the 80486 long after its prime, but make the mainstream 32/64 bit only.

 

Yes it is a terrible business plan for Microsoft but I think Microsoft is forced to it by business themselves.While the home market is quick to adopt new OS the enterprising world is not(for various reasons including economics).

 

XP will die when only 3.5 gb of RAM is just too ridiculously small for anyone to want.

 

You're comments are all from a developed economy frame of mind. What about those firms/governments in less developed countries who simply can't afford to buy new hardware plus the expensive software that Microsoft offers.

This move by Microsoft only goes to show that they don't really care about its users in poor countries. If they did truly give a hoot, they would've put a huge discount on their new software offerings for businesses. But then again, Microsoft ain't a charity and profit is king - I'm not saying it it a bad way though.

 

Microsoft failed. Nothing to do with businesses.

They couldn't get Windows 7 to be backward compatible to Windows XP software. It's not the businesses fault.

 

Do you know what happens when you choose to support crappy legacy software? Security holes, slowdowns and bloat. Backwards compatibility is what holds back innovation. If Microsoft were able to create an OS without worrying about supporting decades of incompatible hardware and software, they are able to come up with a much better operating system.

Microsoft's job when creating an OS is deciding the balance between what to support, and what to scrap. Windows 7 does an excellent job at this by offering XP mode virtualization for the software that can't be run in Windows 7.

 

Fine but the consequence is what is happening right now.

Businesses will continue to use 2000 and XP as their operating systems without the innovations within Windows 7. They will keep trying to plug security holes in XP until 2020 (or even later if businesses don't switch). I have tried XP mode and it is quite slow when you actually want to use it like an OS.

 

I'm all for Microsoft building an OS from scratch with zero legacy code and either 64 bit or even 128 bit and my preference would be 128 with all of the multicore CPU's and cheap ram. And use Windows 8 as a stop gap for 2-3 years. It's time to move on.

Windows XP was great for it's time but Seven is so much better at what it does. I've always been more impressed with how MS makes their OS work on so many configurations as opposed to Apple who uses a closed system.

 

It seems that MS is selling people what they want to buy. That's usually a good business plan. A sale is a sale, and if there is enough demand then supporting it is still a profitable option.

Personally, I would still like to see XP die. I'm forced to use it on my work machine (losing much of the performance that my computer is capable of) because our IT can't be bothered to learn how it works...there's nothing I need to run that requires XP, but they won't buy anything else. Not that we could give up XP on our network...there is a lot of hardware we are running that can't run Vista or 7 (it's marginal at best running XP) and there's no money for upgrades, and even if we had more money, right now keeping people is more important than buying computers.

 

I like XP. It is very light. It works on my 8 year old laptops very well. And configured right, its as secure as (or close to) Win 7.

I heart XP

 

If Microsoft kept extending support for popular operating systems, Companies would still be using NT 4.0 today. WinXP support had already been extended to 2014, 13 years after the OS was released. Companies need to move on eventually and upgrade.

I remember when XP first came out, people i knew whined, moaned, and complained about it and how 2000 or 98SE was better. People still consider Win7 to be Vista 2.0, and that Vista and Win7 plain out stinks and it makes their WoW slower and they are afraid of change. Its all wives tales.

I still have XP installed on dual boot simply because I bought a key a while ago and still want to make use for it. But I rarely use it.

 

Win 7 is great, but it DOES require faster hardware; thus I heart XP.
There are lots of decent computers from 2003-2005 that are in existence, which are more than enough to run many of the apps; provided the OS doesnt bog the system down.
THAT is win 7's failure IMHO; there is not a "fast" mode (with perhaps all the eye candy discarded.

Compare this to Linux, which can happily run (quite fast) on 10-12 year old computers (with lightweight window managers)

Since I dont have a choice of "light" win 7; I like XP. Configured right, I feel no need to move to a more sluggish OS.

 

My anemic Atom based-netbook is faster now with win7 Ultimate than ever was with XP Home.This fairy tale of the blazing fast XP is just that,a fairy tale.I loved XP but it's time to move on.

 

yea i know what you're saying. i used to think i'd never move on, but alas, win7 came by. Though I do think MS should have options for optimizing win 7, like xp had.

 

*Clutches XP Pro*

Is Win 7 faster than a clean install of XP on the netbook?
What have you optiimized on the win 7 install?

 

Can the Vista OS in my dell lap top be replaced by either XP or Win 7 ?

 

Yes. /10char

 

Thank you. I was told by the Geeks at Best Buy that the motherboard in dell's with Vista may not function with XP or 7! What do you think?

 

It should be right. As long as you can get the drivers. XP would be the main on to need to get drivers for, as with Windows 7 you can just use Windows Update, or use Vista drivers.

 

God damn, XP needs to die already. It had a good run, but it's time to go. Sure, you can keep a human vegetable on life support long after they should have died, but what does anyone really gain from it?

 

This is rather true. My school still runs XP, I'm guessing they will update to Windows 7 though over the holidays, they were running it on a few of there Precision notebooks, they might even wait til their lease runs out on the current lot. Who knows.

The only reason I would accept as a legitimate excuse is if their computer is complete crap... I mean, I ran Windows 7 Ultimate on a P4 2.8GHZ with 512MB of RAM. It ran pretty darn good, better then XP actually...

 

great by then they will be releasing a new version of windows every year yah know windows 8 comes in 2012?

 

I think it's great that MS is supporting XP until 2020.
Just think, if the shoe was on the other foot, and MS was forcing businesses to upgrade to win7, most ppl would be using the "m$" acronym for them.

As other have said, MS is making the OS. Sounds like a potential for a good startup business, to help larger corporations transition to newer OS.

 

By that logic, they should support it indefinitely. I would think that businesses would want to upgrade to something more secure by 2015 at the latest. If any businesses are seriously going to wait until 2020 to upgrade, they are most likely either broke or in need of a better IT department.

 

Well obviously there would need to be a cutoff, your taking my statement to the extremes (not fair).

I do agree 2015 sounds like a good cutoff (though MS opted for 2020).

I think larger businesses (multi-billions/per year) would be hesitant to make the move; as it would probably cost tens to hundreds of millions.

 

Transitioning to new computing platforms for businesses (especially big ones) requires a lot of resources... $$ for the software, project planning, pilot testing, qa testing, implementing, supporting. Lots of companies also have in-house apps that need regression testing to make sure everything will still work with the new platform. Companies may also have to update their various systems that manage, support and protect their computing environment. Most users in companies will complain about any change in their daily work so user training is another cost. Huge considerations for companies to upgrade their OS.

 

This is an interesting thread.

I just bought a brand new motherboard, cpu (Athlon II X2 3.0 GHz) and 4 GB of memory for my 8 year old desktop to give it new life. Windows XP screams on it and my 8 year old ATA133 RAID card works in it. My 10 year old SCSI card works so that my 14 year old scanner works. My 8 year old IDE DVD drive and 5 year old IDE DVD burner work fine. I now have USB 2. It has a serial port so I can transfer files to my 16 year old HP calculator. I only spent $140 and I love it and plan on making use of it for another 8 years or more!

It also has a parallel port header, but I think it is time to retire my 16 year old LaserJet because the cartridges are now 3x - 4x more than cartridges for a newer Laser printer.

 

I actually just recently installed Windows XP on my Latitude. After setting up my server with AD and a Domain, I found it almost impossible to connect in Windows 7... Instead of reinstalling the Server OSes to 08, it was much easier to install XP on my laptop. All I had to do was put in the domain name, then username and password, and I was connected. Unlike Windows 7, many loops to jump through and didn't even work. I'll probably use it until I get new servers and upgrade to 08.