Microsoft: Windows XP Users Are Missing Out

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Reluctance to change for legacy software support is a big deal. However, it is the way the world works. When you buy a Windows license, there is some update support included as part of the license, but it it also not an indefinite support contract. MS has been spending money and resources on XP updates and support for YEARS past the time that they stopped making money from XP. Anyone that bought XP 10+ years ago has gotten their money's worth and more. How many of the legacy programs that people and businesses run, ones that probably cost a lot more than an XP Pro license, still get update support?Heck, the National Instruments stuff I use for signal analysis costs 20X as much as a Windows license and only includes 1 year of upgrade support unless I pay more than $1k per year of additional support. Pro/E (Creo these days) costs an order of magnitude more, along with a host of other programs that are vital to my work. I get a heck of a lot less update support from them than I do from MS. Why? Because they are quasi-niche programs that know they can do just about anything they want because people's careers require them. MS can be shady at times too, but their "bilking" is peanuts in comparison...and remember that you NEED Windows to run most of those programs in the first place. MS knows it too, but they seem to put some effort into not making life difficult for customers.Anyway, change is inevitable. People will find a way to move on and everyone will get over it soon enough. Maybe they will ditch Windows. Maybe not. It'll be interesting either way.
 
Perhaps Microsoft should just start offering licenses in terms of time frame instead of software version. For instance, a 10 year license allows you to use whatever Windows version you like for that time frame. That way, they can end support for older operating systems without backlash since anyone can upgrade at no extra cost. Also, people who don't like 8 can revert to 7 if they like or people who purchased PCs running 7 right before 8 came out can still get the latest software.
 
"Why is it PR? Microsoft does actually care somewhat as they need to keep clients happy so they will buy their future products.Overall MS makes a great product lineup for networks and businesses and they need to make sure customers are happy with the product that way they can guarantee a future purchase."I laughed so hard.Microsoft doesn't care at all, their far too large a company now to care, this is just to cover their butts so those XP users who "may or may not get some nasty bug" can't sue the hell out of them for it.Microsoft makes a decent product lineup overall, but they don't care if the customers are happy with the product, because they own so much of the PC market they can do anything they want and make people deal with it. Hence windows 8's launch as such a hated OS that makes vista shine almost. (Tho vista was just too big for PC hardware at the time but isn't a bad OS)Only now, 2 years later, are they finally giving into customer demand for the OS functionality because the poor sales of 8 reflect the poor sales of Vista and are slowly starting to hurt their overall profits. Most esp since companies don't upgrade very often, and are still refusing windows 7 and 8, and the average consumer hates 8 and refuses to use it, adds up over time.Overall windows is a decent piece of bloatware with a slow gaming API held afloat by the simple fact that: Nothing else can run everything you need it to.
 
Perhaps Microsoft should just start offering licenses in terms of time frame instead of software version. For instance, a 10 year license allows you to use whatever Windows version you like for that time frame. That way, they can end support for older operating systems without backlash since anyone can upgrade at no extra cost. Also, people who don't like 8 can revert to 7 if they like or people who purchased PCs running 7 right before 8 came out can still get the latest software.
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It sounds like a logical idea to me. Could you imagine the furious uproar though? I think that most Windows users buy a license and tell themselves that they just bought an indefinite free service contract with it. Obviously that is not the case, but I think that people would flip out if there was a clear statement of limited support (BTW it is already in the license agreement, but nobody actually reads that). "WTF WHY SHOULD I PAY FOR THIS WHEN I KNOW THAT THEY ARE GOING TO CHARGE ME AGAIN IN 10 YEARS? F YUUUUUU M$$$$$$$$$$$!!!one" Nevermind that people will spend $hundreds every year or two for the latest-greatest phone, and probably buy a newer version of Windows on their own anyway. People want their illusion of free choice and don't respond well when someone presents them with reality that isn't quite as full of unlimited freedom as they imagine.
 
If MS really cared about security, they would treat their OS like say, ESET treats security. You buy the license for the AV for X amount of years. In that time you can upgrade the product or even change the platform.It just blows my mind that they do this for Office 365, which, is something that I would never go onboard with, and not with their OS.
 
Actually the headline should have said that Microsoft is missing out all the $$$$$$$$ that smart XP users are refusing to give stupid and evil Microsoft for their horrible and poorly designed Windows 8 and 8.1.XP users know very well what they are doing. Bravo.
 
Windows XP comments 30%, so there is no reason for Microsoft to drop support for it. Some of use have been buying PC every 3 years, so I am using the same License, but I must have bought it 3-4 over. (Even though my older computers are no longer used / broken). Microsoft don't allow the Licenses to be transferred to new PC. The ways Microsoft develops new software really sucks, especially when it comes to driver support. Why can't XP drivers be installed on VISTA, Win 7 or Win 8. They keep[ changing the way the support drivers. So this is hardly Windows compatibility. I have a high end printer, I will loose all the document management software. As the printer manufacturer does not make it for Windows 7 / 8. I will only have basic drivers, which are pretty useless.A lot of my XP software will not run on Win 7 or Win 8. My ancient Windoes XP computer only came with 256MB on single CPU. Today, I am running Windows XP on a 2GB system, with fast graphics card, fast SSD. I would have to buy the latest iCore7 processor, to enjoy the performance I am getting on Windows XP.
 
I wanted off XP the moment i had enough for a 7 pc a few years ago.Now im on 8.1, both OS's havnt given me much trouble, 7 only did after 3 years for me cause my hardware was HP and mostly OEM from Walmart
 
Yeah, support for XP is about to end. Is that the sky falling that I hear? Ah, nevermind, just the scare factory working overtime. I understand that Microsoft needs to sell, but it would be preferable if they made an actual product that users WANT to upgrade to, instead of doing the car dealer routine: "but it's OLD! It could FALL APART at any moment! Would you risk your FAMILY'S SAFETY to save a few bucks?!" Blah, blah, blah. By the way, still waiting on that Start Menu so I can upgrade from 7.
 
Doing tech support what I have found, and this is just from my own interactions with clients is that people are resistant to change. People get "set in their ways" they don't like it when things change on them. What needs to be done on the consumer end is either bundle the Windows 8/8.1 for Dummies books with each new PC/Tablet
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That is non-sense, people have taken to duck like water to Android or iPhone smartphones and tablets.I have been into PC Word over 5 times, to test out Windows 8 PC. I just don't like it, I still prefer Windows XP. There is no need to waste money on an expensive Windows 8 PC, which brings me no benefits, other then a huge credit card bill.People will go into the shops to buy a Windows PC and come back out with an sexy tablet.
 
What do you expect Microsoft? You dug yourself into a hole from the moment you did a 7 year extension. As if you planned for Windows 7 to be a failure before it even dropped. Now doing small 3 year year blocks as needed would have given you more flexibility, but 7 years? You can't blame anyone but yourselves for creating this mess. Support should have ended in 2012 at the latest. If people want to keep using Windows XP, then let them pay the consequences when their network takes a *beep* and let incompetent IT/Management that refused to be progressive suffer. There is no excuse for sitting around having 7 years advance knowledge at this point.Chalk it up to a learning experience. Save the tens of millions on the ad campaign and use that to fix Windows 8 so that it doesn't feel like an orgy between a PC, Laptop, and Tablet. Also extending malware support isn't helping your cause one bit. Just stop or no one is going to take your end dates seriously.
 
I just upgraded my grandmother's 10-year old Dell P4 last fall. She was adamant she didn't need a new PC and would not let me build her a new one since all she did was check email, pay bills, and web shop. Stubborn old school broad, lol. Finally she gave in when it would no longer run the latest anti-virus programs and play the latest Flash files and other applications all her friends were enjoying. She's now thoroughly enjoying her "new" Windows 7 rig I built for her from parts from a former Core 2 Duo gaming build I had laying around.
 
For those who are too young to remember, Windows XP has half the memory requirements that Windows 7 requires. Then add the monster memory requirements that the modern application requires and you have your answer. You can upgrade your RAM if your memory modules still exist, but then you have to worry whether an old motherboard will handle any more. It is just impractical to upgrade an old machine if all you want to do is type a letter and answer your email. Most old printers can still work but are orphans in the Win7 world of drivers and modern software. Remember that old parallel printer cable?
 


The main reason is adding those improvements to 7 is more than a simple patch. It would probably require a complete rework of other files and how they work. Then who would even buy Windows 8 if they added those new features from 8 into 7? No one. Its a business strategy.

It is much like say anti-virus. Newer versions are faster with improved scan engines but you still have to buy the new one and pay yearly for updates.

I am all for a business making money and considering that it is normally 3-5 years between OS releases from MS and you don't need to jump for each one, you can probably stay on 7 for another 5 years easily, I am fine with it. Plus it has gotten cheaper, and if you were smart you would have bought the Windows 8 license for $30 (or $15 if you bought a recent copy of 7) even if you didn't want to jump right away because you would have saved $120 (it was for Pro).



And yet another non sense uninformed post.

I find it funny that people get so up in arms that a business tries to make money. I mean they could all do it for free then go out of business within a year or two, cuz you know they don't have to pay those employees.

BTW, 8.1 is a well designed OS. Metro is just a ok change. I don't mind as I never use it for anything but searching for an app.



You are comparing a simplified, watered down OS like iOS and Android to a full blown and robust OS. If anyone has trouble working a smartphone OS, they need to stay away from technology because even 4 year olds can use a smartphone OS.

As for cost, PCs are cheaper than ever. It is like $500 for a decent PC for normal users with 4-8GB RAM, a dual/quad core and Windows 8. $500 back during XP got me 2GB of RAM, it was very expensive. Tablets are neat but in no way equal to a PC. The only tablet I am looking at right now is Asus new Transformer with a Core i7. That is a worthy tablet, the rest with ARM and watered down OSes are meh.

I can get why you might not like 8 to XP but tell me, why are you not on 7? 7 and XP share a very similar design apart from some minor GUI changes, which 7 was superior in as well.

Or are you like those who clutched onto 98/2K and were dragged kicking and screaming to XP?



The XP support was only extended due to businesses that were resisting. 7 itself was very successful and moved to a dominant consumer position faster than most people know.

Windows 8 and forward will be a AiO OS. Microsoft is going for similar experiences across devices and will probably be followed by Apple and other OS designers as it makes it much simpler when people can pick up a new tablet and know the OS.

As for the malware, that is just an app that is not specific to XP. It still wont help TBH as it is only one part. Security holes found after April will go unpatched and leave the system vulnerable.
 


It's not only "the system works so it is fine". Let me give an example in another world. My condo had its original A/C unit from the 70s. I have a plan to cover it if it breaks down. Problem is finding parts is very hard but they tried to fix it every time. In the end it worked but was it a good idea to keep it?

No. The thing was not efficient at all and broke down a lot. Finally got it replaced with a newer more efficient A/C unit and now it wont break down as much and parts are easier to find.

Driver support is not MS problem, it is the manufactures problem. Do you think HP, Xerox etc will keep adding support for new OSes or will they find a way to get you to buy their new product?

And I remember parallel ports. I also remember that they have been disappearing from motherboards for a long time because USB is easier and more efficient to use. Most printers are plug and play and drivers are built in or download from Windows Updates.

I also remember PS/2, serial, PCI, ISA/EISA but guess what? They are gone too because other ports have taken over.

Its the evolution of technology and will continue. When SATA Express starts to become the norm, SATA will be removed just like IDE (I hated IDE) was.
 
You know maybe Microsoft is right Windows XP users are missing out we could probably all be running Linux instead and be as happy or more so.Microsoft still doesn't get it unfortunately. We the consumers don't care about there desire help hardware manufacturers sell new hardware by increasing the requirements of their OS through primarily unnecessary means.So Microsoft cuts off legacy support and cripples GDI all while increasing hardware requirements and storage footprint and users should just shake their heads and and go sounds good to me!If I want better security for Windows XP because "YOU" Microsoft are pulling the plug on "Grandma's life support" I'll just use Linux either via VMware or dual booting to use the internet problem solved I'm sure with that and I can still use Windows XP.The bottom line is this 28% of desktop computers agree we DGAF about their agenda our needs come before Microsoft's profit margins. We like Windows XP and will continue to use it if we liked Windows 7 or 8 we'd be using it. Linux I'm sure will gladly adopt us orphaned Windows users with open arms if we need a security blanket should things get dire.
 
people hold off on upgrading because moving from xp to 7 was a needless mindless chore... microsoft needs to learn to make changes to the gui optional, not mandatory. In reality people are just clicking a cursor on a part of a screen to achieve what they want to do with settings etc, why hide those settings with each release of windows.With the bad press behind 8, and having heard the initial dreary experience of their most more tech savvy friends move to 7/8... the 20% still on xp are probably the bottom end of windows users waiting/hoping for 9 so that they can skip a generation or two of GUI's before microsoft tries to force more changes on them in windows 10 a few years down the track.
 
My 10-yo celeron COMPAC and WinXP run my science datalogging software just fine. Zero value to me in upgrading either OS or HW. Yeah yeah M$ codebois and WallStreet flipster$ need the loot. Scr*w them!
 
My 10-yo celeron COMPAC and WinXP run my science datalogging software just fine. Zero value to me in upgrading either OS or HW. Yeah yeah M$ codebois and WallStreet flipster$ need the loot. Scr*w them!
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Good grief. If everyone took that attitude, MS would go under and then there would be zero support for the 87% of the world that runs variants of Windows on PCs. Nobody is FORCING
 
to continue my interrupted previous post...Nobody is FORCING anyone to buy a new version of Windows. MS is not releasing a kill-update that renders XP useless and takes their system hostage. Instead, malware devleopers will do that, despite so many people being given 7 entire years of warning about it.It is not some shady, underhanded attempt to make people buy Win7 or Win8. MS has been very clear about the fact that people will need to pay for a newer version for nearly a decade. They even gave away a couple extra years of support for free by extending until 2014. They are telling people that they will stop spending millions of dollars supporting a product that they have not sold in years because it is probably cash-flow negative to do so at this point. I think that it is just trendy to whine about Microsoft, despite the fact that Microsoft's wildest dreams can barely compare to the kind of monopolistic, far-reaching power of Apple and Google. Paying over $1000 a year for cell data plans on contract is apparently no big deal, but being asked to shell out $199 every decade for a new Windows license is right up there with baby murder and despotism.
 
When I worked for a certain cable provider, three letters, begins with C ends with X and had something similar to a 0 in the middle, we were using Windows NT 4 (pre 2000) during the Vista release.We were doing back flips when we FINALLY got XP machines, and the reason we didn't get them sooner is because they didn't want to rewrite the software to run stable on a newer version of Windows.Pretty sure its like that at most companies, where its not just the cost of upgrading new hardware (which is going to be minimal specs anyways, cheap bastards) but they would have to rewrite any custom software they're running, and this time its going to have to be written for a 64 bit OS instead of a 32 bit OS.Companies skimp by as cheaply as possible with usable equipment for their employees because they feel the employees are going to abuse it and it makes for more profits which makes the shareholders happy.
 
For XP users who are considering upgrading to a newer version of Windows:Windows 7 is no longer available at retail (ended October 2013)."Windows 8 Upgrade Assistant" can tell you whether you can upgrade to Windows 8 before you purchase Windows 8 OS that you might not be able to use.http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/upgrade-to-windows-8In particular, you might find that your processor cannot run Windows 8 because it doesn't support PAE, NX, or SSE2.http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/what-is-pae-nx-sse2
 
I have a windows XP laptop. The point is, I have so many things stored in My Documents, Pictures, Music, the OS Partition, etc. that if I try to delete my XP and install 8.1 then all that would wash away. I don't have the time and energy to segregate all that stuff into other partitions. The people who made Windows platform, can't they make a simple upgrade solution for windows XP also? And in India, the cost of Windows 8.1 is so damn high, that I could rather buy a good mobile phone at that cost. Isn't there any discount for the present windows users (other than the free 8 to 8.1 upgrade)? Or am I ignorant?
 
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