Windows XP dies 8th April 2014 - or maybe not

[Kym]

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/...ear-in-10-days

THE WORLD WON'T END in 10 days when Microsoft finally drops support for Windows XP on PC systems on 8 April, and perhaps aside from making a few minor adjustments, most businesses and consumers still using it probably will hardly notice and thus won't care, despite Microsoft's rather desperate recent campaign of fear-mongering about security.

Microsoft's desperation is understandable, since sales of new PCs fell off a cliff last year due to widespread dissatisfaction with Windows 8. The firm rushed out Windows 8.1 last autumn, but it wasn't enough to reverse the lack of market momentum and the lingering effects of hard times in the economy, so 2013 PC sales were generally down for the year

Anyone still stuck with XP out there?

[arthurking83]

Once you've used Win7, XP feels so last year!

LOL!

I have it on an old box, that has some of my archives .. but I migrated to Win7 about 4 years ago and once I got everything I thought I needed(emails archives, business data, etc) haven't booted up the old banger in about 3 or so years now.

[I @ M]

Anyone still stuck with XP out there?

I did read somewhere that XP is still the OS behind the majority of ATM machines around the globe.

Dunno if it is true or not but if it is I reckon it is scary to have windows in charge of my cash ---- err, hang on maybe it is already.

[arthurking83]

In a few weeks it'll be back to the future for me. Our u-bute touch screen POS system will be running XP!

[Tannin]

Still plenty of XP machines out there. Worldwide, XP still accounts for ~30% of all Internet-connected computers. In the workshop, I am still replacing a lot of XP installs with Windows 8.1 or 7*, and still seeing lots of other machines perfectly happily running XP with no immediate plan to change. The sky has not fallen in, and all the Chicken Littles have been, one again, proven wrong - just as they were with Y2K and ... er .. what was the other sales-driven industry panic? I've forgotten already. Anyway, as usual, there is some truth to the rumours but they are distorted and greatly exaggerated. Plenty of people are still running the ageless XP, and it still works just the same as ever.

Note: If you are running XP, it is more vital than ever to remember that the system itself is generally secure but the factory-supplied add-ins are, as always, highly vulnerable. You must replace the major infection vectors with modern, free, readily available alternatives: Internet Explorer -> Firefox, Palemoon Seamonkey, Chrome or Safari; Outlook Express -> Thunderbird; Windows Media Player -> VLC Media Player or SMPlayer; Windows picture and Fax Viewer -> whichever picture viewer you like: PMView, Irfanview, Picassa, XNView, lots of others. In every case, the replacement is superior and nicer to use as well as safer. This is NOT optional: you MUST replace those four major infection vectors. (If you are running a newer version of Windows, you should do the same for both security and performance reasons, but it's even more important on XP.)

* Note #2: Microsoft made an idiotic and very unpopular hardware requirements change as part of Windows 8 Service Pack 1 ... er, sorry, they are calling it "Windows 8.1", but it's really just a service pack. Because of this, millions of people with perfectly capable, fast, modern multi-core hardware are locked out of 8.1 and have to make do with the slower and generally inferior Windows 7. They can't run 8.0 because Microsoft will strand them without support in less than one year!. Win 7 support ends in 2020. 8.1 is supported 'till 2026. As every schoolboy knows, the Windows 8 user interface is truly terrible - the worst Windows UI of all time. But it's very, very easy to fix using free third-party tools like Classic Shell and Free Launch Bar - takes me all of 30 seconds to install those two, plus about five to ten minutes tweaking various other system settings, most of them the same things that need fixing in out-of-the-box 7 or Vista - and turn it the best, fastest, and most generally usable Windows version there has ever been.

[13ulletz]

We currently still have XP machines out. Progressively replacing them with Win7. We would go to Win8 however at the time of decision, our core software wasn't available on Win8.

Replacing the XP due to potential risk and increasingly lack of support for third party program.

As usual, users don't like change even if it means the new version of a program they must use isn't available...

[Mark L]

...
Note: If you are running XP, it is more vital than ever to remember that the system itself is generally secure but the factory-supplied add-ins are, as always, highly vulnerable. You must replace the major infection vectors with modern, free, readily available alternatives: Internet Explorer -> Firefox, ....

Good advice.
Our current machine is at the computer doctor, so pulled out an old desktop to use. It runs XP. Can't believe the problems IE is having. Have had to just turn the computer off and start again a couple of times. Also had to run some scans to get rid of some unhelpful rubbish that joined me while using IE. FF, no worries. Works just fine.