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Windows XP Still The Dominant OS
- Thread starter HardOCP News
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Makaveli@BETA
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The problem is the general public isn't like us.
They don't care about how a computer works they just want it to work even if they themselves are dumbasses and the cause of the viruses. It's why alot of people switched to mac because owing a PC actually requires you to know what you are doing.
The sad thing is I meet people from my own generation who aren't better than seniors.
freethnker
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Win 7 FTW
Guarana [BAWLS]
[H]ard|Gawd
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And in other news, OSX (combined versions) Have now nearly caught up to Windows Vista in terms of market saturation!
Great news for apple!
Great news for apple!
Ashbringer
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Not very likely. What you're seeing is a degradation of people willing to adopt new software. This keeps up Windows could see a very fragmented world, which could easily be the death of Windows. Once Windows is fragmented to the point where each OS has 20% of total Windows share, you'll begin to see the public break away from Windows. Almost certainly moving towards Mac OSX or Linux. Especially once Windows 8 is out.
Windows 8 will be one OS you'll almost never see in your workplace. Not unless you bring a Windows 8 device to work. This leaves Mac, but even that is on its way out. Apple is certainly trying to move Mac users over to iOS, and iOS is a joke in the corporate world.
This only leaves Linux, which will cause a lot of trouble on its own. Which is why companies are sticking with Windows XP for the moment.
The real problem is that majority of people aren't using Windows XP, it's the corporations. You're either using it at work or have a company laptop with XP loaded onto it.
People who are switching over to Mac OSX aren't likely doing it to avoid viruses. They're doing it because it's hip. Chances are your favorite application isn't on OSX and you have no idea how to use it cause you're too used to Windows. OSX only has a 10% share. Bump that up enough and it'll get its fair share of viruses.
ninjaturtle
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Hmm, XP, Microsoft's little Energizer bunny.
It just keeps going and going....
It just keeps going and going....
King of Heroes
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Okay, so I have to ask, what is your company going to do when Microsoft cuts off support for XP? I mean, the people responsible for these kinds of purchases MUST have understood that MS wasn't going to support XP forever, right? They MUST have understood how bad of an idea it is to lock your company's well being into a particular piece of software that apparently had no guarantees of support going forward, right?
So what are your options at that point? Keep using a completely unsupported operating system? Pay for a support contract from Microsoft (I can only imagine how expensive that will be)? Develop security/stability fixes internally (expensive and probably complicated)? Buy software that is compatible with W7 and performs the same function as the old software (which is what your company wants to avoid to begin with)?
I seriously would like to know how a company in that situation deals with it. I mean, ALL software gets deprecated eventually. This is a fact. How then does a company that completely ignores that reality react when the deprecation date comes up? Are they just hosed?
they cut it down to the wire
my guess they will run XP till they have a major event that forces them to update the in house software
ie they will just run with an unspported OS till there is a major hole in that MS wont fix and they will still run it till some one uses that hole and breaks/hacks every PC they run
![Zarathustra[H]](/data/avatars/m/9/9298.jpg?1723407683){kind=avatar}
Zarathustra[H]
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Incorrect.
XP is inherently less secure than the design of Vista/7. The only way you can make Vista/7 come even close to XP is by doing something absolutely foolish like disabling UAC or running your regular account with administrative privileges.
Vista/7 security mimics that of Unix, Linux and other SysV derivatives. it is more secure by maintaining strict user permission control, and by users adhering to policies of only ever elevating themselves to administrative priveleges when absolutely necessary.
XP has some basic user controls, but these are a joke, and malware can relatively easily gain access to system files and install itself or make critical changes WITHOUT ANY USER INPUT. it is sufficient for a Windows XP box to be powered on, on the network to be infected with malware.
This is much more difficult with Vista/7 (though not impossible) due to its strict user control. Faults in userspace programs are less likely to infect the machine as they can't access the system files without the user elevating to administrative priveleges. The only way they can install themselves in the system files without user input is if they discover a new unpatched hole in windows itself, which is a lot more rare.
Yes, dumb users can make this defense useless by either disabling UAC, running in administrative mode (where all you need to do is press the permission button to elevate to admin status) or just entering their admin password whenever asked for it even if they don't know why they are being asked, but it is still MUCH better than not having these protections at all.
You could be the smartest most wonderful computer expert in the world and think you know your way around viruses and malware, but you will still never be secure on XP due to its inherent design flaws lacking complete user account controls and limiting access to system files.
If you think you are secure on Windows XP, you are deluding yourself.
The only way to achieve even the remote chance of security is to abide by these computer security musts:
- Use an operating system with absolute user control that limits user access to system files.
- Do your every day work in a limited user account, and only elevate to admin privileges if absolutely necessary
- Patch everything immediately. patch your OS, patch your installed software patch patch patch.
- Make intelligent decisions regarding when to enter your admin privileges, what programs/processes to trust, and which not to, and maintain good browsing practices (don't click on those seemingly random Facebook and email links, and DEFINITELY don't enter your password if you accidentally do)
- Have real time virus / malware protection installed and update definitions and scan regularly to make sure you catch anything that gets theough the above controls.
Don't get me wrong, step 4, being intelligent when using your computer is very important, but even if you are, without the other steps you are still at risk.
5 is there because even with the best most intelligent users, observing all steps above, occasionally something is going to get through.
Quite frankly, if you don't follow ALL 5 above, you are a moron, and really have no business calling yourself a computer expert or enthusiast regardless of how much 1337 gaming or coding you do.
Bwhahahahahahahahaha. Hahahahahahahahahaha.
No. Win95 broke plenty of old DOS and Win31 apps. The same shit happened back then and the same arguments against upgrading were made back then.
The cyclic nature of history is a bitch.
Zarathustra[H];1038673634 said:
It's all about the money. Custom software can be expensive, and even more expensive to rewrite just to support a new OS.
I have a custom app at the office that was written 10 years ago. It's not worth the money to up date it, as that section of the company is on the decline, and not profitable enough to justify spending big $ to re-write the software.
Luckly I've managed to make it work on Windows 7, as I have with a couple other old applications (one of them will only run under 32bit Windows 7 but that's ok for now), so I will eventually phased out XP.
Not just expensive, but also very time consuming with often very little benefit to the business. Plus, and errors that introduced in the process can cost a company dearly if they don't get caught before it's released. The risk is quite large.
So if business has slowed down, and it's not cost effective to throw big $ into rewritting some custom software, we should just shut down the company & lay everyone off?
As someone said earlier, too many people don't understand business. Sometime it comes down to a choice of running 8 year old systems/software, or shutting down the business and laying everyone off.
By the time you also add the cost of upgrading memory/disk/etc in order to run the new OS, you are usually better off just buying a replacement system that comes preloaded with the OS.
Unless you are a developer/reseller and have access to the latest OS at no additional cost. Due to my company's Microsoft agreement, it doesn't cost me anything to upgrade the OS on older systems. Because of this I've even upgraded some of the old P4 systems to windows 7 32 bit.
This is a major issue. Software that doesn't work on Window 7, missing drivers for printers or scanners, or drivers intermitantly crash in Windows 7.
Depending on your staff, this is also a huge issue. I have techincal users that always want the latest & greatest, while other users are still on XP & Office 2003 because of the huge amount of time it will take to teach them Windows 7/Office 2010.
dj_spanmaster
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I'm reading this on a corporate laptop running XP, and I'm getting a kick out of it.
King of Heroes
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heatlesssun
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Really, if you software and hardware that's this problematic with Windows 7 at this point, you problem have other problems with that hardware and software.
We rolled out an Office 2003 to 2007 upgrade two years ago, around 200,000 users and while it was a lot of work one thing that wasn't as problematic as many ribbon haters were predicting was training. We had some online training courses but no formal training courses. All of our users just picked it up on their own.
Sure there are a lot of tech unsavy folks out there but people aren't as stupid as many in tech forums make them out to be.
Funny thing about 2003 to 2007 transition for me was while I got a shit ton of complaints about how Microsoft changed the menu system, I ignore those emails completely (unless it involves legitimate missing functions like TWAIN scan to document - a hidden function that can be added to quick menu), and in a couple weeks, the complaints died down and nobody wants to go back to 2003. In fact, I get a lot of requests for upgrades to 2010 for tighter SharePoint 2010 integration. I think the newness feel of Windows 7 and Office 2007/2010 caused people to be enthusiastic about the latest and greatest. Gives them a "what else will they bring to the table" feeling.
Windows XP and the sameness of Office 95 through 2003 caused such great complacency and fear of change. Hell, if anyone remembers, even merely adding colors to task bars in XP caused a hell of a stir.
Some people just like new shyt because it's new shyt. The old shyt works great. The new shit works great. So I don't give a shyt.
Putting the finishing touches on a "scrap box" computer from left over parts to use for viewing the web and watching movies on my 55". XP32 bit. Works great!
UserInterface
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not trolling or anything but does that graph say there are more vista machines then OSX?
I'm just asking cause the web seems to be full of people that say OSX is better then windows, but I can't think of anyone that has vista anymore, and it has been more then 3 years since I last worked on one.
I'm just asking cause the web seems to be full of people that say OSX is better then windows, but I can't think of anyone that has vista anymore, and it has been more then 3 years since I last worked on one.
Definitely not the only one. We have machines worth $100k each attached to computers that are XP, 2K, and NT4, finally got rid of the last Win95 one last year, I have been trying all week to move that last NT4 one up to Win7, but even though the BootP process that should assign an IP address to the machine is running, it just won't assign the address. I am going to try falling back to the old BootP application from NT4 and see if that will work, but so far the things just won't talk. I would hate to have to spend another $100k just because an old P2 400 computer is slowly dieing
Seems electronic engineers can make equipment that can outlast anything software engineers can make lol. Well maybe the software engineers can make stuff that lasts, just look at the XP boxes still running. But then I just bought my first home Win7 last month on my new laptop, and two years ago I upgraded from 2K to XP because I couldn't find my 2K disk when my harddrive crashed.
I didn't have any problems with our upgrade to Office 07, once I found how to get rid of the ribbon and get the menu back
My company is slowly rotating out machines with XP and replacing with Win7. If I had to hazard a guess I'd say about 75-85% of our workstations are still XP.
PornoSatan
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-Used the same XP install on this machine since 2008
-No anti-virus
-Has no malware, virus, rootkits or anything malicious to speak of.
Things I do to bulletproof XP:
-Router, so I can't be attacked from directly from the internet
-Install Firefox + Noscript, so I can't be attacked via malicious webpages (this is the core of my safety actually, NoScript is God)
-Don't install pointless things like Adobe Reader (use Foxit), or Java, Quicktime, etc.
-Send love letters to Mark Russinovich for his tools like Autoruns, Process Explorer, Process Monitor
-When it comes to installing software, take a minimalist approach, less is better
-When I absolutely want to use software that I consider non-essential, use it in a virtualized environment. Thanks Vmware.
Rock solid since 2008. 0 viruses. Boots up as fast as it did on fresh install. 16 processes running total on boot. It would have been going since 2005, but when I went to uninstall some real old software it nuked a bunch of core files, lesson learned on that. So as far as single user machines are concerned you can secure an XP box. I don't trust 99.9% of people though, so it's better they just go with Windows 7. I'll go to Windows 7 when I build a new system.
-No anti-virus
-Has no malware, virus, rootkits or anything malicious to speak of.
Things I do to bulletproof XP:
-Router, so I can't be attacked from directly from the internet
-Install Firefox + Noscript, so I can't be attacked via malicious webpages (this is the core of my safety actually, NoScript is God)
-Don't install pointless things like Adobe Reader (use Foxit), or Java, Quicktime, etc.
-Send love letters to Mark Russinovich for his tools like Autoruns, Process Explorer, Process Monitor
-When it comes to installing software, take a minimalist approach, less is better
-When I absolutely want to use software that I consider non-essential, use it in a virtualized environment. Thanks Vmware.
Rock solid since 2008. 0 viruses. Boots up as fast as it did on fresh install. 16 processes running total on boot. It would have been going since 2005, but when I went to uninstall some real old software it nuked a bunch of core files, lesson learned on that. So as far as single user machines are concerned you can secure an XP box. I don't trust 99.9% of people though, so it's better they just go with Windows 7. I'll go to Windows 7 when I build a new system.
ChronoDetector
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Not surprised really, I've noticed a lot of organisations still use XP, even my uni still uses XP and they got new computers that came with 7 but decided to downgrade to XP.
Makaveli@BETA
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It would be funny if you did all this and you had spyware running in the background but don't know it because you never scan your system
And I agree a single user system is much easier to protect but XP still needs to DIAF. If you have an old computer then sure stick with it.
Trepidati0n
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So bascially you act like a hermit when it comes to your computer?
Zarathustra[H]
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It would be funny if you did all this and you had spyware running in the background but don't know it because you never scan your system
And I agree a single user system is much easier to protect but XP still needs to DIAF. If you have an old computer then sure stick with it.
This, how do you know that you don't have any infections if you aren't running any scanning software that can detect them?
night_2004
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You have heard of a rootkit right?
Zarathustra[H]
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And, is yours the only computer behind this router?
If there are other clients, can they be trusted not to click on something that installs malware on their machines, thus leaving your XP box vulnerable to their machine on the local network?
PCMusicGuy
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Whether anyone likes or dislikes it, it is a fact that there are still legitimate reasons to be running Windows XP, especially in the corporate world. Personally, there is software that I MUST use to do my job that was not approved for Windows 7 until mid 2011. Even still, every new Windows patch cannot be installed automatically as the software company must test their product for support every time so at best some of my machines are a month behind on Windows 7 patches. There are also other customers you have to deal with. Ever try to sell a facility making 230,000+ barrels of oil per day on an OS/machine upgrade, something that would take about a day, especially if the older system is working fine without issue? It is a tough sale.
try giving them the line that if they dont the "terrorists" can hack there systems and they will be down for months as they clean that up
or they can be down for a day and have more secure system lol
defunctdoormat
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Windows 7 looks like it might even catch Windows XP before the launch of Windows 8.
Actually, what I believe will happen at that point is that Win7 users will leave it for 8, but those that were using XP will continue to do so. People that upgrade tend to want to do so. Those that don't, won't. So you'll have the 7 numbers diluted by 8. And yes, some XP users will leave as well, but it's hard to call at this point. And don't let the dropping of support that's around the corner for XP influence you. People are still using win2k, win 98 and DOS!
Master Blaster
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And Win8 is on the heels....
Every time I come across an XP machine I cringe. I'm thankful to work for a company that has completely phased out XP and is all Win 7 and Linux.
PCMusicGuy, you mentioned legacy software, which is quite quite prevalent in oil production and other fields like medical, production, and manufacturing. My father is a geophysicist who specializes in finding oil. All of his rigs are on XP. He still has software, backups, and data from the late 1990s. Is actually quite appalling, but totally understandable. I think some of these companies definitely get pigeonholed into staying with a specific software platform because as you said, money either makes or breaks decisions. If it's not broke, why fix it?
I know Microsoft really pushed for their 'XP mode' on Windows 7 to make the migration more palatable...I wonder how that turned out - lol.
Every time I come across an XP machine I cringe. I'm thankful to work for a company that has completely phased out XP and is all Win 7 and Linux.
PCMusicGuy, you mentioned legacy software, which is quite quite prevalent in oil production and other fields like medical, production, and manufacturing. My father is a geophysicist who specializes in finding oil. All of his rigs are on XP. He still has software, backups, and data from the late 1990s. Is actually quite appalling, but totally understandable. I think some of these companies definitely get pigeonholed into staying with a specific software platform because as you said, money either makes or breaks decisions. If it's not broke, why fix it?
I know Microsoft really pushed for their 'XP mode' on Windows 7 to make the migration more palatable...I wonder how that turned out - lol.