Despite Attempts to Get Users To Upgrade From XP, 30% Still Use It | Hacker News Reader

Despite Attempts to Get Users To Upgrade From XP, 30% Still Use It

thesurge.net

38 pointsTheSurge59 comments

Many XP systems cannot be upgraded to another version of Windows, at least officially the hardware isn't adequate. On the other hand there was a huge opportunity to switch these systems to Linux if there had been a savvy distro with a little cash and a business model. But I fear that bus has left the station.

Just to add a bit of color, over the weekend I upgraded an old Acer netbook to Windows 8.1. The specs weren't great: 1.6GHz first gen Atom/945 PCH, 1GB Ram 250GB hard drive.

Overall Windows 8.1 is faster and more usable, with the BIG exception of the screen's 1024x600 resolution being unsupported in Metro (which made getting Windows 8.1 interesting). Intel has a hack to show a "larger" resolution in that space. Once Windows 8.1 was loaded I gave the laptop back to my Aunt. She'll probably never think about the Metro side of things (she'll use it as a large start menu for her traditional Windows apps) so that will be fine. I'll probably throw some more memory in there and it'll work for the next couple years.

Not only that, a lot of times that hardware simply has no drivers for newer Windows! Linux indeed often works much better to address this (usually this happens with laptops). I installed Linux for quite a few people in such situation.

I have a Toshiba Satellite 1805 laptop that I bought in August 2001. It runs Linux (Wary Puppy 5.5). It's that or Winodes 2000 [or the ME it shipped with] because XP ties itself to specific hardware.

It's a handy third screen.

I'm one of those people unfortunately.

XP was all I needed for a decade. My firewall which has thousands of rules does not work with anything newer and other firewalls suck today, very badly.

I have many many programs which are licensed and I do not want to have to try to find the key for each one again, heck find the program again, only to find out it doesn't work beyond XP.

XP was just a launching UI for me, really could not care about how it looked. I have it very locked down and very tweaked.

And I really do not want to lose the months of getting something configured again. But come mid-April I won't have a choice.

My guess is that someone will step up and continue to create patches for XP, because you're in a pretty big boat.

But if I were you, I'd switch to a newer OS and run the whole XP box in a VM (note you may run into some MS licensing issues setting this up). Then at least you can slowly start migrating and at least your "main" hypervisor OS will be fully patched. Doesn't help you with the firewall, though.

What blows my mind is that XP still needs constant, serious security patches after 12 years. Think about that.

I see constant security patches for Linux and associated userland, pretty much monthly also.

It's not because the software is necessarily "insecure", it's just because new ways of getting around protections are found every day. Plus, look at how much the technology landscape has changed since XP was introduced in 2001.

Uh, ATMs use Windows XP Embedded, which isn't really the same thing and is not at EOL. Microsoft said they'll support Embedded at least until 2016.

I wonder, why would ATMs use XP instead of Linux which sounds like a much better fit?

Driver support for various touchscreens? But that's just a guess. I would imagine the license cost is not a huge factor in the price of an ATM.

Hardware and software support mostly. OEMs and vendors often write software and drivers for Windows only, or have better support in Windows.

But there's no reason I know of to keep using XP instead of 7 or 8 for these applications.

Disclaimer: I work for a company that engineers software for self-service patient check-in kiosks.

Because their software only runs on Windows. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Funny enough, Diebold, one of the leaders in ATM manufacturing and ATM software, use Windows 7 for their latest ATM's. I know because my current gig is customizing the software for a very large South African bank.

Why do I still use Windows XP? Because Microsoft charges too much for Windows-8. Right now I am running XP in virtual box on my Linux workstation, and everything works fine. Why would I pay to upgrade to Windows-8 knowing that I might have trouble installing Windows-8 in virtualbox. There is no point.

Just curious, why are you using XP in a vm instead of just using Linux?

How else do you test on IE?

Ah, ok. I use browserstack, but I see your point.

Microsoft actually offers VMs for testing various incarnations of IE. They can be kind of a hassle (I think the Win 8 based ones are timebombed and you have to periodically download a new VM), but they work and are free & legal. http://modern.ie/en-us/virtualization-tools

http://modern.ie/ ? Microsoft's got VMs for almost every IE/OS combination you could want.

Edit: meaning, why are you limiting yourself to just XP. I realize that was unclear.

Now this is cool. Thank you for sharing the link.

I have found it to be pretty slow and painful.

Huh? I am using VMs from modern.ie (among others). You need XP to run IE8. The IE8 VM is XP.

You can't test current IE (beyond IE 9?) on XP.

Right, and you can't test IE older than 9 on XP... so you need at least two VMs depending on your requirements. I still see a fair bit of traffic on IE8.

If you have no use for Windows 8 that makes it worth buying, and no problem with running an unsupported OS, why are you even commenting?

Hi, welcome to a Hacker News comment thread! This is the place where we talk amongst ourselves about news stories.

This is a good opportunity for institutions to move to Linux instead of Windows 8, if they're going to have to train their users to use it anyway:

https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/education-mi...

As for why ATM's aren't using Linux, is beyond me. I guess Microsoft got to them first. This is the problem with open source projects over commercial solutions - there's hardly anyone out there working hard to promote that solution to users, other than the "community".

Things are changing and the community and social media can have a bigger impact, but not when these ATM owners had to make the choice, and Microsoft is still spending billions on promoting their stuff.

Honestly, I would also think that most of the applications for ATMs were created before Linux systems gained much popularity. Plus in general Linux isn't used to often commercially, I believe.

"Shit, for some reason people don't want to drop a wad of cash on a upgrade that provides no benefit to them and may not run effectively on their hardware. I don't understand it! Haven't these jerks heard of progress?"

What could be interesting will be percentage of computers running Windows 7 at EOL. My bet is it will be the same or higher. I don't see many companies jumping on the Windows 8 bandwagon any time soon, especially with how much "less buggy" 7 is versus 8.x.

I don't either, but not just because the the bugs. The whole focus on tablets and touch screens is a big turn off to most businesses I would think. Even though Microsoft is finally considering switching 8 to more of a classic style, I think it's too late for that.

It's not too late at all. Microsoft has had a number of "skip this version" Windows versions, and the subseqent release has done well. WinXP did well despite WinME, Win7 has done well despite Vista, and Win8.1 or Win9 will probably do well despite Win8.

I have no doubt that Microsoft will do well on future editions despite Windows 8. What I do think is that anything with Windows 8 in it's name is always going to have the touchscreen/tablet stigma attached to it.

I do see your point...MS has had a hit-then-miss trend of OS's over the last few iterations. But my general thought is that 7 is just too good (in general, and as an alternative) to 8.x/9.

Still think Microsoft should open source XP. They have no interest in developing it despite user demand, let someone else take over.

Do you really believe there is any sort of significant demand for XP? Maybe you could make an argument for 7, but really the almost 13 year old Windows XP?

> Do you really believe there is any sort of significant demand for XP?

Well, I RTFA, so yeah, I do.

Just because there is a large existing installed base does not imply demand for new installs. If you were able to start a business selling XP, I'd say you would have a difficult time.

I think O/Ss are, in a way, overrated, as the core usage for non-power users is simply based on the applications.

Most users probably use all the Windows-es exactly the same way. An acquaintance of mine was actually complaining that Windows 8 was too different.

Of course, security is a different story.

I personally still prefer XP, as I can tell you that Windows 7 is a horrible HD-eating monster, while Windows XP has a small footprint, and it's very lean.

Note - I'm a Linux user, by the way.

Hey, look, there's a link to an article up there! Let's read it together: "Currently, the more than a decade old OS still has a market share of 29.53%." Wow!

"Market: the state of trade at a particular time or in a particular context" - Google definition.

29% of operating systems sold today are XP?

29% of computers sold today are running XP?

When the article says "market share" I think that's misleading, there's no money or trade involved in people using an old thing. It's more indicative that such people are not willing to spend money on computing, than indicative that they are willing to spend money to stay where they are.

User demand? You mean the people saying "develop and give us free updates forever because we don't want to pay you for Windows new edition"?

They have no interest in developing it

So... where did Vista, 7, 8 and 8.1 come from, if not "interest in developing Windows"?

> User demand? You mean the people saying "develop and give us free updates forever because we don't want to pay you for Windows new edition"?

Yep, those people.

> So... where did Vista, 7, 8 and 8.1 come from, if not "interest in developing Windows"?

Not developing the XP branch, that people are still interested in (as this article demonstrates).

Is anyone honestly using Windows XP because they don't like any of the more recent versions? Or do they just not want to pay?

Customers not wanting to pay is not a good reason to open source your product.

What about the goodwill among developers it would create? That worth nothing too?

They're already super-dominant. Diminishing returns on leverage, I'd imagine.

Windows made $6.37 billion profit in Q3 2012. Providing a way to get Windows without paying could potentially kill the cow which is worth unbelievable amounts of money.

It's not that I don't like Windows 7, it just offers no additional value for the things I do with a computer.

To be fair it is quite nice from a security standpoint.

XKCD put it well - http://xkcd.com/694/

So why should they, as a profit-making company, open-source Windows XP and thus create a valid competitor to their existing products which actually do make them a profit?

Windows Vista, 7, and 8 are all further developments in the XP branch.

There's also the Windows Server branch, which is also being actively developed.

The only branch that hasn't been developed is the one where Windows ME is the most recent version.

Wouldn't open-sourcing XP be sort of meaningless unless they also open-sourced the Windows NT kernel, which Vista, 7 and 8 also run on? I can't imagine that happening.

Sure, do that too. Can't imagine it happening either, but am still suggesting that they do it.

That's a good idea, but MS is still too stingy to do that. When they change their mind they can just give the code to ReactOS for example. Another thing which might prevent them from opening all code can be various "official" backdoors and other similar stuff

Yes. Let them just give away a viable alternative to one of their primary revenue sources.

What a fantastic idea; I wonder why they hadn't thought of it themselves.

at this point they should be treated like ie6 users. Its been 15 years

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