Windows XP support is ending at April 8, 2014 | Hacker News Reader

Windows XP support is ending at April 8, 2014

microsoft.com

36 pointsthefox50 comments

I think that Microsoft made a great example of long term support, but I have to agree with the big red "Honestly, it's time for a change" at the top of the page. It's a twelve year old product, I'm honestly amazed to find any users left. Yeah, many businesses may be using XP, which sadly includes almost ATM in the US, but this end of support has been coming for a long, long time and upgrading to newer, likely better software is something that needs to be done.

Additionally, am I the only person who has no major problems with Windows 8.1? Yeah, Metro isn't great on my non-touchscreen monitor but I'm not going to avoid using it because I don't like the UI. (In all fairness, I only run it on a gaming PC and my school/work machine runs OS X...) I'd love to see more lower and middle end options that run Linux, but until then I think ending support for XP is actually a good thing. You can't be hung up on old technology forever.

Windows XP was an extremely successful product. I have great respect for Microsoft for supporting it for 12 years. That's a great example of "long term support".

I'm not disputing the general point; it is still long term support but isn't it much more reasonable to measure the time from the product's replacement not it's launch?

Vista was launched January 2007 so the support period after XP was the current product is 7 years not 12.

Even more to the point, XP machines were still being sold 4-5 years ago. I have one myself.

I think that there is a case for either of these dates. If you were buying after Vista launched there was an alternative (even if it was Vista) with a longer scheduled lifetime and you were making a choice to buy the end of life product. In a way it is better they sell you the obselete product if you need it (because it needs to work in your environment) rather than refuse to sell it because it only has 5 years life left.

Yeah, I'm gonna be 48 this year. Windows users have been proudly using XP for a quarter of my life. Hope I never get so set in my ways. I've been fighting the "it does everything I want it to do" attitude since the c64.

Linux, which is free, has been supported for longer, and is still being supported. MS should either open source XP and/or provide support for a further 3 years or so, which would be about 10 years of support after last official sales.

Please show me a couple of Linux distros which have/had been officially supported for more than 12 years. As far as I know there isn't any.

I don't think there are. Red Hat offer up to thirteen years, with the last three years being in the 'Extended Life Phase', which is very limited compared to the first ten.

https://access.redhat.com/site/support/policy/updates/errata...

I assume you mean a specific release? Because several distros have been around since the 90s.

XP isn't a specific release. It has had 3 service packs, the 2nd of which could have been called a new version of Windows had they chosen, and has had continual bug fixes through its 12 years.

Forget about distributions, names, etc. Imagine you have a software that is critical to your business. You tested it on a specific version of an OS. Continued support means that you can keep using that OS and your software will very likely continue running on the OS without problems, and if there is something broken by a patch, then you can go and complain to them.

If your software runs on Ubuntu 7.04, you suddenly upgrade to 13.10 and your software stops working, then I don't think Canonical will take any responsibility or help you.

I know MS is not perfect in this either, and SP2 introduced quite significant changes, but fundamentally it's the same OS, same look, same UI paradigms, etc.; and they at least intended to keep themselves to the rules described above.

https://access.redhat.com/site/support/policy/updates/errata...

In this sense, the XP will go into the "extended period". You will be able to download existing updates for it and read online documentation. Which is basically what the RHEL extended period is.

Windows is still being supported -- just not Windows XP. Linux is only supported as far back as version 2.6, and that support is similarly ending soon. Linux 2.4, which was released around the same time as XP, is no longer supported. I'm not sure how it follows from Linux's history that Windows XP should be open sourced.

> open source XP

And who would publicly maintain and support it? Security researches may find bugs or even write patches for it, but IT departments aren't likely to deploy them any time soon.

Besides, it encompasses lots of third party software whose right holders might be hard to find or simply wouldn't agree.

Microsoft should do whatever makes the most sense for them and their customers...which probably is not to continue to support XP.

This website is really well done. I love the 'Honestly...It's time for a change.'

Not sure why ending support is controversial for some people. Support for XP HAS to end at some point. It doesn't make business sense for them to keep putting money into it.

I don't think anyone would suggest they should still support MS-DOS, so why XP?

Given that the target audience is still using XP and presumably happy with it, I'd say it is poorly designed and risks looking smug and unhelpful. "We’re here to help" is woefully unhelpful - they are actually here to get you to pay for an upgrade.

XP has had a really good run by software standards and there is no shame in dropping support. From outside the ecosystem this page doesn't sell an update at all.

I've built an XP Countdown clock to erm, celebrate? http://www.10zig.eu/static/xp/

I still have a couple of clients using an accounting package I sold the first version 1.0 copy of in 1988. Thank gods for DOSBOX, is all I can say.

That's nothing, I know a company that uses a 16-bit DOS program from like 1985 or so to do their pricing. Mind boggling, since it even gives the prices in the wrong currency (as in not Euros but a currency that went out of use in 2001)... You would also think inflation changes the prices...

Do airline booking agencies still use that weird mainframe-like program for all their bookings? I heard it was impossible to replace because you'd need to switch the old one off, and there's never a moment when there's not thousands of planes in the air.

Do you still provide official support for that dos version ?

Microsoft is not saying you can't use XP anymore, they say they don't support it.

Yes - to all three customers.

Accountants don't like change.

This is all very well for retail customers, but it's much harder in enterprise.

Fortunately, there's Windows POSReady 2009 which is essentially Windows XP under the hood as an absolute fallback as it's supported until 2019.

Although I agree with Microsoft's approach and using POSReady is not the best option, it does bridge the gap for those businesses who are waiting on third parties to make decisions on which options are to be supported or indeed find a suitable option.

I just bought an old ~2008 netbook that came with a fresh install of XP on it. I was shocked at how slow and unresponsive it was. I really don't imagine windows 8 would improve the situation at all, quite the opposite, I suspect the machine would be completely unusable.

Reinstalling Arch with XMonad as a simple display manager and the netbook is now seriously snappy. Boot time is just a few seconds from start to surfing... and that includes typing 'startx'.

Obviously few people would be techie enough or want to go through the evening it took to set it up. But really the difference between free for a working machine and $199 for a pile of sludge is a bit much in my opinion. I imagine there is a huge gap here for Linux to fill for all that old hardware that still works but needs an OS that will still work with it.

Windows 7 (and 8, and 8.1) are actually quicker than XP on most machines, given that your PC has >=1G RAM.

Obviously it's difficult to beat XMonad's startup speed. However, the problem with old machines is not the OS, as the OS itself barely consumes any resources compared to browsers, for example. So you might save X MB of RAM by using XMonad instead of Gnome or Windows, but it does not help if a Chrome tab needs 100 MB (The Verge front page, for example).

I'm testing windows 8.1 on a couple samsung N145 Plus netbooks it's a lot better than 7 runs. They are still crap though, but less crap with 8 on.

I can understand why they are doing this but it is a bit concerning from a security perspective. Vulnerable machines affect all of us. They can be infected with DDoS bots and other things that aren't just damaging to the owner of the given machine.

I guess the upside might be that this could actually be one of the few things that will get some people to upgrade who would otherwise never have done so.

Joking aside, I'm surprised more isn't being made of Balmer's hand in this mess. Some of XP's staying power is surely due to it's being the first "good enough" Microsoft desktop OS (win2k notwithstanding), but the back-to-back failures or Longhorn and Vista had to have an enormous hand in a generation of users never upgrading. That eight year chasm is breathtaking.

Does that mean that existing updates won't work anymore? Or just there will be no more patches?

There’s not going to be any more security fixes.

Well, since they're still offering paid support to some enterprise customers, then there will be security fixes to XP; the only question is how/if they will be distributed to the general public.

Do you have any link for the paid support?

I think they will have to reconsider retiring support, they will probably see that not many users crowd for Win 8, by that time it would had been too late. Many businesses along with XP may use some other services from Microsoft.

I believe businesses can purchase continued support from MS.

I didn't see that documented anywhere.

No, unfortunately I don't have a source for this claim other than, "I heard it somewhere"

Kind of interesting - that page implies ("Step 3" illustration) that their recommended solution for Windows XP upgrade involves buying a new computer...

Interesting that these pages avoid any direct reference to Windows 8. It's only referred to as "the new Windows".

    the new Windows

Is there anything Micro$oft won't slavishly copy from Apple‽‽‽‽ [1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPad_(3rd_generation)

I can't tell if this is facetious or if someone out there really thinks that "The new X" is a unique marketing formula that Apple pioneered.

Can't you?

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrobang)

You're a brave mammal, taspeotis, risking the wrath of Microsoft's remaining fans with that comment. Never mind; I laughed at least.

Probably so they don't have to update the site once Windows 9 comes out.

What do a pair of grimacing women have to do with anything? Are they trying to pack explosives into an old Gateway desktop?

I hope Windows 7 support will never end, I refuse to put my hands on Windows >= 8

Windows 8.1 isn't that bad. I actually never really see Metro if thats your biggest problem with it.

Everything else (boot time, responsiveness etc.) feels like a direct upgrade from 7 and it works great for me. Did you try it once?

I tried it a couple of times on my mom's pc; I really hate that phone interface (is it called Metro?) because I use a pc so I want a comfortable pc experience. About the performance point I can't say anything, but I'm fine with Win7, so I don't care

First review of Windows 8 I ever saw described it as a brilliant advertisement for Windows 9.

Personally, I can manage it -- knowing about Windows+D, Windows+C and Alt+F4 makes it minimally usable -- but I don't like it.

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