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Microsoft to end Windows XP support on April 8, 2014

5K views 100 replies 17 participants last post by  @ruantec 
#1 ·
NEW YORK -- Microsoft will end support for the persistently popular Windows XP on Tuesday, and the move could put everything from the operations of heavy industry to the identities of everyday people in danger.

An estimated 30 percent of computers being used by businesses and consumers around the world are still running the 12-year-old operating system.

"What once was considered low-hanging fruit by hackers now has a big neon bull's eye on it," says Patrick Thomas, a security consultant at the San Jose, Calif.-based firm Neohapsis.

Read More at:
http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2014/04/microsoft_windows_xp_support_e.html

Other Sources:
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26884167
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26432473
 
#47 ·
Personally I think the idea of user-specific DLC for OSes (and machine-specific or user-specific DLC for consoles) is actually a great concept, especially as it would also stimulate competition for alternatives as apps (paid or otherwise), and actually uncaps the amount of revenue MS could earn from each user. Remember Microsoft Plus ?

IMO that'd be much better and more cost-effective that than subscriptions and would maximize reach for the base OS, unless subs include benefits you want (like Xbox Live's free games). It could also accomodate entreprises better by virtue of volume or site licencing of the addons (in actual deployment and use), not the OSes themselves.
 
#48 ·
@ruantec: so much love for M$ - u work for them now right? :p:p

as for XP, i read all info on every 'critical update' i ever install for it, and not once have i ever been alarmed or felt i needed such an update, as most of those vunerabilities are covered by common sense and good 3rd party protection - i'd never rely soley on M$ for that, even back in the major MSblaster vulnerability days it was common sense to have a 2-way firewall which protected such an attack.

old OS's are not the target - user stupidity/social engineering is and will be for years to come, even newly patched systems succumb all too quickly to that.
 
#49 ·
as for XP, i read all info on every 'critical update' i ever install for it, and not once have i ever been alarmed or felt i needed such an update, as most of those vunerabilities are covered by common sense and good 3rd party protection - i'd never rely soley on M$ for that, even back in the major MSblaster vulnerability days it was common sense to have a 2-way firewall which protected such an attack.

old OS's are not the target - user stupidity/social engineering is and will be for years to come, even newly patched systems succumb all too quickly to that.
More or less what I think.

WinXP + comprehensive security software + user awareness = high security

Win Vista/7/8 + basic security software + unaware users = low security

user awareness is key, if you're going to download dodgy software from youtube you're going to get in trouble whatever.
 
#50 ·
let's put it this way: if 30% of users still use xp [and majority of them are from poorer countries who can't afford to upgrade] are u [hypothetically] as a cyber-criminal, going to bother installing keyloggers,etc to steal their bank/credit details?

but 70% of users on win6's from richer nations are a much better target - it's simple mathematics...
 
#51 ·
WinXP will be targeted. They'll target WinXP to creat botnets, which will be used for spam and DDOS attacks etc.. Also some XP users will have money, but just be unwilling or unable to upgrade for some reason.

Only knowlegeable users on WinXP will be safe, but that also applies to all versions of Windows.
 
#52 ·
funny, i heard the same thing when XP was released: that win 98 was a target, yet i escaped the MSblaster epidemic and all subsequent 'epidemics' that XP suffered, and as far as i'm aware there has not been such epidemics since...i guess we will wait and see.
 
#75 ·
for some who hates open source operating system, he loves open source emulators...

if you run one of the popular Linux Distro than yes your Kernel has fixes up to date. say Ubuntu for example.

the only problem with Linux i see is gaming.. and that is improving every day with Valve joining the Linux world.

but yes linux is not perfect but what software is?

so your saying to me that you would recommend someone an OS that is 12 years old over an OS over that is not a month old.. Ubuntu 14.04
 
#55 ·
To this day i hate XP with a passion the time i could say bb to XP was one of the happiest for me, i dunno why all the love for it, to be quite blunt it was quite crappy, 2000 for instance was 100 times more stable but unfortunately once newer technologies like PCI-Express came into play i had no choice but to change, say what you want about vista as well but if you had a supported configuration it was also way better and most importantly way more stable then XP. As for squall's statement: lol, when you hating you really like to go to wonderland.
 
#56 ·
Well Win2000 may have been more stable than XP, but I always thought XP had good reputation for stability, although initially it had security problem which improved with SP2. My experiences were pretty good with XP, but I take it you didn't share this.

Windows Vista had a reputation for poor stability/performance when it came out, prompting a XP / Vista backlash. But of course by the time SP2 came out much of it had been fixed, but still needed high requirements for the time, e.g. at least 2GB RAM to run OK.
 
#60 ·
Linux security mainly comes from not many people wanting to hack it. It's like buying an undesirable car nobody wants to steal.

Obviously this doesn't apply to Linux-based OSs like Android. But getting through to the kernel is not easy, and even then hackers are more likely to fix kernel exploits than to exploit them such is it's status. But Android is mostly protected by sandboxing of Apps.

Open source is a hinderance in that crackers can read the source code to discover weaknesses. But it also means that patchers can read the same code to discover weaknesses before they are exploited.
 
#64 · (Edited)
lot's of programs huh? well i have 262 installed on my C drive alone, plus another 100 or so games/demos/music software on e,f,j drives, not to mention the hundreds of programs/games/utilities i have installed/uninstalled over a decade.

however i did not start with XP until SP1 came out, likely before that it was atrocious, that's what early adopters get.

i recently cloned my XP to a hybrid seagate SSHD and it now boots to a webpage in around 40secs as opposed to 100secs on a normal HDD, still plenty of life in that trusty old workhorse yet...
 
#65 ·
So lets recap:

-you had the exact same windows xp for over 10 years.
-you have over 262 programs installed on C drive alone atm and that is without those uninstalled or on other HDD's.
-you even cloned it at least once.
- and its working perfectly almost like day one by the way your spouting nonsense.

Sorry but i call bs on the whole story i have no reason to continue this conversation with someone who isn't being serious, or goes to phantasy land.
 
#67 · (Edited)
Have run the same windows XP install since before 2004 on an older system
IT has survived

  1. Transition from PSU exploding a KT133a
  2. Replacing MX 440 with a 5900XT
  3. Transition from VIA KT600 to Nforce chipset (by uninstalling all via devices and forcing the IDE Host driver to the microsoft driver)
  4. Transition from PIC to APIC (guide written @ http://www.ngohq.com/processors/11891-how-to-update-the-hal-without-reinstalling-windows.html by myself)
  5. Transition from Failing (Bad capacitors) A7N8X-E Deluxe to Gigabyte GA-7N400-L (simple swap over)
  6. Transition from 80GB Seagate IDE drive which has extreme Raw Read/Write and DMA host errors to 500GB WD Blue Sata 2.
Only issues stem from using certain software on the gigabyte board. Speedfan for instance can hang the smbus, but since you can't control fan speeds on that particular giga board, it doesn't need to run constantly anyway.

I plan to move this install into a Virtual machine at some point when i replace that hardware.
 
#66 ·
it's true, whether u install 10 or 10,000 programs it only takes 1 rogue program to grind your system to a halt - i think it's time strike, that u take responsibility for your own actions rather than blaming M$/XP for your dilemas [if i keep on like that maybe i should get a job at M$, not that i'd want it]

edit: oh - and cloned it at least once over +10yrs? don't make me laugh, i've done it way more times than that, due to many mobo/hdd changes
 
#69 ·
I actually did have a WinXP computer that ran really well even after 6~7 years... That is until I changed to Windows 7 just last month. The XP started fast and it shut off fast and neither did it really have any noticable lags. All I really used to maintain it was CCleaner and Defraggler. I'm not going to say completely flawless as it did BSOD a couple of times(during those 6~7 years I mean) but still, it worked pretty damn well...
 
#70 ·
Apart from the random hangups coming from Speedfan, it works near perfectly.

Slow.... considering its a K7 build, but works.


Honestly, most XP bsods nearingthe endo f its life came mostly from bad hardware (memory in particular) or drivers.

You can crash any system if the capacitors are about to explode.....
 
#72 ·
^ But why? What was so bad about your experiences?

I thought XP's reputation was pretty good, unless you got a malware infection or some other problem.

262 programs isn't a problem, as long as they're well behaved. Even then there're ways of tackling it.

The time period involved is unimportant, data integrity is pretty good on modern systems. I've had little data corruption occur in recent years
 
#74 ·
^ But why? What was so bad about your experiences?

I thought XP's reputation was pretty good, unless you got a malware infection or some other problem.
That's one thing, not on my end but for people i was maintaining, most malware and addware could seriously cripple the system most time leave it beyond repair, even if you did remove the source or the malware windows still worked like a snail.

262 programs isn't a problem, as long as they're well behaved. Even then there're ways of tackling it.

The time period involved is unimportant, data integrity is pretty good on modern systems. I've had little data corruption occur in recent years
Well...
What does having 262 programs installed have anything to do with performance,

being installed and running are 2 different things.
i know that but...
Or are you of the belief that a registry being large actually does slow things down (it doesn't).
I was of that belief actually, yes.


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Okay now you got me seriously wondering regarding this all shenanigans, someone please recommend me a good light firewall, i only need it for blocking things from connecting nothing more. For AV i guess i'll go with Avira.
 
#80 ·
Open source is great until it looks like garbage. Sadly most open source applications have no taste and are usually a bad copy of professional tools. That is one of the reasons why i haven't embrace the Linux comunity myself... Linux is great but it lacks just what i believe is a very important aspect of feeling confortable when using applications developed for the system. Again, is like directly looking at Photoshop and Gimp.
 
#82 ·
Open source is great until it looks like garbage. Sadly most open source applications have no taste and are usually a bad copy of professional tools. That is one of the reasons why i haven't embrace the Linux comunity myself... Linux is great but it lacks just what i believe is a very important aspect of feeling comfortable when using applications developed for the system. Again, is like directly looking at Photoshop and Gimp.
barely? that's like your opinion.. the fact is, it works almost perfect.



sadly is because of money.. look at android. its open source but its the biggest mobile OS they is. if GIMP project had the money which adobe has.. it probably be just as good if not better.
What are you both on about ? Gimp is an fantastic program, but you both got to understand that gimp is its own thing, it doesn't try to be the photoshop free clone your both talking about but another fantastic graphics program, which if you know how to work with can give superb results. If either of you would have started work with gimp first rather then PS i guarantee that you wouldn't think that. The problem of you two and many others is that they go from Photoshop expecting Gimp to be a free Photoshop, that makes as much sense as going from Photoshop to Corel Draw expecting Corel Draw to be yet another Photoshop.... I sort of tested this out after taking a break from photoshop, when i first gotten into vectoring, i started using Inkscape rather then Illustrator, and then going to Illustrator i couldn't quite fit in with it. In a way i always regretted starting of on Photoshop and not going to Gimp.
 
#85 ·
I think you misunderstood my post Strike :p

Gimp is incredibly awesome and probably the best photoshop alternative. Sadly as i said it lacks professionalism just as most(if not all) open source applications and even OSes. For instance CS2 is available for free from Adobe and even being that old it feels tons better. I'm not sure if you are quite understanding what i mean so i will make this example.... Mazda is known as the asian BMW and as Mazda driver myself i can confirm that. However even being that awesome and great i can also confirm that it lacks a hell bunch of things in comparison to a real BMW(as a old BMW owner and driver myself i know that). The comparison here isn't about the job being done as they do a great job but about the feeling you get from those apps where open source ones tend to be kinda cheap. Obviously if you never worked with better alternatives those apps and tools are going to blow your mind and look fantastic but if you did you will wish they would be better.

Android in the other hands is a different story as unlike Linux is taking a different route and getting far more attention from big companies. As a result you will obviously have more professional apps available. However it still suffers from the same problem at the end as core tools are just ugly and cheap in comparison to the competition. For instance development tools and others are just not as good and a good example is scalability issues sometimes in many apps(specially video).
 
#87 · (Edited)
I understand that and as i said it all depends on what you touched first but at the end from a different perspective(judging by design) open source applications tend to look cheap... and yeah Mazda is known as the asian BMW and i was kinda shocked when i heard about it the first time but it seems that way. You keep understanding that i'm comparing alternatives but i'm mostly talking about "look and feel" here rather than functionality which is why open source lack a lot in my personal opinion but it could be just me.
 
#89 ·
Yeah, the problem is that Linux is being developed by great "CORE" coders. That's obviously great but it hurts quite a lot when it comes to user friendliness, taste and proper UI frameworks as core coders are awesome at writing good code but totally sucks at anything else. Talking of which if you give a quick look at the tools you can see the core problem as the so called "ADVANCED" UI frameworks are actually in a pre-historic level in comparison to other enviroments. The only development framework really worth to use for linux is QT but sadly is underrated and lacking proper tutorials and key functionalities still. Obviously if you never used better tools you will find those amazing but if you ever used WPF/MVVM or Apple's UI framework you will end up doing a facepalm yourself.
 
#91 · (Edited)
Actually i agree with you here and to be honest i have 0 idea what those specialists had in mind as Windows 8 is aestethicaly speaking "HORENDOUS" and this is coming from someone who usually defend Windows 8. Judging by all means of UI design Windows 8 and WP are a disaster as there is absolutely nothing really worth mentioning. I have to say that i started to get used now since all my devices use Windows 8 but as someone who love UI design in apps i can say that is the worst thing Microsoft ever designed in there lives. There are few things they did ok tho. but at the end i care about the core and other things they did right rather than looking at the picture. In my case i'm trying to change that by my own and already started with the latest version of the @ruanTuber which is probably one of the first applications for Windows 8 that doesn't look like another Metro app as you can se here:
http://ngemu.com/threads/ruantuber-hd.161777/

Specially in the last video i posted i'm breaking at least most Microsoft design patterns for Windows 8 and i'm happy i did. I wish other developers would follow.
 
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