It’s finally here. After 12 years, 6 months, and 12 days on the market, Windows XP has hit its end of life. It will receive its last ever set of patches on Windows Update today, and for the most part, that will be that. Any flaws discovered from now on – and it’s inevitable that some will be discovered – will never be publicly patched.
How bad is this going to be? It’s probably going to be pretty bad. By some measures, about 28 percent of the Web-using public is still using Windows XP, and these systems are going to be ripe for exploitation.
I never liked Windows XP (I used BeOS during XP’s early days, and Mac OS X and Linux during XP’s later days), so I’m glad to see it go. This terrible operating system should have died out years ago.
Windows XP was great leap forward for Microsoft, after that, it’s been constant “one step forward, two steps back” waltz.
It depends on what you do/did with it. I’ve done a lot of work on windows XP and it was great. It is old now, and has been for a while, but so is the IBM System 360. They are not comparable directly but they are still useful and have been refined for a while.
Agreed. If ‘terrible’ Thom means ‘extremely successful’ then yes, it was absolutely terrible.
Security wise, it was truly terrible though.
It was a great step forward from Windows 98SE/ME and a smaller one from Windows 2000.
A likely cause of its lasting power has been the Windows Vista disaster. By the time Windows 7 came out, the damage had been done.
And the jury is still pretty much undecided with respect to Windows 8/8.1. Many opinions – however no convincing arguments for shifting user habits from keyboard+mouse/touchpad user I/O to touch. The breakthrough/novel app for Windows 8.x does not appear to have been written yet.
I concur with Tom that BeOS was a promising alternative at the time Windows XP came out. However, Be Inc. shifted (10 years too early?) to a web-based concept and essentially marooned the desktop users on a lost island in the middle of the ocean.
Also, when 95% of the corporate world one is interfacing with/working for is Windows/Office – is there really a choice?
After trying to delete a broken network profile from Windows 8, and finding that one has to drop to the command line to do so, this member of the jury has reached a decision: it’s a giant leap backwards.
You’d have the same experience on virtually any OS
Err… no? Windows 8 has removed the WiFi network manager completely. You can’t edit or delete saved network profiles. Deleting a profile requires you to invoke nets at the command line. Editing a profile requires you to locate a bunch of .xml files, find the correct one, and edit it in a text editor. Changing network priority is a nightmare. XP gave you a nice GUI panel to do this.
And on the other hand BeOS was too late …IMHO it might have had a fighting chance if it came before Win98. But Be initially self-exiled itself into niche hardware category :/ (first with BeBox, then Macintoshes, and coming to x86 PCs only after some years)
Edited 2014-04-12 22:55 UTC
Can’t really agree. I found XP a step backward from 2K, at least until SP2 when it stopped crashing. At least then I could get work done. It was still slower than 2K though.
… if you were one of those people who had Win2K, then maybe so.
But if you were one of the hundreds of millions of ordinary consumers who hadn’t used Win2K and had had to put up with Win98, trust me: it felt like a *massive* leap forward.
(Trying to escape Win98 was what brought me to BeOS and hence OSAlert, when it still had a BeOS forum.)
Indeed, it was very very difficult for me to migrate from Win2k to WinXP in my work environment.
I avoided it for many years, until I more-or-less had little choice left. With “Classic” mode, WinXP was tolerable for me.
These days I have migrated to Win7 for work and the Windows boxen I have at home… and I don’t miss XP at all
XP finally brought consumers on the NT kernel. It was a huge leap forward for most people migrating from win 98/95. I was kind of hoping it would suck along the lines of Windows ME to provide BeOs/Linux air to breath and grow. But on release it was undeniably the best operating system Microsoft had ever created. Then a year or two later when the exploits started, my opinion changed 180 degrees, until SP2 which finally came with a firewall.
It was good. Its time is over. It should be put to pasture. Win 7 is a noble heir. And win 8 should be okay by the end of the year.
Edited 2014-04-08 19:13 UTC
There are things in Win 7 that $%&! me off on a daily basis; things that worked fine (or were easier to administer) in XP.
I’m sure MS must have had good reasons for changing some of them, but useability obviously wasn’t always a top priority.
Well, XP was the last version I seriously used to do non trivial stuff with. I must admit my usage of 7 is minimal as is my windows 8 usage. windows 8 makes anything look better right now. There very well could be some really basic stuff that is in win7 that makes it a pain to do stuff on. I wouldn’t be the best one to ask about that.
Are there exploits that only Microsoft can patch?
Can’t antivirus vendors close any holes in the system discovered after today?
Avast have recently been claiming that that’s what they intend to do…
Yeah, I would imagine there are exploits that only Microsoft can patch.
IE vulnerabilities for one. Antiviruses can react to an ie bug by cleaning up after an infection happens. But they aren’t always fail proof.
I think its pretty clear that XP is not a os you should run at this point. I understand there are some reasons why people are staying on it, but they all pretty much come down on the side of poor planing. No piece of software will be supported forever.
I’m still running Win2K on a box, not connected to the net though…
Kochise
I remember that Windows XP was unstable trash until SP2. But it beat out it’s successor Windows Vista.
…until SP1.
Machine not powerful enough to upgrade? Don’t want to leave Windows? Want an operating system that nobody will write viruses for? There is such an option, if you’re willing to bleed a little…
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Me
Didn’t the Dutch and British recently pay MS to keep XP supported under some special program or something? I reckon many other governments might be doing the same.
As with any good stuff not generally available, leaks of the most critical ones will likely make their way through the underground distribution channels.
However, it might be wiser to stay away from such future leaks as it will never be certain that they would not have been tempered with.
Yes, the support is for the “Server 2003” clients so basicly they have to do security support for XP (2003 without the server part is just xp after all) until “July 14, 2015” All calm down, you got another year =D
Not quite, XP is NT 5.1, 2003 is NT 5.2
Almost. XP 64 bit is NT 5.2. So 2003 and XP 64 bit are the same. 32 bit XP and 2003 are different.
Not special. We just crossed end life. There is a final stage called end of license that is December 31, 2016-January 30, 2017 for XP.
https://www.microsoft.com/windowsembedded/en-us/product-lifecycles.a…
After End of license you cannot license the OS for embedded usage and support. So about 20 months left until complete death. So the true XP death clock starts now. The Dutch and the British as far as I know have paid out for the last 20 months in some sections.
NT 4.0 goes end of license this year.
I am really interested to see what happens at end of license with the XP product activation.
oiaohm,
This is an excellent point. All of today’s (and yestorday’s) DRM is not only a nuisance today, but it’s going to become a major problem for future computing enthusiasts wanting to go back and try out old software. You can whip out your old atari, commador, or apple, and to the extent that the hardware still works the software will too. That’s no longer going to be the case for lots of software and operating systems from our generation due to dead activation schemes.
Since this is being ignored by OSAlert, check out the IndieGoGo campaign and Community page:
http://community.reactos.org/
Edited 2014-04-08 18:02 UTC
Add 3 more zeros to the requested amount, 100 experienced developers and you might get ReactOS finished. 50000 is going to support at most 15 full time developers for a month.
Are you suggesting that ReactOS has progressed to the point of being a drop-in replacement for Windows XP?
If so, submit the breaking news to OSAlert yourself.
A bit OT, but I have a Community ReactOS question.
I see from your link that the developers are seeking feedback for which hardware should be supported.
Question: If the OS is Windows-compatible, why can’t people simply use the Windows drivers and software packages supplied by the OEMs?
We are not seeking feedback for which hardware should be supported, we’re giving our community the option of driving the development of ReactOS towards full support of *their* favorite apps and drivers *first*
Eventually every single app and piece of hardware, that has a Windows driver, would be supported, but the key word here is *eventually* and that’s what the Community Edition is mainly about.
I know it is an opensource project, but professional voice acting costs about 10-50USD per hour (according to John C. Dvorak) in the US.
In the frontpage of the ReactOS website w.r.t. the (R)evolution: “Where there is an end, there will be a beginning. Where time runs out for one, time starts for another.”
Yes, it had problems, but once they were sorted out, XP was pretty decent. From SP2 onwards it’s nice and stable, well supported and places relatively low demands on modern hardware. I have it on one of my machines for those occasions where I have to use Windows. It does everything I need and does it with ease and without much fuss, and so I will continue to use it until that’s no longer the case.
And since I don’t have that much of an interest in Windows (it’s just a necessary tool for me), I’m not going to be spending any more money on it than I have to – certainly not when the only difference for me will be eye candy… But that’s just me!
I found XP to be rock-solid. Mine was installed in 2006-ish and although it did get a virus once or twice, I never had to reinstall the OS from scratch. Always running a third-party two-way firewall, I believe, is the key.
Hard to believe average people are dumping computers or spending hundreds of dollars on upgrading OSes and hardware just ’cause MS made a EOL announcement.
Heck, I only upgraded to SP2 last year or the year before; something or another required it.
“I never liked,” “I’m glad to see it go,” and “this terrible operating system should have died out years ago” . . . . c’mon Thom, stop being hateful for hateful’s sake. I tried to use BeOS right after Windows 98, but it wouldn’t let me install it on the shiny new AMD system I built back in 2002, because it only worked on Intel iron.
As far as using OSX, well, if WinXP is said to hold users’ hands, OSX outright pushes them the direction OSX thinks users should go. I built what’s now called a hackintosh back in 2004 on a PowerPC and I could feel my brain cells dying off by the second just by using the Apple interface.
I also remember all too well building myriad GNU-linux systems and needing to go back to my XP system to find out how to configure my Xserver or resolve a painful dependency or whatever. Well, one time, it just hit me: Why am I trying so hard to use some other OS when this one just allows me to get my work done?
This is what XP allowed so many people to do: just simply get some work done without the whole “WOW! I’m really computing here!” kind of bad-geek, early-nerd experience.
Now, you may well hate it for this reason: it provided a solid and high benchmark for other OSes to aspire to. Many of those other systems couldn’t match it, so they decided not to compete with it and instead pursued other goals, whether it be acting as terminals for itunes or specialized, narrow-focus desktops that attempted to distinguish themselves simply by not trying to be XP.
You’re European, so this following analogy may not mean much to you, but bear with it: Windows XP was the Ford Model A of the computing world. Some people loved Model A’s, relatively few hated them, most were of the proverbial “meh” reaction, but that didn’t stop a majority of people from buying one and using it for all sorts of simple, utilitarian purposes and then some. It may not have done anything particularly elegantly or been the best in its class in any way, but it could do almost anything and, treated properly, would last nearly forever. Windows XP is the analog of the Model A in the computer world.
I love operating systems just as much as you do, but there is no denying that Windows XP casts a long shadow over what we now consider a normal desktop OS experience. It certainly deserves the respect of anyone who runs a website centered around OS news, regardless of the flaws it had or has (which operating system has never had any flaws at all? Perhaps OpenBSD, but part of the reason for that is because users can do little of anything fun or useful on such systems~).
I love this website and respect your opinions on most things, but simply knee-jerk impulsive hate for Windows XP is just wrong and misplaced. For all its warts and flaws, it dragged the computer world, kicking and screaming, forward to a better, more coherent way of doing things.
Flame me if you like for these opinions, anyone, but I have to add that, even as a long-time XP user, I am still wishing HARD that I can finally get full 3D support for my AMD card in ANY linux distro (currently have a Debian system and a mongrel Ubuntu system I put KDE on myself because I don’t like how Kubuntu does it, sorry). I really, really want to leave the MS stuff behind, but I need something more compelling and reliable than what I’ve been presented with or been able to hack together thus far.
Sorry, but I have to call bullshit on that one. I have under my desk right now, an AMD Duron based machine from 2001 that runs BeOS quite happily. The integrated graphics aren’t supported, but the ATI card I put in it works fine with an updated driver from BeBits. BeOS R5 always worked on AMD in my experience; the only limitations are too much RAM and too fast CPUs, and the latter can cause issues on Intel as well as AMD processors.
Actually, you had to patch it to run on AMD processors – maybe you were using a pre-patched BeOS PE derivative (BeOS Max for example usually came pre-patched).
Interesting, because my R5 retail disc installs on that Duron system today and I didn’t patch anything; it’s how I’ve got BeOS on it in the first place. My R5 disc came as a bundle with GoBe Productive.
I do remember having to patch for later generation Athlon XP machines, long after Be Inc. was gone. But I’ve never had to patch for this Duron machine.
Edit: Just found this, from tycomsystems.com, and it confirms what I said:
Edited 2014-04-09 10:45 UTC
Indeed, I never had anything less than an XP to test with, so I guess that’s why I never got it working without the patch.
I found some info on what caused the problem, and how it was patched:
http://wiki.bebits.com/page/InstallingOnAthlonXPorMP
I ran non-modified BeOS PE (the “install in a file” thing) on Duron 600 MHz (the very first / slowest one, Spitfire core).
You only had to patch the kernel for Via C3, Transmeta Crusoe, Athlon XP with Palomino core or newer with diskprobe (swap the line GenuineIntel… “CentaurHauls” for VIA CPU, “GenuineTMx86” for transmeta, and “AuthenticAMD” for AMD CPU’s) If his duron is of the Spitfire line (remodeled Thunderbird Athlons) it would run fine without patching, even BeOS 4.5 as the kernel still accepted the redundant but still in the older CPU’s id “AMDisbetter!” that can be found in K5 and some very early k6 (ceramic pcb)
I believe it is; it’s an 800MHz so definitely not a “Morgan” or “Applebred”. I also have to use a non-PAE Linux kernel, even though technically it supports PAE.
Had 1.5 GB, couldn’t run neither BeOS 5 nor ZetaOS. If too much RAM becomes a ‘limitation’, better get rid of such an “operating system”. Especially considering the prior case “640K is enough”…
Kochise
Which is why Haiku exists.
The speed issue when the CPU ran faster than 2147mhz was due to the RTC (real time clock) getting out of sync.
XP sp2 finally caught XP up with NT 4 sp6A. Too bad we never got sp7 for NT else we’d still be running it. XP was game friendly so it had that as a plus. But for work NT was my preferred choice. Many fewer user traps to fix.
Weirdly, XP wasn’t as good as a gamer as Win2K in my experience.
At least, when it came to DOS games, which was supposed to be the main improvement.
XP included more complete VESA emulation for NTVDM (the virtualized DOS environment), as well as Sound Blaster sound and joystick emulation, but using the 3rd-party VDMSound driver in Win2k did the same for sound and joystick support, and Win2k’s VESA emulation – while not quite as complete – seemed to work more reliably for the DOS games I was still playing. I can’t remember which ones they were, but there were a couple DOS games that just plain wouldn’t work in XP, but would in Win2K.
NT4 didn’t support USB …that would be a bit of a bummer nowadays.
I don’t advocate voluntarily using out-of-date operating systems (except for shits and giggles), and I don’t think Microsoft are under any moral obligation to support XP any longer than they have already.
But nonetheless there are legitimate reasons for people not switching over and there is a strong business case for Microsoft starting some kind of extra-extended-and-extra-expensive scheme. See how El Reg explains it here;
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/04/02/the_mathematics_of_trust/
This is why these days I wouldn’t build a business around any proprietary software that could be a key attack vector (like an operating system). If the source had been released then those people who need to keep XP could have got together and hashed something up that would tide them over.
Well, proprietary software is bug riden ? What about OpenSSL ? Ain’t something “Open” in the name, yet… http://osne.ws/lch ? Stop this FUD about proprietary software like FOSS is a panacea…
Kochise
Its not the panacea. Much FOSS is much worse and buggier than proprietary software. But even then you can fix it yourself in a tight spot.
Software requires maintenance just like vehicles. Would you buy a motorbike that could absolutely only be repaired by that company’s mechanics, however good it was? Maybe. Perhaps the bike is really good and you don’t think the company will ever stop supporting it or go bust. But, as an example, if these hypothetical locked down motorbikes had been de rigour in the first half of the century there would be practically no classic British bikes left on the road by now.
I think you’re reacting to a generic mad-eyed FOSS evangelist of your own imagining rather than the actual circumstances I was describing.
________________
P.S. (EDIT) I should have been clearer in my original post that I meant I wouldn’t build a business that was intended to run indefinitely on key-attack-vector non-FOSS. Short or medium term business pursuits are unaffected by this problem of course. As are secondary machines like the one running our laser cutter, which I expect will run Windows XP offline until the end of time.
Edited 2014-04-09 14:30 UTC
XP was solid for me at home and at work. I could count on two hands how many times it crashed over the entire lifetime that I used it. I couldn’t help but to laugh a little when half of the shiny new G5’s we ordered during that time couldn’t even make it through their first boot without crashing. To be fair, the half that didn’t crash randomly were pretty solid. Easily as solid as the XP rigs.
Neither my own experiences, nor those who have had just about the opposite are surprising. No hardware or software is exempt from being YMMV.
I agree with xminusone : really just ranting “freely” about Windows XP is a bad judgment. XP was a great OS for its time. That’s, btw, the reason why it’s still there today ! It will probably be still there *after* Windows Vista totally disappear, and even after most Linux Desktop currently installed. It’s also the reason why, for a long time, Linux Desktop and any alternative desktop OS merely tried to “copy” it. It was the benchmark reference, for all others.
It has finally been overrun by Windows Seven, OS X, chromebook, and modern Linux Distros. So yes, it’s time to let it go.
But we could at least give it its due credit.
It WAS terrible.
– Updating it was a mess. WU on XP is my definition of hell.
– It had a terrible graphics subsystem powering the UI, leading to artifacts, slow responsiveness, tearing, and god knows what else – especially compared to OS X or even BeOS, using XP felt like running through wet sand while wearing concrete boots.
– Security was a total and absolute nightmare.
– Booting it was a nightmare. It took forever, and just when you thought the desktop was ready to use – NOPE more waiting for a million things to load in the background.
– No proper package management whatsoever.
– Incredibly BSOD-sensitive, especially during the early years.
I’m sorry, but XP was NOT a good operating system if you were used to the modernity of OS X and the speed and compactness of BeOS. Both of those had their own sets of issues, but nowhere near as dreadful as XP.
The only reason XP gets a pass is because Vista was a pile of shit, but with Windows 7 around, there is absolutely NO reason WHATSOEVER to still be using that mess.
I used OSX side-by-side with XP for years. It’s complete crap to say OSX was in some other & higher league that XP was at that time. We experienced far more crashes with OSX than XP. XP worked fine across different hardware configurations while OSX wasn’t even consistent with identical hardware.
Well, since you decided to confirm your view with the cherry-picked article on Win XP, I’ll answer your points, one by one.
And I’ll start by a simple sentence : In what kind of world are you living ? Are you sure you remember properly the events from 2001-2007, or just can’t help but selective compare some of them with 2014’s situation ?
Updating was relatively new back then. It was only starting to make sense. Before that, you had updates for Win98 too, and they were even worse.
Which Linux Distro was proposing live & packaged updates in 2001 ? You might find one or two cherry-picked example, but the overwhelming majority did not provide any.
Updating started to become a mandatory feature during the Windows XP era, and now it’s everywhere. Thanks to the progress of telecom infrastructures, but also because Microsoft was showing the example with Windows XP.
If anything, WinXP was in the right train, and allowed broader progresses in this area.
The most important and most valid, but also the easiest point of your argumentation.
Sure, Windows XP has been lambasted for its lack of security.
But the truth : it’s the first time, ever, that an OS has attracted so much attention from armies of hackers, pirates & governments. And they learned it the hard way.
They did not just “stay stuck”, they worked and provided remarkable progresses in the course of the next 2 release candidates. It anything, it made them a better product.
Consider this with the stance of direct competitors, such as Linux Distro and Apple’s Mac. “We are bug free”. “There is zero attack on my desktop”. How many systems relied of these imprecations to just maintain the illusion of being safer than Windows ?
We all know the rest of the story. These systems are not more secure, if anything, they are much worse. They are only less targeted, and the day someone or some group start to pay attention, the number of flaws to exploit is mind blowing. And it’s even worse for users, since they are kept in the blank, such as Apple’s order to its own selling force to outrightly deny any malware allegation on OS-X, as long as the situation remained sustainable (hint : it is not).
Total nonsense.
I had a lot of configuration back then, tested many different Linux systems, and even alternative OS.
None of them was stable.
None of them provided even a sense of stability, as much as Windows XP did.
So sure, WinXP wasn’t perfect, but pretending that it was basically one or the worst of its kind is pure History rewriting. It was among the best of its generation, miles better than Win9x, and eons better than Linux desktop.
But sure, if you compare Windows XP from 2001 with OS-X from 2007, yes, indeed, you have a case…
This one I agree,
although most of the problems were coming from additional crapwares, typically installed by system admin within corporations. But WinXP did not provide a good defense against this inflation.
But to be fair, I’m not sure any other OS would have fare better back in 2001 with an equivalent workload. Most other systems were faster to boot because there was only so little possible to do with them.
Really ? Never heard of InstallShield ?
Or if you want to limit to Microsoft : never heard of MSI ? (Microsoft System Installer : http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Installer)
Total nonsense.
Windows XP was miles better than its predecessors Win9x. AND, it was miles better than most Linux Distro of the time. Yes, all the shout about the “better stability of Linux” was plain bullshit. All Linux Distro I tested back then were much *less* stable, too dangerous for production use.
I knew people pretending otherwise. They were little else than Linux evangelist, blind on Linux issues, and always criticism to Microsoft.
Even OS-X was and is known for its stability issues, but here also, you can count on Apple evangelist to hide this fact and pretend otherwise.
Linux & OS-X (and alternative OS) had an advantage though : they were so limited in what was possible to do with them that the range of cases, and therefore of possible problems, was multiple order of magnitude lower.
But just put your foot one inch beyond the nominal case, and you’re good for a crash.
BeOS was a jewel.
You can’t compare XP workhorse to it.
BeOS was an ultra-limited system, working on limited configurations, with limited applications and use cases. Inside the walled garden, BeOS was exceptional. Just get out, and you’re in for an unsolvable nightmare.
XP had the duty to work on all kind of configurations. Just cherry picking the worst ones is dishonest. If you had to use the same methodology with BeOS, it would get a zero.
I agree with that, and so does Microsoft by the way.
This is a tribute of how bad large corporations and administrations are managed. Pile of average corporate individuals, trying to be the least useful as possible, pushing problems and risks around to be in charge of nothing.
This has nothing to do with the rest of the post though.
Tractor some points you miss that make a few of your statements flawed. Linux started the idea of distributions using Internet to push out updates.
Back in 2002 Linux workstation computers did run Linux stable, My current Linux install was a clean install in the year 2000. So I have used a Linux Desktop over all that time frame. 2002 Linux certified hardware was a lot rarer than today. Yes lots of people who say Windows XP was more stable than Linux you ask what hardware they test on and its uncertified hardware for Linux. Running windows on uncertified hardware can be impossible as well. Take current day chromebooks yes they are x86 but Windows XP, 7 and 8 are all not run-able on them without being highly unstable.
The rule has not changes “Run an OS on uncertified hardware expect crashes”.
Dangers to Linux in production usage back in 2002 did not come from stability. Security yes. X11 has been security poor. The other issue is document compatibility. Document compatibility was fairly much non existence in 2002 when XP was released. Even websites were likely to be IE only.
That would be providing live and packaged updates and the distributions would be like debian or redhat or …. many others. So fairly much has not changed much. Debian distribution releases are fairly much service packs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Packaging_Tool
On-line and packaged updates updating Linux world you are talking 1998 and before. 1998 for working stable. Most of the early package update solutions include it in Linux.
Debian was using dselect in 1995 that also supported online and off-line update solutions. But it was buggy. 3 years of development later and a stable update solution appears.
By 2002 when XP releases updating in the Linux world is a very old thing and highly mature other than lacking perfect GUI for X11. So its valid for Linux people to look at Windows XP update system and complain. Because truly Windows Update has been crap compared to Linux update solutions.
InstallShield is not a proper package manager. Where is the list of installed files so you can work out what file owns to what package. These databases of files is a properly of all Linux package managers after slackware. Slackware uses a tar compressed file even modern day slackware installs maintain lists of installed files. InstallShield is not much better than an a tar file because a key feature to be called a decent package manager under Linux is missing.
The Linux world was in fact slow to pick up on-line updating. BSD in the form of Freebsd gets started http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeBSD_ports yes 1994.
I bought a Windows PC in 2006, my first taste of XP.
It looked and felt horribly dated, even then. Stability was a problem. Got viruses by the bucketload after I gave the machine to my father. And it didn’t seem much better than Windows 98 which I had previously used. (It was better, but not a giant leap).
For contrast, I thought Vista was pretty good. I was surprised that people disliked it, and I think the “Vista sucks” meme came from a combination of “They moved everything!” and “My old programs keep asking for permission to run” and the simple fact that Vista was a bit sluggish on early Vista-era laptops. Run it on a desktop computer, though, and it would fly.
XP on a desktop was slow. Vista on a desktop was a massive speed boost. I’m not just trolling either.
I wouldn’t call it terrible. It was certainly better than Windows ME!
What a great coincidence – The HeartBleed vulnerability, which apparently has been known for a while, is just announced the day after Windows XP reached its EOL!
Just wondering – one cannot be sure anymore of the real W5s behind announcements such as this.
With the real Windows XP now past its EOL, I am wondering what are the plans, if any, for the XP Mode under Windows 7 Professional/Ultimate falvors.
Has-it reached by default its EOL too?
Yes; XP Mode follows the same support lifecycle.
When the clock ran out for Windows 98SE, Microsoft mailed everyone a CD will all of the latest and final patches and updates. I wonder if they’ll do something this time around as well?
Did they? I didn’t get one
I did make sure to make my own CD of updates, patches and drivers to go with my SE disc because I knew they’d be needed in the future. And they were…
It was sent in a cardboard mailer direct from Microsoft Corporation. The disk is titled, “Microsoft Security Update CD,” dated February 2004.
It contained updates for Win98, 98SE, 2000 Professional, ME, and XP. But since it was mailed after 98SE support ended, I believe it contains the last software updates and security fixes for that OS. Later ISO downloads from Microsoft contain only files for Windows 2000 and newer.
Haven’t had to use it in many years, but back in the day it saved the headache of downloads in a dial-up era.
Good-bye!
Good luck!
Good riddance!
If you haven’t made the step from XP to Linux, today is the day.