6 ms·

Alternatively, Microsoft should continue to support Windows XP as long as there are a large number of critical systems that rely on it. They are unable to upgra

Alternatively, Microsoft should continue to support Windows XP as long as there are a large number of critical systems that rely on it. They are unable to upgrade because it would break a lot of legacy software. I believe Windows XP should have been supported for at least 50 years, considering how many people still depend on it. IMO, Microsoft has acted irresponsibly, and the decision was only driven by money. Sure, 2001 was a long time ago, but so what? What's wrong with a PC that runs the same OS for 100 years? Sometimes things work fine just the way they are. For all intents and purposes, most machines running Windows XP are fast enough. Office workers aren't running some insane virtual reality system, they're responding to emails and entering data into some Visual Basic application. I understand that newer versions of Windows do have stronger security, so it is better if people can upgrade to a more secure version of Windows. But it would have been better if those security features were somehow back-ported. But seriously, can the current version of Windows please be considered "finished"? Why not spend the next 50 years just maintaining Windows 10, just the way it is? Imagine if they devoted all of their resources to finding and fixing all of the possible security issues until it's virtually bulletproof, and the price of a zero-day gets to a billion dollars. I think it's a shame that Microsoft constantly releases unnecessary upgrades and tried to get people to keep buying new licenses.

melling 9y ago
The world will change more in the next 50 years than it did in the last 100. Do you really think it's a good idea to stop all progress on a major OS?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- _red 9y ago
  I think you must differentiate between a general purpose OS and a single-purpose OS. Why isn't XP good enough to run a map kiosk in a mall? Or flight arrivals screen in the airport? Face it, the needs of many single-use applications where solved decades ago...the need to constantly undergo the endless forced upgrade cycle waste a tremendous amount of human effort.
  - Sindisil 9y ago
    Perhaps, as long as those units are air gapped (i.e., not Internet connected, with no physically unsecured I/O ports).
  - jononor 9y ago
    XP is a general purpose OS, with a large attack surface. That is what makes it less-than-ideal for special purpose use.
  - signal11 9y ago
    > Why isn't XP good enough to run a map kiosk in a mall? Or flight arrivals screen in the airport? It is and the stripped-down versions of XP Microsoft sells to run kiosks still get updates [1] > Windows Embedded Standard 2009. This product is an updated release of the toolkit and componentized version of Windows XP. It was originally released in 2008, and Extended Support will end on January 8, 2019. > Windows Embedded POSReady 2009. This product for point of sale devices reflects the updates available in Windows Embedded Standard 2009. It was originally released on 2009, and extended support will end on April 9, 2019. [1] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/18581/lifecycle-faq-windows-products https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/18581/lifecycle-faq...
    - _red 9y ago
      Sure. Everyone knows about the embedded line. However, MS makes it very difficult to acquire and manage those products. Generally speaking, you must buy their embedded products with a motherboard/cpu purchase from an authorized vendor. MS business strategy basically mandates that a whole class of "single purpose" customers can't / won't buy via the way MS wants to sell it. If you try to mandate that the mall buy your special (expensive) motherboard/XPe combo you will generally make no sales. Therefore the default becomes that your customers just go buy "whatever computer they can that matches specs" and run that. Hence you wind up with tens of millions of devices that aren't supported anymore.
kogepathic 9y ago
> They are unable to upgrade because it would break a lot of legacy software. I believe Windows XP should have been supported for at least 50 years, considering how many people still depend on it. It's not Microsoft's fault that people depend on Windows XP. IMHO it's the fault of companies buying hardware and software from manufacturers who are unwilling or unable to upgrade their product to run on newer versions of Windows. To put it another way: the only reason there is a huge demand for COBOL programmers is because banks are too spendthrift to rewrite their software in more modern languages. > IMO, Microsoft has acted irresponsibly, and the decision was only driven by money. Welcome to the world of successful businesses. They don't do things for altruistic reasons, they do it because it makes money. > Imagine if they devoted all of their resources to finding and fixing all of the possible security issues until it's virtually bulletproof, and the price of a zero-day gets to a billion dollars. I think it's a shame that Microsoft constantly releases unnecessary upgrades and tried to get people to keep buying new licenses. A lot to unpack here. 1) I personally don't think it's possible for anyone to design a general purpose OS as complex as Windows that is bug free. Just look up how small the space shuttle software was (IIRC ~600,000 LOC) and how mind bogglingly expensive it was. 2) Businesses could already avoid a lot of this if they didn't view IT as a cost centre and instead as an investment. 3) Yes Windows 10 is a privacy nightmare. But Microsoft has made real strides in OS security since XP. It's wrong to claim that all they've done is put a minimalist theme on the same old OS. From a security perspective they absolutely are not "unnecessary upgrades"
- jaxn 9y ago
  It is absolutely Microsoft's fault. Many of the existing XP computers a big monolithic systems that have been decentralized so Microsoft could sell more licenses. Think networks of retail stores using hundreds or thousands of PCs for their point-of-sale. Or government agencies like the DMV with locations in every rural county. They put a PC on every not-quite-a-desk.
  - aanm1988 9y ago
    and did they say "don't ever upgrade this"?
- 9y ago
userbinator 9y ago
Sure, 2001 was a long time ago, but so what? What's wrong with a PC that runs the same OS for 100 years? My thoughts exactly. If you look outside of computers/tech, at other large pieces of infrastructure like electrical and water supply systems, you'll find plenty which are much older and still in active operation. 2001 was only 16 years ago. I have many things older than that and probably "unsupported", yet continue working with only occasional maintenance. Thus, as computers become more integrated into our lives and a part of the infrastructure, it makes sense that they should stop "moving forward" and settle down stably at some point, yet all I've seen is the complete opposite. In fact, I'd say instability in infrastructure is immaturity --- to take an example, in the early days of electrical power, there were plenty of incompatible sockets, voltages, and frequencies. Now we have settled on a small set of standards, which have been nearly the same for the past decades. I understand that newer versions of Windows do have stronger security The flip-side is that some of this security isn't really helping the user, i.e. DRM. Newer version of Windows also come with other unnecessary/unwanted features like telemetry (possibly with their own vulnerabilities), regressions in UI, etc. In other words, if you upgrade you could be more secure from remote attackers and get some new features you actually want, but you're also giving away more privacy to Microsoft and moving toward a more locked-down-against-you ecosystem. It's not all positive. If only Linux and WINE, or even ReactOS, were in a more usable state...
yladiz 9y ago
Let's not conflate something "working" with something able to receive support from the manufacturer. If I have a car from the 1960s, I'm sure it will work, but beyond the legality of some components, if something breaks, if the manufacturer even exists anymore I would be lucky that they would help support it, and if they did, I would have to pay a large sum of money for the support. If a customer wants to use Windows XP, they can, but if a customer wants support for it, they can pay Microsoft a lot of money for it (and I think some actually still do). Besides, don't forget that businesses do need to make money. Are you suggesting that Microsoft should have supported/should support Windows XP forever, for free?
midnitewarrior 9y ago
I'd be a fan of Microsoft providing 3 or 5 years of support to business for free, then offering increasing levels of paid support for the next 5 and 10 years. It both preserves the revenue Microsoft depends on to operate, and gives businesses choices to keep operating their legacy systems, albeit at increased cost. At a certain point, it's cheaper for businesses to rebuild their solutions with the latest tech Microsoft would prefer they are on, so they can re-license, rebuild their solution with modern tech, and start enjoying the benefits that come with free support for a new licensing period. During the days of Windows XP, XP wasn't designed for a world of Internet threats, I think it would have been difficult for them to continue to support XP in a production environment while preserving compatibility with existing features. Windows 10 is built for the modern world of threats. Microsoft sells a Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB (Long Term Serving Branch) with guaranteed support for 10 years to address many companies' needs. Everybody has learned from XP, Microsoft has learned that long term support is needed so the innovated their support model, and companies have learned that they can't expect an operating system to exist in a connected world for 15+ years. Hopefully with new support options and more reasonable expectations from business, Microsoft's LTSB support model is going to address everyone's needs.
- ycombobreaker 9y ago
  Windows XP was most definitely deployed in a world with constant Internet threats! That it was not designed to address the threats is probably more of a misprediction on their part.
ralphie02 9y ago
> I believe Windows XP should have been supported for at least 50 years, considering how many people still depend on it. IMO, Microsoft has acted irresponsibly, and the decision was only driven by money. I don't think you understand how much developer effort is required in maintaining such an old OS. In addition, these same developers need to get paid and since MS is in the business of making money, supporting a SW that massively burn cash (I assume the maintenance is not cheap) is blatantly foolish. > Why not spend the next 50 years just maintaining Windows 10, just the way it is? If I understand it correctly, this pretty much is the plan with Win10. It's supposed to be the last Windows OS
FT_intern 9y ago
> Why not spend the next 50 years just maintaining Windows 10, just the way it is? The best developers (the ones with the most choices) will leave because nobody wants to maintain a project.
pcwalton 9y ago
> Imagine if they devoted all of their resources to finding and fixing all of the possible security issues until it's virtually bulletproof, and the price of a zero-day gets to a billion dollars. The trend in security has lately been toward isolation (sandboxing, etc.) instead of fixing security issues as they come up. Newer versions of Windows have more isolation features. Setting up a sandbox on Windows XP is a nightmare, and there's no way to shut off access to FAT drives or win32k.sys, etc.

melling 9y ago

The world will change more in the next 50 years than it did in the last 100. Do you really think it's a good idea to stop all progress on a major OS?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
_red 9y ago
I think you must differentiate between a general purpose OS and a single-purpose OS. Why isn't XP good enough to run a map kiosk in a mall? Or flight arrivals screen in the airport? Face it, the needs of many single-use applications where solved decades ago...the need to constantly undergo the endless forced upgrade cycle waste a tremendous amount of human effort.
- Sindisil 9y ago
  Perhaps, as long as those units are air gapped (i.e., not Internet connected, with no physically unsecured I/O ports).
- jononor 9y ago
  XP is a general purpose OS, with a large attack surface. That is what makes it less-than-ideal for special purpose use.
- signal11 9y ago
  > Why isn't XP good enough to run a map kiosk in a mall? Or flight arrivals screen in the airport? It is and the stripped-down versions of XP Microsoft sells to run kiosks still get updates [1] > Windows Embedded Standard 2009. This product is an updated release of the toolkit and componentized version of Windows XP. It was originally released in 2008, and Extended Support will end on January 8, 2019. > Windows Embedded POSReady 2009. This product for point of sale devices reflects the updates available in Windows Embedded Standard 2009. It was originally released on 2009, and extended support will end on April 9, 2019. [1] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/18581/lifecycle-faq-windows-products https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/18581/lifecycle-faq...
  - _red 9y ago
    Sure. Everyone knows about the embedded line. However, MS makes it very difficult to acquire and manage those products. Generally speaking, you must buy their embedded products with a motherboard/cpu purchase from an authorized vendor. MS business strategy basically mandates that a whole class of "single purpose" customers can't / won't buy via the way MS wants to sell it. If you try to mandate that the mall buy your special (expensive) motherboard/XPe combo you will generally make no sales. Therefore the default becomes that your customers just go buy "whatever computer they can that matches specs" and run that. Hence you wind up with tens of millions of devices that aren't supported anymore.

kogepathic 9y ago

> They are unable to upgrade because it would break a lot of legacy software. I believe Windows XP should have been supported for at least 50 years, considering how many people still depend on it. It's not Microsoft's fault that people depend on Windows XP. IMHO it's the fault of companies buying hardware and software from manufacturers who are unwilling or unable to upgrade their product to run on newer versions of Windows. To put it another way: the only reason there is a huge demand for COBOL programmers is because banks are too spendthrift to rewrite their software in more modern languages. > IMO, Microsoft has acted irresponsibly, and the decision was only driven by money. Welcome to the world of successful businesses. They don't do things for altruistic reasons, they do it because it makes money. > Imagine if they devoted all of their resources to finding and fixing all of the possible security issues until it's virtually bulletproof, and the price of a zero-day gets to a billion dollars. I think it's a shame that Microsoft constantly releases unnecessary upgrades and tried to get people to keep buying new licenses. A lot to unpack here. 1) I personally don't think it's possible for anyone to design a general purpose OS as complex as Windows that is bug free. Just look up how small the space shuttle software was (IIRC ~600,000 LOC) and how mind bogglingly expensive it was. 2) Businesses could already avoid a lot of this if they didn't view IT as a cost centre and instead as an investment. 3) Yes Windows 10 is a privacy nightmare. But Microsoft has made real strides in OS security since XP. It's wrong to claim that all they've done is put a minimalist theme on the same old OS. From a security perspective they absolutely are not "unnecessary upgrades"

jaxn 9y ago
It is absolutely Microsoft's fault. Many of the existing XP computers a big monolithic systems that have been decentralized so Microsoft could sell more licenses. Think networks of retail stores using hundreds or thousands of PCs for their point-of-sale. Or government agencies like the DMV with locations in every rural county. They put a PC on every not-quite-a-desk.
- aanm1988 9y ago
  and did they say "don't ever upgrade this"?
9y ago

userbinator 9y ago

Sure, 2001 was a long time ago, but so what? What's wrong with a PC that runs the same OS for 100 years? My thoughts exactly. If you look outside of computers/tech, at other large pieces of infrastructure like electrical and water supply systems, you'll find plenty which are much older and still in active operation. 2001 was only 16 years ago. I have many things older than that and probably "unsupported", yet continue working with only occasional maintenance. Thus, as computers become more integrated into our lives and a part of the infrastructure, it makes sense that they should stop "moving forward" and settle down stably at some point, yet all I've seen is the complete opposite. In fact, I'd say instability in infrastructure is immaturity --- to take an example, in the early days of electrical power, there were plenty of incompatible sockets, voltages, and frequencies. Now we have settled on a small set of standards, which have been nearly the same for the past decades. I understand that newer versions of Windows do have stronger security The flip-side is that some of this security isn't really helping the user, i.e. DRM. Newer version of Windows also come with other unnecessary/unwanted features like telemetry (possibly with their own vulnerabilities), regressions in UI, etc. In other words, if you upgrade you could be more secure from remote attackers and get some new features you actually want, but you're also giving away more privacy to Microsoft and moving toward a more locked-down-against-you ecosystem. It's not all positive. If only Linux and WINE, or even ReactOS, were in a more usable state...

yladiz 9y ago

Let's not conflate something "working" with something able to receive support from the manufacturer. If I have a car from the 1960s, I'm sure it will work, but beyond the legality of some components, if something breaks, if the manufacturer even exists anymore I would be lucky that they would help support it, and if they did, I would have to pay a large sum of money for the support. If a customer wants to use Windows XP, they can, but if a customer wants support for it, they can pay Microsoft a lot of money for it (and I think some actually still do). Besides, don't forget that businesses do need to make money. Are you suggesting that Microsoft should have supported/should support Windows XP forever, for free?

midnitewarrior 9y ago

I'd be a fan of Microsoft providing 3 or 5 years of support to business for free, then offering increasing levels of paid support for the next 5 and 10 years. It both preserves the revenue Microsoft depends on to operate, and gives businesses choices to keep operating their legacy systems, albeit at increased cost. At a certain point, it's cheaper for businesses to rebuild their solutions with the latest tech Microsoft would prefer they are on, so they can re-license, rebuild their solution with modern tech, and start enjoying the benefits that come with free support for a new licensing period. During the days of Windows XP, XP wasn't designed for a world of Internet threats, I think it would have been difficult for them to continue to support XP in a production environment while preserving compatibility with existing features. Windows 10 is built for the modern world of threats. Microsoft sells a Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB (Long Term Serving Branch) with guaranteed support for 10 years to address many companies' needs. Everybody has learned from XP, Microsoft has learned that long term support is needed so the innovated their support model, and companies have learned that they can't expect an operating system to exist in a connected world for 15+ years. Hopefully with new support options and more reasonable expectations from business, Microsoft's LTSB support model is going to address everyone's needs.

ycombobreaker 9y ago
Windows XP was most definitely deployed in a world with constant Internet threats! That it was not designed to address the threats is probably more of a misprediction on their part.

ralphie02 9y ago

> I believe Windows XP should have been supported for at least 50 years, considering how many people still depend on it. IMO, Microsoft has acted irresponsibly, and the decision was only driven by money. I don't think you understand how much developer effort is required in maintaining such an old OS. In addition, these same developers need to get paid and since MS is in the business of making money, supporting a SW that massively burn cash (I assume the maintenance is not cheap) is blatantly foolish. > Why not spend the next 50 years just maintaining Windows 10, just the way it is? If I understand it correctly, this pretty much is the plan with Win10. It's supposed to be the last Windows OS

FT_intern 9y ago

> Why not spend the next 50 years just maintaining Windows 10, just the way it is? The best developers (the ones with the most choices) will leave because nobody wants to maintain a project.

pcwalton 9y ago

> Imagine if they devoted all of their resources to finding and fixing all of the possible security issues until it's virtually bulletproof, and the price of a zero-day gets to a billion dollars. The trend in security has lately been toward isolation (sandboxing, etc.) instead of fixing security issues as they come up. Newer versions of Windows have more isolation features. Setting up a sandbox on Windows XP is a nightmare, and there's no way to shut off access to FAT drives or win32k.sys, etc.