8 ms·
Millions in Asia still on Windows XP
- devx 13y agoThe Chinese government should try and switch the Chinese faster to the new national OS, Ubuntu. http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2013/03/ubuntu-to-become-the-official-os-of-china http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2013/03/ubuntu-to-become-the-offi...
- nols 13y agoFaster? It's taking the French Gendarmerie a decade to transition to Ubuntu. It'll take much much longer to transition the Chinese government to Ubuntu (if that ever happens). The first linux distro designed to be used by the Chinese government was developed in 2001, and UbuntuKylin is a loose continuation of that, so we'll see how that goes.
- bruceb 13y agoFor the avg user that only needs internet, office, and music/movies Windows XP is good enough. What does Vista/7/8 offer a person using a Pentium 4 level computer? Nothing really worth paying for. I am surprised MS doesn't get more credit for XP which could be seen as a relativity dependable workhorse. Problem is for MS of course they ended the need for the users to upgrade.
- freehunter 13y agoImproved security is a major feature that most people should care about (but they don't).
- vezzy-fnord 13y agoI'm not very familiar with Windows 8's security features (besides the inclusion of an improved Windows Defender and a sandbox by default). However, what security can one speak of when it's only (enhanced) security against uninformed third parties? With features such as SmartScreen snarfing your requests, security goes only as far as the will of the vendor or their cooperation with an institution of power. Windows malware threats still seem to be going quite consistent.
- superuser2 13y agoWindows XP will stop receiving security updates and 0-days will never be patched.
- kunil 13y agoIf my computer is letting me to play solitaire on my free time, I don't care which bot net it is contributing on its free time
- Houshalter 13y agoUntil it steals your important data, or crashes your system, or sets your laptop on fire from maxing out your cpu for bitcoin mining. Depends on the specific malware obviously.
- bluecalm 13y agoWeren't there some issues with 64bit XP version though ? I remember having trouble with it but maybe I was just unlucky. Would be interesting to see what % of those XP users have 32bit version still.
- pmelendez 13y agoAs far as I remember... One of the service packs solved the 64-bit issues
- huskyr 13y agoI just travelled through Asia (Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam) for two months and, indeed, everyone still uses Windows XP. I was actually pleasantly surprised when i used XP again after many years in internet cafes and noticed it to be good in terms of user interface. Things 'just work'. Maybe because i've used XP for many years, but i had the impression that many things were in logical places, little bloat or silly stuff that you get in Windows 8 and, most important at all, very fast and responsive even on the old machines they had there.
- 3825 13y agoI was using Windows XP last week to make sure I didn't break compatibility and I miss little things like snap[0]. It is remarkable how quickly we build muscle memory because I really didn't use Windows 7 until about the third quarter of 2010. I was either on Tiger on my personal computer or XP for everything else. [0] http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/features/snap http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/feature...
- harshreality 13y agoWindows XP extended support ends in April (2014). Having your computer hacked due to unpatched OS and browser should be worth paying to avoid. If you don't feel like paying, there's always linux distros, *bsd, nexenta OS... http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/default.aspx?LN=en-us&x=10&y=13&c2=1173 http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/default.aspx?LN=en-us...
- kunai 13y agoThis notion that there will suddenly be 5000 gazillion 0days as soon as XP loses support in April, and that as soon as you go on the Google homepage on May 1st, is ridiculous and absurd. I've been running unsupported XP SP2 on one of my older machines for over a year now. It's connected, runs applications, email, and internet services. No hacks, no worms, no rootkits, no nothing. Just use a good antivirus and you'll be fine. AFAIK there hasn't even BEEN a 0 day patch for XP in more than 3 years.
- hrjet 13y agoJust curious. How can one be sure that there is no worms or rootkits installed?
- kunai 13y agoI'm not quite a security expert, ask tptacek for confirmation, but you can never be sure. However, signs do start to crop up, and I haven't had any of the supposed "symptoms" of something like TSS/TDSS.
- Shorel 13y agoSysinternal utilities for me. They even created the original rootkit detector.
- viraptor 13y agoI think that if I had a 0day at this point, I'd wait until May to use it - exactly because the support ends and MS is unlikely to release a patch. Since lots of people will not care enough to upgrade, that could be a gold mine :)
- bruceb 13y agoI should add that XP also came out at a time when PCs were starting to come to a point that upgrading hardware began to offer only diminishing returns to this same set of people. P4 and first dual cores are fast enough to run the same 3 main things, net/office/music&movies with out being annoyingly slow (assuming you had a gig or more of ram). So perfect storm of good enough hardware and software.
- microcolonel 13y agoOf course these users would likely be well served(for the most part) by a GNU/Linux distribution, and with many of them the difference between XP and Windows 8 may be greater than the differences between XP and a typical CentOS installation, or even some of the more adventurous environments. The great thing is, in relation to the concerns Microsoft has put on this infographic, Windows 8 is not the natural choice.
- bluedino 13y agoExcept that they wouldn't - software incompatibility, browser incompatibility... It's similar to getting grandma to run Linux.
- omh 13y agoSoftware incompatibility certainly. But I don't think most people will notice browser compatibility issues if they move to Firefox or Chrome on Linux.
- barbs 13y agoAgreed. Also, if people understand the reasoning behind moving from Windows XP, they will find linux more attractive, since updates are free and frequent for most distributions, and similar OS migrations are unlikely to happen again. This is a real opportunity for desktop Linux.
- bgroins 13y agoThat's absolutely not the case. One of Microsoft's strengths has always been backwards compatibility, and the ability to run legacy applications in compatibility mode. I work in a large organization with literally hundreds of legacy medical applications running on XP. We're planning a migration to Windows 7 as all of the apps have been certified with the exception of IE6 dependencies (which will be delivered via Citrix). We could certify approximately 0% of our applications by switching to CentOS.
- ck2 13y agoNot just Asia, I've yet to find something that I need beyond XP for, and the US government uses XP everywhere. (though Firefox lack of mpeg4 support is annoying because we don't have windows media foundation on XP) Will grudgingly look at Windows 7 in 2014 when security fixes cease.
- Touche 13y agoI'm interested, are you talking about for your own personal use or do you manage IT for a company?
- danielbarla 13y agoOne example: (As far as I know,) XP doesn't have TRIM support, and this makes SSDs on that platform far less less attractive.
- cpeterso 13y agoI also see Windows XP on a surprisingly number of POS machines (point of sale, not the other ;) I also see OS/2 on some ATMs.
- anaerobia 13y agoIn one of my previous jobs(Sempra Energy), the work issue laptop had Vista logo, but the IT guys gut it and install XP. My current default desktop at DirecTV has XP, and I started my job last March.
- yashg 13y agoAnd those users don't care for support or security updates. Majority are not using the genuine Windows anyway and Vista/7/8 don't really provide anything extra to a regular user over XP.
- nness 13y agoThis is likely due to privacy; particularly in countries like China.
- camus 13y agoXP+IE = endless source of botnets. And now they have to pay to upgrade to a sane and secure OS ... they'd be better off with Linux.
- omh 13y agoWhat on earth does it mean to say "Windows XP with SP3 is 56.5 times more vulnerable than Windows 8 RTM" ? I guess it's this some attempt to quantify how often XP machines get infected vs Windows 8. But a good part of that is probably because XP users are less technically proficient than the kind of people who've upgraded to 8. If you're a CTO for a business then most of these details probably don't matter. All they really need to say is "no more updates next year, so soon you'll be directly vulnerable".
- dublinben 13y agoAccording to Microsoft's research, 11.3% of Windows XP computers are infected compared to 0.2% of Windows 8_64 computers. That's 56.5 times more infected. http://blogs.technet.com/b/security/archive/2013/08/06/the-risk-of-running-windows-xp-after-support-ends.aspx http://blogs.technet.com/b/security/archive/2013/08/06/the-r...
- omh 13y agoThanks for the source. I think using that that something is "more vulnerable" is misleading though. Do we really think that 8_32 is 4 times more vulnerable than 8_64? Isn't it more likely that 64-bit users are less likely to run random malware? Of course I definitely agree that XP is "less secure" and everyone should be planning to move away from it. But for a well-managed corporate network it just doesn't seem like such a big deal as MS are making out.
- RRRA 13y agoTime to upgrade to GNU/Linux! :)
- bgroins 13y agoI could just imagine that conversation with my CTO... Me: CTO, we're switching to Linux instead of Windows 7 CTO: Great! How much functionality will we lose with our applications? Me: All of it! CTO: Let's do it!
- xutopia 13y agoWhat do you mean "all of it"?
- AndrewDucker 13y agoAll of the custom internal applications written over the last decade or so that provide vital business functionality, I'd have thought.
- bgroins 13y agoYep. I work at a hospital so switching to Linux would impact 100% of our applications. I understand the desire (especially on HN) to switch to Linux, but it's just not a plausible solution for most institutions. It sounds great in theory if you don't think about how all of our end user applications are running on Windows, have specialized hardware and drivers, not to mention people love the shit out of MS Office.
- telephonetemp 13y agoThen again, a lot of corporate software is Java or .NET, which means a much smaller porting effort. Trying to run native Windows software under Wine, OTOH, doesn't end well (in my experience).
- hrjet 13y agoCEO: Haven't you two heard of Wine, ReactOS, CodeWeavers?
- RRRA 13y agoTime to upgrade to GNU/Linux! :)
- sandGorgon 13y agoThat's funny - I wonder why we dont see any stats for India, definitely one of the largest markets. sidenote: For those that believe that these guys can upgrade to Linux, that will only happen on the basis of a single piece of software - Excel. And no, OO/LibreO is not good enough.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- namecast 13y agoSouth Korea's dependence on Windows seems to continue; I wonder how much is related to SEED, the weird crypto-via-ActiveX implementation that's held them hostage all these years. (http://kanai.net/weblog/archive/2007/01/26/00h53m55s http://kanai.net/weblog/archive/2007/01/26/00h53m55s)
- mmagin 13y agoThat post is from 2007, are they STILL stuck with this?
- namecast 13y agoYep. It's hard to make that sort of hack just 'go away' without sunsetting most of Korea's e-commerce sites. At least as of last year, it was important enough to be mentioned as an election issue in Nov. 2012: http://www.geek.com/news/korean-presidential-hopeful-pledges-to-end-internet-explorer-monopoly-1528451/ http://www.geek.com/news/korean-presidential-hopeful-pledges...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- asadotzler 13y agoIt's not just Asia. Firefox has a global population of hundreds of millions of users and our data says that ~30% of the WORLD is still on XP.
- cpeterso 13y agoMozilla continues to support Firefox on Windows XP precisely because of XP's huge install base in Asia. It is a struggle, though, because Microsoft would rather not spend any time or money supporting XP with Visual Studio's toolchain.
- mmagin 13y agoThe simple truth is that corporate users tend to be very cautious about upgrading (and who can blame your average IT department for its conservatism) and many individual users only upgrade when they buy a new PC. In my feeling, by analogy, Windows 2000 was like when they first put modern electronic ignitions and truly reliable fuel injection in passenger cars (making a whole class of maintenance and problems a thing of the past). Now it's just like buying the latest boring mid-sized sedan with slightly different styling. For me, Mac OS X, ten years ago, was like getting a Tesla. Desktop OSes have become such a commodity since then though. As much as I don't like the iOS model and its restrictions and business model, it's probably the first serious innovation in "desktop" OS products in a while.
- scriptstar 13y agoI just finished a project where I worked as a front-end lead developer using HTML5, CSS3, jquery, bootstrap, backbone.js and all I had was a trusted XP machine provided by my employer. It was fine and I don't see any point in this argument. Unless you are doing an earth shattering and mind numbing things. Honestly developers can live and work well with XP machine. I am the living proof.
- thecolorblue 13y agoIt has been my experience that small businesses, from book stores to car dealership, still use windows xp a lot. As soon as you put a price tag on upgrading its out of the question.
- brianbarker 13y agoAsia is not stuck on XP because it's more or less secure. Asia is stuck on XP simply because of piracy (which kind of seems to argue it's less secure, but anyway). Most people over there are running pirated XP. I worked at a company that had Asian partners and we found even legitimate companies over there had office consoles on Pirated XP. That was a shock to us. The really shitty downside of this is most users are using IE8 or lower and sometimes newer versions of .NET couldn't be used in our software builds. Business dudes always wanted us to design our web pages to appease these customers, which became increasingly difficult as technology goes forth.