Posted by The Blogging Desk on Tue, Jul 12, 2011
Digital Trends:
In yet another valiant effort to get people off Windows XP and onto Windows 7, Microsoft is finally ending its “extended support” for the decade-old PC operating system. Unlike Apple, however, when Microsoft puts its foot down, it gives users 1,000 days to get out of the way. The company won’t officially stop supporting XP until April 8, 2014–a year and a half after Windows 8 is expected to roll out. The company will not issue any security patches after this date.
While there are plenty of home users still running XP, Microsoft’s big concern is the large number of businesses that haven’t yet upgraded to Windows 7. Despite its lenient timeline, the Redmond giant is so desperate to get people off XP that it now routinely insults the OS, posting up an entire video called “Is Windows XP Good Enough? Really?” which we’ve embedded below.
To scare those concerned with the bottom line, Microsoft quotes a Gartner report as well, which indicates that “more than 50 [percent] of organizations that do not start deploying Windows 7 by early 2012 will not complete their deployments before Windows XP support ends, and will incur increased support costs.”
Is this truly the end, old friend? We've had some good times together. A few laughs, a handful of tears. But you've always been there for me, XP.
Maybe that's the problem. Maybe Microsoft made the OS just a little "too" well. Why else would folks not want to leave for the vast unknown of Vista, 7, and eventually Windows 8. If everything works swimmingly, why would you ever want to leave in the first place?
The problem is that Microsoft is ready to move forward with new technologies and their endless supply of users aren't quite willing to hold hands and make that jump as well. Apple got into similar stickiness when they left the PowerPC section of their users. Further down the line, they cut support for OS 9 completely when the transtition was complete to OS X.
Granted, Apple's OS userbase was miniscule compared to Windows and still is, really. Microsoft is in a tighter spot thanks to the millions and millions of liceses that are out and about. Somethings you just have to rip that band-aid off and hope the best. Good thing Trigon is around to pick up the pieces, am I right?
