Windows XP hits 10, refuses to die
It was 20 10 years ago today that Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play Windows XP was released to the public. And there’s still no sign of it curling up into a ball in the corner and dying. Unfortunately.
On Oct. 25 a new Windows operating system was shipped to stores. The company immediately knew it had something special to share with the world, with the statement, “Microsoft’s Best Operating System Ever,” included in the press release. And only the most vehemently closed-minded Apple fanboys would claim that XP was anything but brilliant.
This brilliance saw XP do well in terms of sales, but it’s no record-breaker, failing to overcome Windows 98′s early sales rate. And there are still a host of people reluctant to upgrade from Windows 95. Sales eventually pick up and then boom, and Windows XP ruled the roost for the next five years until Vista turned up in late 2006/early 2007.
Unfortunately Vista doesn’t exactly do what was intended. So many people decide to stick with XP. It does the job so why bother upgrading? Vista is first made usable and then made pretty damn good by service packs, but its fate had already been sealed.
Then came Windows 7 – released in October 2009 – everything Vista should have been and a whole lot more besides. Here is a legitimate reason to make the move up from XP. Windows 7 is faster, more powerful, massively more secure, and packed full of features that XP simply couldn’t handle.
While many consumers have now upgraded to Windows 7, whether by software or hardware, there are a core of companies that are determined to stick with XP through thick and thin. Microsoft really wants XP to die, but it isn’t helping the course of progress by carrying on supporting the aging OS right through to 2014.
Windows XP was a fine operating system, and still works well on a PC from that era. But the world has moved on, and we’re only a year or so away from Windows 8 with its radical new user interface dropping into our laps. Happy Birthday, Windows XP, but will you now kindly shuffle off this mortal coil. Thanks.
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October 25th, 2011
MS continues to support XP because companies (and our federal government) are PAYING THEM to keep supporting it Dave.
October 26th, 2011
XP still works.
Its fast reliable. And frankly For companies to have to retrain EVERY user on a new OS is a nightmare.
7 has a crappy new Interface where everything is movied. It has a host of hardware that no longer works (seriously I would have to replace 150 printers and scanners in my building alone) And I would have to completely retool 75 percent of my laptop user base and about 80 percent of my desktops.
XP WORKS and isn’t going away anytime soon. We just got rid of the last 100 or so Windows 2000 boxes about 2 years ago. With a lot of companies they HAVE to use XP as there lots of custom legacy software out there that HAS to be completely re written some of it going back to mainframe emulation. Untill all of those have been taken care of THEN corporate users might go to 7 and 8 full time.
October 27th, 2011
“Windows 7 is [...] massively more secure [...]”
You’ll never make it as a writer, but you may have a future ahead of you in comedy.