XP

[SuperDave]

Good new here from MicroSoft to extend their Anti-malware support to 2015.

[Geek-9pm]

This puts a load on Microsoft two two  or three ways.

• They will have to have some employes and servers dedicated to XP updates.
• Some users will be slow to change, reducing new sales revenues.
• They still may face legal issues for an old and less reliable product.

Good Work,  Microsoft! You have put the consumer first!
Maybe it will catch on.

[DaveLembke]

Thanks for sharing that good news...

Kind of curious as to when they will eventually kill off the key activation though. I cant see them supporting that feature forever. The only way I know how to avoid the key activation is to create a ghost image for the system that has XP and then in the future when microsoft no longer supports activation, to use the image to restore to the system and the system is back up and running without an activation required as long as hardware did not change. So say in the year 2021 you have this old Core 2 Duo system and want to play 32-bit games on original hardware that the games were created for, you can be back up and running vs the OS dying off or requiring a reinstallation every 30 days to run it over and over again...LOL

[Geek-9pm]

In 2021 one might imagine that software emulation would be so good that even activation of XP will be a trivia chore. 

[artbuc]

So I just bought Win7 for nothing? From what I read, extending support of MSE does not do much to extend XP security?

[BC_Programmer]

So I just bought Win7 for nothing? From what I read, extending support of MSE does not do much to extend XP security?

You are correct. None of the support for XP has been extended- It still ends in April 2014. What has been extended is the support for Microsoft's Security programs when run on XP.

IMO their announcement just confuses the heck out of everybody. In a meeting today a co-worker said that XP support was extended another year and another two of us had to explain how that was not the case.

Updates for XP itself will stop full tilt in April 2014. What happens then is since Vista/7 are still getting patched malware authors will reverse engineer those patches to see what they fix and see if that vulnerability exists in XP and if so, exploit it. Effectively every patch released for Vista, 7, and 8 beyond that point is a new unmitigated zero-day exploit for XP.

[Geek-9pm]

I feel sick...   

[Lisa_maree]

On the positive side. No more Wednesday blues when users installed Tuesdays updates and they didn't work.

Also whats the problem with using windows xp with a limited account. A lot of security problems happen because most windows users use an administrator account which allows anything to install any way it likes.

Thank goodness we have VMware so now would be the time to visualise windows XP and then backup the virtual machine so that it will run on a different host without activation.

So you can keep running windows xp for the rest of your life and then use windows 7 for 8 for the risky internet stuff.

Or use an Apple and run XP in a virtual machine on that platform.

[BC_Programmer]

Also whats the problem with using windows xp with a limited account. A lot of security problems happen because most windows users use an administrator account which allows anything to install any way it likes.

The main issue is that it's not very usable. There is no simple way to quickly switch accounts (There is fastswitch, but that only helps so much). So whenever you want to install a new program, you need to switch to the admin account, change certain settings, switch to the admin account. Another issue is that particularly for businesses, is that if they are remaining on XP for using certain software, sometimes the reason they need XP is specifically because of user-permission issues, so now certain programs need to be run as admin. And of course many users are sticking with XP because programs they use only run on XP, and usually that is because they don't work for limited users (eg. under UAC on Vista/7/8) and running as a Limited User on XP will cause the same problems.

What usually happens is even the most dedicated user will find the micro-management and hassle of switching back and forth for certain programs running as admin and those not too much of a hassle and will just run as the user that everything works with.

[artbuc]

The main issue is that it's not very usable. There is no simple way to quickly switch accounts (There is fastswitch, but that only helps so much). So whenever you want to install a new program, you need to switch to the admin account, change certain settings, switch to the admin account. Another issue is that particularly for businesses, is that if they are remaining on XP for using certain software, sometimes the reason they need XP is specifically because of user-permission issues, so now certain programs need to be run as admin. And of course many users are sticking with XP because programs they use only run on XP, and usually that is because they don't work for limited users (eg. under UAC on Vista/7/8) and running as a Limited User on XP will cause the same problems.

What usually happens is even the most dedicated user will find the micro-management and hassle of switching back and forth for certain programs running as admin and those not too much of a hassle and will just run as the user that everything works with.

So true. I experimented yesterday with a limited user account and there was no way I could do that long term and I do not even spend much time on the computer.