Microsoft extends support for XP to year 2014
By burrito88
@burrito88 (2774)
United States
October 7, 2010 10:46pm CST
I have previously posted here in response to other discussions Microsot's plans to abandon support for XP noe that MS 7 is out. Microsoft was trying to force XP users to upgrade to Vista in order to upgrade to 7 since there is no direct way to ugrade XP to 7. This as apparently backfired. I just learned that because many business users have not upgraded from XP, Microsoft will continue to support XP until the year 2014. This is great for people like me who ave some older computers that I still sometimes use that may not be able to run 7 and also I don't want to be forced to upgrade to Vista.
1 person likes this
9 responses
@RamRes (1723)
• Argentina
10 Oct 10
Microsoft is making too many mistakes with Windows for a few years now. If you want to upgrade from XP to 7, you have to install Vista???? It's crazy, it just leave or PCs with all the garbage of XP, Vista and 7, all togeter. We all know, that kind of "upgrade" can never be good, and leads to a formating in a few months.
They also have very bad experience with Vista, at last people realised how bad Windows is. That's why they want XP to continue alive, to keep the market share. 7 is still too new and being much more resource demanding than XP.
On my part, I stay with XP. I'm not a big fan of it (all the opposite, in fact), but is much better than Vista or 7, much faster and compatible with hardware and software. Why change it, when it works well?
But the main point is, it don't matter if Microsoft supports XP or not, people will continue to use it after MS forgets about it. The software don't rely at all on anything that microsoft control, any copy will continue to installing and working. The support from Microsoft is totally useless and all this is just a marketing move.
@burrito88 (2774)
• United States
16 Oct 10
Where support can be useful is to provide patches to prevent hackers from taking over your computer. Any other support is probably useless.
@RamRes (1723)
• Argentina
18 Oct 10
Not really, those patches are mostly useless. In fact, I often strongly recommend that the automatic updates should be disabled and avoided. Microsoft security is the one of the weakest points in any Windows, hackers know how easy is to destroy a Windows installation, patched or not. If anyone REALLY wants to get in my Windows system, he will.
And the automatic upgrades have the downside of displaying that infamous star saying "you may be victim of a software falsification".
So, no adventages and a great problem, I say NO to Microsoft updates. Why I need the support then?
@burrito88 (2774)
• United States
3 Oct 11
I used to update my operating system myself when Microsoft would make new versions. I got stuck when I tried to update Windows 2000 to XP. The initial problem was that 2000 was based on Windows NT and the version of XP I had was based on Windows 95. I needed to get a "Profession" version of XP to upgrade from 2000. The next snag I hit was that XP was the first Windows product that tried to use generic drivers and also, it did not seem to know where the old drivers were located in the old OS. At least it didn't seem to know or just transfer the drivers. I had a problem when Windows asked for a location or disk to load a driver. I didn't realize what I was being asked for and didn't know where the driver was anyway. I didn't even know it was a driver. Since I wasn't given any warning, I just continued to update the OS. When I tried to restart the computer with the new OS, I had a catastrophic failure and the OS wouldn't load or allow me restore the old OS. I had to pay somebody to fix the machine then and since then I've never tried to upgrade on my own.
@samson1967 (7411)
• India
8 Oct 10
I too use windows Xp, the fun is I dont even know that XP users has to upgrade to Vista!!! However I am glad to know that XP's are valid till 2014. Thank you for the information, I will share it with other XP users.
@burrito88 (2774)
• United States
8 Oct 10
Yes, I myself have 3 old desktops where I was wondering if I could run 7 on them by upgrading my memory. I think I would still need to go through Vista to upload 7 and 7 might still run slow.
@brokenankle (103)
• United States
8 Oct 10
i bought a new computer with windows vista already installed on it and disliked it so much i downgraded it to xp which i feel was more of an upgrade however i have yet to try windows 7 i have heard many good things about it tho i might try it on one of my older computers and see if i like it
@burrito88 (2774)
• United States
3 Oct 11
I have a laptop that I bought two years ago and it came Vista. I don't think I've had any major problems, however, Microsoft had several years to fix things by then.
@jlov101 (79)
• Philippines
20 Oct 10
I am still using Microsoft Windows XP on my desktop computer. I think I've been using it for more than 5 years now. I found XP very stable and most of the software I used are compatible with Windows XP. Even though there were bugs or viruses, I still prefer to use it now. But this does not mean that I'll not use any other operating system. Actually, I already tried using Microsoft Windows Vista and Windows 7. If Microsoft will extend their support for XP then it is a good news. I thought they'll just support it up to this year only.
@rosdimy (3926)
• Malaysia
11 Oct 10
Yet another extension. For all we know this could go on foe a few more times.
It is true that Windows 7 has a few extra features. Personally I do not see the need for an upgrade to Windows 7. There are independent companies which are doing a good job in filling in the gaps, or providing a better alternative to some of the available functions on Windows XP.
Windows 7 is said to be more secure, and this is one of the highlighted features of Windows 7. They conveniently omitted to mention that there are companies providing security solutions for the XP, for free or at a low price.
There is a limit to what an ordinary person would want to do with a computer. The options available on the XP are more than enough. It does not make any real sense to fork out more money just to have something extra, which is not really necessary to an ordinary user.
@o0jopak0o (6390)
• Philippines
8 Oct 10
well if they didnt almost half of windows users will be left out in the dark.
