XP: Why You Need To Upgrade

[Rilbur]

There was some conversation today, and I decided it would make a good place to start a forum conversation.

 

That conversation revolved around XP -- and all the hate it receives from those 'in the know'.  Lets start our conversation by reviewing some of the reason it's so well hated.

 

Historically, that hate has started from the geek community because those who use XP are limited to older versions of Internet Exploder.  Software developers, at least the good ones, don't become software developers to do lots of hard work.  We become software developers so that someone else (the computer) will do all the hard work for us.  Anything that increases to our work load annoys us, and forcing us to support older versions of IE multiplies our work load in two ways.  First, it means that all sorts of modern additions to the HTML specifications are no longer available to make our lives easier.  Second, when handling browser-based behavior, you add in yet another set of browsers we have to account for and support -- browsers that frequently act in odd, non-compliant ways.

 

Moving on, the general reluctance to upgrade has also cost the gamer portion of the population more heavily than many realize.  Many games hit the 32 bit cap years and years ago.  You see, a 32 bit OS can only address so much memory.  Even if you have 16GBs of RAM in your machine, your computer could only use up to 4 of it at a time.  And so long as programs were limited to supporting 32 bit OSs, that meant they were effectively restricted to using no more than two gigabytes of memory at a time.  This has stifled game development for the last several years.  Improving graphics demanded more memory to support them, which meant that not only were games 'capped' as their size, that size had to compete with graphics for resources, further capping the scale of games.  Think that didn't matter?  Take a look around, you'll find more than one blog post or news article about a company that's rejoicing over finally shedding that artificial, absurd limit.

 

And in a modern context, Microsoft has finally shed their albatross and ended all future updates and supports for XP.  They bent (broke, really) that decision for the patch targeting the recently discovered attack, but in the end that doesn't matter.  What matters is they aren't going to patch every vulnerability.  Which means that any computer running XP is vulnerable to the security flaws that are patched in every patch Tuesday.  And before you try to argue that after 12 years, most of those flaws have been found and fixed, let me point out that every patch Tuesday consists of a roadmap pointing straight to the flaws that haven't already been fixed.  In announcing a fix to various security flaws, Microsoft -- of necessity -- has announced what those flaws are.

 

If you're still running XP, and want to use the internet, you must upgrade ASAP to a new operating system.

 

The first two reasons may or may not effect you, but in the end that third one is critical.  You can't avoid the security flaws in XP by running another browser, because many of those flaws are in the underlying OS, not just the browser.

 

If you're running a machine that can't support a more recent version of windows, well, you've got two choices.  One is to pony up for a new machine -- expensive, but in the end necessary.  Computers come with a definite lifespan (about 6-7 years), whether you like it or not.  Second is to side-grade to a different OS.  Many of the Linux distros can run extremely efficiently on a relatively weak machine.

 

 

[techmanjoy]

While I agree with some of the topics you bring up here I strongly disagree with your premise as a whole.

 

While you are correct in saying that patch tuesday can be used as a roadmap to what has not been patched it does not mean that everything that has not been patched contains a vulnerability. Windows XP itself was an excellent operating system for it's life span and will continue to be a great and stable OS. However newer and better technologies are developing and moving forward and to utilize them to their fullest extent you are correct in saying you will need to upgrade. However, some versions of windows XP did support 64 bit and they were the better versions anyway.

 

While I agree that if you are still running XP As a primary OS for your primary computer it is time to upgrade I don't believe that XP has reached the end of it's usefullness in it's entirety. XP makes a good stable OS for things like home media servers and home automation control centers. It's strength in these endevors lies in it's extrememly low cost to run. If you properly streamline a copy of XP you can run it and small server software on as little as 1GB of memory and a 30 GB hd.

 

So while I agree that the time to upgrade primary computers from XP I disagree that it has lost it's place in the IT market as a whole.

[Rilbur]

While I agree with some of the topics you bring up here I strongly disagree with your premise as a whole.

 

While you are correct in saying that patch tuesday can be used as a roadmap to what has not been patched it does not mean that everything that has not been patched contains a vulnerability. Windows XP itself was an excellent operating system for it's life span and will continue to be a great and stable OS. However newer and better technologies are developing and moving forward and to utilize them to their fullest extent you are correct in saying you will need to upgrade. However, some versions of windows XP did support 64 bit and they were the better versions anyway.

 

While I agree that if you are still running XP As a primary OS for your primary computer it is time to upgrade I don't believe that XP has reached the end of it's usefullness in it's entirety. XP makes a good stable OS for things like home media servers and home automation control centers. It's strength in these endevors lies in it's extrememly low cost to run. If you properly streamline a copy of XP you can run it and small server software on as little as 1GB of memory and a 30 GB hd.

 

So while I agree that the time to upgrade primary computers from XP I disagree that it has lost it's place in the IT market as a whole.

Two points:

 

One, Windows XP 64 bit never worked.  I'm sorry, the driver support just wasn't there -- or if it was, it waited until I upgraded out of the XP ecosystem to develop.

 

Two, If you're running XP as a media system, without internet connectivity, that's fine.  Please read the entire premise:  if you're running XP and want to be connected to the internet, you must upgrade.  A personal media server that does nothing except sit in a corner playing music is fine -- so long as it's not exposed to the internet.  And if all you're doing is using the system as a personal server, linux is ultimately more likely to provide you with better performance and security.  Especially since 'connected to the internet' doesn't refer to using that machine to access the internet, it's referring to whether or not there is a data path between the machine and the internet.  Routers and other firewalls can -- and will -- fail.

[techmanjoy]

I used WinXP 64 bit successfully for several years while waiting for 7 to come out after the release of Vista.

 

I do still disagree though that it is only safe with no internet connectivity at all. If the device is connected to a home network and acting as a media server it will almost certainly have external network access, and be accessible from an external network. However if the server's heartbeat is low it is not likely to be a target. And in most homes where such a media server would be run it would be an inconsequential threat. Whereas a home user who does not use linux on a regular basis could create a much larger heartbeat and be less secure with open control protocol connections by default such as SSH or FTP. A novice user should not use linux as a standalone server box as an alternative to a more widely used OS because updates have stopped on it. Linux when imporperly administrated has a much greater attack surface than windows. I'm not saying that linux on a whole has these problems. I am a wide beleiver in linux and enjoy working with it. However for a novice user reccomending linux over a standard home os of any kind can be just as dangerous as using and outdated os.

[Azorf]

Another old thread to resurrect! The machine I am using at the moment is running XP though I can also boot up W7/32 as well. I also have another machine in my room with W7/64 and one of my work machines runs W7/64. Trouble is a lot of machines in the NHS in england still run XP and they have been getting patches and updates (useful to keep my machine going!). I don't have much of a preference but probably W7 is better, however some old software I run needs 32bit and is happy on XP but has a lot of issues on W7. Still, it ain't broke.....

[Zach Caldwell]

Unless I am in error, WIN 7 and even WIN 10 have the option that you can run programs in older format, such as XP. Though off the top of my head I do not recall where the option is located.

[Azorf]

Unless I am in error, WIN 7 and even WIN 10 have the option that you can run programs in older format, such as XP. Though off the top of my head I do not recall where the option is located.

I know, but it is only a workaround and there are issues with drivers etc. Its easier to keep a machine running XP.