About 11 months ago
I warned you guys about Zero Day. If you're too lazy to check that link, here's the deal in a nutshell: Microsoft will end support for Windows XP on April 8th. Yes, THIS April 8th. If you weren't aware of it up until now and you've been happily plunking away on your XP machine you're about to get a rude awakening. Microsoft will take to
warning you via popups.
Starting tomorrow (provided you've been installing your updates regularly) you'll see popups warning you that support for XP is about to end. You can disable the popups though just by checking the "don't show this message again" box, but it's seriously time to consider an upgrade. Experts all agree that a
zero-day attack is
imminent.
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| That side eye tho. |
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On another note, it's pretty telling how "eager" everyone was to migrate from XP. When I posted about this almost a year ago, XP had almost 39% of the market share. One year later,
it's only dropped 10%.
Switching from XP to Win 7 cost me over 400 dollars to replace software I owned that would no longer run. Scolding people about how 'outdated' their systems are is actually inappropriate. They aren't technophobes, they're just frugal!
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of people in that boat with you, Paul. Several businesses have custom software that isn't supported on the newer OSes. The banks are scrambling (well, kind of scrambling) to upgraded 95% of their ATMs because they're all running XP. Microsoft is about to make a killing on extended support packages. Unfortunately, those extended packages are only for people with corporate accounts. The average end user will be left out in the cold.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I can't even imagine how this is going to play out. I've seen people who are still using Windows 98 and 2000 without consequence. It's possible that the folks who make a living finding exploits for XP may just say screw it and start focusing their attention on 7 and 8. I doubt it though. We've never seen a phenomenon like XP. It has endured longer than any other OS partly because it's so easy to use and partly because Microsoft totally screwed the pooch with Vista. I fully expect though that most people still using XP won't bat an eye at the popup and keep plunking along. It would take a massive zero-day attack to put a dent in that 29% market share.