Poll: Will Microsoft really end Windows XP support on April 8??

[Skel]

Some companies fix manufacturer's defects past a 5 year period, especially if it's safety related.

I'm not talking about them offering customer support, or writing new drivers. I'm talking about them fixing their own mistakes that were in the original software.

I'll also say that I don't believe any of them do, and they're really the people that sold you the copy of Windows XP. If anything they should be going after Microsoft for new updates as they bought it from them, but as they're not that really does say something.

 

[ViRGE]

Some companies fix manufacturer's defects past a 5 year period, especially if it's safety related.

I'm not talking about them offering customer support, or writing new drivers. I'm talking about them fixing their own mistakes that were in the original software.

What you're talking about would be formal verification. Ignoring for the moment that it has never been done on the scale of software like Windows, the cost of doing so would be so high as to make Windows more expensive than half of the computers it's purchased on.

 

[rockyct]

I think it's pretty clear that if users are still running WinXP, pushing back a deadline isn't going to change very much. If they delayed it another year, maybe we'd see the rate drop to 25%, if they were lucky 20%. Computers with WinXP on them won't stop working on April 8th, they'll just be more and more known exploits for WinXP. I bet a lot of them are already infected with something. I suppose it's possible that some hacker is waiting for the EOL date to unleash a horrible virus/worm, but I wouldn't assume that. It is time Microsoft cut the cord.

 

[davmat787]

What you're talking about would be formal verification. Ignoring for the moment that it has never been done on the scale of software like Windows, the cost of doing so would be so high as to make Windows more expensive than half of the computers it's purchased on.

True. Some don't realize (and for good reason) just how expensive it is to roll out a single update to Windows Update. Ten years of that is a very fair commitment in my opinion.

And to whoever thought of someone recompiling or whatever Vista/Windows 7 updates for Windows XP, that would never work and be extremely dangerous. Think whoever does that will test it across tens of thousands of various PC configurations, stress test it, make sure there are zero regressions, localize for every language, .etc?

Those are just a few of the things MSFT does for every update.

 

[mikeford]

i hope it dies
and i hope all the machines ranning it have bigtime problems

The "main" likely problem is to used in botnet's to do denile of service attacks or send spam.