Windows XP

securityguy

The problem with all these discussions is it's not quite clear what the end game is.

Consider the case of "elderly" users with XP, and the "oh, they don't want to relearn" argument. In this case, "elderly" often means "pensioner". People in that position could easily be using computers, and using them for things that matter like grocery shopping or communicating with local authority care services, for another twenty or more years.

Are they seriously going to continue to use XP for that long? When the hardware fails, are they going to scuffle around in computing junkyards looking for old XP machines? Are software vendors going to maintain browsers (or their "in twenty years" equivalents) which interwork with web applications (again, or their "in twenty years" equivalents) that far into the future? Of course not. And when such users finally do move to a more modern operating system, the more intervening steps they have to jump over the harder the learning curve is going to be, and the harder the migration.

People in their seventies appear able to buy cars without needing to find a second hand 2001 Fiesta so that they're not confronted with new switches, and similarly televisions, cookers and other consumer durables. There's a real whiff of "Goodbye Lenin" to all this, in which past some magic age people are entitled to have time frozen, and continue to operate as though nothing has changed in the past twenty years.

If you assert that you're incapable of ever using anything other than XP, you're going to get a nasty shock at some point in the next twenty years when you have no choice. Putting that day off longer and longer seems an odd decision.

emptybox

securityguy wrote: »

The problem with all these discussions is it's not quite clear what the end game is.

Consider the case of "elderly" users with XP, and the "oh, they don't want to relearn" argument. In this case, "elderly" often means "pensioner". People in that position could easily be using computers, and using them for things that matter like grocery shopping or communicating with local authority care services, for another twenty or more years.

Are they seriously going to continue to use XP for that long? When the hardware fails, are they going to scuffle around in computing junkyards looking for old XP machines? Are software vendors going to maintain browsers (or their "in twenty years" equivalents) which interwork with web applications (again, or their "in twenty years" equivalents) that far into the future? Of course not. And when such users finally do move to a more modern operating system, the more intervening steps they have to jump over the harder the learning curve is going to be, and the harder the migration.

People in their seventies appear able to buy cars without needing to find a second hand 2001 Fiesta so that they're not confronted with new switches, and similarly televisions, cookers and other consumer durables. There's a real whiff of "Goodbye Lenin" to all this, in which past some magic age people are entitled to have time frozen, and continue to operate as though nothing has changed in the past twenty years.

If you assert that you're incapable of ever using anything other than XP, you're going to get a nasty shock at some point in the next twenty years when you have no choice. Putting that day off longer and longer seems an odd decision.

With age comes a difficulty in picking up new things, but I don't think that's a big factor here?

I think it's more people not being able to (or not wanting to) splash out on a new computer, at this time.
And perhaps believing the hype that Windows 8 is completely different to what went before, and therefore is going to be unusable.

securityguy

emptybox wrote: »

I think it's more people not being able to (or not wanting to) splash out on a new computer, at this time.

Vista was released in January 2007, and the vast majority of PCs sold in retail channels after the summer of 2007 ran it. There was a lot of XP deployed in corporate environments after that because they had licensing available to do it, but any computer that was bought retail with XP other than via Morgan-type end-of-line sellers is now about seven years old. A computer bought running XP in 2007 would be more than capable of running Windows 7 (upgrade license from XP is, what, about fifty quid?) and probably Windows 8 (ditto).

Spending fifty quid every five years or so to remain on current bits is hardly the gouging of vast piles of money out of your pocket: 10p per week.

And perhaps believing the hype that Windows 8 is completely different to what went before, and therefore is going to be unusable.

Do they seriously think that Microsoft are going to release a Windows 9 that looks like like XP? In other news: Ford aren't planning to restart the Cortina production line.