Win XP? Your PLAGUE risk is SIX times that of Win 8 - NOW UK-based Windows XP users were six more likely to actually be infected than their counterparts who use more recent versions of Windows, according to figures from Microsoft. The company is likely trying to highlight the infection rates of the 12-year-old OS as a way to get customers to upgrade. It says that 9.1 of 1,000 XP (SP3 …
Apples and oranges, son. And you know it. Hint: look up how many actual, live, major malware incidents have been on Mac OS X or Linux _ever_ and compare to the number running _right now_ on various versions of Windows. Or, indeed, just those running on XP.
But don't let the real world stop your shilling for Ballmer.
If Microsoft are saying this now, as XP SP3 is still supposed to be supported, what does that say about the quality of Microsoft's support? If this was after the cut off, I might understand it, but saying this now indicates that Microsoft aren't doing their job by a system that is supposed to still be supported, and implies that they are either deliberately running the system down or are totally incompetant, both reasons leading to severe doubts about the future of more recent systems.
If, however, they are merely scraping figures off the ground in Usenet fashion to frighten people to move, then there is only one word to describe them. Despicable.
"How much protection can a decent anti-virus tool give against the vulnerabilities that a lack of support might open up?"
None worth having (IMO) because *most* AV tools use signatures of Virii to detect them. Those signatures can't be generated until the virus is written and a machine (possibly yours) has been infected with it. In essence the protection you have from AV tools is always behind the curve.
With respect to software developers supporting their code, in my experience the overwhelming majority of them don't pro-actively hunt down vulnerabilities, so even if the software is supported you are still more likely to run into the vulnerability than the developer.
Where software developers do pro-actively hunt for vulnerabilities they may or may not be competent. With closed source you have very little data available to you by which you can assess the efficacy of their vulnerability squashing efforts.
A little while ago I found a trivial DOS exploit in a vendor's client libraries by simply copying their example code and increasing the number of loop iterations. That particular vulnerability cost 6 months of lost production despite having (VERY expensive) vendor support for a very expensive mature product. There were some warning signs - in that vendor's case the majority of their patches seem to derive from vulnerabilities discovered by third parties.
The serious Open Source projects do pro-actively review their code, and publish + fix the vulnerabilities as they find them, and you have the capability of verifying whether they are doing a decent job or not. Plus you can always look at the code yourself - and possibly even backport patches if you really can't upgrade.
YMMV
All those lapsed copies of McAfee and Norton that folks haven't paid for or upgraded since they bought the laptop/PC 4 years ago.
"Well yes I think it has anti-virus!"
I love the fact that shop bought Windows 8 machines still have useless trial installs of McAfee on them which knocks out the perfectly good Windows Defender.
Still not helping guys!
1) Win8 sales in the dumper (at least, not near expectations), 'cuz Win 8 sux0rz. ... check!
2) No one...and I mean <i.no one</i> is updating Win XP (reason: see 1 above) ... check!
3) Stock price slipping, in spite of showing Ballmer the door ... double check!!
So...
Fire up the vaunted Microsoft FUD MachineTM in a desperate attempt to reverse 1, 2, and 3 above ... checkmate!
Microsoft dug themselves into an operating system hole, first with the slow and annoying Vista. Then, while at it, they changed device driver models, something that happens almost every other Microsoft OS release. What happens? OOOPS! Lots of printers and scanners and graphics cards and audio cards and other more specialized hardware no longer work with the bright and shiny but blighted Vista. Windows 7 really ought to have been the free upgrade to Vista, but, yes, it uses almost the same device driver model, so your older but perfectly functioning hardware won't work with it either. Then Microsoft begat Windows 8, the demon spawn of Windows and the iPad. We all know how that is turning out, rejection of Windows 8 by large enterprises plus cries of anguish by consumers given no choice to buy in the stores except Windows 8. (People will race to the free Windows 8.1, because they really have no choice if stuck with Windows 8.)
Oh, yeah, and did I mention that many large companies (like banks) and enterprises (like govts and hospitals) have designed and developed for their own use proprietary applications that run on XP? And sometimes, with VERY special hardware? Now they have to "migrate" these applications to some bright new Microsoft OS. But migration is not a simple thing like birds flying south in the autumn. It is re-engineering the applications to run in a much-changed world of Windows 7 or Windows 8 Application Programming Interfaces (API). Some of Microsoft's API changes are for the good, as they make the software world more secure and more reliable. Others fix serious design errors made by Microsoft in earlier software, e.g. the hugely mistaken tight integration of Internet Explorer into XP, opening a huge hole for operating system contamination. So migration of software to the brave new world of Windows 7-or-8 is both very costly and extremely time-consuming. Yeah, I know you can run XP apps in an XP virtual machine under Windows 7. Well, SOME apps, like regular everyday commodity software you buy in the store. But proprietary software developed in-house? I'll believe it when I see it.
So now they want to use the tactic honed by long-time IBM partner: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, or FUD. Scare the hell out of everyone still using XP. They will scare a lot of people to Windows 7-or-8, and hardware vendors like Dell, Lenovo, HPaq and Acer-eGateMachines will smile as they sell a lot of systems to replace the ones that run Windows 7-or-8 very poorly. Nevertheless, come April 2014, millions of people will still run XP, probably with Firefox or Chrome and with any anti-virus package except MIcrosoft Security Essentials.
Upgrade? That's when you find out your older, not ancient hardware can't run Win8. Time to get a new computer, which comes with Win preloaded. Cheap Dell for me.
It's easier anyway, and seems like upgrades always bring up all manner of cryptic (utterly baffling) messages that I'm happier to never see. Can't imagine why Microsoft never seems able to make things clear.
A new processor always means a big jump in performance, however satisfactory your old computer was before Microsoft obsoleted it. And doesn't your old hard drive really have too many miles on it? New box fixes this too. Just network old and new computers and copy files across. Software apps have to be reloaded, but again, wasn't it time for that anyway, and maybe some changes, now that you have to do it anyway?
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