back to article Windows XP still has 27 per cent market share on its deathbed

Remember where you were once your patch Tuesday downloads end, because today is Windows XP death day. Users other than the well-heeled and well-organised won't receive so much as another byte of code to update the operating system as of today, bringing to an end an era that started with the operating system's release to …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Lots of last-minuters out there.

    My experience may not be universal, but in the last two weeks I have had a rash of customers calling me about the need to replace their XP systems. They've known about it for months, they've been told the system needs replacing, but until an alert appeared on their machine telling them that Microsoft Security Essentials would stop working, they've done nothing about it. I now have a couple of months of completely full order books while I replace these computers for Windows 7 or 8 (mostly 7) systems.

    I would guess that there'll be a reasonably big drop in the number of XP users over the next 8 weeks, then you'll be left with the die-hards and the people who can't afford/don't understand.

    1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      Re: Lots of last-minuters out there.

      I suspect you're not alone but what will people be upgrading to?

      You can still get Windows 7 for "professional" machines - HP is selling them. Large companies are mainly already on 7 or are getting extended support for XP. Consumers, I think, are likely to continue replacing their PCs and notebooks with the media consumption devices they've always wanted.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Mushroom

        Re: Lots of last-minuters out there.

        From my experience even most small companies with staff who primarily use their systems for mail and web browsing have long upgraded from XP. Don't forget that these are typically companies with no fulltime administrator where the company owner simply buys off-the-shelf with whatever operating system said systems happen to have on them during the time of purchase.

        Hence any such user who has purchased a system over the past seven years should already have Windows Vista installed (and believe me when I say that despite Vista's issues a lot of regular users simply didn't care as that's what the computer came with).

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Lots of last-minuters out there.

          It's possible, Entrope, that your small companies are richer than mine. Some of mine have upgraded, but many have put it off for too long. Some have been planning to but this is the nudge they needed to get around to actually doing it.

        2. ps2os2

          Re: Lots of last-minuters out there.

          One of our machines went belly up last week (XP). We went out and bought a new machine and a license for XP and reformatted the HD and installed XP.

          MS is not going to tell us ho to run our business.

          F*&^K off MS.

      2. This post has been deleted by its author

      3. Enrico Vanni

        Re: Lots of last-minuters out there.

        "Consumers, I think, are likely to continue replacing their PCs and notebooks with the media consumption devices they've always wanted."

        Yup. I'm predicting sales of Hudls and Lifetabs will see a sharp increase in the next couple of weeks.

    2. Craig 2

      Re: Lots of last-minuters out there.

      Personally, I think it was a mistake to make MSE complain about the end of life for XP. A lot of people ringing are worried that the antivirus is being retired and that they will be fine if they just load on AVG or something similar. It takes a lot of explaining to convince them that the OS (and usually the PC) is obsolete.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Lots of last-minuters out there.

      FWIW, I run a forum that's only relevant to consumers in the UK, and gets around 130,000 unique visitors per month, so a fair sample of what Joe Public here is using. Even now in April, 12% of those visitors are still using XP, and that figure hasn't changed since late last year. There are a lot of people holding out still, and not just in those regions generally considered more relaxed about IP issues!

    4. BongoJoe

      Re: Lots of last-minuters out there.

      You missed those "those who can't move" from that list.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Lots of last-minuters out there.

        I did, but that still doesn't explain the downvoting. Was I advocating the death sentence for cyclists or something?

        1. James O'Shea

          Re: Lots of last-minuters out there.

          "Was I advocating the death sentence for cyclists or something?"

          Shooting's too good for them. Rope is cheap (and reusable!) and gravity's free.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Lots of last-minuters out there.

            "Shooting's too good for them. Rope is cheap (and reusable!) and gravity's free."

            And the rope suspending infrastructure is already in place (street lamps)

  2. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

    Does El Reg have any stats as to how many people running XP are reading its hallowed words?

    1. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      El Reg's continues to fail to corroborate sources…

    2. Spoonsinger

      Re :-Windows XP still has 27 per cent market share on its deathbed

      That would be interesting.

      Not related but also interesting is that on the wikimedia statistics page, XP/Server 2003 only account for about 8% of the hits in the "Breakdown per OS version, non mobile" space for February.

      http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportOperatingSystems.htm

    3. ElReg!comments!Pierre

      Re: How many XPers?

      > Does El Reg have any stats as to how many people running XP are reading its hallowed words?

      Well, there's me, for example. My personal machines mostly run Debian but this work one is an old XP system, with manny overexpensive specialist pieces of software installed. I'm probably going to upgrade in the coming weeks, but I still don't know what to do about said software...

      1. GreyWolf

        Re: How many XPers?

        Go dual-boot with Linux. I went to Mint Cinnamon a while ago. Looks like XP, mostly works like XP, closer to XP than Win 8, easier upgrade path than Win 8, lower rate of support calls from friends and family ...and in my experience, it's lighter and faster and more responsive than XP. So, no, I won't be laying out hundreds of pounds/dollars on a new machine or even more hundreds on replacing all the software that will not work on Win 8.

        When I "need" XP (for software I've paid for), I select it at boot time.

        BTW, I have an nVidia graphics card - it works smoother and faster under Mint Cinnamon than it did in XP.

        1. Goldmember

          @GreyWolf Re: How many XPers?

          I think the point was more that he has old, specialist software which can't easily be moved to a new machine. We have a similar situation on the odd machine at my place; old expensive software, some of it written by companies no longer in existence, not much in the way of alternatives, install media long since been lost etc.

          A Linux dual boot wouldn't help in that case, and the XP install would still be prone to attack.

  3. king of foo

    where are the stats

    For ms update?

    I'd like to know how many of those XP machines are currently "virgin".

    I know for a fact that certain well known and well used outsourced support engineers like to use 5 year old XP images with java 6 and an ancient flash player. Ugh. Oh, but they remove minesweeper and solitaire...

    Add to that the genius group policies actually completely disabling windows update for fear of unwanted reboots.

    Throw in a sprinkling of perhaps 90% of the users running laptops with kids at home managing to install utorrent on mummy or daddy's laptop, or simply the users rocking insecure WiFi when they are out and about and swapping USB drives with customers and suppliers...

    Stir briskly and add a splash of " antivirus only updates when I'm on the work LAN, but I never bother connecting because its too slow. I do all my work at home or in the field"

    I'm going to get some popcorn.

  4. Justin Stringfellow
    Go

    today is a good day to bury XP

    If I was the sort of scumbag who actively discovers & exploits vulns, builds botnets etc, I'd have saved a good one for around about now. What's the betting that something nasty turns up very soon indeed?

    +1 for popcorn

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: today is a good day to bury XP

      This stuff is already happening, regardless of the end of support.

  5. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

    I'll try to get Win 7 working on my old (8.5 years), decrepit, but still functional VAIO SZ2XP/C, which should be able to run it (with some drivers I have unearthed) later this week. Through a university license I can get a win 7 pro update cheap, so it is worth a punt. Should it fail I will wipe my last Win XP install make it single boot again (but this time with OpenSUSE Linux).

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      Opensuse

      Good choice

      PS Linux deals with the Sony Vaio function keys out of the box.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: 8.5 year old VAIO SZ2XP/C

      >I'll try to get Win 7 working on my old (8.5 years), decrepit, but still functional VAIO SZ2XP/C

      Why? if you're not using it a lot.

      If you are using it alot then I'd put a new system on the shopping list as your biggest problem will be hardware failure.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Post-Death Updates

    I rather suspect XP will soldier on for some years yet. As for the post-death updates, they'll surface in various places. The binaries are cryptographically signed, so they should be easy to check. I know a developer's private signing key appears to have been stoled recently, but that's why you check the file manually before running it to make sure it is signed with MS' own cert rather than some random 3rd party's.

    This is going to drag on, even if the media hype will, hopefully, die down a bit.

    1. Andy Gates

      Re: Post-Death Updates

      Well, the public sector just got a year of patches. A very reasonable £5.5m, too. Given the porosity of the internet, those updates will get public smartly. Getting updates from random sources of course opens the home user to the risk of fake XP updates... fun fun.

      My Y2k-sense is tingling. I think more of a whimper than a bang, but I'm ever so glad for the extended support while we grunt through updating our zillion desktops.

  7. David Knapman

    What's really depressing is that, due to how these stats are collected, we know that these are all machines with access to the internet.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Also what it doesn't say how many of these are simply VM's / Windows 7 XP mode machines, just getting their patches.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It will drop....

    ...as one big factor was missing.

    UK financial year end.

    As a reseller, as every year, there was a huge surge at the end of March, as the large companies and public sector business need to dump some profits / justify budgets.

  9. hammarbtyp

    I don't believe it...

    Vista still 3%. What were they thinking!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Mushroom

      Re: I don't believe it...

      Some months ago I saw a photo on Reddit of a lost notebook someone had found. Fella tried to boot the system up and was greeted with the lovely sight of the Windows Vista smartcard logon screen...

      ...along with a US DoD Property notice.

      Does that answer your question? :P

  10. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. M Gale

      and they have been scared off by the stupid clown/teletubbie appearance of Win 8.

      So... Windows 7, then?

      1. GreyWolf

        So... Windows 7, then?

        No. Dual-boot with Linux. Mint Cinnamon looks like XP, mostly works like XP, closer to XP than Win 8, easier upgrade path than Win 8, lower rate of support calls from friends and family ...and in my experience, it's lighter and faster and more responsive than XP. So, no, I won't be laying out hundreds of pounds/dollars on a new machine or even more hundreds on replacing all the software that will not work on Win 8.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        IT at work are now absolutely insisting that people upgrade for security reasons.

        My replacement refurbished Win7 machine with all my data transferred on immediately went down with Cryptolocker.

        I think it got in through the reading pane of Outlook (on by default). I hadn't actually done any work with it.

    2. Malcolm 1

      An ironic choice of insult given that XP suffered significant derision for its "Teletubby" default UI theme.

    3. Roland6 Silver badge

      Re: You had a long and productive life

      Well given the 50th anniversary celebrations around IBM's S/360, and Oracles commitment to Solaris etc. I think it is over egging it a bit to suggest Windows XP had a long life.

  11. jake Silver badge

    Underlying meanng of the data ...

    85-90% of El Reg's readers use an OS from Redmond.

    Kinda explains the quality of the commentardy.

    1. Piro Silver badge

      Re: Underlying meanng of the data ...

      Surprisingly high quality for an internet community? I thought so too.

      If you think the comments on El Reg are of low quality in general, you clearly have yet to visit the "have your say" section of the Daily Mail, or read any YouTube comments.

    2. Khaptain Silver badge

      Re: Underlying meaning of the data ...

      And strangely enough so are 85-90% of business: ie the people that actually pay us.

      If 85-90% of business used *nix there would probably be 85-90% of El Reg's readers using *nix.

      I really don't have a preference whether it is indirectly MS, Apple, Canonical or IBM that helps me pay my bills just as long as my bills get paid and my company can keep doing business.

      .

      1. Daniel B.

        Re: Underlying meaning of the data ...

        "If 85-90% of business used *nix there would probably be 85-90% of El Reg's readers using *nix."

        Or they're using Unix stuff, just not in the desktop PC's.

      2. Roland6 Silver badge

        Re: Underlying meaning of the data ... @Khaptain

        And strangely enough the majority of business'es do use *nix, but only a (brave) few on the desktop and hence it is largely invisible to the majority of employee's.

    3. jake Silver badge

      Re: Underlying meanng of the data ...

      After an hour ... 2 thumbs up. 10 thumbs down. QED :-)

      (Yes, I know, correlation does not imply causation ... but I found it amusing nonetheless.)

      1. Khaptain Silver badge

        Re: Underlying meanng of the data ...

        So what exactly was your point ?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Underlying meanng of the data ...

          "So what exactly was your point ?"

          Windows users think Jake's an arsehole?

          QED?

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Underlying meanng of the data ...

            "Windows users think Jake's an arsehole?"

            I use Linux and OSX.

            I guess that makes him a cross-platform arsehole, then?

        2. AceRimmer

          Re: Underlying meanng of the data ...

          "So what exactly was your point ?"

          Only 10 down votes ... people are starting to warm to jake's opinions.

          1. Woodgar

            Re: Underlying meanng of the data ...

            "Only 10 down votes ... people are starting to warm to jake's opinions."

            Not really.

            Clicking the down vote is still feeding the troll.

        3. James O'Shea

          Re: Underlying meanng of the data ...

          "So what exactly was your point ?"

          Jake's a troll.

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