Don’t believe the lies about Windows XP’s imminent death

Every few weeks, you see a bunch of stories warning that Windows XP will meets its demise on April 8, when Microsoft stops supporting the 12-year-old version of Windows, including ending security updates for the world’s second-most widely used version of Windows. XP will reach what Microsoft calls “end of life” on April 8, but it will hardly die. XP-based PCs will run the same on April 9 as they did on April 7, and they’ll be as secure on April 9 as they were on April 7.

I understand why Microsoft, PC vendors, and IT consultants are screaming over the “death of XP”: They want to scare XP-using companies and individuals — who comprise a whopping 30 percent of the customer base seven years after its successor’s debut — into buying new PCs, or at least getting new licenses and consulting gigs. FUD is the unfortunately common MO for tech companies’ sales staffs. But I’m not certain why so many tech writers repeat this foolishness.

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Some tech writers have joined the “XP will die” bandwagon out of sincerity, some of mindless repetition of whatever press releases come their way. One who’s joined the bandwagon out of sincerity is Ars Technica’s Peter Bright, who strongly believes that users should switch to Windows 8.1 (or at least Windows 7) because the new Windows is much more secure and is actively maintained by Microsoft.

I recently called him out on Twitter about a story he wrote whose headline said XP was about to die, and we had a Twitter exchange about the whole issue. (To be fair, his actual story was more nuanced, and I know that writers rarely write their own headlines.) He argues that hanging on to XP means greater risk over time, whether of peripherals and applications not working on it or of unpatched security holes getting exploits from hackers who don’t have to worry about Microsoft’s eventual remediation getting in their way.

Both fears are theoretically true, but it doesn’t mean XP is dying — or that users will be any worse off after Microsoft ends support for Windows XP than they were before it. XP itself will not change, so the pros and cons of XP will remain the same as they are now for at least months to come. I also know that if large groups of users keep running XP, third parties will fill in many of the major security gaps and ensure application compatibility — as they’ve been doing since 2007 through all three successors to Windows XP!

Microsoft and the PC makers don’t like that fact, so they want to panic users to switch. The problem is that Microsoft and PC makers have created much of the reason that people cling to Windows XP in the first place, and I don’t believe there’s an easy way out of the dilemma they created for themselves.

Personally, I recommend that Windows XP users switch to Windows 7 (and avoid Windows 8) or OS X, but that’s not so easy for home users. Many stick with what they know and that works for them as is. If you’re still using Windows XP as a home user, you’re not a power user and you’re not a geek who wants to use the latest whatever. The very act of relearning how to use the computer is a major turn-off. Yet that’s what Windows 7 requires, and Windows 8 takes that required relearning to a horribly high level given its awkward mishmash of two operating systems. Sorry to say, Windows 8.1 doesn’t fix that fundamental flaw.

Unfortunately, you can’t go to a store and buy a Windows 7 PC, and getting one online is not so easy, either. Thus, people stay where they are. Or they buy an iPad or other tablet instead, relegating the PC to a family terminal for occasional school and work use (Microsoft Office works just fine on XP!).

Microsoft understand this “stay put” mentality is strong, which is why it now says it will no longer offer its free Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) antivirus product to XP users as of April 8. The threat is clear: Switch or get infected. Such a lovely customer strategy! Fortunately, many other antivirus tools are out there, and in any event MSE is hardly that effective to begin with.

Enterprises used the Vista debacle as an excuse to prolong the lifetimes of the PCs they buy, reducing how often they replaced PCs. After all, PCs last a long time these days, so why toss them? Then the recession hit, and enterprises deferred Windows 7 and associated PC replacements.

Finally, they’re now spending (some) money on new PCs, and to avoid the high cost of supporting users’ confusion around Windows 8, not to mention avoiding the higher costs of touchscreen PCs that Windows 8 favors, they’re deploying Windows 7. PC makers are getting some sales, and Microsoft is getting license renewals, but PC makers aren’t selling the higher-margin touch and hybrid models, and Microsoft isn’t selling additional Windows 8-oriented server options. Did I mention that Microsoft Office works just fine on XP?

Also, many enterprises have XP PCs they can’t easily replace. In the 2000s, many software developers in enterprises and in specialty-application shops tied their software to Microsoft’s ActiveX tech to run through the Internet Explorer browser. These ActiveX ties are typically version-specific, and ActiveX in turn is tied to a specific IE version. There’s a similar tie-in in some Java versions as well, as Microsoft applied the same strategy to that platform. The XP compatibility mode in Windows 7 and 8 is supposed to address this legacy tie-in, but it requires both IT overhead and newer PCs, so there’s a high cost.

As a result of the Microsoft lock-in strategy, many companies have apps they rely on and would cost too much to change that run only on a XP PC and an older version of IE. Microsoft wanted that tie-in, of course, to ensure that enterprises couldn’t leave Microsoft even if apps moved to the Web on other OSes or even on other browsers, which was its fear at the time. The lock-in worked a bit too well!

This anchor is Microsoft’s fault, and it hasn’t really helped companies address it, XP mode nothwithstanding. Yes, IT should have long ago replaced those apps with platform-neutral technologies, but that’s not the IT way — too many relish being “Microsoft shops” and have now become Stockholm Syndrome hostages. Plus, few business execs would be willing to pay the cost of replacing the apps bought under this foolish strategy, so it’s hard to even ask.

In an InfoWorld comment thread this week, someone pointed out that Windows XP is as old as Mac OS X 10.1 Puma, which no one has run for years, and asked why people expect Microsoft to support XP with updates and patches when Apple doesn’t support any OS X version from before 2009. It’s because Apple has very successfully made user interface changes incrementally, so upgrading to the next OS X is not a shock to the system. Users do it, and happily. The percentage of pre-2009 OS X users is similar to the percentage of pre-2001 Windows users: negligible.

In the Mac world, if there’s pain to be had, it’s when Apple decides to orphan old technology by no longer supporting it in new versions, as it did when it dropped AppleTalk networking support and Classic (pre-OS X) app support in OS X Leopard, PowerPC chip support in OS X Snow Leopard, PowerPC app support in OS X Lion, and RSS support in OS X Mountain Lion. That forces people to buy a new Mac or stick with an old OS, though Apple usually supports dicontinued technologies for four years in OS X upgrades before cutting them out completely. By contrast, Microsoft rarely discontinues old technology, though it occasionally requires new technology to achieve Windows certification, as it will do with the Trusted Platform Module as of January 2015.

The big split, if you can call it that, in the OS X world today involves 2009’s OS X Snow Leopard (19 percent), 2011’s Lion (16 percent), 2012’s Mountain Lion (22 percent), and 2013’s Mavericks (37 percent) — four OSes based on the same core, with very similar operational user interfaces. Their differences are mainly around Apple services such as iCloud, and of course, most pre-2008 Macs can’t run Lion or later.

But in Windows, there’s a truly big split among 2001’s XP (30 percent), 2007’s Vista (an understandably tiny user base of 4 percent), 2009’s Windows 7 (47 percent), and 2012’s Windows 8 (11 percent), each of which has major differences not just in functionality but in user experience and operational UI. Ironically, you can run any of these OSes on most PCs built in the last decade, so most Windows XP PCs could run a more recent version of Windows, even though memory capacity and processor speeds may make you regret running the newer Windows versions on really old PCs. As a result, PC makers have tried to invent reasons such as touchscreens to get people to trade up their hardware.

The bottom line is that 59 percent of Mac users run an OS X version from 2012 or later, whereas just 11 percent of Windows users do. That’s what Microsoft and its PC partners are desperate to change. The problem is that the resistance is to the new Windows itself, and threats and scare tactics don’t change that fact.

As I said, I personally would urge XP users to switch to Windows 7 (find an old disc on eBay or local computer store) or OS X. But I understand why so many won’t or can’t. The truth is they don’t actually have to — certainly not on April 8.

This article, “Don’t believe the lies about Windows XP’s imminent death,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Galen Gruman’s Smart User blog. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.