Inside the muddled, misguided mind of a Windows XP holdout

It’s not fair. I write a rant on Google robots taking over the world, and two weeks later Chaotic Moon shows off a “drone” that’s really a $499 remote-controlled Brookstone copter carrying a duct-taped Taser and known as the Chaotic Unmanned Personal Intercept Drone, aka CUPID. That’s really funny — so funny I want to be there when a few hundred specimens out of Harvard’s self-building robot hive chase Chaotic Moon’s founders down the street toward the Mandatory Dotcom Ubergeek Meat Plant (MANDUMP).

But at the other end of that spectrum are the pseudo-Luddites, like those people still using Windows XP and desperately protesting its April 8 support death knell. For them, this will be a hard one to hear.

[ Microsoft: Misery sure loves this company ]

Basically, these folks are saying they’ll hold their breath like 8-year-olds until Microsoft agrees to keep supporting XP. But aside from oceans of blue faces, their main argument is that allegedly a little more than 32 percent of the computers on the planet are still running XP, so Microsoft’s stellar security reputation will suffer if all those machines are suddenly compromised like nuns in a biker bar.

Security? You’re barking up the wrong OS

First, I didn’t realize Microsoft had a stellar reputation in security. I must have missed that memo somewhere in the endless stream of IE root-grabbing exploit emails I keep getting. Second, only people who believe in Santa Claus and OJ’s innocence also believe their 12-year-old XP machine hasn’t been compromised in some way by now. Some apparently think new hardware will save them as XP’s user share inexplicably grew by 0.3 percent last month. It’s like people want to get hacked.

Let’s say your XP machine has not had its firewall popped and Microsoft really is the leader in secure PC software and the sky is green and the grass is blue. How does coming out and clearly stating — for years — that you’re stopping support on a specific date hurt your future security reputation if customers are ignoring you? If millions of users get pwned because, despite being warned years in advance, they decide to stay in the ’90s with the “Fresh Prince” reruns and Marky Mark underwear ads, that doesn’t make Microsoft look insecure today.

Microsoft Security Essentials missing almost 40 percent of existing malware as recently as last month — that makes Microsoft look insecure today. Selfishly, I’d like Microsoft to concentrate on not continually applying Band-Aids to an XP codebase that must look as beat up as Dad’s old slippers. This conflict really isn’t about security; like everything else, it’s about money.

It all comes down to cash

Microsoft doesn’t want to spend more funds on the impossible mission of maintaining a secure XP, and customers don’t want to spend it on Windows 8 — or if they’re lucky and smart, some downgraded licenses of Windows 7. I give Microsoft a lot of grief over a lot of issues for a lot of reasons because — well, it’s fun and the company tends to deserve it. But I can’t disagree with Redmond on this count.

Yes, certain segments of Windows XP customers, including schools or other low-budget organizations, justifiably claim they can’t afford the massive investment it would take to upgrade their PCs. But they didn’t even try. Microsoft announced the exact date of XP’s end of life in 2008. That’s six years of ignoring a deadline everyone knew was coming. Do we not understand the concept of upgrading a little at a time? Waiting until the last minute to upgrade, then complaining about unaffordable costs is weak sauce.

Another argument is that XP is much simpler to use than Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8. I can’t argue the Windows 8 point, but Vista is a non-issue and please don’t tell me that school kids who slurp up technology like Charlie Sheen slurps up cocaine can’t figure out Windows 7.

The last popular objection that Windows XP users need XP because they’re running XP software — so far, I haven’t met an XP package that doesn’t run on Windows 7 in compatibility mode.

Maintaining an OS requires huge resources and Microsoft is already doing it (or at least trying to) for between three and six client-side OSes, depending on how you define highly mobile operating systems. Pouring resources into an outdated platform just because customers don’t want to upgrade is an obviously unrealistic expectation. It sucks money into a black hole that can’t generate revenue in any form. And since Satya Nadella is now driving around in Ballmer’s solid gold Porsche, even the most isolated XP users should have realized that expecting Microsoft to keep supporting a product as outdated as XP for no discernable profit is like expecting Comcast to abide by Net neutrality rules or startup technorati to start taking an active, beneficial role in the communities that nurtured them.

Microsoft will also point out in its own weak argument that any effort to continue supporting XP means wasting money that would be better used developing benevolent new technologies it promises will improve our lives and expose more of our collective brain stem to intelligence organizations and data miners. Every dollar spent on maintaining XP is another dollar that can’t be used to rebuild Windows 8 into an OS that somebody might like somewhere and that the NSA can exploit everywhere. I suppose it’s slightly valid, but I don’t have much sympathy for that objection either; however, it still doesn’t justify the evil-empire-isn’t-supporting-my-12-year-old-OS-anymore hue and cry.

Maybe there are people who don’t need to advance with the times, but if you’re reading this, you’re not one of them. You have another year of $200-per-month support capability, but after that it’s time to heave yourself off the XP couch, dig into the employee 401(k) or your kid’s college fund, and move up. Alternatively, you can shell out for custom or third-party updates that in the long run cost more than upgrading.

It’s a hard message and XP users certainly don’t want to hear it, but you had six years to prepare — actually a little longer once Windows 7 showed up and you knew Microsoft would end support for XP eventually. It’s not like upgrading is a surprise concept; it’s been a fact of life since PCs landed on desks.

You’ve upgraded before, you can upgrade again

Schools had to do it when RadioShack Trash-DOS died and when DEC PDP and VAX bit the dust. Apple users had to do it when the Orchard finally gave up the PowerPC ghost (which undoubtedly also included a large swath of schools). OS/2 Warp users had to get therapy and admit they’d wandered a little too far off the rails. The 200 worldwide NeXT users eventually had to get real-world skills. Many users of umpteen different Unix versions that perished when Linux showed up had to move. And corrupt DEA agents have to look for new bribes now that pot’s legal.

Times change, and life sucks. XP users need to take a drink, stop wishing, bite the upgrade bullet, and join the rest of us living modern lives with compromised crypto currencies and flying Taser-bots. It’s far from perfect, but sticking your head in prehistoric software sand isn’t going to help.