The sane person’s guide to the Windows XP apocalypse

Microsoft giveth and Microsoft taketh away. In between, it also files lot of bug reports. Come next week, we’ll say good-bye to either Windows XP or the digital peace of mind provided by regular patching and hotfixes.

Yes, I recently hammered folks who’ve been complaining about XP’s retirement either because they say they’ve been caught off guard and can’t afford to upgrade all their machines at once or because they don’t think it’s fair they’re being pushed to drop something that isn’t broken. As my brother would always say while delivering a HALO* wedgie, “Let’s not fight.”

You’re a small business with limited resources, and you’re in this situation. What can you do about it?

The real costs of upgrading XP

Unfortunately, this generally isn’t about licensing costs. I was schooled/lambasted/burned in effigy after my last XP post by a reader who said her small business could afford upgrading the 25 PCs in the office to Windows 7, but not the specialty software she was using, which cost a little more than $8,000 a seat. Why hadn’t I thought of that, sad excuse for a human being that I am?

That’s a bad position to be in, and I sympathize. While I can still say this should have been all the more reason to prepare for this April on her part, I’m inclined to concentrate my stink eye on that price-gouging, kitten-chewing software vendor.

Sign up for access to the Microsoft Partner Network (it’s not hard) and you’ll find mounds of resources that Redmond hurls at anyone making software for Windows. You’ll see the XP end-of-support message slapped on everything from a long way back. That’s just the free stuff — an MSDN subscription (which you’d be nuts not to have if you’re making Windows apps) takes you to a whole new level: here’s what’s coming, here’s what to do about it, here’s how to do it.

It’s amazing to me that these vendors can leave their customers hanging while pointing the finger at Microsoft. The business owner said she’d never been contacted by her software vendor about upgrading based on XP EOS. I have trouble believing that, but then again, we’ve established he chews on kittens. I suppose it has to be true.

Options abound

My advice to this reader or anyone trapped on XP by legacy applications that can’t move forward for whatever reason remains the same: Check out Windows 7 Pro or higher, which give you the option of using either Compatibility Mode or XP Mode. The former lets you tell Windows to run an application as if it was XP. The latter starts a virtual XP machine in which to run your app. If you have an IT staff, you can also run XP applications from the server side using Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V) — basically the same as XP Mode, only run and managed on the back end. 

If you think Microsoft built three ways to do this because none of them work perfectly, you’re right. Not every XP application is guaranteed to run in any of these modes, so your nephew’s hand-coded, eight-year-old college thesis project powering your business may not work. In typical Microsoft fashion, these features are only enabled in the more expensive Windows 7 versions, not Home Premium. Worse, XP Mode and MED-V support weren’t implemented in Windows 8+ only Compatibility Mode (yet another reason to avoid upgrading to Windows 8 and stick with Windows 7). And Microsoft’s support for XP Mode and MED-V end on April 8 as well, as part of the end of XP support — so they’ll get no further updates, either.

But these options are there. Before bursting into tears or spending $200,000 on new seats for that vile bastard’s software, get your nephew, IT staffer, or consultant to test your app using these features. Then maybe reconsider the tear-stained good-bye note to your cat, the WWII-era live hand grenade, and the one-way ticket to Redmond.

Linux lurks in the wings

If none of these Microsoftie tools can help, it’s time to cuddle up with the penguin. Linux on the desktop has evolved greatly over the years, personified by Ubuntu. Sure, Canonical just shuttered its ill-conceived attempt to compete with iTunes and/or Dropbox via Ubuntu One, but the distro is great and isn’t going anywhere.

Granted, it’s not as slick as either Windows or OS X, but it’s not drab by any means, and it has two characteristics that should be highly attractive to folks who can’t afford an XP software/hardware refresh: First, it’s free, and second, it runs fabulously on old hardware. I know this because the machine in my workshop is a plastic- and sawdust-covered Gateway laptop from 2006. It’s running Ubuntu 12.x, and performance is not a problem. There’s even a lightweight version, Lubuntu, which will run on really old hardware.

Upgrading to Ubuntu is basically a matter of backing up all your data, finding Linux analogs for all your applications, downloading the ISO, and doing clean installs followed by restores. Yes, that’s for small businesses. If you’re trying to do this for an enterprise, go straight to the hospital and get treatment for your throbbing head wound.

No, I’m not reversing my stance on Linux on the desktop as a long-standing pipe dream. The fantasy remains in that second step — namely, finding Linux analogs. For the most part, you won’t, which is why you don’t see too many Ubuntu machines on business desks. Even if you find some, Linux-based analogs tend to be not as slick or as feature-rich as their Windows/Mac counterparts, and while they claim compatibility, that’s usually at a basic level. LibreOffice may support DOCX, for example, but try opening up a 50-page glitz document — the formatting will look like a Rorschach test.  

With Linux, there are two ways to try and save your XP dino-app from extinction. First, there’s virtualizing XP using a Linux standard like KVM. Even if it didn’t work using Microsoft’s virtualization technology, there’s a chance it might run this way. Or there’s CrossOver, though it’s not a perfect solution because it’s based on converted apps, not on OS-level virtualization. Codeweavers maintains a list on its site of applications supported this way, but it also works with companies on custom porting either from the software manufacturer’s side or from the customer’s side. It’s something of a last resort, but it’s out there, so don’t dismiss it.

All is not lost (yet)

That’s all the advice I have for people with limited resources who think they’re stuck to XP by grimy software tentacles that won’t let go. Being bound to XP isn’t necessarily the calamity Microsoft wants you to think it is. Your PCs won’t spontaneously combust and you won’t come home to find your children zombified and gnawing on your dog’s dead skull. Those machines are just moving from “supported” to “at risk.”

Certainly, it brings problems, including application compatibility and regulatory compliance, but none of those will shoot you in the face Wednesday morning. Consider turning on the advanced features of your firewall, email filtering, and locking down Web surfing with a white list. You can probably subsist on XP just fine for a while from a security perspective. But if you fool yourself into thinking stopgap measures like these mean you never have to get off and never think about it again — well, you deserve what happens to you.

* (HALO: High altitude, low input, achieved by your brother pushing you down the stairs after grabbing your Underoos. If successful, your waistband is on the second floor while you’re on the first. The move was banned by the United Nations in 1952, which wasn’t soon enough to save me.)

This article, “The sane person’s guide to the Windows XP apocalypse,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the crazy twists and turns of the tech industry with Robert X. Cringely’s Notes from the Field blog, follow Cringely on Twitter, and subscribe to Cringely’s Notes from the Underground newsletter.