“Microsoft plans to ship the final public patches for Windows XP on April 8. After that, it will not deliver fixes for security vulnerabilities it and others find in the 13-year-old operating system,” Gregg Keizer writes for Computerworld.
“The result, even Microsoft has said, could be devastating. Last October, the company said that after April 8, Windows XP would face a future where machines are infected at a rate 66% higher than before patches stopped,” Keizer writes. “Microsoft has justified its stoppage of Windows XP patches by reminding everyone that it has supported the OS longer than any others, which is true: Its normal practice is to patch an operating system for 10 years. And it has argued that Windows XP is old, outdated software that is less secure than its newer operating systems: Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1. Again, true.”
“The problem that Microsoft has only occasionally touched on is that Windows XP powers a massive number of personal computers around the world. According to Internet measurement company Net Applications, 29.5% of the globe’s PCs ran XP in February. Using estimates of the number of Windows PCs now in operation, that ‘user share’ translates into approximately 488 million systems,” Keizer writes. “Microsoft has never faced this situation before, with a soon-to-be-retired OS running a third of all the Windows PCs worldwide. So on one hand it’s not surprising that it has stuck to its guns, and is pushing XP into the sunset and forgetting it. But by doing that, it could hurt itself as much as the customers who end up with an infected XP system.”
Full article, in which, incredulously, Keizer attempts to claim that Microsoft even has a “security reputation” to risk, here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “silverhawk1” for the heads up.]
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