Microsoft rescues XP users with emergency browser fix

http://news.msn.com/science-technology/microsoft-rescues-xp-users-with-emergency-browser-fix

by quackerhacker • 12 years ago

39 63 12 years ago

news.msn.com

DigitalSea2• 12 years ago

XP is turning out to be quite the headache for Microsoft. Undoubtedly it is one of the best versions of Windows ever put out, but it's 13 years old now and not even corporate conglomerates have an excuse for not updating. Yes, the alternative to XP is only a meagre few years old and I understand it costs money to upgrade, especially a large-scale corporate network spread out over multiple locations, regions and continents.

But then we need to ask ourselves this: at what point does supporting an older operating system like XP cost you more money then it would to spend the money upgrading to a later version of Windows? Surely there is a point where you're spending more money on maintaining the older version on-top of added security expenses and unexpected expenses due to loss because of an undiscovered vulnerability.

CapitalistCartr• 12 years ago

My CNC machines aren't so easy to update.

jpablo2• 12 years ago

If you need Internet Explorer updates for those you are using them wrong.

DigitalSea2• 12 years ago

Why would you need to update your CNC machine anyway? Surely such a device is locked down and wouldn't fall prey to the kinds of vulnerabilities a corporate PC would. Presumably you're referring to the fact your CNC machine is setup to be operated remotely? The risk of someone accessing your CNC machine is probably lesser than that of someone infiltrating a corporate network and wreaking havoc on files, stealing information and credentials.

batuhanicoz• 12 years ago

For closed systems I think there is no need to upgrade.

What is the harm of not upgrading, what is the worst thing that can happen?

Of course, this is for a system that is not connected to the outside world.

GauntletWizard• 12 years ago

XP is 13 years old, but a viable alternative is only 5 years old; Windows 7 only came out in 2009. For many industries, replacements are measured in decades.

jpablo2• 12 years ago

And I think Microsoft actually stopped selling Windows XP one year later, in October 2010.

lelandriordan• 12 years ago

OSX v10.1 came out around the same time and nobody seems to say the same thing about Apple which dropped support years ago. Ubuntu is used by tons of huge corporations and its LTS versions are only supported for 5 years yet nobody blames Canonical. Yes XP runs enterprise but 13 years is more than reasonable to stop support. Its not like MS suddenly dropped this on these companies either, they gave years of warning to them but the companies didn't listen and now blame MS. And if these huge companies are planning their IT infrastructure decades at a time, in an OS industry that is only around 30 or so years old, they need to rethink their strategy and hire a new CTO.

grecy2• 12 years ago

I work at a telco. We just upgraded to Win 7 last week, and even then, more that 40% of machines are still not done, and likely won't be until late in the 3rd quarter.

"Do it as late as possible" is the motto when upgrading your machines doesn't earn more income.

chris_mahan• 12 years ago

Large bank here. our Win7 upgrade is mostly done, but still ongoing.

hippich• 12 years ago

upgrade to Win7 which is already 5 years old...

McGlockenshire• 12 years ago

Undoubtedly it is one of the best versions of Windows ever put out

It might be better to say "most successful," not "best."

AnthonyMouse• 12 years ago

OK, name the versions of Microsoft Windows which are better than XP.

leoc• 12 years ago

But the XP end-of-life event has turned out to be pretty lucrative for them, with companies and government agencies opening their wallets in exchange for extended support. I wonder if they'll be enticed to shake that tree again more frequently in future.

stormbrew• 12 years ago

I think this is one of those "Some money is too expensive" kind of situations, really. The drain on Microsoft's resources, and the knock-on effects of having increasingly vulnerable windows installs around, are probably worth far more, in the long run, than any amount anyone would ever pay them.

cletus• 12 years ago

Undoubtedly it is one of the best versions of Windows ever put out

I agree with this. XP was really the first version of Windows that came from the NT/2000 line (rather than the Win95/98 line) that was consumer-friendly. It's hardware requirements were (and are) pretty meager. I know I only upgraded once Windows 7 came out and it became apparent that (unlike Vista) it didn't completely suck.

at what point does supporting an older operating system like XP cost you more money then it would to spend the money upgrading to a later version of Windows?

Going back to the 90s, it used to be that a new computer was essentially useless within about 3 years, such was the thirst for more power, memory and storage.

But something happened about 5-10 years ago. Ever since then, pretty much any computer you can buy is "enough" for most users, particularly corporate users (which largely comes down to running a browser and MS Office). Microsoft became successful in an era where they could rely on increasing market size and churn to get rid of their old versions. Not so any more.

Some will say "just spend the money and upgrade" but think about it this way: upgrading to Win7 will mean not only buying licenses but in many cases new computers. What if those computers don't actually offer any significant cost savings or improved capabilities for most workers? Think of a hospital that could spend $X million upgrading all their PCs or they could spend that money on an MRI machine or something else which saves lives. In comparison, a computer upgrade can be hard to justify.

One of the reasons I switched to Chrome was for the automatic updates. It's also why I switched all my family members. No one wants to manually run updates. No one even wants the Firefox version of "Install update now?" when you start it (by virtue of you starting Firefox means you want to do something other than wait for it do stuff).

Microsoft needs to integrate the philosophy of continual transparent updates. Unfortunately they're addicted to the revenue of new license sales.

Just recently I looked into buying Photoshop. It's kind of a must-have for digital photography but it's really expensive (for personal use). I discovered that last year Adobe had switched from a license model to a subscription model. Some complained about this. Adobe was famous for doing things like not updating the RAW converter for previous versions of Photoshop to force you to upgrade.

Thing is, their subscription is as little as $10/month. Normally these companies want to recoup the purchase cost in <12 months or something similarly unreasonable. I'm perfectly happy to pay $10/month for Photoshop.

(Some) consumers are willing to pay a service fee of $15/month for TiVo. That's after purchasing the hardware and before paying for any actual content. Why isn't the market just as willing to pay a similar price for something that's meant to protect your private information, credentials photos, identity and financial data?

To me, this is the real power of, say, ChromeOS. Many people only need a Web browser (particularly at work) and don't want to have to spend the time, effort and money to manage their corporate deployment.

And of course MS aren't doing themselves any favours with the clusterfk that is Windows 8...

dba7dba2• 12 years ago

But something happened about 5-10 years ago. Ever since then, pretty much any computer you can buy is "enough" for most users, particularly corporate users (which largely comes down to running a browser and MS Office).

I think it was the internet.

graycat8• 12 years ago

Upgrading from XP is worse than that, much worse than just the money.

I'm typing this on XP. For Windows 7, I have a full, retail purchased, on DVD copy of Windows 7 Professional. Okay, but so what? To install Windows 7:

(1) Find a boot partition -- actually I do have one available.

(2) Wonder if Windows 7 will run on my hardware with a 32 bit processor and a 1.8 GHz clock. E.g., I've not seen a statement from Microsoft on what hardware Windows 7 needs.

(3) Especially wonder what of my crucial old software will run on Windows 7. E.g., I don't want to get into the 'security mud wrestling' of Vista.

(4) What's new in Windows 7 I will have to waste time learning?

(5) What is in XP that I am using that will not be in Windows 7?

(6) What of my hardware, e.g., a FAX modem, Windows 7 won't work with?

(7) What if anything I could want will I get from Windows 7 I don't have with XP? I haven't seen any such list from Microsoft.

(8) As far as I can tell, the main reason to install Windows 7 is just so that bug fixes will continue to be available. This matter of bugs is getting too convenient for Microsoft's bottom line.

(9) What about major software such as SQL Server I am running now on XP? Installing SQL Server was massively wasteful mud wrestling on XP, and I fear loss of some days of time getting SQL Server running and, then, loss of some weeks of time, literally, getting the system running again after the installation of SQL Server ruins my system requiring me to format a boot partition back to empty, reinstall XP from the DVD, install XP updates, no longer available?, that is, maybe the 'updates' I have still just pull the actual updates from Microsoft. Yes, SQL Server installation was bad enough it wiped out my favorite boot partition for XP and all the software I'd installed on it. My experience is that installing SQL Server is a big threat to all other software on the system.

The issues are not just buying Windows 7, guys; I've already done that, and the copy is sitting unopened on a bookshelf.

Microsoft: Document your products. Tell me what I need to know. Be clear. I've already bought your product and, still, due to lack of enough documentation am scared stiff to use it; I fear a disaster to my work. Did I mention you need to document your products, tell me what I need to know, and, by the way, document your products and tell me what I need to know? Did I mention those things?

fancyketchup2• 12 years ago

at what point does supporting an older operating system like XP cost you more money then it would to spend the money upgrading to a later version of Windows?

Well... when expensive capital equipment runs XP, that point is essentially "never."

For example: Old versions of LabVIEW run on XP, but not 7. A license for one desktop runs $10-50k, depending on options. Lots of sciencey equipment requires software that only runs on XP. Want to upgrade to 7? Ok, here, buy a new $100k laser / $20k UV-vis-IR spectrometer / $10k multi-channel scaler / $10k oscilloscope / whatever. Another user mentioned his CNC machine (those aren't cheap).

I mean, you can do that, but $10k buys you a lot of extended support (which is curiously unavailable to everyone who isn't a big business). I'm sure most university labs would jump at the chance to pay a few hundred dollars per machine to support instruments incompatible with 7.

crygin• 12 years ago

Seriously. A few years ago (2010ish) I was roped into helping out with a microprobe array that would have cost about $150k to replace, whose controller software would only run on Windows 95... not OSR2, meaning that USB wouldn't even work (we used ZIP disks to move sequence files on and off of it). The fellow in charge of the thing would grab systems being surplussed from elsewhere in the department that might run Win95 and clone to their drives... when I left he had 4-5 spares in a closet for the day the current controller died.

EDIT: And we did attempt to virtualize it, but at least at the time were unable to do so successfully (timing issues, I think).

yuhong• 12 years ago

I don't think custom support is that cheap. There is typically a floor of at least $100k for Custom Support Standard.

ars• 12 years ago

It's pretty obvious that they did this because people were being advised not to use IE - without specifying a version.

If they didn't update IE on XP then even IE on Win 7/8 would get hit by advice not to use it.

filmgirlcw3• 12 years ago

Right. Of course, the fact that that advice came from DHS, which still has a ton of XP/IE6-based internal apps probably made it that much worse. The government is a big client. Having them move to another browser, even if they haven't agreed to upgrade all the clients to the new Windows yet, is just a bad idea.

ddoolin• 12 years ago

What I'm wondering is how many times is this going to happen? Where they're more-or-less forced to continue emergency patch mode for major vulns?

filmgirlcw3• 12 years ago

Microsoft is going to have to take a stand and make this the last XP patch (for anyone not paying for extended support like certain governments) forRealThisTime if they ever want to move on.

In this case, I can understand the reprieve, if only because it came like 20 days after the EOL. In fact, you almost wonder if this wasn't publicized until after the EOL in an attempt for malicious parties to do maximum damage.

But this won't be the last hole. Others will exist and if Microsoft doesn't stop from now on, it won't disappear until web standards change to such an extent that all versions of IE that run on XP won't render modern sites at all.

Kind of a good reason, in retrospect, to decouple the web browser from the OS, huh?

rbanffy5• 12 years ago

Microsoft is going to have to take a stand

And risk having all those corporate drones move to Linux, Android, ChromeOS or anything non-Microsoft or, worse, Microsoft-hostile? Risk spawning a non-Microsoft ecosystem around vast IT-deficient corporations (any reasonably managed IT infrastructure has moved on long ago) that would undermine their other side businesses?

They'll never do that.

vacri4• 12 years ago

No other desktop is suitable for the enterprise desktop environment out-of-the-box. Much as Windows is maligned, OSX doesn't have the range of tools available for enterprise use, and free desktops still aren't quite there for regular users en masse.

dublinben• 12 years ago

It's probably better for Microsoft if those companies did move to an operating system like RHEL. They can still sell Office 365 subscriptions, and don't have to be responsible for security patches any more.

filmgirlcw3• 12 years ago

Except at a certain point, none of their products will work with XP and as they shift from perpetual to subscription licenses and service contracts, the value of a shop that hasn't paid in X years is disappearing all the time.

Losing those customers might be a good thing, at least if urge can still retain some business.

They gave the OS 13 years. Ask RedHat to do that. Or Google. (not even going to mention Apple for mass enterprise installations, that's not their target anyway).

Moreover, Microsoft can still argue that it's cheaper to migrate to. New Windows than a brand new system. Or you know, try to offer a VMWare or Citrix style solution to cut down on machine/licensing costs.

jiggy2011• 12 years ago

I'm guessing that those still using XP after EOL are those who don't care about security.

clinton_sf• 12 years ago

It's breathtaking to see such a blunder: a Forune 100 company telling nearly 20% [1] of its installed user base, it's second largest desktop OS customer base, to stop and make a financial decision about what to do, instead of giving them a low-cost, path of least resistance option to continue in some way similar to the status quo. For many people still on XP, the users are not technical enough to understand how to do an OS upgrade or how to migrate user data to a new machine, let alone understand why they would want to when the current system appears to work fine.

I'm surprised that they're not trying to monetize their current XP user base with some sort of "XP extended support" fee-based subscription so they don't force users to look elsewhere for a desktop OS -- between Windows 8's blunders and a Mac, I suspect many of those XP users will consider a Mac. Or simply by offering a ~$40 upgrader app to get to Windows 7 "lite" for XP users that works on the same hardware and drivers...

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/02/discontinued-windowsxp-stil...

ehPReth• 12 years ago

Out of support should mean out of support -- no one off patches.

ETA: Organizations will use these 'emergency patches' as yet another reason not to upgrade.

Microsoft rescues XP users with emergency browser fix

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