I bare bad news Windows XP users. Come 2014 Microsoft have recently announced that they shall be finally stopping support for the OS all together after a 13 (and a bit) year lifespan. Users are expected to upgrade to a newer system such as the upcoming Windows 8 (no release date as of yet) or the two previous versions – Vista and 7.
Losing support is a fancy way of saying Microsoft have finally given up with patching security updates and fixes for the XP system. This is time-consuming and for a system that will then be nearly 14 years old, is unnecessary!
However, Microsoft supporting a system like XP for so long is usually unheard of, for example, Windows 2000 was only supported for 10 years, Windows 98 for 8 and Windows 95 for just over 6. It is clear that XP still remains to be a major player in the Operating Systems market despite it due to become a teenager in 2014!
I believe XP being so popular in the market, 10 years after being initially released, can be slightly attributed to the revolutionary design step-up between the old systems available at the time.
XP was the upgrade for the millions of users of Windows 95/98, who were used to gray task bars/windows and bland cyan backgrounds whilst XP offered users exciting new graphics such as the default ‘pretty hill’ as your background, multiple themes and excellent customization. It’s aesthetics, I believe, made modern computing look and feel futuristic, an exciting prospect for most “Average Joe’s” and arguable most importantly for some, it didn’t break the bank balance. OS X by Apple was expensive and the technology/software to make Mac-Windows interaction easy was still in its infancy. This made XP even more popular.
I also feel that XP seemed to work ‘logically’. For me there was no “Oh, why is it doing this?” or “Surely If I do this, then this should happen!”. It tailored perfectly to how I believe an interface should be for a user. Easy to use and logical. It is so easy to use that my parents use XP and have done now for close to 8-9 years!
I also do still use Windows XP, not on my laptop but on the main family computer. I do believe it was one of Microsoft’s better releases especially after using Vista for 3 years now. It will be a shame to see support for XP go, but I shall remember it fondly!
RIP Windows XP. 2001 – 2014
