Xpocalypse Not: Microsoft May Support Windows XP in China Past April 8

[Guest]

In a brief message on the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, Microsoft said it would support Windows XP in China past the April 8 kill date.

Xpocalypse Not: Microsoft May Support Windows XP in China Past April 8 : Read more

 

[mi1ez]

If you're creating patches, why not distribute worldwide?!

 

[coolitic]

There is no apocalypse. The ones who are still using xp are probably apart of botnets already.

 

[brandonjclark]

Great, so now people using XP (shudder) have to torrent their security patches?

 

[bourgeoisdude]

If you're creating patches, why not distribute worldwide?!

Agreed. This doesn't make much sense. The whole point of ending support is to cut costs on supporting a 13 year old operating system.

 

[billgatez]

Whats to stop other people from using these patches as the difference is only language.

 

[dextermat]

Support for the country that bootlegged the hell out of xp.... wow makes no sense to me.+1 this should be worldwide. We getting ripped off again.

 

[skit75]

"Microsoft noted that 70 percent of Chinese XP users had never once installed a security update."30% of XP Chinese users is still a huge number. The Chinese security firms will be the likely host(s) for the patches is what I suspect, not MS.

 

[clonazepam]

A Communist country wants to keep their population on less secure software, and would likely pay for that. Sounds completely reasonable from that perspective. Microsoft supports Communism, spying, and bootlegging, if there's money coming in from somewhere. (just having some fun here, <3 MS)

 

[rwinches]

Maybe the 70% can't qualify as genuine so they can't DL the patches.

 

[DalaiLame]

The better for the NSA to spy on them!

 

[ethanolson]

I bet they're going to issue patches only on non-firewalled systems in China... in other words, none. They're just providing confidence to people to stay on any kind of Windows platform.

 

[maniac62]

A Communist country wants to keep their population on less secure software, and would likely pay for that. Sounds completely reasonable from that perspective. Microsoft supports Communism, spying, and bootlegging, if there's money coming in from somewhere. (just having some fun here, <3 MS)

A Communist country wants to keep their population on less secure software, and would likely pay for that. Sounds completely reasonable from that perspective. Microsoft supports Communism, spying, and bootlegging, if there's money coming in from somewhere. (just having some fun here, <3 MS)

PRISM is way more technologically advanced than the Great Firewall. The Great Firewall only blocks IP, hijacks domain and blocks pages with certain keywords. On the other hand, PRISM already involves working on compromising encrypted protocols. In the field of spying, the Chinese government is just inexperienced compared to the U.S.

 

[Beave Village]

Just turn automatic updates off already if you're using XP right now or know someone using XP right now. Fire up Avast Antivirus 2014 free edition and make sure they do weekly scans with Malwarebytes and SuperAntiSpyware.Be sure to turn off the Security Center notifier that Automatic updates are off and DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT use Microsoft Security Essentials on XP for antivirus as that may expire as well in time.

 

[AndrewMD]

If you are still using XP in America or any other part of the world, you get what you deserve. Even if you don't like Windows 8, Windows 7 can still be purchased. If your programs are not compatible with newer OSes that is also not Microsoft's problem, it is truly your own.

 

[gm0n3y]

It seems to me that the majority of people still running XP probably aren't running updates. They say that 30% of users have installed at least one patch. I'd guess that most of those people installed patches when they first installed the OS and that the majority haven't updated since and of the few that have, they may not be doing so frequently. And according to Ballmer, at least 90% of installs are pirated.The latest data I could find (March 2013) says that there are around 195 million PCs in China. I'll assume that all are running Windows. More than half are running XP, according to the data I could find it is around 55% as of last September (107 million). Of those 107 million:- 90% pirated, so only 10% valid: 10.7 million- 30% have installed a patch: 3.22 millionSo best case scenario is that there are a little more than 3 million legal copies of XP that will benefit from new patches. Now how many of those are currently running with the latest patches? 50% or less? And that is with automatic updates (or notification reminders). How many of those are going to go to a third party website to find new patches? I would guess that less than a million (probably less than 500,000) legal XP users in China will actually download a patch from a third party company.Sources:http/www.neowin.net/news/statcounter-windows-xp-is-the-most-used-os-in-eight-countries-including-chinahttp/www.neowin.net/news/ballmer-9-out-of-10-copies-of-windows-in-china-is-pirated

 

[JD88]

So now we have the proof that all the XP end of the world stuff is simply greedy Microsoft trying to convince people that they need to shell out hundreds of dollars for the absolutely 0 increase in functionality that Windows 8 offers. The situation in China is a little bit different too as the threat of a National Linux based operating systems is ever looming to take market share away from Windows. Microsoft absolutely had to continue XP support in China to keep its foot in the door.