Posts Tagged ‘Internet Explorer 7’
The XP Patch Nightmare: Why We Should Move On
October 25, 2001 – A Microsoft operating system was released as the Internet revolution entered the everyman’s home. Only one year after the absolute fiasco known as Windows ME (in a time before Vista was known as possibly the worst operating system of all time), Windows XP was released, and with it came hopes of a new stable Windows OS. Combining the new technologies of ME with the stability of Windows 2000, XP became the world’s number one OS, and sits on that throne to this day. It heralded the modern internet era, and until recently was the OS of choice for OEMs.
Now, we can finally see what a horrible, horrible mistake keeping it alive was. Since the appearance of a 17-year old DOS exploit, followed by an update that has created countless BSODs and endless reboots, Windows XP looks unlikely to be able to weather the coming years. Microsoft believes they have discovered the primary cause of the current maladies:
“In our continuing investigation in to the restart issues related to MS10-015 that a limited number of customers are experiencing, we have determined that malware on the system can cause the behavior. We are not yet ruling out other potential causes at this time and are still investigating.” (emphasis added)
People attacked Windows Vista for performance flaws and pricing, but at least Microsoft began to clean up its act regarding internet security with Internet Explorer 7 and the improved Windows Firewall. User Account Control, a feature Unix systems have had for quite a while, was a step in the right direction (despite its dreadful implementation). And Windows 7 finally comes with performance improvements and most modern hardware is capable of handling it.
The only market that really had any justification in using XP was netbooks, but even they have moved on to Windows 7 Starter Edition. While XP may have extended support till 2014, users should realize that they need to upgrade far before that.
There are essentially three routes. If you have anything with higher performance than a netbook, it is safe to move on to Windows 7. “Vista-capable” PCs should not still have Windows XP on them. It is an insult to their hardware, and these recent episodes have shown that it is no longer safe.
If for some reason you are still using a 800 MHz Celeron with 128 MB RAM, then it is either time to get a new computer (anything from any brand with any operating system circa 2010) or to install Linux. For the majority of users, the latter seems like too difficult of an option, but Ubuntu is a usable and user-friendly introduction to Linux.
As for netbooks, which is the only platform where new machines still have this abomination, please get Windows 7 or Linux or even a Hackintosh. Microsoft has directions for those of you who don’t know how to set up an ISO to install from a USB. And while I am sure there will be many of those hesitant to move forward from XP, I beseech you: at least take this as a wake up call.
Via Engadget.
