It’s late 2001 and I’ve finally managed to find a group of like minded people who enjoy computers, games and all things that I felt ashamed of liking for the better part of my teenage life. We’re gathered at a friend’s house to have a LAN as this was long before the time when broadband was a common thing in Australian households. As much as these gatherings were a hive for sharing ill-gotten files they were also the beginnings of my career in IT as often we’d be experimenting with the latest software just for laughs. It’s at this very gathering where I had my first encounter with the latest operating system from Microsoft, Windows XP, and little did I know that I’d still be encountering it for the next 13 years.
Today marks a day that we have known was coming for a long time but many have refused to accept: the day when Windows XP is no longer supported by Microsoft. You can still get support for Microsoft Security Essentials on Windows XP until July 14, 2015 but Microsoft will no longer be providing any updates, free or paid, to the aging operating system. For administrators like me it’s the ammunition we’ve been using for the better part of 2 years to get people to move away from the old operating system as nothing scares corporate customers more than the possibility of no support. Still though out of the total Windows market share XP still claims a staggering 27%, meaning almost 1 in every 3 Windows users is now on a system that won’t have any kind of official support. Many have criticised Microsoft for doing this but in all honesty it had to happen sometime or they’d never see the end of it.
The reason behind XP’s longevity, something which is usually unheard of in the high technology industry, can be almost wholly attributed to the utter dismal failure that Windows Vista was. Prior to that Microsoft customers were more than happy to go through the routine upgrade process every 3~5 years however the fact that Vista didn’t deliver on what it promised, coupled with it’s astoundingly bad reliability, meant that the vast majority of organisations got comfortable with Windows XP as their operating system. The time between XP and Windows 7 was long enough that the pain of moving forward became too great and many opted to wait until there was just no option left for them. My most recent project was a great example of this, migrating a large government department to Windows 7 from XP which only barely missed the deadline that was hit today.
This is the prime reason behind Microsoft’s recent change from a longer product cycle to one that’s based around rapid innovation. Whilst it’s true that Windows 8 is shaping up to be the Vista of this current product cycle, with Windows 7 adoption rates still outpacing it, the vast majority of the hard work will be done if users finally move to Windows 7. The upgrade paths from there are a whole lot more forgiving than coming from XP and moving from 8 to 8.1 takes about as much effort as installing a patch. I’m quietly hopeful that Windows 7 won’t become the next XP but at the same time I know how readily history can repeat itself.
So it’s without a heavy heart I say goodbye to Windows XP. It will not be missed by anyone in the industry as it was supposed to be dead and buried a long time ago and it was only through the stubbornness of the majority that it managed to stick around for as long as it did. I’m hoping for a much brighter future, one where Microsoft’s quickened pace of development is embraced and legacy systems are allowed to die the swift death that they so rightly deserve.