What XP Netbook Manufactures Aren’t Telling You?
Your XP Netbook that you just bought isn’t secure. Nor will it ever be. It’s running an 8 year old operating system for which support has been discontinued since April of 2009. There will not be any new security patches or updates for your XP netbook. Not from Microsoft at least.
Microsoft announced on April 3rd last year ( 2008 ) that it had bowed to demand of manufacturers and would allow them to sell Windows XP Home for ULCPCs (ultra low cost personal computers or netbooks) will be until June 30, 2010, or one year after general availability of the next version of Windows.
Michael Dix, General Manager of Windows Client Product Management, also made it very clear in the same interview that just because OEMs could sell netbooks with XP on it, did not mean they were going to be supporting it beyond April 2009:
I should also note that there will also be no impact on our technical support plans—mainstream technical support will continue to be available until April 2009 and extended support will continue until April 2014.
Now I know some of you are baying for Steve Ballmers blood at this point and ready to blame Microsoft for this apparent “injustice” or trickery, but step back and think for a minute about who really is to blame on this occasion. Here’s a hint: It’s not Microsoft.
This all came to my attention today when I read that Microsoft would not be patching a bug in XP that it had already fixed in Vista, citing the age of XPs code as making it unfeasible and I ended up in a lengthy discussion on Twitter trying to explain why it was not Microsoft people should be mad at, but the manufacturers, the OEM’s.
The fact of the matter is that when the manufactures approached Microsoft, due to consumer demand, they entered into the arrangement knowing Microsofts support lifecycle and exactly when support for XP was due to end. Microsoft have never hid or even glossed over the fact that support for XP would be ending last April and I would hazard a guess that the OEM partners involved got a pretty good deal on XP due to that fact.
Yet, this knowledge in hand, the netbook manufacturers have sold and continue to sell and advertise machines that are running an operating system that will not be receiving an more support, bug fixes or security upgrades.
On the whole XP is a dead horse to Microsoft and their only interest in providing any support for it is at business level, which means businesses with XP Professional (and even they would like to bump those up to Windows 7 ASAP ). These are the only licenses that may qualify for extended support as XP Home is a consumer product and does not qualify as business or development software.
Microsoft are more interested in the imminent release of the excellent Windows 7 and erasing the memory of Vista while moving on to the next project.
So where does this leave you? It leaves you with a bone to pick with the company that produced your netbook and quite possibly with your retailer as well.
Questions have to be asked of both. Why weren’t consumers informed when purchasing these machines that the operating system was going, or at this point, is out of date and no longer supported?
Of course, I’m sure that the OEM’s and retailers alike will push the responsibility back on the consumer, stating that if they’re savvy enough to be looking for a netbook they should be savvy enough to do some research on the product they’re about to drop a lot of hard earned cash for.
Frankly I agree with the manufactures and retailers on that score, but it doesn’t eliminate the fact that they should have actively informed customers that this was the situation when they were purchasing the netbooks and included it in the advertising literature. After all, it’s a serious thing and a big deciding factor to know that the operating system is no longer supported.
One last thing, considering the OEM’s decided to go with XP knowing that the OS was about to end it’s support lifecycle, should they be held accountable to move into an paid support arrangement with Microsoft similar to what they have in place for business software?
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So let me ask you this… why did I receive a boatload of updates on the first Tuesday of the month?
While not”actively” supported, Microsoft has continued to ship updates to XP knowing full well that if they didn’t that this “ugly truth” would have halted (or drastically slowed) the sale of netbooks with XP and left the door open for more Linux sales.
Now that Windows 7 is ready to ship… NOW they are suddenly pulling the “no longer supported” card… just in time to try and push netbook manufacturers to stop selling the old OS in favor of the new. Microsoft already allowed “good enough XP” to wash out Vista, and they are not about to let it do the same thing to Win 7. Microsoft needs Windows 7 to take off, and these netbooks running Vista were a potential Achilles heel. I don’t believe for a second that the timing of this fact is “coincidence” nor do I believe that netbook mfr are to blame… the support was there… right up until Microsoft was ready to yank it away and force Win 7 to be “the next big thing”
Microsoft have been guided by their own lifecycle supoprt schedule which existed way before the OEM's came to Microsoft asking for an extension on XP Home. I linked to the it in the post.
The simple fact of the matter that while Microsoft may choose to ship updates, especially ones that it makes for the extended business cycle that are compatible, the chances are that the majority of the "boatload" of updates you talk about are likely for other Microsoft programs on your computer rather than XP Home itself. Programs such as the windows "live" programs, office etc.. will all continue to be updated regardless fo which OS they are running on and will come through windows update.
Also it's not against precedent for Microsoft to ship patches for out of cycle software but it is a rare and exceptional circumstance.
There is no conspiracy here, at least on Microsofts part. They were very clear from the outset about when mainstream support would be ending for XP. They are not "pulling any card" as they put it. The support lifecycle for XP has been publicly available for literally years.
There is no Microsoft conspiracy in this, just consumer ignorance which the OEM's have relied on to ship their product. They knew that without XP netbooks would remain in the realm of the uber geek as they would have had to use linux or another light weight OS. They approached Microsoft and asked to be able to sell XP for longer. Microsoft agreed in 08 but also made it very clear that support would end in April of 09.
Jay Monster, here's a little more info. This isSymantecs breakdown of the 5 critical patches that were shipped by MS this month.
As you can see only 1 of the fixes a problem in XP and that patch was issued because of the extended support for XP Professional for business and as such worked for XP Home.
You can see more information about that particular patch here.
You'll see in the text that Microsoft is listing it as:
If they were supporting XP Home it would have said "for all supported editions of 2000 and all editions of XP"…
This should help with explaining where some of those updates came this month