Windows XP Home: Obsolete Sooner Than You Expect

5 Jan, 2006 at 3:46pm ET Article published in Tech

Arstechnica is reporting that Microsoft have stated that because Windows XP Home is a consumer product and therefore doesn’t qualify for Extended Support, when it leaves Mainstream Support at the end of 2006, the software giant will cease to offer support for the OS. Unless Microsoft changes their mind, this will leave XP Home users without any further security updates from January 2007 onwards, according to the report.

“For consumer products, security updates will be available through the end of the mainstream phase. For Windows XP Home Edition, there will be no security updates after 12/31/06.” Regarding paid support for problems unrelated to security patches, I was told that “Users who want to continue to receive support after the Microsoft assisted and paid support offerings have ended may visit the Retired Product Support Options Web site.”

Source: Arstechnica

Comments

5 Jan 2006 ~ 3:48pm GHoosdum Strange... if they're going to be providing the security updates for XP Pro anyway, why not Home as well?
5 Jan 2006 ~ 4:01pm Home is a consumer product whilst Pro is a business product, business products are eligible for extra / extended support.
5 Jan 2006 ~ 4:05pm GHoosdum

wrote:

Home is a consumer product whilst Pro is a business product, business products are eligible for extra / extended support.

Yes, but the patches would be identical between XP Home and Pro - it wouldn't put Microsoft out at all to simply provide the same extended support for all versions of XP.
5 Jan 2006 ~ 4:12pm madmat Not to mention the fact with all the delays on Vista if they don't get their act together they'll really be leaving their butt swinging in the wind if by '07 there's still no new consumer OS from them AND they stop supporting the only one they do offer.
5 Jan 2006 ~ 9:27pm Qeldroma Looks like another means of forcing others to migrate to Vista. At the very least up to Pro. You know if it hacks Pro it will likely attack Home as well so there is no real "security by obscurity" either.

Ya'Kno- I think a major company should sucessfully market and sell Linux- apparently people don't trust the starving programmer method. MS sorely needs a swift kick where it counts.
5 Jan 2006 ~ 11:05pm TheSmJ What is the latest news on Vista's release date? Is it still March or have I missed something?
6 Jan 2006 ~ 12:13am Madball If Apple was smart, they would release a PC version of OS-X before Vista comes out. That would really piss Mr. Gates off.
6 Jan 2006 ~ 1:08am Nosferatu I'd kill for a x64 version of OS X that could run on non-apple hardware (and was legal)!
6 Jan 2006 ~ 1:31am Leonardo I really doubt Microsoft will back up that statement. They supported Win98, what, nearly two years after the date they had initially announced for cutoff?
6 Jan 2006 ~ 3:35am Shorty

Leonardo wrote:

I really doubt Microsoft will back up that statement. They supported Win98, what, nearly two years after the date they had initially announced for cutoff?

Yep, Leonardo hit the nail on the head ^^^^^^^^^^^^

Articles like this are just scaremongering.
6 Jan 2006 ~ 12:30pm drasnor Windows 98 is kind of a different story though: it was the last stable 9x OS. I mean, went by my old school district last month and they're still running Windows 98SE. It's not like this is surprising since we've always known that Home was just an excuse to screw the customer anyway.

-drasnor
6 Jan 2006 ~ 1:31pm Qeldroma

Shorty wrote:

Yep, Leonardo hit the nail on the head ^^^^^^^^^^^^

Articles like this are just scaremongering.

True; however, if someone didn't and MS had no bad press about it, I'd think they'd do it.
6 Jan 2006 ~ 2:13pm Spinner It's all really about how Microsoft really messed up with their Longhorn roadmap. Vista should have been on the shelves by now. But regardless, Microsoft will have no choice but to extend XP Home support for at least another couple of years. All this is just further iteration of how the software giant got it really wrong. It is though a testament to Windows XP that it's managed to hold up this long. Imagine how insane we'd all be if Windows ME v2 was the only consumer OS available right now. Perish the thought.
7 Jan 2006 ~ 2:45pm CyrixInstead Hmm well said Spinner. I certainly would be in an asylum. My version of Me did nothing but crash crash crash.

~Cyrix
8 Jan 2006 ~ 7:17am trilinium Have you guys seen the predicted specs needed to run Vista? I think i'm gonna be sticking with XP for a while yet... unless someone sends me a kind donation - :-). Apple won't release a PC version of OSX cause that would make their sales only software and people would ignore their computers. But with the new Pentium-based Macs that will be coming out sometime this year, you will (with a bit of hacking) be able to install Windows on a Mac (not appealing) and vice-versa (very appealing). It would be great to finally have a nice stable user-friendly OS for PCs... (Don't say Linux)
8 Jan 2006 ~ 10:57am drasnor Going software wouldn't be that hard for Apple. I know an Apple employee and he's confirmed for me that they're fully aware that all their profits come from iPods, people buying Macs to go with their iPods and iTunes, etc. Even the educational markets buy iPods as "backup storage devices". Yeah right.

-drasnor
8 Jan 2006 ~ 6:00pm Spinner

trilinium wrote:

Have you guys seen the predicted specs needed to run Vista? I think i'm gonna be sticking with XP for a while yet...

Any PC that can run XP should be able to run Vista with no problems. They may not be able to have all the bells and whistles turned on graphically (e.g. Aero glass theme), but it will run just fine, if not better in some respects.

Think of Windows 2000 in comparison to XP. XP by default might demand more when you get to the desktop (at least by default), but you can make XP pretty much run like Windows 2000 by turning off all the graphics, and XP boots loads faster than Windows 2000 out of the box. I think the same kind of comparison with XP and Vista will show very similar results.

I've tested Beta1 of Vista on my secondary rig which has an Athlon XP 2000+, 512MB DDR2100, GF2 MX and a WD1200JB HD and it ran better than XP in a lot of respects. It's obviously not the finished product, but I don't think any upgrade to a system that can conformatably run XP will be necessary. If you want the nice themes, you may decide to upgrade your GPU, but you don't need to sweat it, at least nothing I've seen so far suggests that you should.

Cheers
8 Jan 2006 ~ 8:53pm trilinium

Spinner wrote:

Any PC that can run XP should be able to run Vista with no problems. They may not be able to have all the bells and whistles turned on graphically (e.g. Aero glass theme), but it will run just fine, if not better in some respects.

Think of Windows 2000 in comparison to XP. XP by default might demand more when you get to the desktop (at least by default), but you can make XP pretty much run like Windows 2000 by turning off all the graphics, and XP boots loads faster than Windows 2000 out of the box. I think the same kind of comparison with XP and Vista will show very similar results.

I've tested Beta1 of Vista on my secondary rig which has an Athlon XP 2000+, 512MB DDR2100, GF2 MX and a WD1200JB HD and it ran better than XP in a lot of respects. It's obviously not the finished product, but I don't think any upgrade to a system that can conformatably run XP will be necessary. If you want the nice themes, you may decide to upgrade your GPU, but you don't need to sweat it, at least nothing I've seen so far suggests that you should.

Cheers

Im sure Vista's many many bugs will become apparent anytime soon
8 Jan 2006 ~ 9:02pm drasnor XP runs just fine on my friend's IBM Thinkpad w/ 266MHz Pentium II and 64MB of RAM. Somehow I think that's asking a little much for Vista.

Trilinium: just guessing by your sig and description you're a Mac user. Well, also being a Mac user I can safely say that MacOS is not without its share of bugs. Ever wonder why people still use Classic? It's because anyone that bought OS X versions 10.0, 10.1, and early adopters of 10.2 all got burned by paying $150 or more for a Beta (or Alpha for those poor 10.0 and 10.1 users). The difference between MacOS and Windows is that Windows stays bought; with MacOS you get to spend $150 for your next service pack.

Linux FTW.

-drasnor
8 Jan 2006 ~ 9:14pm danball1976

drasnor wrote:

XP runs just fine on my friend's IBM Thinkpad w/ 266MHz Pentium II and 64MB of RAM. Somehow I think that's asking a little much for Vista.

Trilinium: just guessing by your sig and description you're a Mac user. Well, also being a Mac user I can safely say that MacOS is not without its share of bugs. Ever wonder why people still use Classic? It's because anyone that bought OS X versions 10.0, 10.1, and early adopters of 10.2 all got burned by paying $150 or more for a Beta (or Alpha for those poor 10.0 and 10.1 users). The difference between MacOS and Windows is that Windows stays bought; with MacOS you get to spend $150 for your next service pack.

Linux FTW.

-drasnor

No, he isn't a mac user. His sig says that he has an apple sticker on his computer to make him feel less guilty for using windows.
8 Jan 2006 ~ 9:20pm drasnor

danball1976 wrote:

No, he isn't a mac user. His sig says that he has an apple sticker on his computer to make him feel less guilty for using windows.

Well that's silly. Why insinuate Macs are superior if you don't even use them?

EDIT: More proper diction.

-drasnor
10 Jan 2006 ~ 2:59pm trilinium I do use macs as well, but mainly PCs because i need them for my work. I just recently had a whole line of lovely BSOD's (Blue Screens of Deaths) on my Windows XP PC, and it made me realise just how much better Macs were...
10 Jan 2006 ~ 3:10pm trilinium You don't have to pay for each service pack on the Mac, only the updates to the next system (like XP or Vista for Windows) like Tiger or Panther and when you do have to pay for the next version its still cheaper than Windows and alot better. At least they don't patch Mac OS X like a giant blanket with lots of holes.