14 DAY TRIAL // Windows XP’s retirement is only 10 days away, but plenty of users are still running it, so Microsoft’s efforts to move everyone to Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 seem just a waste of time and money.
While it’s pretty clear that there are several reasons why users do not want to upgrade, experts are claiming that customers do not think that end of support is such a critical moment and aren’t quite willing to move to another operating system anytime soon. Soon, they might start paying the price, he says.
“The channel has been very proactive with customers about migration, but it has been a bit like banging your head against a brick wall,” Kelvin Kirby, UK president of the International Association of Microsoft Channel Partners, was quoted as saying by CRN.
“You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. We've been saying [migration is key] for two years now and that customers need to think about an upgrade strategy but it seems like it has fallen on deaf ears. There is an assumption that Microsoft won't let XP die.”
According to the same aforementioned source, some resellers are claiming that Microsoft has picked the wrong strategy to make people step away from Windows XP. The company focused too much on scaring tactics, rather than getting closer to users and explaining why it’s so important for everyone to deploy Windows 7 or Windows 8 before end of support arrives.
Microsoft has indeed turned to a fairly aggressive campaign to get users off Windows XP and recently started showing upgrade notifications on computers still powered by this ancient OS version.
A March 8 update brought these warnings on each Windows XP machine, but a recent patch delivered to Security Essentials also assaulted users with more notifications supposed to make everyone aware that end of support is coming for the operating system introduced more than 13 years ago.
Windows XP, on the other hand, remains one of the most used operating systems worldwide, despite all these efforts, with third-party statistics showing that almost a third of all desktop computers are still powered by this aging platform.
Microsoft, however, has no intention to delay end of support for Windows XP, so on April 8, computers still running this particular operating system will get the last, and probably the most important, batch of updates ever released by the software giant itself.