Analyst says that Microsoft does the right thing by letting users know of XP EOS

Apr 4, 2014 12:20 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft will end support for Windows XP in just 4 days and although the company urges everyone to upgrade as soon as possible, at least 28 percent of computers worldwide are still running it.

Even though Microsoft has provided advanced notifications that Windows XP support is coming to an end, plenty of users are still disappointed with the decision and ask for more time to upgrade. And still, analysts believe that Microsoft has made the right thing and unlike Apple, it provided no less than five years of advanced notice to make sure that users have enough time to switch to a newer OS.

Wolfgang Goerlich, vice president of Consulting Services for VioPoint, says that Microsoft handles end of support completely different than Apple, as the fruity-named company chose to stop providing updates for OS X Snow Leopard without providing advanced notice to its users.

“A useful comparison is between Microsoft and Apple. Microsoft released Windows XP in 2002. Apple released OS X Snow Leopard in 2009. Microsoft announced the retirement plan in 2009. That is seven years of full support with a five-year advanced notice,” he said.

“Meanwhile, Apple quietly stopped providing patch updates in 2011 and announced end-of-life in 2013. By comparison, that is two years of support with no advanced notice for ending security patches. In this light, Microsoft did the right thing by providing guidance and advanced notice.”

Of course, Microsoft’s efforts to convince users to upgrade have often been considered as too aggressive by users who were still running Windows XP, especially because the company turned to notifications and pop-up warnings that were displayed right on the desktop.

Starting March 8, Windows XP computers are showing upgrade notifications following an update delivered to users via Windows Update, while Security Essentials has recently received a new patch to do exactly the same thing.

This user scaring tactics, as some have named them, are only supposed to make people aware that XP support is coming to an end, Microsoft said, as some people still don’t know that they need to upgrade to another operating system as soon as possible.

Additionally, Microsoft explains that even though users will continue to run anti-virus protection and some other security products on their computers, they’ll still be vulnerable, as an unpatched operating system could allow attackers access personal data and run malicious code by bypassing all active security apps running on a target computer.