{"id":153395,"date":"2016-02-11T15:21:19","date_gmt":"2016-02-11T13:21:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=153395"},"modified":"2016-02-11T15:22:29","modified_gmt":"2016-02-11T13:22:29","slug":"the-greatest-windows-of-all-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/software\/153395-the-greatest-windows-of-all-time.html","title":{"rendered":"The Greatest Windows of all Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recent reports that one of Melbourne\u2019s largest hospital networks was still running Windows XP<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0raised questions about the continued use of the operating system.<\/p>\n

A poll\u00a0conducted by\u00a0MyBroadband in January revealed that even among a tech-savvy audience, around 3%<\/strong><\/a> still use the venerable operating system. This number is corroborated by our site analytics.<\/p>\n

To explain why Windows XP clings to life – it has\u00a0been out of extended support for almost 2 years – we looked at the launch dates and lifespans of the versions of Microsoft\u2019s operating system since Windows 95.<\/p>\n

However, Microsoft only lists information such as end of retail sales and end of pre-installed sales for Windows versions from XP onward.<\/p>\n

These details, along with the launch date, end of mainstream support, and end of extended support, are depicted in the infographic below.<\/p>\n

\"Windows<\/a><\/p>\n

Mainstream support<\/strong> includes free support and product updates, including the ability to request product design changes and features.<\/p>\n

Extended support<\/strong>\u00a0includes security updates, with the option to pay for additional support.<\/p>\n

Most-loved and long-lived Windows<\/h3>\n

Windows XP is the most long-lived version of Microsoft’s modern operating systems by a significant margin.<\/p>\n

While Microsoft typically releases new versions of Windows every 2 or 3 years, there was a 6-year gap\u00a0between the release of Windows XP in 2001, and Windows Vista in 2007.<\/p>\n

The reaction to Windows Vista was tremendously negative, causing many Windows users to hold off on upgrading until after the launch of Windows 7 in October 2009.<\/p>\n

It is interesting to note that with nearly all the versions of Windows listed above, the sale of machines pre-installed with the operating system halted before its mainstream support ended.<\/p>\n

There are two exceptions: Windows XP and Windows 7 Professional.<\/p>\n

The popularity of Windows XP<\/h3>\n

To suggest that Windows XP remains in use purely because people got used to it and refuse to change with the times would be selling it short.<\/p>\n

Yes, there were many complaints<\/a><\/strong> about the operating system – particularly its \u201cFisher Price toy\u201d look and the introduction of product activation – but it\u00a0introduced a number of features that resonated with users.<\/p>\n

Under the hood, Microsoft merged the Windows 9x and Windows NT branches in XP, and stopped supporting 16-bit backwards compatibility through MS-DOS.<\/p>\n

Windows XP also dropped support for Microsoft\u2019s VxD driver model, forcing hardware makers to use the Windows Driver Model.<\/p>\n

Consensus in the industry was that this decreased occurrences of the infamous \u201cBlue Screen of Death\u201d due to misbehaving drivers – a major drawcard for users upgrading from Windows 98 or Millennium Edition.<\/p>\n

More on Windows<\/h3>\n

Most popular version of Windows among MyBroadband\u2019s readers<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

The risk of still running Windows XP<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Windows 1.0 to Windows 10: from the first to the last Windows<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

How to securely use Windows XP after support ends<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Even though Windows XP has been unsupported for almost 2 years, there are still a number of users clinging to the venerable operating system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":133426,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[35,123,807,26970,4806],"class_list":["post-153395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-software","tag-headline","tag-microsoft","tag-windows","tag-windows-10","tag-windows-xp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153395"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153395"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":153401,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153395\/revisions\/153401"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}