Farewell, old friend. This kind of thing is regrettable, but there really isn't an easy answer either; support takes time and money, and constantly allotting some of that time and money to old systems gets harder and harder as they move forward. I hope that rather than lambasting Microsoft nonstop for something they'd have to do sooner or later, I hope that people will take the things they loved about XP and demand them from future products, or maybe even make their own OS—no small feat, I know, and I'm hardly tech-savvy enough for that so I guess I'm one to talk, but it beats sitting around moping at any rate. I've been on Windows 7 for some time now, and while it did have its kinks to work out it's been a helluva lot better than Vista was. The only computer in our house that still ran XP was pretty old anyway, so I personally won't be affected. I just hope my grandparents aren't lost in a fog at this point.[/img]
Support for most users was taken away a long time ago actually. It's been a rolling process and it is just now that no one gets official support. IIRC all current support was part of extended contracts such as for servers. As said above, it is pretty crazy for people to expect Microsoft to extend support this far outside of the project's scope. If anything I find it odd that it took this long. I mean they are 3 full releases and 7 years farther now. But all the same XP still runs on a surprising number of systems. (More surprising is probably the number of computers running even older OSs.) It puts Microsoft in a tough place trying to sell a new OS when many people simply don't care about or understand the changes being made. If their system works they see no need to upgrade.
It had a really good run, let's hope they continue the "tick tock" pattern they have made for themselves and then maybe the next OS won't be god awful. (Tick tock meaning "tick" is good, "tock is bad". XP - good, vista - bad, 7 - good, 8 - bad)
Never realized the tick tock pattern. It makes sense the more I think about it. Anyway, it's time to say good bye to this wonderful software that's been with me for a really long time. The only problem now is that my school still uses this for their computers.
I liked it for it's time... But in the last year or so I've developed a strong distaste for it. My law firm used it and it made our computers horrendously slow and unreliable as the demands went further and further on it due to what we had to use for programs. Like the new phone system caused the computer to process like an 80's computer. I'm not kidding, it'd take you an hour to start your work, I wasn't the only one who complained about it, either. But my boss insisted that we use it until the day XP actually died. The new computers are much better with seven and process much faster.
It'd probably be easier for him to just get a new computer. Maybe more expensive, but it'll make the data transfer much easier. Just a thought.
I feel your pain, dude... My mom thinks it's a bragging right of hers to know how to turn on a computer we had in the 90's. She still refuses to realize she needs to know computers for any job out there.
