Windows XP still runs at more than half of businesses surveyed

[A Guy]

Windows XP continues to find a home among a hefty number of businesses, at least according to the results of a new survey.

Among more than 100 businesses that recently attended the TechEd North America 2014 conference, a full 53 percent admitted to still running XP within their organization. Polled by IT systems management provider Adaptiva, 29 percent of those surveyed said their inability to move away from XP at this point stemmed from issues of application compatibility, 15 percent said it was because of the time involved in migrating, 4 percent cited the cost of a migration, and 2 percent pointed to the demand for user training.

Source

A Guy

 

[alphanumeric]

I'm sure my former employer is still running a few XP boxes. They are not connected to the Internet so no big deal. Compatibility would also be an issue. They run very specialized software custom designed for the equipment they monitor. They are also maintenance terminals.

 

[OvenMaster]

My bank, my insurance agent, and my public library still use XP Pro.

 

[tannim]

I know Home Depot still uses XP, I saw it on their point of sale registers friday.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there

There's loads of reasons why people are still using XP -- for example some Huge Engineering projects use gear that often lasts for 25 years or more - very expemsive to replace - sometimes in the 100,000's of US Dollar amounts - or even more. The original manufacturer might have gone out of business or is no longer making the same gear so the old kit is no longer supported. - We see this every day with cheaper items like printers and scanners - Canon and Epson are quite guilty of this - a lot of their older and still very capable printers and scanners didn't even have 64 bit drivers when VISTA came out.

In any case things like public Library services can asily run on older OS'es for ages yet --if you've STILL got a public library you should be very greatful -- a lot are closing down so those that remain probably need to count every Dollar, Euro, Rouble, Penny, Zloty etc etc.

My XP system (running as a VM) will outlast W7 by years -- I've mentioned before I have some great Vinyl Record cutting Gear, some Minidisc recorders, an HP Plotter and various other gizmos that were never supported even on W7 and I still use this gear regularly -- and as a VM on an SSD XP runs at really LIGHTNING speed too.

Some POS equipment ( -- not Piece of S---E !!! BTW ) uses embedded windows which is a bit different to the "Normal" or usual desktop OS. These will stay around also for quite some time and aren't a security risk either. The requests for example to a Bank for Credit / Debit card validation is sent to another server and the Internal LAN of the store receives the answer / authorisation which is sent to the POS tills.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[Phill3990]

Hey,

Most schools in the UK still use XP for there PCs. Whether this is by choice or because its on the computers when they bulk buy them is another question!

Phill3990

 

[Jonguy30]

I was in a store some weeks ago and there I saw windows xp computers still being used. I think it's because of the software they use?

 

[NoelDP]

So long as they cannot be in any way connected to the Internet they areprobaly okay. If thay can be connected, start worrying!

 

[Jonguy30]

Lol, I agree with that. It was only one computer I saw that had it (maybe it was isolated), but I'm not sure if those computers processing credit and debit cards use XP, would that be a cause of concern also? I take it those sort of computers are connected to the internet (after all, how else are you gonna make a payment?).

 

[NoelDP]

Many shops have a direct/dedicate connection to the home server or at least use tunnelling to avoid problems - it all depends on the interfaces involved.
The problem comes mostly from Trojans and keyloggers, rather than anything else - if the machine is locked down properly so it can't be used to surf for p0rn, and has proper protection in terms of firewalls etc, then it may be OK.