For the avg user that only needs internet, office, and music/movies Windows XP is good enough. What does Vista/7/8 offer a person using a Pentium 4 level computer? Nothing really worth paying for.
I am surprised MS doesn't get more credit for XP which could be seen as a relativity dependable workhorse. Problem is for MS of course they ended the need for the users to upgrade.
Windows XP extended support ends in April (2014). Having your computer hacked due to unpatched OS and browser should be worth paying to avoid. If you don't feel like paying, there's always linux distros, *bsd, nexenta OS...
This notion that there will suddenly be 5000 gazillion 0days as soon as XP loses support in April, and that as soon as you go on the Google homepage on May 1st, is ridiculous and absurd.
I've been running unsupported XP SP2 on one of my older machines for over a year now. It's connected, runs applications, email, and internet services. No hacks, no worms, no rootkits, no nothing.
Just use a good antivirus and you'll be fine. AFAIK there hasn't even BEEN a 0 day patch for XP in more than 3 years.
I think that if I had a 0day at this point, I'd wait until May to use it - exactly because the support ends and MS is unlikely to release a patch. Since lots of people will not care enough to upgrade, that could be a gold mine :)
I'm not quite a security expert, ask tptacek for confirmation, but you can never be sure. However, signs do start to crop up, and I haven't had any of the supposed "symptoms" of something like TSS/TDSS.
I'm not very familiar with Windows 8's security features (besides the inclusion of an improved Windows Defender and a sandbox by default).
However, what security can one speak of when it's only (enhanced) security against uninformed third parties? With features such as SmartScreen snarfing your requests, security goes only as far as the will of the vendor or their cooperation with an institution of power.
Windows malware threats still seem to be going quite consistent.
I just travelled through Asia (Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam) for two months and, indeed, everyone still uses Windows XP. I was actually pleasantly surprised when i used XP again after many years in internet cafes and noticed it to be good in terms of user interface. Things 'just work'. Maybe because i've used XP for many years, but i had the impression that many things were in logical places, little bloat or silly stuff that you get in Windows 8 and, most important at all, very fast and responsive even on the old machines they had there.
I was using Windows XP last week to make sure I didn't break compatibility and I miss little things like snap[0]. It is remarkable how quickly we build muscle memory because I really didn't use Windows 7 until about the third quarter of 2010. I was either on Tiger on my personal computer or XP for everything else.
I should add that XP also came out at a time when PCs were starting to come to a point that upgrading hardware began to offer only diminishing returns to this same set of people. P4 and first dual cores are fast enough to run the same 3 main things, net/office/music&movies with out being annoyingly slow (assuming you had a gig or more of ram). So perfect storm of good enough hardware and software.
Weren't there some issues with 64bit XP version though ?
I remember having trouble with it but maybe I was just unlucky. Would be interesting to see what % of those XP users have 32bit version still.
I am surprised MS doesn't get more credit for XP which could be seen as a relativity dependable workhorse. Problem is for MS of course they ended the need for the users to upgrade.