Windows XP SP1 Support Ends Tuesday

tophee writes "ZDNet reports that support for Windows XP SP1 and SP1a will be ending this coming Tuesday. From the article: 'Microsoft will end support for Windows XP Service Pack 1 and SP1a on Tuesday, leaving people no option but to upgrade to Service Pack 2 if they wish to continue to receive crucial components, including security software.' Colin Barker of ZDNet notes, 'There's little reason for anyone to still be running SP1; SP2 contained a range of improvements to XP's security.'"

WGA

[Paxtez]

Not having to install WGA seems like a good reason...

Re:And once again... (you can say that again!)

[bassgoonist]

yeah...and how much did you pay for linux? :-p

Of course...gov't agencies and other large entities will get whatever support they pay for...which means they can get SP1 support if SP2 screws up their software.

gotta add something before it gets out of control

[Rooked_One]

M$ didn't do this to shut down pirates... they know that people will easily get around any protection they can muster. Its so they can work less and concentrate on other things - and to not worry about the people who havn't bothered installing SP2 yet for some reason.

Dialup

[Kangburra]

'There's little reason for anyone to still be running SP1; SP2 contained a range of improvements to XP's security.'

They forget of course that not everyone in the world has broadband access. Those on dial-up cannot update to SP2 easily. Here, regional WA, has patchy broadband at the best of times, let alone those who use the internet "just for emails" and don't want to spend a lot to do it.

Re:Heh

[Achromatic1978]

Ubuntu Dapper was released nigh on ... four months ago. How many distros that were flying high five years ago exist now, in the same state of 'repair'? Yggdrasil? Slackware? Etc? Anyone can 'commit' to anything. I can commit to providing "security updates for Achromatix for the next century!", but it doesn't really count for a lot only four months after release. They're hardly bound to it, even remotely.

Re:Dialup

[Anonymous Coward]

I was under the impression they would send you a free SP2 cd if you requested it

Lots of people still use W98...

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Forced obsolesence is an attempt to force peopleto move on up. DOing this to XP is to help build the mindset that XP is old and it is time to think about Vista...

However, lots of people are still using W98, so their obsolecence program is not necessarily working all that well in personal user space. I'm sure that in corporate space (where they make their money) it works a treat.

Re:Dialup

[mwvdlee]

Even worse; The ISP my brother has, uses a software/hardware combination that they acknowledge won't work with SP2. They refuse to upgrade either, so he's stuck with SP1. The thing is; it's a pretty big ADSL supplier in Holland and he's not the only one in this situation. I can only assume there are many similar situations in which people really are forced to stick with SP1.

Re:Makes sense

[Guppy06]

"Anyway I hate MS versioning schemes, why service pack why not call it a point release?"

Because point releases is what Microsoft makes their OS money from, charging hundreds of dollars to upgrade Windows 4.0 to Windows 4.1 (95 to 98) or NT 5.0 to NT 5.1 (2000 to XP). One could make the case that Microsoft uses their odd naming scheme (such as "Vista" for "NT 5.3") mostly to disguise the fact that they're charging more and more money for less and less meaningful version updates.

Little Reason?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

There's little reason for anyone to still be running SP1; SP2 contained a range of improvements to XP's security.'"

How's about the fact that you paid upwards of $200 dollars for your copy, along with that the implicit support from Microsoft. How's that for a good reason?

Re:And once again... (you can say that again!)

[roseblood]

You have to understand that is not me. But it does describe something like 30% of home PC users (if you consider that a recent news report said DSL/CABLE has a market penetration of fourty-some percent of home PC users, and a good majority of home PC users will be using windows XP.) People like that will not be aware of the existance of 'service packs.' They will not know the value of such things and will not know that microsoft offers to send you SP2 on a disk. They most likely will not be knowledgeabl enough to navigate the MS knowledge base to learn any of those facts. These are the people who can not support them selves(IE: they aren't slashdot readers.)

Jebsis, the world is not slashdot. Every third person in the real world does not contribute to OSS projects. They do not know what the hell Linux is, and they are not even likely to know what Vista is.

Re:Little Reason?

[Toreo asesino]

Do you really expect to be supported running software with known problems? It's only been out since the beginning of Feb 2003, so it's not too much to ask, surely?

Re:Little Reason?

[Anonymous Coward]

and they provided that support through service packs and hotfixes, if your using sp1 you have chosen not to take them up on there support obligations and hence your on your own baby.

Re:The problem

[suv4x4]

The problem with Microsoft is that they never separate bug fixes from feature additions. So either you stay vulnerable or you eat more and more of their junk.

Name a feature addition in SP2 that's a showstopper for you. For all time I used SP2, I never found a problem with it, and I use and test a lot of software almost every day.

How Debian (and derivatives) do it right

[SgtChaireBourne]

how much did you pay for SP2?

A lot. Twice. MS makes a profit on Windows, somewhere about 70%-80% profit in fact. Then you pay again when you have to re-tool your whole shop for the differences found in XP SP2. That is, if you are still running out-dated architectures like MS Windows. Many of us don't pay a thing.

So, dude, just lay off with the faboi stuff and get over it: XP SP2 breaks a lot of software that worked under XP SP1 -- even today, in October of 2006.

I realize some of the MS fabois just don't know better (or don't want to), but many simply get paid to cruise blogs and websites and put in the good word for their masters [digg.com] and throw out the same canards again and again. However, because there are many more among those that read and don't post that haven't figured that tactic out it's necessary address them again and again:

The places that notice little or no effect between XP SP1 and XP SP2 are few. Even the reviews compared the effort of deploying SP2 to more like an OS upgrade [crn.com] than to anything else, let alone a "patch". Several sites I witnessed, could not deploy SP2 because it broke several of their mission critical apps, even on the desktop. In those cases, none of the vendors were quick about getting their over-priced cruft to work with SP2 for MS' over-priced cruft. One even tried to demand payment for development work.

In contrast, look how Debian (and some other systems) still does it. Patches address only specific problems and do not change the functionality of the software. In a production environment, it is essential that nothing changes until you yourself make it change. People pay the money for getting a known item. It will have advantages and disadvantages, but since they are known they can be planned around. Changing the specs means a lot of readjustment, which translates into lower return on investment.

Look at it this way. What if the gear ratio on your car changed occasionally and without advanced warning? Or if, after two years of using it daily, it suddenly turns into a diesel while the tank is full of gasoline? Or if the tires changed from summer, winter, or all-weather while driving? You get the idea. If you buy something to perform in a certain way, you expect it to continue performing that way for the life cycle of the product. It used to be that way even in IT. I guess it still is, with the exeception of MS and its products. I guess that's because so much of the MS business model is based on keeping customers on the treadmill and too busy to look around, let alone hop off.

Businesses like stability and predictability. Debian has those in spades and is attracting more users that way. As a result, the visibility of Debian is increasing and as that happens, an re-awakening of the knowledge that even IT can be reliable and predictable. Reliable and predictable == money.

Re:Little Reason?

[drawfour]

Microsoft IS supporting XP. It's called Service Pack 2.

Re:Thanks for the notice guys

[Daltorak]

I'm an a large site that's running XP SP1 on all of quite a few thousand machines and I'd just like to say that one week notice of termination of support is ridiculous.

You're right, one week is totally ridiculous and unnacceptable.

Of course, ehm... they announced this a long time ago -- January, to be precise.

http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifean19 [microsoft.com]
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/support/endofsupp ort.mspx [microsoft.com]

Re:Makes sense

[LMariachi]

Apple releases 0.1 releases every year

OS X 10.3, aka Panther, shipped in October 2003. 10.4, aka Tiger, shipped in April 2005. 10.5, aka Leopard, is due in spring of 2007.

they name each one after a wild feline of some sort, "to disguise the fact that they're charging every year for minor updates".

Leaving aside the question of whether the point releases (of Windows or OS X) have been minor, let's see... apple menu, About This Mac... "Mac OS X Version 10.4.8." That sure is one crafty disguise!

Even if you had a point, "but those guys do it too!" is not a valid response. [cuyamaca.edu]

Re:The problem

[plover]

The "very annoying" limit is on the number of TCP connections that have been sent a SYN without having yet receieved an ACK, not on complete sockets. Is it annoying because you frequent dead hosts, or because you are running a port scanner?

And what exactly did you need to do with raw sockets that you couldn't do with AF_INET? Is there something so special about your application's packets that you have to hand-craft the TCP/IP headers? Do you intentionally write DDoS attackers?

At least you can port your application to a real OS if you feel the need to byte-edit your network packets. Oh, excuse me. I must have forgotten that even Linux doesn't support AF_RAW, because there's still no legitimate use for an end user to have access to raw sockets. Even so, you still have an option: you can write your own protocol (which is exactly what raw sockets was letting you informally do in the first place.)

Sorry, but with the number of Windows zombies out there that are screwing up the net, I'd rather have to make one person like you work to regain these "features" than to have them exist for millions of idiots who won't ever need them.

Or could it be that you just saw in a KB article that Microsoft "took something away", never mind that it actually helps improve network security, and you never did anything with raw sockets anyway?

Re:The problem

[julesh]

Name a feature addition in SP2 that's a showstopper for you.

* The limit of 30 half-open TCP connections means that using it for some networking applications is infeasible.

* The fact that it needs 1590MB of disk space on top of your XP SP1 installation in order to install means that it actually can't be installed on a machine with the original recommended minimum hard disk size for XP (1.5Gb = 1536MB total).

But carry on living in your fantasy world where everyone else has the exact same requirements and usage patterns you do.

Re:Little Reason?

[Kaenneth]

SP2 IS the support, that's part of what you paid for, the ongoing updates.

This is like complaining when you bought a car with free oil changes for 10 years, that you need to get the oil changed, then NOT taking it in to get changed, then complaining because it broke down!

In summary, if you're using Windows XP, and not running SP2 by now, AND you are complaining about Windows problems, you are an idiot.