Thanks very much for the link. It's helpful.

I've been an advertising copywriter for technology ad agencies. Here is something that may be helpful for you: I suggest you work on creating a better way of explaining what you are trying to say.

I visited the link you gave and became confused. It says, "Powered by Malwarebytes". My guess is that it would take me an hour to decide what is being communicated. And, I already know about host files.

If you put more effort into explaining, every reader would find it far easier to understand what you have to say.

I'm interested in anything anyone has to say about Malwarebytes.

"... runs into the millions."

Yes, but Microsoft is taking in millions from "Enterprise" users. See the sub-heading "Large customers are paying huge amounts" in Microsoft Windows XP "end of life": Conflict of interest.

"... no longer secure..."

OpenBSD is secure because it was examined carefully for vulnerabilities. Microsoft makes more money if there are vulnerabilities, and if its older products are considered likely to be insecure.

"... when it no longer boots..."

We have corporate users who do the same thing every day on computers installed in 2004. They don't want change.

"... when none of the software you use will still run on the old OS"

Yes, you and I. But some corporate users do specialized corporate work on software that ran under DOS. It does what they want. There is little call for change.

"... when you have to employ tech staff with out-of-date skills..."

The Windows command line windows are mostly just the old DOS. There is nothing out-of-date.

"... when the software is a dead do-do that nobody wants to touch..."

Lots of people do lots of things that have remained stable for decades.

"Sorry, but everything has an end-of-life."

I talked to a guy who makes a lot of money per hour maintaining Cobol programs on old mainframes. Yes, end of life. But possibly decades from now.

"When you can't log into your damn bank because it's said that IE6 is too old..."

The browsers are updated frequently, of course. And computers connected only to an internal network have no outside internet vulnerabilities, if there are no DVD drives. I talked to a woman who worked at Tektronix who could not send an email from her work computer because there was no outside access.

Should employees be allowed to explore the internet during lunch breaks? Sure, on a separate network in the lunch room.

I have the latest hardware and software, a 24-port gigabit switch, and multiple 3 Terabyte RAID drives. But that's because I make a lot more techological demands than the average person.

I don't feel conflict of interest. Unfortunately, conflict of interest is a big factor in the lives of many people who are involved with computer technology. Their minds are persuaded by what would make them more money.

What I said may be imperfectly expressed. However, we have about 20 Windows XP computers operated by people who are not intense about cooperating. Those computers are guarded only by Malwarebytes and the fact that are all limited users, and we've had no problems.

The point I was trying to make is that, if there is enough attention given, software can be free of vulnerabilities.

Software does not have an "end of life". It continues to do what it always did.

"End of life" is a marketing term used so Microsoft can sell more copies of Windows, apparently. My understanding is that fixing newly discovered vulnerabilities in Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 would be fairly inexpensive.

I've explored the issues concerning Windows XP: Microsoft Windows XP "end of life": Conflict of interest.