MS own goal with xp countdown widget

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Microsoft's Windows XP countdown widget: oh, the irony | Technology | guardian.co.uk

Previous Blog home Microsoft's Windows XP countdown widget: oh, the ironyMicrosoft sensibly wants people to upgrade to Windows 7 (it's money for them, security for you) so offering a widget for the countdown to XP's end of life makes sense. However...


Hilarious, but true. Microsoft, as part of its drive to get people and companies to migrate from Windows XP to Windows 7 (and you really ought to, you know: Windows 7 is more secure and it was designed in the 21st century so it knows about things like SSDs, which make your computer go like a rocket) has developed a little Windows widget that you can use to count down the days until that moment in 2014 when XP hits its End of Support (which gets its own TLA: EOS).

So, that's a widget to get people and companies off Windows XP. With us so far?

And here's the page.

Download Details - Microsoft Download Center - Windows XP End Of Support Countdown Gadget

Mmm... yes... System requirements... "Supported Operating Systems: Windows 7, Windows Vista."

 

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They must have borrowed some of the managers from my work to sign-off on that one.

 

I think I'd lose the will to live with a three year countdown on my desktop...

It's bad enough having to wait for father christmas.

 

LOL this whole XP retirement thing.

I'll probably still be running (and supporting) it until about 2020.

 

You're still on XP? I thought for sure, Zeb would migrate over

 

Yeah, it's kinda amusing, but as was said, I think having this running on my XP desktop would probably drive me nuts as well...

XP will be around for a while, just support will get thinner, and thinner until it goes away entirely as it did for NT, 2000, and other products too. Quite sure my other home computer running XP, will still be up and running with it in 2020 just like zebulebu's, runs some of my older gear and apps perfectly fine still (although personally I've come to prefer using 7 in just about all cases over XP... it's a silly thing, but the window snap feature is really useful when working with Office applications).

 

Please correct me if I am wrong, but could this be for support staff / managers / admins who are using Win7 or Vista and are supporting users on XP? After all, I did not know there were widgets in XP...

 

If the managers etc don't know when EOS is for XP they should be immediately demoted to a logging-only role and have their admin rights removed.
The amusing thing about it is that it DOESN'T work on XP, which kinda defeats the point really. Especially in an XP only environment, which is where it would be most useful you would think.

 

this is why apple will win the great computer war lol