Microsoft rescues XP users with emergency browser fix

XP is turning out to be quite the headache for Microsoft. Undoubtedly it is one of the best versions of Windows ever put out, but it&#x27;s 13 years old now and not even corporate conglomerates have an excuse for not updating. Yes, the alternative to XP is only a meagre few years old and I understand it costs money to upgrade, especially a large-scale corporate network spread out over multiple locations, regions and continents.<p>But then we need to ask ourselves this: at what point does supporting an older operating system like XP cost you more money then it would to spend the money upgrading to a later version of Windows? Surely there is a point where you&#x27;re spending more money on maintaining the older version on-top of added security expenses and unexpected expenses due to loss because of an undiscovered vulnerability.

Microsoft is going to have to take a stand and make this the last XP patch (for anyone not paying for extended support like certain governments) forRealThisTime if they ever want to move on.<p>In this case, I can understand the reprieve, if only because it came like 20 days after the EOL. In fact, you almost wonder if this wasn&#x27;t publicized until after the EOL in an attempt for malicious parties to do maximum damage.<p>But this won&#x27;t be the last hole. Others will exist and if Microsoft doesn&#x27;t stop from now on, it won&#x27;t disappear until web standards change to such an extent that all versions of IE that run on XP won&#x27;t render modern sites at all.<p>Kind of a good reason, in retrospect, to decouple the web browser from the OS, huh?

It&#x27;s breathtaking to see such a blunder: a Forune 100 company telling nearly 20% [1] of its installed user base, it&#x27;s second largest desktop OS customer base, to stop and make a financial decision about what to do, instead of giving them a low-cost, path of least resistance option to continue in some way similar to the status quo. For many people still on XP, the users are not technical enough to understand how to do an OS upgrade or how to migrate user data to a new machine, let alone understand why they would want to when the current system appears to work fine.<p>I&#x27;m surprised that they&#x27;re not trying to monetize their current XP user base with some sort of &quot;XP extended support&quot; fee-based subscription so they don&#x27;t force users to look elsewhere for a desktop OS -- between Windows 8&#x27;s blunders and a Mac, I suspect many of those XP users will consider a Mac. Or simply by offering a ~$40 upgrader app to get to Windows 7 &quot;lite&quot; for XP users that works on the same hardware and drivers...<p>[1] <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/02/discontinued-windowsxp-still-no-2-desktop-os-after-windows7-windows-8-lagging-far-behind/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;04&#x2F;02&#x2F;discontinued-windowsxp-stil...</a>

It&#x27;s pretty obvious that they did this because people were being advised not to use IE - without specifying a version.<p>If they didn&#x27;t update IE on XP then even IE on Win 7&#x2F;8 would get hit by advice not to use it.

What I&#x27;m wondering is how many times is this going to happen? Where they&#x27;re more-or-less forced to continue emergency patch mode for major vulns?

Out of support should mean out of support -- no one off patches.<p>ETA: Organizations will use these &#x27;emergency patches&#x27; as yet another reason not to upgrade.