Why keeping Windows XP is a Bad Idea

IDC has recently released a pretty good white paper on the perils and pitfalls of sticking with Windows XP (and therefore not migrating to Windows 7 

IDC has outlined a number of concerns with not migrating to later operating systems including the following;

• New PC capabilities that are not exploited by Windows XP.
• The approaching end of Windows XP SP3 extended support on April 8, 2014.
• Lower operational costs
• Soft benefits (i.e. Consumerization of IT - and the limited support under Windows XP)
• Compliance issues (No patches after Windows XP support terminates)

Here is a great diagram referenced form the IDC white-paper which outlines the increasing cost for keeping Windows XP.

What we can see from this graph is that the costs for maintaining an operating system gradually increases. This kind of makes sense as we all have felt the gradual decline in speed/performance from our machines as they age and with the added detritus of legacy applications 

If I was a salesman, I would be toting the above diagram on the back of my business card. Some pretty incredible improvements here. That said, after a closer look, Windows 7 take apparently ZERO time to re-image... Not quite sure of that one...

You can read more about this white paper in the following link to Microsoft website which is currently hosting the IDC white-paper.

Mitigating Risk: Why Sticking with Windows XP is a Bad Idea (IDC White Paper)

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=29883

Application Compatiblity and Ageing Applications

Ageing Applications and Vista Compatibility


I still maintain that most applications will work under Vista and Longhorn (just today re-branded as Windows Server 2008) but by reading this blog you might think that there are quite a few issues. My gut feeling is on application compatibility is will follow a sliding scale of something like:

1 year-old application - 95% will be compatible with Windows 7/8
2-4 year-old application - 90% will be compatible with Windows 7/8
4-7 year-old application - 80% will be compatible with Windows 7/8
8 years and older applications - 50% will be compatible with Windows 7/8


What drives these kind of numbers? Not hard-core scientific research but experience with thousands of applications from Windows 3.1, NT4, 2K and Windows XP.

Hence, the reference to "gut feel". That said, these estimates can be backed up by the following events;

1) In 2005 Service Pack 2 (SP2) introduced a majority of the restrictions that are now in place with Windows Vista. Excluding the new UAC functionality, most the local registry, local machine IE restrictions were expected to cause a large issue with corporate applications with the release of SP2 - the reality was the only a small proportion of applications were affected.

2) In 2003, Microsoft released Windows XP with a new driver model and enhanced application compatibility support for legacy applications. This is the big hurdle for most developers (excluding driver developers) - if you got your application working on XP - then you are likely to get most of the application working on Vista and Windows Server 2008. The driver developers had to pretty much start again.

3) From 2001-2002 Vendors starting delivering application installations in the MSI format moving from the early days of a few poorly constructed MSI's (some packages were just Setup.exe's within a single custom action inside an MSI) to the present where roughly 80% of applications are shipped in the MSI format. Note: an install may be released an SETUP.EXE but really is a boot-strap MSI.

4) In 2000, Windows Installer started the installation standardization process that allowed vendors and corporate IT system administrator to rationalize their application management strategies to a single deployment technology (MSI) thus removing two of the primary reasons for application installation failure;
- Non-standard installation technology
- Non-transparent installation logic

It may seem straight-forward but vast majority of application failures are due to poor application installation routines.

5) Most application in use today that were shipped pre-Windows XP would have been targeted for Windows 2000 or NT 4 or 3.51 and may have dependencies on 16-bit components or the NT driver model. These older applications represent the greatest challenge to application compatibility on Windows Vista.

But hey, that's why we can use Microsoft's App-V and Citrix to deliver these legacy apps. No more need for kiosk machines (aka total security liability).