Windows XP marketshare is low :'(

https://www.netmarketshare.com/oper...8-08","dateEnd":"2018-08","segments":"-1000"}

 

Take heart, my friend! We are survivors! We are living proof that XP is not dead yet! When something does what you need it to do, it is never obsolete! As long as I can, I'll keep using XP! The greatest OS Microsoft EVER made!

 

YES!!

 

They're not actively trying to stop useage of all the rest of them, only XP, , , , , ,

 

XP is a monkey on Microsoft's back. Microsoft, with the exception of the underrated Windows ME, had achieved a great degree of financial success with nearly every OS they had ever released. They figured that XP would last no longer than a few years and that they'd get the public to migrate to their newest OS as soon as it was ready to be released. Nearly 17 years later, it's still here. After XP Microsoft lost their way and forgot what had made their old operating systems so great. This became somewhat evident with Vista/7, but really became clear with 8/8.1 & 10.

While MS even in their prime years had some missteps (such as trying to force consumers to use Internet Explorer, though there were ways of getting around that), in general they let you have it your way and gave you a choice of not only what you wanted to do but how you wanted to do it. They gave you free rein to tweak everything so that it was just the way you liked it, not how they wanted you to have it. With every version of Windows post-XP, you lost more and more customization options, and while there were workarounds they weren't always reliable/trustworthy. 8 was when the defecation really hit the fan. It was bad enough that things that were once so easy to tweak were now more difficult than a final exam in college calculus, but then they started to force this awful Metro interface on consumers. And don't get me started on 10, which all but requires you to deactivate a multitude of settings to keep them from spying on you. It seems they're trying to usher in an age of computing where everything is done via smartphones and tablets. They want to make desktops/laptops obsolete. MS trapped themselves in a corner by making XP so good. They failed to heed those famous words: "Change for the sake of change is not progress." The more they've been changing, the more I've kept clinging onto what not only works but works sensationally. XP is the best MS OS for almost any machine released in the last 20 years or so. From Pentium III PCs to even 3rd/4th-gen Core i3/i5/i7 machines (provided you have the right drivers and know what you're doing), it makes them functional AND speedy.

It speaks volumes about what has happened to a company that was once so great to see what they're doing now. They're no longer concerned about making consumers happy, but whatever it takes to turn profits. Not to say they haven't always been doing it for the money (they are a business after all), but back in the day they seemed to put more stock in listening to their user base, actively hearing out suggestions and making sure that whatever OS you used--whether you were still on 3.1 or 95 or had gone all the way up to 2000 or XP--remained reliable for whatever you needed it to do. Planned obsolescence has always been a thing with Microsoft--sooner or later each operating system would see its support cut off. But they have gone from planning obsolescence to forcing it on the public at large. They are trying to make sure that everyone--be it the millionaire with money to burn who can afford a new system, or the old retired man or woman who relies on SSI and barely has enough for groceries never mind a PC--HAS to migrate off of XP, or whatever OS they're using, and onto their latest version of Windows, not because of any legitimate game-breaking flaws in pre-Vista OSes but because "We're Microsoft and you're not, and you're going to do what we say or we'll leave you out in the cold!" XP's share of the market is low because MS has used guerrilla tactics to force boosts in sales of 7/8/8.1/10 & not because any of those OSes truly earned it. Windows XP was user-intuitive, highly customizable and designed to run well even on low-spec machines--the exact opposite of its many successors (though Vista & 7 still retain bits & pieces of the old Microsoft philosophy, they were a grim foreshadowing of what was to come in subsequent years).

Until MS gets their acts together and returns to everything that had made them so good in the past, I'm sticking with XP. The last Windows version I'd even think about using is 7, but even that is a far cry from what once was.