Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Windows XP Still Popular Among Users

So, the big question is - When would Windows 8 actually outdo Windows XP in terms of popularity? Three months have passed since Microsoft officially ended the support for Windows XP. Still, the aged operating system is comfortably placed at the second spot as far as the user market share of Windows operating systems is concerned. Compared to this, Windows 8 is at the third place with just 14 % of the total user share.

According to technicians available at the Windows XP help and support center, one in five SMBs still use Windows XP operating system. This comes as quite a surprise because while Microsoft was planning to discard the services of Windows XP, the company had insisted its customers to migrate to the latest versions to avoid the security issues pertaining to the lack of support for this OS. Among the users who have finally relented depending on XP, more have opted for Windows 7 operating system instead of the touch-sensitive versions. Due to this, the user market share of Windows 7 has skyrocketed in the last few months and has now touched a staggering 50 % mark.

Microsoft no longer issues security patches for the Windows XP operating system. As stated by the Windows XP help team, over the last three months, Bitdefender has detected one web marketing business that had to tackle almost 800 million malware attacks. This emphasizes the need to switch over to the more updated versions. Catalin Cosoi, chief security strategist says that, "Swift migration from XP is a must for all users. A few weeks after the end of support announcement, a new Internet Explorer zero-day vulnerability turned into a permanent threat for XP users. That was until Microsoft issued a patch that was made available for Windows XP users as well. However, this was an exception that shouldn't make enterprises believe it will happen again, so the swift migration from XP is a must for all users."

Some of the other interesting findings of the Bitdefender research report were that almost 37% SMB staff work remotely or from home, making them more vulnerable to BYOD security worries. Compared to this, around 17% of their employers allow workers' personal devices full access to their virtual private networks, which can again invite security issues.

Hence, even though Windows XP comprises of several useful options, it is essential that users migrate to the latest advanced versions at the earliest.

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