I do IT support professionally and we are leaning on people hard to get off XP. If they did, they'd know that upgrading the O/S can be vastly more complicated than just sticking in a DVD. Advice to periodically replace the O/S with a newer version usually comes from users who have no non-trivial applications they depend on.
In the business world, XP still has a huge user base, many times bigger than Windows 8. If they did, they'd know that upgrading the O/S can be vastly more complicated than just sticking in a DVD.īitflipper I didn't get that email.
Seriously, losing XP-compatibility usually has one of two causes: the developer is too lazy and/or too cheap to keep an XP machine around for testing, or they are coerced by Microsoft in order to keep their Windows logo certification. Because my applications interact with Microsoft Office, I also have to maintain compatibility with multiple versions of Office, and let me tell you that's a royal PIA! But I do it because the alternative is telling a customer I can no longer take his money. That's because I make a point of maintaining compatibility across many Windows versions.
I am a software developer, and my products install and run on XP just fine. Hence new software doesn't support it anymore. Windows XP has been officially discontinued, as it is 13 years old now.