Windows XPiration

Well, with about 3 weeks to go until Microsoft stops supporting one of its biggest and most successful operating systems ever, 500 million computer users worldwide are soon to be abandoned--if they keep running Windows XP. 

I'm one of them. 

I've kept my old Gateway workhorse computer, which I've had since late 2005, running XP and even have given it a refurb. Of course, I couldn't have upgraded if I'd wanted to--Win Vista and it's subsequent generations (all bloated like a corpse in hot TX heat) wouldn't fit. 

So now my options are the same as every other user's: update both the machine and the OS, start using Linux on my current older machine, or switch to Mac (not--it's hard enough having to learn new, needlessly and endlessly updated software and OSes without switching the horse under this rider completely). 

I probably would have gotten to this upcoming milestone in somewhat blissful ignorance except that now that I'm working for a computer service business part-time, well, it's THE topic right now, at least for me. If you want to read more of what I wrote about XP's impending doom, follow this link. (In a future article, I'll write about what you can and should do with your XP machines.) 

That article is a rather serious look at what those who waited must do now that we're down to the 11th hour. This one is different.

Imagine working for an employer who constantly changes the rules about the time you learn your job and how to do it. 

Imagine being in a relationship with someone who has a habit of leaking your personal information to others unless you constantly remind him not to. 

Imagine having a co-worker who performs her tasks just a bit differently from month to month or year to year, leaving you to figure out what the heck she just did.

That's the software bind we've gotten ourselves into--and yes, we've been there for years. There was a time when consumer preference drove the economy and the goods we bought, used, and kept buying. No more. It's now engineer-driven--software engineers, I might add. 

We buy what they design, whether we want it or not. Usually, we don't. 

But we keep buying it like a junkie at a meth lab. Ugly image, I know. But honestly, we're addicted--helplessly so--to our electronic lifestyles. And because we are, software engineers have us by the short hairs. 

How's that feel? Are you squirming, yet? In about 3 weeks and the weeks thereafter, when XP is still running on many thousands of machines, there'll be more squirming when viruses and other malware attack these unsupported systems. They will come, despite the fact that some have said other viable systems make a more attractive target. That may be partly true. But there are others who love destruction for destruction's sake. 

It seems to me that we've forgotten our power as consumers in the act of consuming. And that, my friends, is why XP is going away at all.