Re: Reminds me of Y2K
"The hype is that 'something new might happen!' after 4/8/14. This appears to just be marketing FUD."
I'm not certain by what objective standard it can be dismissed as pure FUD. I mean, sure, some of the commentary is over-the-top. Windows XP hasn't made ATMs particularly vulnerable, for example.
But by and large, XP's retirement poses some legitimate security considerations, most of which has been objectively reported by the tech media. Whether one absolutely must act on these considerations is debatable, but the considerations themselves aren't FUD.
In the articles I've written, the perspective has generally been: "If you know what you're doing, you don't have to upgrade, but if you have to ask whether you'll be safe, XP might be more trouble than it's worth." I think this is a pretty responsible and fair assessment. Yes, some people will keep using XP without incident. The ratio of victims to potential victims is usually pretty small, even when we're talking about major cyberthreats. But I think it would be irresponsible to broadly encourage people to keep using XP. Even if only a minority of users get victimized, the consequences can be pretty terrible for the unfortunate few. IT professionals and tech-literate consumers are one thing. But XP's user footprint is huge, and we can safely assume it includes millions who could blithely stumble into a trouble-- and who might unwittingly spread the problem to other machines. Words like "might" and "could" set off alarms for some people-- but in this case, I think they're a necessary part of comprehensive discussion.
User Rank: Ninja
4/15/2014 | 8:24:43 PM