It’s amazing yet true that the veryown Windows XP is one of the most popular operating system in theworld has turned 10 this Wednesday. However, Microsoft didn’tcelebrate the birth anniversary of the Operating System whileabandoning any sort of congratulation message or even press release.

As a matter of fact, Microsoft hadshifted the status of Windows XP to RTM i.e. release to manufacturingon 24 August, 2001. This term is used by the company to categorize aproduct ready for release in the market. Thus, Windows XP reached theretail market on October, 2001.

An analyst named, Michael Cherry whoworks with Kirkland, Wash.-based Directions on Microsoft stated, “TheWindows XP that people loved wasn't [the original 2001] XP, it was XPSP2.”The Windows XP SP2 was shipped inAugust 2004, three years after the release of Windows XP. Microsoftitself had accepted that they had added new functions and boosted thesecurity of XP in the Windows XP SP2. Besides, other security changeswindows also installed a refurbished firewall, which was alwaysswitched on as the default option. The new security centerspecialized in third party firewall, antivirus protection and more.Nevertheless, the company also introduced DEP, “data executionprevention” to its first anti-exploit technology.


Cherry added, “Windows XP is old. Tenyears in this business is a lifetime.” Microsoft too is stressingon the same issue and had asked its customers to move on to nextoperating system, last month. As a matter of fact, the executives ofIE team had stated XOP as “lowest common denominator” in theirmeeting while explaining why the operating system wouldn’t be ableto run any other browser.

Cherry accorded while stating, “I'vebeen telling [clients] to move to Windows 7.” He said this whilefavoring Windows 7 over XP which released in October 2009.Cherry has been stressing that Windows7 is safe to use in spite of the fact that Windows 8 is going to bereleased between April to October, 2013.

Analysts believe that if Windows 8 isreally good it would be easier to switch on to it from Windows 7instead of XP. Microsoft has also assured its customers that any PCcapable of running Windows 7 would also be able to run Windows 8efficiently.

However, in case Windows 8 doesn’twork really well, Windows 7 would be the savior just like XP did forVista.
Cherry expressed his deepest concernsfor Windows 8 and stated, “It looks like they're changing a lot inWindows 8.” He said this while pointing to the tidbits provided byMicrosoft about Windows 8.

He further added that the presence ofnumerous changes in Windows 8 point out towards a possibility that afew things can go wrong in the OS either during its development orshipping.Presently, Windows 7 has been using theshare of XP and Vista. Thus, the accumulative share of Windows 6 bythe end of July was 29.7% among all the OS while XP still retained ahuge share of 49.8%.