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The risks of not going Windows shopping
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CHINESE Windows XP users will have limited choices when Microsoft Corp stops providing regular anti-malware updates for its 13-year-old Windows XP next week.
Users can pay at least 888 yuan (US$143) for a higher version of Windows that they probably don’t need or can keep using Windows XP with loopholes and risks. The body of users includes government and companies, which in some cases may take years to transition from the current familiar system to the new Windows 8.
All this points to the uncomfortable truth that China still has a long way to go in developing its own information technology industry, despite the fact that it has the world’s most mobile phone and personal computer users.
Microsoft has announced that it will “turn out the lights” on Windows XP on April 8, ending regular system upgrades and security services to users of the program. Without that support, computers are vulnerable to system crashes, computer viruses and Internet fraud.
“It’s time for XP to retire,” Microsoft said on its Chinese website. “Please embrace the Windows 8 for the Internet era.”
The cost of this embrace starts at 888 yuan for an upgrade to Windows 8, with professional versions priced at almost 2,000 yuan. A majority of current XP users will probably find upgrading beyond their means.
New features of Windows 8, such as the mobile-style interface design Metro, are regarded by many Chinese as unnecessary. Even in the Windows family, Windows 8 is not popular. Since two versions of Windows 8 were released last year, they have managed to attract only about 10 percent of all Windows users. Windows 7 has 47 percent, and XP, 29 percent, according to tech site Next Web.
By contrast, Apple’s iOS7 was running on 80 percent of Apple devices by January, after being released last June.
As of the end of January, 49 percent of Chinese computer users, or about 400 million, were using Windows XP, according to research firm StatCounter. More than 200 million computers in China are still running Windows XP.
“It (XP) meets all of my demands. I won’t upgrade to a new system I don’t know, let alone paying about 900 yuan,” said Kevin Chen, a public relations official based in Shanghai, who started to use XP in 2003.
I can see why Microsoft has taken this decision. It makes good business sense to attract new users with new products and thus make bigger profits. But the situation has raised a number of concerns in China, including the degree to which Microsoft holds an almost monopoly position.
If only 10 percent of the Windows XP computers in China are upgraded to Windows 8, that would mean 20 billion yuan of revenue for the US-based company.
The Chinese government tried to intervene by persuading Microsoft to continue support for the legacy XP system. But Microsoft denied the report, saying instead that it will cooperate with China’s biggest PC maker, Lenovo Group Ltd, and top Chinese dot-coms Tencent Inc, Baidu.com Inc and Qihoo 360 to continue offering some technical support for Windows XP in China after April.
The continued services will last for two or three years, depending on what numbers of Chinese users have transitioned to another operating system, the Chinese companies said.
But looking at the list of Chinese companies stepping forward to provide so-called “protection” to XP users, I can’t help but wonder how effective these services will be.
These firms are Internet companies and hardware makers. There’s no further detail on exactly what kind of support the web companies are offering. I guess it’s based at the Internet-level, which is completely different from Microsoft’s system-level support, which requires a high-level of security technology and understanding of the operating system.
Even with the “protection” of Chinese firms after the April 8 cutoff date, Windows XP will be “vulnerable to risks,” said an executive of one of the Chinese firms, who declined to be identified.
However, industry insiders urged the Chinese government and industry leaders not to adopt Microsoft’s Windows 8 and encouraged the country to develop its own system, citing a security threat.
“The Windows update shutdown is an information security incident in China,” said Ni Guangnan, a computer scientist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. “It will bring serious loopholes for computers.”
He suggested that the Chinese government and official organizations adopt a two-step strategy. First, they should secure the safety of their Windows XP systems, taking immediate measures to address potential loopholes. Second, the country should invest in the development of its own operating systems.
But the fact remains that there is no practical alternative to Windows in China at present. Chinese firms have developed several Linux-based operating systems, but they don’t have the business maturity of Windows. At present, they serve just niche markets.
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