To the millions of people still using Windows XP: enough already

According to the latest data from multiple firms and the US government, there are still millions of people using Windows XP, an operating system that was replaced a decade ago and has been completely unsupported by Microsoft for more than two years.

That means that in all that time literally every single vulnerability in Windows XP has gone unpatched, left wide open for any bad actor to take advantage of. At this point it is patently absurd to still be using Windows XP to go online, where your system can easily become infected with some nasty malware.

And millions of people are still using Windows XP, even in the United States. The numbers do differ somewhat depending on which site you look at, but they all show a significant number of people using XP, especially on desktops.

For instance, the folks at Net Market Share show 8.83% of desktop users still using XP as of January and February of this year. StatCounter, a similar outfit, shows that 5.53% of Windows users are still rocking Windows XP as of last month, though it does seem to finally be declining.

And sure, many people now browse the web from something other than a desktop, but even if you look at all web traffic, a not-insignificant portion of people are still looking at this every time they start up their machine:

Even looking at our own analytics for the past year, Windows XP accounted for about 0.07% of our visits. That's nuts. Are you reading these words on a machine running XP right now? Please, stop. I loved XP, too, but it's time to move on.

Those numbers are even backed up by the United States government. You can check out USA.gov's analytics report for the last 90 days and see it broken down in many ways, including operating system. Out of 2.59 billion visits to over 4,500 government websites, 0.07% of people were using XP since the beginning of 2017. That's 18,130,000 visits from people using machines running Windows XP, including 15.7 million in the US. What are you people doing?

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Seriously, though, if you're running Windows XP right now, it's far past time to upgrade. I get it, maybe you don't want to buy a new laptop because they seem super expensive, or you checked out Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8.1 and were unimpressed. But with cyberattacks and malware growing more sophisticated by the day, you're in serious danger browsing the web with unpatched, old software.

And nice, new laptops aren't even that expensive! We have some great laptops under $200 that we recommend, and this Acer Aspire E 15 is crazy powerful, fast, and runs a brand-new copy of Windows 10. We love it. It's even got a DVD drive, something you very rarely find on a new machine. You can put your XP disc in it if you still want to carry an ancient operating system with you.

Please, please, please: it's time to upgrade.

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