30,000 Rally to Save Windows XP

By Nick Mokey January 17, 2008

30,000 Rally to Save Windows XP — Image used with permission by copyright holder

We’ve seen petitions to save whales, turtles, eagles, TV shows, school dances, and now, an operating system. The Vista-hating editors over at InfoWorld have fired up a campaign to save their beloved Windows XP, which Microsoft currently has slated for demise on June 30. The surprising part: they’ve gathered over 30,000 signatures in less than a week.

The Save Windows XP campaign launched on Sunday with a special section on the InfoWorld site, a blog, a list of reasons to keep XP, and of course, a petition. InfoWorld reported on Tuesday that the list had already gained 12,500 signatures, and the momentum has seemingly continued, bringing that number to 30,000 as of Thursday evening.

While there’s no guarantee the petition will actually be able to save the OS, InfoWorld executive editor Galen Gruman remains optimistic about the possibility of change. “In the past, Microsoft has responded to customer dissatisfaction and changed its plans, so there’s reason to believe it will listen today if the message is loud enough,” he said in a separate InfoWorld article.

Custom complaints have already driven the date of XP’s execution back once, from January 2008 to its current date in June. Although that’s the last date consumers will be able to go out and pick up a retail version of XP for themselves, Microsoft plans to allow system builders access to the operating system until January 30 2009.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Managing Editor

As Digital Trends’ Managing Editor, Nick Mokey oversees an editorial team delivering definitive reviews, enlightening…

Computing

The next big Windows 11 update has a new hardware requirement

Windows 11 device sitting on a stool.

Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 11 24H2 update is expected to arrive with yet another hardware requirement. Centered around SSE4.2 or Streaming SIMD Extensions 4.2, a crucial component for modern processors, the new Windows 11 24H2 with build 26080 will only boot on CPUs that support the instruction set.

This information comes from Bob Pony on X (previously known as Twitter), following earlier reports in February where he claimed that CPUs lacking support for the POPCNT instruction were no longer compatible with Windows 11. The updated requirement is essentially the same, except that they now mandate the entire SSE 4.2 instruction set instead of just the POPCNT instruction within it, as was previously required.

Computing

You’re going to hate the latest change to Windows 11

A laptop running Windows 11.

Just two weeks after rolling out a preview build to Windows Insiders, Microsoft is pushing out an update to Windows 11 that adds advertisements to the Start menu. Build KB5036980, which is now slowly rolling out to the wider Windows 11 user base, includes recommendations in the Start menu, and they sneakily sit beside your real apps.

These apps comes exclusively from the Microsoft store, and they sit in the Recommended section of the Start menu. This section includes recently used, frequent, and new apps, but one (or more) slots will now be dedicated to an ad. As the update reads: "The Recommended section of the Start menu will show some Microsoft Store apps. These apps come from a small set of curated developers. This will help you to discover some of the great apps that are available."

Computing

Windows 11 Home usually costs $139 — but it’s only $30 today

Laptop sitting on a desk showing Windows 11's built-in Microsoft Teams experience

If you've recently bought yourself a new desktop or laptop, you're most likely using Windows 11 Home edition, which is still pretty good, but it does lock some features away that you can only get with the Pro edition. While they aren't completely necessary, they are nice to have, but the usual $200 cost of a Windows 11 Pro license means they aren't worth the cost. Luckily, there's a great deal from StackSocial that discounts Windows 11 Pro down to just $30, which constitutes a whopping 84% discount on the regular price. You better grab it quite too, because the sale is going to be ending soon.

Why you should buy Microsoft Windows 11 Pro
Most of the features that you'll find on Windows 11 Pro are targeted to, you guessed it, professionals, but that doesn't mean that you can't also take advantage of it. For example, while both versions of Windows 11 are pretty secure, Windows 11 Pro has extra security features. For example, the Pro version comes with Defender Application Guard, which is an additional level of security that protects your files even if your computer is stolen, and the BitLocker can directly lock your files so nobody can read them even if they can access them.