Monday, October 25, 2021

The Beloved Windows XP Operating System on This Day in History

 

This Day in History: The Windows XP operating system developed by Microsoft was released on this day in 2021, marking 20 years since it was released. Even though support for Windows XP ended in 2014, as of August 2021, 0.6% of Windows PCs run Windows XP (that's about 12 million PCs), and 0.18% of all devices across all platforms run Windows XP. Windows XP is still very prevalent in many countries, such as Armenia where over 60% of computers use it. Many companies are set up to work with hardware and other tools that are only compatible with XP. For many, the time, money and risk of migrating to a newer operating system was simply not worth it.

Apparently the US Military still uses Windows XP because much of their software won't work on newer operating systems.

Windows XP is still the third most popular operating system, behind Windows 7 (which is still the number one favorite) and Windows 10. As of June 2021, 15.52% of traditional PCs running Windows are using Windows 7, even though support for Windows 7 ended January 14, 2020.

The top five operating systems are Apple macOS, Microsoft Windows, Google’s Android OS, Linux Operating System, and Apple iOS. "But that’s just the tip of the operating system iceberg. There are numerous free OS options in addition to Linux including Chrome OS, Syllable, and ReactOS, which was initially launched as a Windows95 clone. But that’s just in the world of personal computers, mobile devices, and tablets. When you examine server OSs, the number jumps considerably. All told, there are over 63 base proprietary OSs with various versions or updates, in addition to another 26 non-proprietary OSs." Source 

Windows XP also came with Easter Eggs. An Easter egg is a message, image, or feature hidden within software. One such Easter Egg can be found at C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\etc where there is a secret file called quotes that you can open and read in notepad. My Windows 7 has a quote file in the winsxs folder, with a few quotations from George Bernard Shaw such as "Assassination is the extreme form of censorship." Also, go to RUN:thumbsup: type "telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl" without the quotes("") and after you do that you will see a Star Wars movie played out in ASCII art.

Back when XP was released in 2001:
Michael Jordan was still playing in the NBA
David Beckham was the soccer icon
America was in the middle of an anthrax attack
Dial-up Internet was still common
Floppy Disks were still used regularly
Friends was still running
Facebook, Twitter and YouTube didn't exist.
AOL was at the height of is popularity.
The biggest companies in the world were Exxon Mobil, Wal-Mart, General Motors, Ford and General Electric. There were no trillion dollar Tech Giants.

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