Garmin discontinuing support for Windows XP

In the short history of personal computing. 12+ years is almost half of a life time.

Would you hanging around a 30 years old car for daily use? Yes, you can. But it is most likely cost more to operate and more likely to breakdown on the side of road than a new car.

I still have the original Apple II and IBM PC, Both run very well, can do almost everything on my daily routine list that I can do on a Windows 8.1 machine. For the same reason as a classic car, I'd rather not.

It's not so much if the software is old, but when the hardware fails, then it's over. XP will NOT run native on new hardware. The drivers, etc are just not available.

Windows XP is simply another version (now older) version of MS Windows so there should be NO valid technical reason for it not to work with the current version of Windows.

My thought, this is another malicious case of a company purposely producing a product which is version specific to "force"<>/em> people to upgrade.

Me thinks you don't really understand the relationship between the OS and Hardware.

Let's not forget that MS does not write ALL the hardware drivers. It would cost a huge amount of money and manpower to keep writing code for all the OS versions for every piece of hardware innovation that is implemented, or ever has been implemented since the first Windows version first appeared. Unrealistic.

I am a developer at a small software company and XP is still on our support list. In reality, it is not that big a deal. Unless you write your code to use some of the newer API calls that appeared since XP SP3, you will not usually have a problem. The only software I have myself that will not run on XP is iCloud. That is due to it using a newer API call that did not become available until Vista (IIRC - possibly Windows 7).

Why should Garmin support a platform that even the originator (i.e. Microsoft) no longer supports?

I can't fault Garmin for this one. If I were their management, I'd do the same thing.

Nope, I installed updates on the eighth and once after the eighth. But now I'm beginning to wonder what's going on, I received the alert again this morning.

follow up: I went back and checked the details on the alert I received this morning. It wouldn't let me paste it here for some unknown reason but bassically it said the updates were 9.9MB and consisted of: updates for .NET framework 3.5 SP1 and .NET 3.5 family update for .NET versions 2.0 through 3.5 (KB951847) x86 and another update to .NET framework 3.5 SP1 for the .NET framework assistant 1.0 x86 (KB963707). there was also a url that took me to this site for more details.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/951847

I am truly wondering what's going on.

XP can run all .NET frameworks up to 4.0. 4.5 is the latest and will not install on XP (or Windows 2003). If Garmin decides to update their software to require .NET 4.5, then there is going to be a problem.

What's going on is that you likely have Windows Update set to check for updates to not only the OS but other Microsoft products as well. The notifications for other Microsoft products is something you can choose to opt in to when upgrading Windows Update to Microsoft Update. It sounds as if you had done so at some point in the past and thus you keep getting notifications.

Microsoft Office 2003 products will not continue to receive updates after April 8,2014 in addition to Windows XP.

I don't know if it's truly a bad song or not but you may be right about the updates. I don't remember setting anything for other products. Although I did in the past go to their site and update my .NET framwork to run a piece of software that wouldn't run. That may have tripped it.

I am guessing you have just installed .NET 3.5 package or installed another software with .NET Framework 3.5 dependency and .NET Framework 3.5 gets installed with it.

I have a corporate licensed copy of Office 2010 Professional Plus through the company I work for, so I'm set for quite some time. When they decide to go to the next version of Office I'll get a copy of that version.

I didnt upgrade Windows 98 SE soon enough after MS discontinued support, and quickly regretted it, when I found myself with a useless OS within a few short months. I could not upgrade any of my programs, because Win 98 was no longer supported by anybody! I got virus after virus, so, in short order, most everything on my computer was useless. I was barely able to get away with my pictures, and videos.

@groundhog, I feel I have to push BACKUP so that you and others reading this thread will never have to make a "barely able" statement about keeping their data.

USB drives are very affordable. I got a 1TB WD Passport for $70. A computer guru I follow recommends Macrium Reflect as an excellent backup package that you can download for free.

I try to make an "image" of my computer ever few months. If a drive fails, I can restore my computer to the point in time of the image.

Were it not for my also using Carbonite to do real time backups of my data files, I would do images every month.

My backup images are stored off site - as you do not want all of your data in the same place (think fires, floods and tornados)

Win98 with FAT32 file system offers no security at the file level. Win98 registry has no security either. Everyone can install any software they wish on Win98. Nothing will stop viruses from infecting your Win98.

I don't think XP damage will be as severe as Win98 when new unpatched flaws are exploited. As long as you use your computer as a regular user, I'm guessing the damage will be minimal (if the flaw being exploited can not elevate regular user permissions to Admin).

I wont mention the name, starting July 1, my bank will detect the OS, and deny anyone who tries to do online banking while using Windows XP. They claim XP will become wide open target for hackers, and the bank refuses to become party to it at the expense of their customers. The February bank notice came with advise to customers that we are leaving ourselves vulnerable to viruses, hackers, because XP will become very unsecure, and unstable in very short order. They even hinted that our bank accounts would be wide open to hackers, and spambots!

I am writing this on my 8 year old home computer running Windows XP SP3. I have a MacBook and Windows 7 laptop, but my main home computer is still XP. If any of my banks try that, my first step would be to see how they are detecting the OS. If they are using the browser's "User Agent" report, there are plugins for Firefox and Chrome that will change your user agent to be something else. As such, you could be running XP and your browser can report it is IE 11 running on Windows 8.1 if that floats your boat.

I wonder how much the bank stands to gain by increasing Microsoft's OS sales. Perhaps sales of new computers to run the new OS will also help out the banks bottom line.

The bank knows someone using XP will get hacked and the bank knows that someone will sue them for allowing them to use XP. I can just hear it now..Well if it wasn't safe why did " X" allow me to use it to access their site? Same with Garmin.
"Who cares if no updates or security patches have been out in 1,2 or 3 years I should be able to use it" will be the next thing out of their mouth.
Trust me, someone will get sued because they allowed a computer running XP to be used to access their site and something went wrong.
When bad things happen unfortunately people nowadays want to blame everyone but themselves for the bad decisions they made and running XP for much longer is not a smart thing to do.

What is Windows XP?

But this made me smile.

Not much else need be said here, as you nailed it.