Windows XP in 2021: Few Programs and Many Websites Do Not Work

Windows XP was one of the best Microsoft operating systems. Launched in 2001, and with support until 2014 , this system has been in the homes of millions of users around the world, as well as in businesses (where, unfortunately, it is still used). However, nothing lasts forever, and the success of Windows 7, and with an eye to the future, XP came to an end. But users refused to forget it and have continued to use this system on their computers despite the risks that this entails. And now, 6 years after its end of support, it is still a system with a worrying market share.

What made Windows XP so special? It was a nice, accessible, and easy-to-use operating system. And throughout its three Services Packs, it was improving little by little, receiving new functions (such as its famous firewall) and correcting all kinds of bugs and problems. That Vista was his heir made users want much more to stay in XP.

Windows XP in 2021

However, in 20 years things have changed a lot. And today, Windows XP is not only an outdated, unsupported, and vulnerable operating system, it also has fewer and fewer features and less software available.

Few programs still support Windows XP

For a long time, developers have continued to release versions of their programs for Windows XP . At the end of the day, there was not that much difference with Windows 7. However, with the arrival of Windows 8 and, above all, with Windows 10, things have changed. Developers have been abandoning the development of their software for this operating system en masse. They let us download the “Legacy” versions of the programs, the older versions that still work on this system. But the new ones don’t work beyond Windows 7, at best.

This is more concerning when you consider that we don’t even have modern antivirus for XP , and since it has many known vulnerabilities, connecting without an antivirus is anything but responsible. Nor will we have modern web browsers, or programs that have always been in XP, as is the case with Notepad ++, which has recently been one of the last to abandon this system.

Surfing the Internet with XP, an odyssey

This operating system is not ready for the modern Internet. Browsers (like Chrome) no longer work on it, so we cannot have the latest standards to connect. A version of Chrome, in addition to being difficult to get, is dangerous. And we better not talk about what it would be like to navigate with the Internet Explorer that came with XP …

Today, most websites use standards that are not present in this operating system: JavaScript code, HTML5, CSS3 , etc. And since web browsers are not updated for this system, it is impossible to visit websites that use them. And that’s without taking into account HTTPS connections with TLS encryption , since the version used in Windows XP was considered obsolete a long time ago.

It is also difficult to connect via Wi-Fi from this operating system, since we could not use, for example, WPA3 keys or 5 GHz Wi-Fi networks . We can connect with cable, yes, but we would find the previous limitations.

There is life beyond Windows XP

It is still possible to download Windows XP for free to use on an old PC or in a virtual machine. Although no one should think about installing this system from scratch on a new computer just as they would not install, for example, Windows 98. Furthermore, we remember that a few months ago the complete source code of Windows XP was leaked, so hackers They can know all its secrets and find ways to attack users that we would never have imagined before.

Don’t use Windows XP. there is life beyond this operating system. Nor should we use Windows 7, since this OS has been unsupported since last year and little by little it is having the same problems as XP. But Windows 10 is an operating system already very established among users, and does not consume much more than 7. There are even a large number of easy Linux distros, similar to Windows, that will allow us to give a second life to our PC safely and with support. Do you notice many differences between Fenix OS and Windows XP?

Fenix OS - Windows XP