XP SP2 Adoption Lagging Overseas

Vizquel wrote to mention an eWeek article reporting that Microsoft is frustrated with the lack of Service Pack 2 usage overseas. From the article: "During a keynote at the Security Summit East here, McKee said Microsoft has so far distributed more than 250 million copies of XP SP2 to provide a hardened shell around the operating system but the low upgrade levels remains a disappointment."

Re:I'm no expert....

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention SP2 refuses to install on pirated keys... Piracy rate is pretty high in far east countries like China, ya know.

Possible reason

[GeekyMike]

I am wondering if he is referring to the upgrades of licensed copies. If not countries such as China and others with almost institutionalized software piracy might cause this lack of upgrades. If it is for licensed versions, I could assume a lack of bandwidth being somewhat limiting. I personally have had no issues with XP SP2 either time I installed it, but the second time was much more pleasant because I had my cable internet connection.

In related news...

[Spy der Mann]

Overseas are frustrated with SP2 obsession with registering.

Because Piracy Abound

[robbyjo]

Well, SP2 adoption is slow because piracy abounds in foreign land, especially in Asia. Windows updater checks the authenticity of the installed windows and refused to install SP2 (and other updates) if the check fails. For some reasons, critical updates can be downloaded from time to time, but not always. Coupled with lack of broadband internet and clueless users, I'm not surprised at all to hear this news.

Upgrading SP2

[chroma]

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that it's a lot of trouble to upgrade to SP2?

I recently had to re-install XP on a laptop that came with SP1. It took about 4 cycles of going to the Windows Update site, getting it to install the patches, and rebooting. It was over an hour before I was done. I have a hard time imagining regular users wanting to do this. MS needs to change their update process so that it can be done all at once.

Oh, they installed it...

[TheOtherAgentM]

But they couldn't boot back into Windows afterwards, or they couldn't get back online. That's why they're not reporting SP2 users.

Re:Possible reason

[Stan Vassilev]

There are two reasons for the low adoption overseas:

A. Ignorance, as in:

"I don't need it, I'm safe"
"I don't know where to get it"
"ess pee.. what?"
"oh no I can't do it, it's too complex"

B. Piracy concerns, as in:

"oh no, they blacklisted my serial key and will b0rk my PC"
"OMG, it calls MS and reports my pirated copy"

Thing is MS did black list the keys but wants SP2 everywhere, even pirated copies, since it's bad PR to have tons of vulnerable Windows copies around. I know people still on 98 btw.

Actually, they mostly have SP2 installed.

[WhiteWolf666]

Most Windows users I have seen, especially overseas, tend to wipe and re-install from the latest and greatest pirate slipstream whenever their installation gets foobar'd.

I recently helped someone with an install, one of these pirate CDs. She even had a regular license for XP, but decided to go with the pirate disk.

Why?

Because it had SP2 slipstreamed in, a variety of other updates, product activation disabled, WinRar included, Acrobat reader included, Sun's Java included, Firefox, and Macromedia Flash included.

I was impressed. It was almost as functional as a Linux install. No Office suite, or any of the other stuff that comes with Linux, but still, much, much better than a standard Windows install, far less updating to do, and only took about an hour.

It's not as easy as a Linux install; but its way better than the normal install cycle.

Re:WHO CARES?

[LurkerXXX]

Because if they won't bother upgrading to SP2, they probably didn't bother to turn on the firewall that came in XP that's off by default (until SP2). Lots of machines on the internet without firewalls means more infected machines on the internet. That more useless traffic clogging things up. More virus/worm traffic. More spam. More phishing sites to trap your less tech-savy friends and family members. More zombie machines being used to DDOS servers (some of which you may actually want to use). etc, etc. Lots more bad stuff.

That's why you should care, even if you never run a MS machine yourself. More patched machines on the internet is better for all of us. Whether we use the same OS or not.

Re:WHO CARES?

[Anne Honime]

Honestly, this is by far the most uninteresting and useless slashdot headline I've ever seen. I'll take troll hits if necessary. For the love of god, why would I care if someone updates to service pack 2 or not? Christ!

I do ; while I personnaly use Linux on an exclusive basis, I really care about SP2 spreading because my mail boxes are constantly hammered by botnets of un-patched windows computers. The more SP2 there are out there, the less spam will hit me. So please, upgrade before I kill an innocent bunny to make my point.

Re:WHO CARES?

[Sj0]

We shall see exactly what your computer teacher does when something else in his or her(who am I kidding? His) life that he isn't a teacher of goes wrong. Geez, your brakes went? Well, the car uses patented(possibly copyrighted) designs, so he'd better watch out, because if his brakes go and he dies a terrible terrible death, we'll all know it's because he wasn't utilizing a free and open standard.

Re:Possible reason

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope that the slashdot people won't block this one. I have more news to this guy:

C. I don't have the hardware to run this XP

"Do you meant that I need to spend 2000 USD dolars in a PC that can run XP? NO WAY! Stick with windows 98"
"Ok, then lets choose: The license of the program you need really legal from the box, or the computer with windows XP"

D. Overseas Internet is not FREE!

Most Americans plug a cord and have Inernet in echange of some empty coke cans. Often poor countries have Internet as a luxury because to have internet at home/work means 90% of the income per month.
Choose: Donwload XP ES-PEE-TOOOWOOO or try to compress that in an old computer, floopy diskettes (they are very used here unlike USA that they are just a rarety)

D1. Pirate copies without patchs.

Ok get your pirate copy from 2004, and guess now if that lucky user gets wired: One year of more of patchs available to donwload at one time.

Anyway the only way that everybody will use XP SP" will be when old hardware dies at all. And well since I still see some windows 95/3.1 floating around (and even DOS boxes)... whatever!

Re:SP2 got bad rep

[Jarnis]

Hey, don't badmouth Win98.

It's a great source of revenue for PC repair shops.

- (re)installing it, with all the arcane driver magic and updates takes hours. Lots of $$$$
- Most computers with Win98 (or worse, 95) are so old, that more recent operating systems are not an option
- Most users of such old computers are fixated with the rule 'well the hardware still works, it's only 5 years old, I will REFUSE to buy a new computer' - never mind that they are paying half the price of a fully set up new system in repair costs to get this ancient operating system reinstalled as it magically blew up again when my kid installed something odd from the internet'.

You'd be amazed how many people pay to the tune of 200-250$ for someone to reinstall their ancient crap computer and all their applications, while 20 feet from the repair desk there's an offer for a brand new system, XP preinstalled, all set to go, 10x performance of their old junkheap, for less than 500$.

All because they can't let go of their old crap as long as it can still produce some kind of a picture to the monitor.

We PC techs thank Microsoft for Win98 and WinME. /bow

Re:Possible reason

[websters]

Another reason:

For sites with large numbers of users and large numbers of legacy applications, regression testing takes a lot of time. Our business environment is slow to change anyway (a government department) and the impact of breaking an application is high (health industry, 25,000+ PCs).

The perceived benefits of SP2 to our organisation where: all PCs are behind the firewall; all PCs are virus protected; policies are in place to specify acceptable usage; were less than the risk of breaking a critical application.

However, nearly all scheduled testing has been completed and our SP2 rollout is scheduled to start in about 2 months...