Security News > 2021 > October > It's Windows XP's 20th birthday and way too many still use it
Today is the 20th anniversary of Windows XP, and although the operating system reached the end of support in 2014, way too many people continue to use the insecure version of Windows.
Why are people still stuck on XP? While Vista felt like an experimental release for a beta version, Windows 7 was an excellent and refined release, and so was Windows 10.
The first category of systems that are still using Windows XP is those belonging to public sectors, known for their crawling upgrade speeds and hesitancy to use new technologies.
Windows 7 was when Microsoft added the "Telemetry" data collection system, and with Windows Vista being unreliable, those worried about this aspect of the OS's functionality are stuck with XP. How many systems are still running Windows XP? According to StatCounter, the percentage of Windows users using the XP version of the OS in September 2021 is 0.59%, a significant number when you consider how many Windows systems are deployed worldwide.
One very notable case is that of Armenia, where Windows XP is the most popular OS, enjoying a share of 53.5% among Windows users.
While the market share for Windows XP is relatively low, too many organizations and users still run this legacy version of Windows.