The only annoying thing is the dialogue boxes telling us to update our version of Office. We're looking for stability and reliability. 'Windows 7 doesn't offer any particular features we need. Olsen says the only difference he's noticed is that 'the spam levels have picked up a bit, but we haven't seen anything else relating to XP.' The programs the company is using – AutoCAD, Microsoft Office 20 – to provide engineering and technical services are still functioning fine.
There are an estimated 430m PCs still running some version of Windows XP, first released in 2001, and whose last formal Service Pack 3, released in April 2008, is approaching its sixth birthday. The 18-strong company is typical of hundreds of thousands – perhaps millions – of small businesses around the world. We grabbed some ahead of them stopping selling models with XP.' There are no compatibility issues, he says. Nor are the ones running XP antiquated: 'All our PCs are less than four years old. 'We've got four or five running it, and six or seven PCs running Windows 7,' he says. The businessman Derek Olsen wasn't even aware that Windows XP had reached the end of its life, and the computers running it at his company, Olsen Environmental in Perth, Australia, still seem fine. Except that nobody seems particularly worried.
