Windows is starting up.
On Christmas Day of 2013, I had heard from a relative of mine (who heard it from his own computer guy) that once 2014 came to pass, the computer software known as Windows XP would be having its last update(s) real soon. By the time this article comes up, it may very well have already gotten its last update that would help make those computers feel more secure. While there are still about two more years left on this system's life-cycle before it truly bites the bullet and becomes a system that's permanently obsolete, it really does signify how old of a software this type of system really is. In 2001 (the year that Windows XP was first released to the public), it was considered one of those computers that it felt like practically everyone had to have in their business or home or something like that in order to have a fun and safe time with the Internet. Yet here we are over a decade later with not only Windows updating its software with stuff like Vista, 7, 8, and 8.1 (and real soon, 9), but Apple, Linux, and even Google (and to a lesser extent, Amazon) have also (re-)emerged as major competition towards Microsoft's PC and laptop market. Not only that, but new markets like smartphones, tablets, video game consoles, and even a thing called "smart-watches" have emerged as strong technological environments that make PCs almost feel like they'll be a thing of the past.
It does feel kind of sad to see that a device that many people on this site have used at one point or another is about to kick the bucket for good. It had some pretty interesting aspects that truly affected how we used our computers, for better or for worst. Not only that, but there were also a lot of memories that truly influenced how much change it had brought up on the Internet. Still, as humans, we do have this everlasting need to evolve ourselves to make bigger and better things that the masses could benefit from, and in our modern day society, we just so happen to offer a bit more power than what Windows XP has. In fact, we also have an apparent interest in special applications that may or may not be built into our newer systems that could do things that we likely won't use in the first place, such as using Netflix or Hulu. With that said, there have been many positive things about Windows XP that we might have taken for granted at the time of its release.
Windows XP was unveiled officially to the media during the month of August 2001 and eventually was released to the public for all to see on October of the same year, and its impact that would be put onto the public was something that took time to do, yet when it came up, it showed off just fine. As a new web browser, it helped standardize what was, at the time, an increase of power by being a 32 bit processing unit instead of a 16 bit processing unit. To give out a proper understanding of what that means, think of an operating system like Windows 95 as a console similar to that of the original Playstation or a Nintendo 64; it was good for what it was as a computer at the time, but it could get pretty unstable every once in a while if you leave it on for too long (think one of those early educational Charlie Brown PC games as an example of sorts there). Windows XP, on the other hand, allowed for it to start out with a video game like Halo pretty easily with very little issues in the process. This helped show off that this operating system would have more of an impact than some people would have thought it had.
Chances are more likely than not that you've not only seen this, but also loved it at one point or another.
For starters, by allowing for more memory in a PC, it allowed more users to do things that would have normally been limited to just supercomputers that only a select few people had at the time. Programs like Direct-X and Photoshop that had aspects about them that were just "pretty good" beforehand got upgraded to make them really good in not only the mid-2000's era, but also to this day. Not only that, but the improved memory spaces that would be on further operating systems would help make not only video game systems like the NES, the SNES, and the Sega Genesis easier to emulate, but it also allowed for a system as recent (keeping in mind the same era where Windows XP was the most prevalent system) as the Nintendo 64 (and later on, the Gamecube and even the Nintendo DS) to work with little to no hiccups whatsoever. There was also some improved flash capabilities that came through which helped make people like Egoraptor and Eddsworld (R.I.P. Edd Gould) stand out as fun people to look through in the future. However, what felt like a major aspect that many of feel like we've overlooked as a whole is the video editing capabilities that we have.
Before Windows XP, there weren't really any major video editing software tools that you could use to edit videos with since the applications were pretty primitive and the ones that did exist didn't have enough memory to really make something major with them. Sure you can save them onto your PC for whatever reason possible, but there wasn't really much of a purpose to having them out on 16-bit computers since no major websites were created for them at that time, especially when looking at stuff like the Space Jam website. With Windows XP, it allowed users to have a purpose to create new videos for themselves for free and do whatever kinds of crazy shit they want to do, regardless of how good or bad it looks now. Not only did Windows XP help give video files like .avi and .mp4 hold more of a purpose these days, but they also helped influence video hosting websites like EbaumsWorld and StupidVideos to come up and set up a new environment for us to use for future reference. I say that because its through websites like that which helped put up YouTube and its personal influencers like DailyMotion, Vimeo, and blip.tv to set up videos for people like us to set up our personal YouTube Poops through hundreds upon thousands, if not millions of people under an easy method! Still, while Windows XP did help set up some good things about the Internet, it also helped bring up some very bad aspects that needed some serious fixing up to work with.
When thinking about WIndows XP, you usually think of one of the most "popular" web browsers around in Internet Explorer. That is partially due to how during the early days of Windows XP, it was pretty much the only major way users could access things online alongside AOL, and in those times, that was truly something else for an experience. With Internet Explorer 6, it brought out the absolute worst of finding thing on the Internet to date, what with it being filled with exploitable ways of not only being filled up with viruses, but also means of crashing your PC due to some very exploitable hidden details that Internet Explorer 6 had when no other web browser afterwards, regardless of whether you still use Internet Explorer after 6 or not, had ever used them since then! When considering that combined with how Microsoft went and almost monopolized the web browsing universe and how newer web browsers made by Mozilla and Google ended up showing off some aspects of web browsing better than Internet Explorer despite some of its many improvements it made afterwards, and it's almost no wonder why Internet Explorer has the reputation that it has in the first place! Still, having a web browser crash during the start of an operating system's life cycle is nothing compared to an ever-lasting legacy that it had left behind for the rest of its days.
Imagine working with that all day long.
Another major problem that I had briefly mentioned was viruses; while they definitely weren't anything new nor were they anything close to safe for PCs to have beforehand, the way they were implemented throughout most areas of the Internet helped make them become the single most annoying and killable ways you could ever destroy some of your PCs, especially if you weren't wise to know what to do there. When it came to viruses before Windows XP, while they still did some dangerous things on your PCs, they at least had some interesting methods of putting them out onto either MS-DOS systems or on Windows 95/98/ME computers, as well as some pretty strange results coming out of it in the process (with danooct's YouTube channel giving off some proper examples of just that). Starting out with Windows XP systems onward, however, they implemented some of these viruses in the most douchebaggy, Hellbent methods possible. Some of these viruses ended up being displayed as annoying pop-ups that you couldn't get out of unless you pressed the Ctrl+Alt+Delete method on your keyboard and quit that method that ran; the end result from the virus would either be that you clicked on a button to have it take you to a fake virus scanning method that'd be ready to con (and infect) you or you'd end up losing your Internet data if you quit the method that was running. Either way, it was still annoying to see, but that's just the tip of the iceberg on that shit.
When Windows XP came out, it introduced an interesting little folder called "system32". That folder was a very nifty way for it to store important things onto your PC so that it always ran it properly no matter what. However, it also introduced a horrible exploit that can still be rampant on certain PCs to this day; with Windows XP and other 32-bit PCs, you could write a small little batch code that allowed you to write down something along the words of "delete the C disk drive that holds the system32 folder" (I'm not typing the exact code down here lest I accidentally end up deleting my own PC in the process) and it would end up being able to quarantine very important files for the system to run on. In the end, all that you'd have left is a blank black screen with a FATAL error on your system, with there being no other choices than to either try and find a way to revert your system back to normal (which not many people knew how to do in the first place) or you'd more likely have to install a new version of Windows XP or whatever system you had onto it with all of your data being left behind in the process. While this little piece of code is still a bitch to have been discovered and exploitative to some people, it is something you could outright avoid altogether provided you stay away from batch files like this. However, not even the best kind of protection can prevent you from seeing fake virus protecting applications.
What would usually be the worst of the bunch that not many people could avoid outright are the viruses that pretend to act like a company like McAfee, Norton, Malwarebytes, or AVG and help you catch them while pretty much infecting your system on the inside-out. These viruses have the looks and styles that they need to have in order to pretend to be trustworthy pieces of data when they really have that special something that infect your system before you know it. By having it look like an actual virus blocker combined with putting in secretive data that can allow it to infect whatever it wants to infect, they make for some of the biggest dickbag viruses that we as computing users have ever seen yet! Once it has its way onto your system, it would then mess with your files in ways that only massive dicks would by making a great majority of your files (even game files like Solitare and 3D Pinball) inaccessible through simple methods and force you to input a credit card number in order for you to try and "un-infect" your PC. That is probably the absolute worst way to infect a PC yet since not only is it more common to get than ransomware viruses, but it also has the potential to lead to phishing, which is basically people having access to your credit card information and using it for their pleasure. Really, combining serious damage with potential threats helped make browsing on Windows XP almost feel like a minefield when first starting out; in a way, it still kind of is on other PCs to this day.
It's especially a pain in the ass when you can't even understand what the fuck it's trying to say here!
With this in mind, I personally had some pretty interesting and unique moments with Windows XP. I had started out as a person that was not really caring too much about stuff like the Internet since I basically was the person that liked playing video games on my Nintendo 64 and sometimes on the Windows 95 PC that I had up until sometime in the early 2000's (I'm thinking either 2002 or 2003 here). Anyways, when it came to upgrading my PC back in the early 2000's, I won't lie and say that I wasn't hesitant with upgrading my system into Windows XP because I was still attached to the system in a sense. However, once I had no choice but to integrate into these new Windows XP computers that my grandparents and my mom had (let's just say that I had an interesting little way of living sometimes throughout my childhood), I had grown to eventually love playing with stuff on there. From simple games like Billiards and checkers to some unique online slot games to even playing a new sort of game they had called Pinball 3-D, I had realized that there was a whole new way of looking through things online. It also didn't take long until I started going more outward into the online world for the first time in my life, and to be fair, most of that stuff was involving things that a normal, young kid (that's also a fan of all sports) would look at, such as Nickelodeon's website, places focusing on video games, and other stuff like that. However, it's when I started venturing out at I think the age of 12 that I started noticing some... interesting things online with Windows XP.
From that point in time with Windows XP, I had my life change in ways I had not expected. Whether it was for the better or the worst, I'm not 100% sure on, though. For starters, some of the art that I had seen on stuff like Super Mario and Pokemon would invariably lead me to some pornographic websites that had allowed me to secretly see porn online at an age that I wasn't really supposed to have. Not only that, but some of my interests ended up growing from simple things like having me not being much of a music person beforehand to listening to lots of different music now (although I know I don't show that on here), as well as gaining more interest in the artistic style of life. It also let me be introduced to the idea of having multiple PCs for the first time in my life, although one time was involving a very slow PC and some virus attacks that threatened my first PC's performance. Not only that, but there were growths of newer, major websites like Wikipedia and YouTube that would still have quite a grasp on our society to this day, as well as introduce websites like MySpace that would fall almost as quickly as they would rise outright. I especially had a nice growth from hating to write down stuff for school to enjoying writing to the point where I can say that I have helped out a Writing Staff of sorts for a website. Even with Windows XP, there have been some people that had to use Windows XP's Movie Maker in order to make YouTube Poops like SuperYoshi, Pimpsahoy, IAmTheGang, and many more people that I have likely forgotten about; it even had myself try and take a stab at making one back when YouTube Poops were making a major boom onto the Internet! Seeing quite a movement like this happen truly made this era quite a unique experience that we'll probably never experience in our lives ever again.
Still, the memories that we might have with Windows XP will be quite an experience that will take a long time for us to really forget about them. While it is true that some members here might have never really had a Windows XP computer in their lifetimes, there are definitely aspects that won't be taken away from us even as Microsoft ventures to try and go from a good computing experience to a... let's just say more interesting cultivation of ideals that appear to mix-and-match together into a blurred line on what is truly a computing experience and what is more about a multimedia extravaganza. From advancing technologies on aspects like quality of pictures and videos to more extreme viruses that act like fake prompts that you can't escape from so easily, there was definitely an experience that not many other computing system's could say they had in their lifetimes. If you had your own memories of working with Windows XP computers, such as how this piece will probably be the last article where I did the majority of my work on my Windows XP system that I currently have, now would probably be the best time to share them while you still can. Otherwise, it is finally time to honor the past and look forward to a brighter future, for without it, we might not have greater personal experiences at hand.
Windows is shutting down...