>>Go back and re-read my post that caused your questions. It was all from the point of view of the seller and I even pointed out places where mistakes were made. You also need to keep in mind that what's right for one buyer may not be right for every buyer.

/edit/

Here's what I responded to:

>>It's the same thing people are complaining about Win8. It isn't that it's harder to use. It's that we're creatures of habit and don't like change.

So how come people queued for Win95 and now suddenly are creatures of habit? The answer is that there are no compelling features any more, no excitement, no reason to want to change. People are not afraid, it's just not worth the bother especially if you have to learn where everything is all over again so you can stop using a current OS that works just fine.

I'd also observe that a MS product is not the best answer to every question. For example, for Android development why would C#/Visual Studio be any sort of advantage? Unless people already are wed to Visual Studio, they'd be smarter to take a good look around.

>>And many others are dropping XP because it's not secure.

As I said, if security were a major driver, Linux Mint or similar would be installed in preference to any other desktop OS. Clearly security is not the main concern. The Windows advantage used to be that apps would continue to run on any version. MS walks the fine line of incentivizing upgrade by making luddites miss out on stuff while still distinguishing Windows as the OS with all the drivers, software and features. If it's made too hard for people who don't always need the latest model, maybe they'll be incentivized to consider alternatives whose drivers and compatibility increasingly seems to match or even exceed Windows across versions. I know that at least one of my customers recently investigated the viability of swapping to open source across the whole desktop- which is one of the risks of promoting HTM5/CSS as the future and then denying customers access to it unless they commit to a whole new OS for which the customer perceives no other business driver.

>>IE won't ever support HTML5 and CSS3 on XP. Changing browsers won't solve other security issues with XP. There is not such thing as 100% secure, even with hardened firewalls and networks, things can get through. When connected to such a network, you may be more secure, but what about those employees who take a laptop home and connect to their home network or travel and connect to hotel networks?

I agree that there is no such thing as 100% secure. W8 is not 100% secure. Certainly an employee who takes home a laptop can get themselves infected if their settings/habits allow unknown payloads to download and activate with Admin privs on newer OS or at all on XP or otherwise sneak aboard. Again, if that were the concern then something like iOS with its notorious sandbox isolation is an important option, or Linux Mint. You should take a look at Linux Mint: it has drivers for practically everything and Windows users know exactly what to do as soon as it loads... plus it ships with HTML5/CSS all set to go for people who buy the story that this is how apps will be delivered in future.

BTW, I see that Travelocity has joined the local mobile app bandwagon, competing for customers to use its app in preference to the browser. The battle for customer share is being fought using targeted apps for iOS and Android rather than served HTML5/CSS. Developers need to take note.