85% of Windows XP users say they’re not upgrading, antivirus company finds

Most Windows XP users aren’t in a rush to upgrade — at least, according to a survey by antivirus company Avast.

Only 15 percent of Avast customers surveyed said they planned to upgrade from XP, even though Microsoft officially ended support for the aging OS last week. Even scarier, 21 percent of customers weren’t even aware that XP was losing Microsoft’s support, and 27 percent don’t plan to upgrade or buy a new PC.

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While Avast didn’t disclose its survey methodology, the numbers don’t seem surprising. If a Windows XP owner didn’t feel the need to upgrade after the widely publicized launches of Windows 7 and Windows 8, a simple support cutoff probably wouldn’t convince them otherwise.

And at this point, it’s probably not worth putting more money into an old XP machine. Only 5 percent of Avast customers surveyed said they planned to buy a new PC.

As of last month, 23.6 percent of Avast’s 200 million customers were still running Windows XP. Since then, less than 2 percent of customers have upgraded, the company revealed.

With Microsoft taking a step back, the door is now wide open for security companies to fish for even more XP customers. Avast says it plans to continue supporting Windows XP for at least another three years.