Wow, it just won’t die will it? Like some sort of zombie operating system, no matter what Microsoft does to try and kill off the world’s favorite O/S, Windows XP still keeps bouncing back. Tattered, worn, with stinky breath, but undeniably alive.

The latest proof is this interesting little report on How to Get Security Updates For Windows XP until April 2019. It’s basically using the fact that a little known branch of XP, typically used for embedded equipment such as cash registers and such, will be supported with updates by Microsoft for another five years.

What you’re effectively doing is turning your home XP run computer into a fake cash register so that Microsoft will keep pumping the updates down to your machine as they come out. Fascinating. Of course there are differences between the two operating systems, such as the lack of a media player in the cash register version, so your updates will not cover everything.

But if you’re keen to keep your old XP laptop going as a spare machine, and you don’t mind the possibility that one day you may wake up to a trashed computer which you’ll have to roll-back, then this could be a pretty neat solution. You’ll need to be comfortable doing a bit of work adding something to your registry, but hey, at least there’s no soldering involved. Caveat utilitor as they say.