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Microsoft Extends Product Lifecycle
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has decided to extend product support on business and developer products effective June 1, 2004. Mainstream support remains unchanged at 5 years, extended support is greatly extended from 2 to 5 years and Online self-help support is extended from 8 to 10 years. I have to say kudos to Microsoft on this one."
Being a tech, i have often felt that MS should have been doing this for years. It makes me wonder if LINUX isn't scaring them a bit.
Sincerely, Czephyr
Given that XP is still unstable and incompatable and given that longhorn will proobly be the biggest risk of an operating system a company can take up, along with more incompatabilities, I wouldn't be surprized if companies stuck with Windows 98SE until 2008.
....butnotasgoodaslinuxofcourse.. :E
Pity Microsoft stopped selling 2000. They'd be making a killing about now. I still think 2000 was the best windows offering so far....
disagree with the statement "kudos for Microsoft". What 11 out of the first 13 replies to the post do not seem to realize is that the post is talking about O/S support not a religion. Personally I find the MS developers site informative, simple and free. I wonder how many of the 11 have actually tried to use it (gasp, some of us still have customers who use NT4). Oh how I wish I hadn't squandered my mod points.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Maybe you're right. Y'know, I still haven't figured out why Microsoft has picked this fight with Linux. It's a war they can't possibly win. You can't compete with a hobby after all. And yes, before the zealots jump all over me, I know Linux is much more than a hobby these days. Still, that's what makes it virtually impossible to wipe out.
It would be a much more interesting computer world today if MS had gone with the same attitude as IBM. Just think of where we could be if MS was contributing to open source in a big way instead of wasting resources trying to dis-credit it at every turn.
I would guess that one result might be that their stock wouldn't be stuck at ~$25/share while Redhat's, (for example), has gone from $5/share up to $25 in the last several months. It seems shareholders and potential investors are biding their time and waiting to see how this all shakes out.
"A revolution without dancing is... a revolution not worth having"
WinXP...
DId you know you could be court-martialed for running WinXP on a DOD system up until september of last year?
then, microsoft offered the gov 498,000 licenses for about $2.00 (i'm not really sure exactly, might be as much as $10) each and the official word from the people in charge of evaluating software changes from !!can not be secured!! to "um, try not to use it in a sensitivity critical environment"
Great for me as a security contractor, BAD for me as a citizen.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
Business software will become free. I'm as much of a proponant of OSS as much as the next person on /., but I don't think Microsoft will let go of the general consumer bracket in my lifetime. That's not to say that the techno-savy person won't install GNU/Windows on his computer instead of Longhorn, because it's been shown that their business ended technology is far superior to their personal iterations.
There's also the principle behind games. Most serious games that feature multiplayer aspects, as well as huge MMORPGS, won't be open source, because the risk of hacking is just too great.
Learn something new.
Compatibility between new and old versions of the same product is not an option because there is no such thing.
Anyone else cynical enough to immediately think that this is just to stop people considering their options when they realise that their support's suddenly run out?
There's plenty of businesses out there running older versions of windows who might look elsewhere rather than upgrade if there was no support.
That said, better software support is probably generally a good thing.
No. Longhorn is late. That's all.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Microsoft has only enjoyed it's consumer monopoly for about 10 years of those 40. And they find it hard to transfer that monopoly to other consumer categories. Sony still leads the console market, Symbian leads the mobile market, Media Center and other attempts to grab the set-top market have all shown little sucess in the face of satellite company set-top boxes and Tivos.
The PC as we envisage it today is certainly not going to be the majority consumer computing platform in 40 years. Probably not even in 10. And it's clear that Microsoft are not a shoe-in to any other category.
Then the other factor is compatibility and interoperability. Microsoft has built it's monopoly up on limiting compatibility - people buy Microsoft mostly because there is a vast catelog of software out there that only runs on Microsoft OSs. There are going to be a myriad of different consumer device categories used - some of them mentioned above, but the will be more. The consumer is going to expect these all to work together seamlessly. That's only going to happen with open standards, and probably an open and generic programming model too. In such an environment, it's hard for a monopoly to flourish.
Is this step really suprising?
No, because their very own bugs force them to obey the wishes off their customers: customers seem to use OS software longer that MS think they should, hence they tried to control the lifecycle by ceasing support. What is the consequence of this?
Millions of unpatched machines out there spreading viruses and spam all over the internet. And what should Microsoft's reaction to that inconvenient side effect of using MS products be: "Sorry, no more support!"?!? That should easily make for the biggest PR desaster in corporate history. They simple realised that and adjusted support to the longer lifetime that their OSes unfortunately have in the wild.
That is quite incorrect. The software wasn't Common Criteria certified up to that point, but you could run it.
The ability to run/not run software in a DoD environment is controlled mostly by mission - there are very few applications you 'can't' run. There is a person in every military organization called a DAA "Designated Accrediting Authority" who can issue an ATO "Authority to Operate" for anything he/she feels like doing. This person is usually the commander of an installation or organization, and will usually be of 0-6 or higher rank.
If you run something in the DoD without getting a DAA signoff, you are screwed. If the software is insecure, the DAA and the IA "Information Assurance" staff are the ones who are screwed.
The ultimate expression of the DAA's ATO is the DITSCAP. The DITSCAP is basically a huge document showing you did due diligence in security testing your software. You are supposed to list all threats in there, and make value judgements as to whether they are deal breakers or acceptable, and what steps you are taking to mitigate.
The DAA signature on ATO means that that commander read the DITSCAP, accepts the risks, and will run the software/system in question. No courts martial. No UCMJ at all.
As to your other assertion about Microsoft giving software away to the Army, realize that we (meaning Army installations) pay a tax each year out of our budgets to finance the Microsoft ELA with the Army, which is costing the Army precisely $151.00 each bundled desktop, which includes Office and the OS, plus a server CAL. Either way, that's a long way from $10.
There is a Powerpoint on the topic (opens up fine in OOO) located here. You can also go to the Army Small Computer Program site if you want to see how the ELA is implemented in real life.
Please stop lying to these people. Thank you.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I agree that it might be more prudent for MS to shift towards a business model in which they sell support, but do remember that MS is notorious for repackaging one of their current OSes with superficial or pointless alterations and selling it as a new, superior product. WinME is a prime example of this behavior.
Longhorn doesn't seem to be a superficial improvement over Windows XP, however. Sure, the new 3D-accelerated GUI may provide only eye candy, but the underlying APIs and technology involved are completely different from the old GUI API. The same applies with the WinFX framework, which will hopefully be a complete and modern replacement for the old Win32 API, which is quite ugly especially in the UI area.
Windows Me might've been pointless, but Longhorn provides some real improvements from a developer standpoint. It remains to be seen whether or not this will translate into improvements for the end-user, but I'm sure a lot of coders will be happier with Longhorn.
...Longhorn.
It would be somewhat amusing if 2K/XP reached EOL and Longhorn would still be "coming right up".
-- Would it be acceptable to just put my name on my sig?
I have been running XP on a PII 450 MHz with 384mb ram for about two years doing high end 3d modeling and rendering. It works fine.
>For one thing, you pay for beer.
Imagine if someone offers to buy you a beer. Good deal huh? Thats the idea with "Free Software".
>The beer is only good for one use.
And "Free Software" could be buggy, unsupported and cause all sorts of aliments. But it didn't cost you anything. Same thing.
>The effects are fleeting, and the byproduct is useless.
With "Free Software", its a tool to get something done. I want to add two numbers, I don't care about the software that does it, I just want the sum of the numbers.
The general idea is that you've used the software/beer and it didn't cost you anything (someone else paid for it).
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Microsoft has been using short product support times (along with many other techniques) to force regular software product upgrades onto their corporate users. They did not wake up one morning and say: "oh, let's suddenly be nicer to our customers and help them stay with the old product longer instead of buying a new product from us." It seems clear to me that enough corporate customers balked at the relentless upgrade cycle Microsoft was trying to impose that they had to back down. Good news for consumers, bad news for Microsoft's bottom line.
Why is it the first thing I noticed about your list is that MS programs worked and non-MS didn't? More hidden API's? Or just companies not following the rules?
this is direct proof consumers are not willing to upgrade simly because Microsoft says so. As time goes on, it will become hard and harder for Microsoft to force upgrades on users. When you analyze Longhorn with this trend as a filter, I'm going to guess Longhorn is going to be a really hard sell for Microsoft.
Right, but will Longhorn be the last, great OS development MS needs to make? Or will they release a half-dozen Longhorn "upgrades" in the future that are nothing but GUI tweaks with essentially the same kernel architecture and same APIs?
If Longhorn really is a revolutionary OS, MS should be able to keep it "current" with patches to facilitate support for new hardware standards as they emerge and add GUI tweaks as needed. Will MS show any real interest in doing this?