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The End is Nigh for XP
SlinkySausage writes "Computer makers have been told they'll no longer be able to get Windows XP OEM by the end of this year, despite strong ongoing demand for the OS. Analysts and computer makers are wondering if the move is premature given Vista's ongoing performance and compatibility issues. Dell recently said it would reintroduce XP on a range of machines due to customer demand but Microsoft will only allow this until the end of the year."
It's funny, that even the compusa and bestbuy salespersons are telling me that I should latch onto any secondhand xp copies I can get my hands on simply because Vista is causing them and their customers nothing but headaches.
Is it just me, or is Microsoft shooting themselves in the foot by pushing this new, and somewhat unpopular product into the marketplace?
for sale
I'm a self-modifying sig virus
Who modded this drivel "Insightful"?
Just about any Linux distro released in the past couple of years has an update tool which will not only patch the OS, but all of the applications as well. All of the additional tools you need to buy to make Windows useful have to be updated separately.
Linux is MUCH simpler than that.
I don't have to go to ANY website to update my current desktop (SLED 10), an icon glows orange in my toolbar, clicking it gives me the option to update.
I work in I.T. as an MS sysadmin.
That explains a lot.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
If you want to see the ubuntu community's (best?) contribution just head over to irc.freenode.net #ubuntu; people are always willing to help with the most common, mundane questions you can think of. I don't know why people are so keen to spoon-feed people FAQ responses, but spoon-feed they do, and I think it's vital for beginners (though for more experienced people it does mean the non-trivial questions are drowned out).
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
The trick is the way you answer. The first dialog asks if you want to reboot now or later. Don't answer. It'll then not bug you to reboot and you won't risk an auto reboot.
jh
It's actually not new for Vista. XP also just places it on a timer, and when that runs out, shows the reminder again. And if you don't do anything and then go home from work, it auto-reboots. So XP share this behavior. Actually, the only thing Vista does is improve things a little, because it at least let you set the timer to 4 hours, which is far more than XP's 15 minutes or whatever it might be. (not configurable from an UI at least)
To resolve this auto-reboot behavior which is a very strange default, given it can cause dataloss, simply (in XP and Vista alike) set the Windows Update client to only auto-download updates, not install them. The problem with forced reboots after a while only happens if the updates have already been installed.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Bill Gates is software's Dr. Death. It doesn't matter what the customer wants; Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, wants more money, and will drag everyone through his neurosis.
Microsoft's business model is to do what hardware manufacturers want. Hardware manufacturers want operating systems that can't run on old computers, so customers will be forced to buy new computers. Sometimes it has seemed to me that Microsoft is not really primarily a software company, but primarily an abuse company that accomplishes abuse through software.
Windows XP was not really stable until Service Pack 2 was released. Before that, Windows XP was full of grief for administrators. Service Pack 2 contained something like 330 documented fixes, if I remember correctly, and I verified that there were fixes that were not documented. Now Microsoft wants people to go through that again??? With a Service Pack 0 release?
Someone said that Microsoft's motto is "The whole world is our beta test site." The entire reason people wanted to migrate away from Windows 98 is that it has an unstable file system, and artificial limits to system resources. Otherwise, many companies would have wanted to stay with their old systems, because employees often run a very limited set of software packages.
Managers in a company that has a virtual monopoly, like Microsoft, may think that the way to make more money is never to release a good product, so that customers will always want more.
Eventually, I think, more and more companies and universities and governments will decide they don't like expensive, stupid, forced upgrade cycles, and will migrate to a managed distribution of Linux like Ubuntu.
The problem with Linux and BSD has always been that developers don't like to document what they have developed. Sometimes user-friendly GUIs and documentation can be 80% of the work, and that work isn't done very well by people who "just want to program".
Linux distributions need a manager like Mark Shuttleworth of Ubuntu. Developers don't like to manage their own work, as Mark said he has discovered. The Linux kernel has a manager, Linus Torvalds, and the rest of Linux needs a manager, also.
I have several times offered to help document open source software, but my offer has always been refused. Apparently there is a strong attachment to doing things the old way. Apparently there is a feeling that someone who writes the documentation will get too much credit, even though I did not expect to have my name on what I wrote.
Changing to any new operating system tends to be expensive because of the re-training required. Good top management could help design methods of easing that transition by coordinating the details that tend to be forgotten when no one is really in charge.
The link you provide is to manage the wuauclt app remotely via COM. SO you can request that the WU agent pulls down available updates but not get the agent to check other sites for updates to your own apps - just those which MS choose to update at MU/WU... the PP wanted the ability to use it to provide updates for his own applications - not force users to update the MS ones.
The business desktop version of Vista by default reboots without asking permission at 3am after receiving an update. After all, the computer can't be doing anything useful in the middle of the night, right?
I found out when it rebooted near the end of a week long calculation I was making.
Overall, my impression of Vista has been positive -- on the scale for MS Windows releases. It continues MS's unbroken track record of mediocrity. I've encountered some of the problems people have reported on Vista, although in most cases they aren't really a bad as people say. Other problems that people have feared are just figments of their imagination. You can rip CDs to MP3s and copy the files around. At least for now.
But the lesson they haven't learned is illustrated by the automatic reboot: they haven't learned how to stay out of the user's way. They may have copied some of the MacOS eye candy but they haven't copied is the philosophy of leaving the user in charge. Unix based desktops vary greatly in their usability. Some of them can be cluttered, or cryptic. But they always stay out of the user's way. The irony of Windows was all those years where MS supporters sneered at MacOS as being a childish toy, but Windows is the only desktop environment that patronizes its users.
I'd grade Vista as a solid C, where XP got a C, 2000 got a B, NT 4 a D. MS was aiming for a B, improving XPs security the way 2000 improved NT 4's stability, but early signs are not promising in that regard. It is also a bit buggier still than a released operating system should be, but not intolerably so. But unless you have a specific documented concern, for instance if you have an extensive DRM'd video collection you want to play out of your video card, I don't think there is a reason for Windows users to panic because they have to use XP.
The only people who clearly ought to be irritated by this are IT people, for whom it makes a lot of work and expense. If Vista delivers on promises of greater security (questionable yet), then it will have been worth their while.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I work for a non-profit, and we discovered last week that Microsoft's Charity OpenLicense program is no longer available for Windows XP or Office 2003. If we want those, we have to pay full price instead of the discounted Charity OL price (which is about 1/4 of the full price). In this particular case, we were attempting to buy a license to use with Parallels on one of our MacBooks, so that our web nerds could test their work on Windows.
What really pisses me off about them dropping the COL program on XP is that the non-profits are generally the ones that can least afford the hardware upgrades to make their existing clients play nice on Vista. On the other hand, it's still cheaper to buy XP even at full price.
My daughters XP machine has been crapping out lately, so in an attempt to get the files off of it before I fragged it, I inserted a Knoppix Cd in there and booted it up. Suddenly the computer was running stable! She was really impressed with it, so I decided to just ditch XP and install Linux for her. I went with Ubuntu, and after downloading 6.10 I had a couple of questions about the install, so I headed over to IRC, where three people jumped at the chance to help me out, and the questions were answered in a matter of minutes. They knew I was a linux newbie, and there was no attitude, just a desire to get somebody else running Linux. Hats off to them!
He who laughs last is at 300 baud.
Amen to that. Any time I have a critical problem I can't resolve by cruising the web, I visit an irc channel. I ask my question, and usually no one answers the first time. So I answer a few newbie questions. Eventually, someone who knows the answer often comes along. So I get what I need, and I give something back to the community. Not everyone does that, but as long as there are some of us who will answer more questions than we ask, the system can continue to work.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"