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Why is Microsoft Patching XP?
akkarin noted a story about a new Service patch for XP. Dubbed SP2c, the new service patch contains no bug fixes or features. Instead, this exciting patch exists only to add new valid active product registration keys. Oops.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
Because we can have a Vista-bashfest? No, really.... I'm serious....
a large portion of the world uses XP and it is likely a lot of people on Slashdot have to administrate it.
Why would it not be on the frontpage?
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
It's front page material because it allows us to have fun bashing Microsoft. ;-)
This is Slashdot, after all.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Why would it not be on the frontpage?
Because this is the equivalent of Microsoft's changing one obscure icon in shell32.dll and then releasing it as a fullblown patch? I have no problem with noting major XP/Vista patches on the front page, but this is simply too trivial to be frontpage worthy news.
This message printed on 100% post-consumer recycled electrons.
Service Pack, please. Patch makes it sound like it's some kind of thing you're entitled to because the system is buggy, while pack sounds more like you get something extra. For free!
And it's due. I mean, how old is SP2? Two years? Three? Who'd take MS serious if they didn't release a service pack every few years?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Way to spin it, Slashdot. Making the "mistake" of underestimating how well a product is going to sell: not a bad mistake to make.
I'd like it if they rolled up all of the 80-90 critical patches since SP2.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
That's not entirely true.
Microsoft has bet significant bucks on the success of Vista, in both R&D and research. On the other hand, XP is nearing the "end" of its product cycle (in theory), having been supplanted by Vista. Or, to use a different turn of phrase, "old and busted" versus "new hotness."
Imagine you have an old and busted car, and you're buying a new sexy one. For some reason, you need to hang on to both, but you fully plan to get rid of the old & busted one at your earliest convenience. But it turns out that the new car has some serious problems with it, and it's constantly in the shop: but because of your family's needs, you can't just ditch it and start over. Now you're stuck with two cars, and paying upkeep on both of them...
Anyway, it's a flawed analogy, but suffice it to say that MS stands to lose a hefty chunk of change if Vista dies on the vine.
Why would you need to guess about something which is already publicly known and their obvious policy?
XP will eventually become unsupported, they won't have any new patches for it, and they'll expect everyone to upgrade to Vista. Oddly enough, Windows 3.x, 95, 98, and ME have all gone through this.
Believe it or not, every software company does the exact same thing. Just than when Microsoft does it, it's on a massive scale, and it gets rammed down the throats of everyone no matter what they think.
Longterm this will be seen as a major mistake made by them, in my opinion....
Long term, none of our opinions seem to alter what Microsoft does. It just happens.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The reason for it is easy:
If they sent it out as a normal update, people could choose to ignore it. As a servicepack they can set it as a requirement for future security updates. This is just what they did with SP1 & 2, only this time without any added features for the user.
Also: they really have to sell Vista...
A computer is a tool, but I am not. I use Linux
In case you haven't noticed, after installing a copy of XP SP2, there are still quite a lot of patches to be downloaded. Only service packs are slipstreamed onto the retail media, not regular patches.
New CD keys need to be added, and they need to be available when installing. Therefore, the keys must be delivered in a service pack, as they need to be included on the CD.
A hardware product has an official End-Of-Life date beyond which it is no longer sold nor supported. That's fairly logical, because it is a standalone physical item, and its physical end of life is inescapable.
But the concept of EOL'ing an operating system that's at the heart of bazillion old machines out there seems completely wrong, to the point of being bizarre. Those machines will (mostly) never change their operating system, and why should they --- after all, their manufacturer created them as XP machines, not as Vista boxes, and their manufacturer-supplied drivers might not even work with Vista.
Yet, except in the case of non-networked machines, their continued survival requires fairly regular O/S updates in response to the changing face of the Internet. End-Of-Lifing XP reflects a very myopic stance by Microsoft, as if their product Windows XP were somehow standalone. Well it's not.
Microsoft enjoys the $$$ benefits of Windows being adopted worldwide as the most popular operating system, but with that comes the responsibility of maintaining the heart of those myriad machines which use it
Yes, it's a responsibility. Operating systems are not toasters. They sustain the continued viability of machinery that uses them, and can't be treated as independent items. Their manufacturers committed to a dependency on Microsoft support.
While End-Of-Life is a common concept in commercial products, there is something fundamentally wrong with declaring an operating system as dead. While the hardware survives (at least 10 years, maybe 15), a degree of support should continue to be provided, as I see it. The rate of support calls will dwindle to zero over time, so "It would cost us too much" is not really a good excuse. Especially given the size of MS coffers.
Killing off older machines by denying support for their O/S seems irresponsible by the O/S manufacturer, regardless of which O/S that is.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
XP is fine now (when they're not breaking it remotely), Vista was delayed and Vista sucks. If Vista didn't suck then I wouldn't still be reading horror stories about DRM, HD-crippling, driver issues, kernel vulnerabilities etc. etc. etc. long after it has been released. Barely a week goes by without a handful of things like this or this cropping up.
Are all of these kinds of stories just trolls with spin skills worthy of Karl Rove? If the answer is no then Vista sucks. If the answer is yes then there are lot of people angry at MS - probably, at least in part, because Vista sucks so very much: http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=vista
I've been part of several discussions trying to ascertain what advantages Vista actually offers to outweigh the drawbacks and it ain't pretty. The bottom line for us, and I daresay hundreds of thousands of other organisations, is that XP works, is mostly stable and is well supported. Vista can't compete with that - and they're calling it an upgrade?
So if you need Microsoft - and unfortunately we still need to develop with DirectX - then XP will do fine. Vista has to bring something really worthwhile to make us want to go through the hassle of the upgrade and to put up with all the unwanted baggage that Redmond seems to think we all need.
And of course if you don't need Microsoft then you're already laughing. Whatever OS you're using will be just as secure as Vista (if not more so), fully extensible, support all sorts of open formats and not try to wrestle with you for control of your own computer.
I really am glad that Vista's working out for you but unfortunately for most of us the "nifty new features and new look" just aren't enough to justify a broad OS upgrade - certainly for anything other than a home or hobby rig. And my home'n'hobby rigs all run XP or Linux and serve me just fine. =D
Why do you think the ribbon is horrible? Sure it takes some getting used to, but I've found the interface much more intuitive. Try telling your grandmother how to print in Landscape all the way up to Office XP... It required at least 3 levels of menu-digging and a half-dozen clicks. Now, it's 2 clicks and she's on her way to printing out cheap-ass birthday cards!
I had a problem moving from using only a keyboard in Windows 3.1 to using a mouse in Windows 95, I thought it was too "clunky" and "bubbly" (pre-XP.) In the 10+ years since those 4 months of annoyance, nothing has really changed!
I'm dealing with a reasonably large staff which has grown incredibly accustomed to, over the course of a decade, the Office 97/2003-style interface. Whatever the "intuitiveness" of the ribbon, the fact remains that it would be a rather large effort on their part (and mine) to move in that direction. Even I, a guy who has been using computers in one form or another since the early 1980s, and considers myself fairly adaptable to new interfaces, found the ribbon and the general displacement of all the important functions I use in Office to be very hard to overcome.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Methinks theres a pattern here:
Win95 - compelling reason to upgrade
Win98 - pass
Win2000 - compelling upgrade
WinME - hahahaha
WinXp - compelling upgrade
WinVista - Jury's still out, but probably pass
This is
The reality is that XP is a 'pretty good' OS. It's not a magnificent OS, but it's 'good enough'. OS X looks a lot nicer and in many respects is (along with being less vulnerable). Locked down BSD is a lot more secure than XP. And Linux is a lot cheaper. But for a large number of people, XP is 'good enough'.
The two big markets that Windows is tough to beat in are gaming and certain legacy enterprise applications. In both cases, Vista performance is inferior to XP.
Right now, nope.
98se was such an improvement over 95, even over 95osr2, that it was definitely a "compelling upgrade". XP was not "compelling" for me until SP1.
Vista:XPSP2::ME:98SE