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Microsoft Extends XP's Life By 6 Months
hairyfeet writes "Despite Microsoft releasing Windows Vista more than nine months ago the adoption rate has not been as Microsoft hoped. Bowing further to pressure from OEMs and consumers, Microsoft has extended the life of Windows XP, which was due to end sale by OEMs on January 1 next year, to a new date of June 30. Asked if this was an indication of a strong demand for XP, a Microsoft representative sought to downplay the extension, stating 'We wouldn't term it strong, we would describe this as accommodating a certain element who needs more time.'"
What happens to the activation servers long after the products (ie 2000 and XP) are out of extended support?
Microsoft representative sought to downplay the extension, stating 'We wouldn't term it strong, we would describe this as accommodating a certain element who needs more time.'
Hmm...
Journalist: "Did Vista fail?"
Microsoft Representative: "I wouldn't say it failed. I'd say it successfully failed in succeeding to fail in successful failure."
Journalist: "Oh.. right, exactly what I had in mind!"
It's just so transparent when companies spin things, it hurts. And you know behind the curtains they shout and curse and spit, and say things like this:
"I am not sure how the company lost sight of what matters to our customers (both business and home) [..] our teams lost sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, [..] I see lots of random features and some great vision, but that doesn't translate into great products. I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft."
And, as you know, this is an actual quote from Jim Allchin's private email to Gates and Ballmer. Regarding Vista. Not quite like their public claims of vicious unstoppable wildfire Vista success, now, is it.
Yes, that's obviously the case. Anyone who still trots out the old stupid chestnut "Windows is unstable" argument has either never used 2000 or XP, or is just lying in hopes of attracting attention from the gullible to his purely political motives (or both).
Actually, I think this is pretty fortuitous for Microsoft, despite the fact that it calls attention to Vista's lack of popularity. Computer stores around here are using the fact that they "still" sell computers with XP as a sales tool, and the support extension is a pretty nice method of keeping everyone happy and quiet while Microsoft does whatever they do to Vista to make it a reasonable upgrade. Although I've not used Vista beyond a few tries in the store and a minute or two at a friend's house, it seems from popular opinion (beyond the completely unsurprising groupthink here at Slashdot) that Vista was born prematurely, and Microsoft is fortunate to have a historical product like XP they can use as a tool of placation until the new one is what it always should have been.
XP *is* really good, and Microsoft is pretty lucky that Vista didn't come after, say, Windows 98 or ME, because those are not something they'd want to fall back upon in a situation like this. I guess the old saying is true -- business is as much about timing and luck as it is about skill.
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Inventor of the term 'pardon my French'.
I work in an organisation who has a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement license so on Vista's launch I installed Vista Enterprise on a pretty crappy work PC (Dell GX240) and Vista Ultimate on my home PC (self made Athlon XP 2000+) to see what it was like and I still use them daily.
And I have had no problems with instability and apart from an obscure Belkin USB IrDa device I have had no problems getting other devices to work, either with Vista drivers or XP Drivers and I find it stable and fast, apart for copying files which is a dog.
At this point you may be thinking "Ah, he thinks Vista is great", but you'd be wrong. I quite like Aero, I love the way Vista Ultimate talks to my XBOX 360, but I'm left thinking "Is that it?" There is nothing there worth the £350 Microsoft is asking for the full version, asking that is taking the piss. The basic version I think is £100.. is it worth that.. even then probably not.
While we have no plans to roll out Vista at work at the moment, we said to any of the IT support staff they could install it if they liked on their PCs/Laptops and only 2 of us (including me) did it out of 120 people.
It seems no-one is really interested or cares about Vista.
Jonathan
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http://www.irvtheswerve.net/
Vista was designed for the movie industry, but Microsoft forgot that the movie industry is not buying vista, the customers have to. Speaking of lost focus.