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More Evidence That XP is Vista's Main Competitor
Ian Lamont writes "Computerworld is reporting that Windows XP Service Pack 3 runs MS Office 10% faster than XP SP2 — and is 'considerably faster' than Vista SP1. XP SP3 isn't scheduled to be released until next year, but testers at Devil Mountain Software — the same company which found Vista SP 1 to be hardly any faster than the debut version of Vista — were able to run some benchmarking tests on a release candidate of XP SP3, says the report. While this may be great news for XP owners, it is a problem for Microsoft, which is having trouble convincing business users to migrate to Vista."
will 2008 be the year of vista on the desktop? stay tuned to find out!
Microsoft now has proof that consumers have choice!
I think games might be the key for Microsoft to increase Vista uptake.
Vista is the only operating system that supports DirectX10 at the moment. if it stays that way and games start making use of DirectX10 features then games will have no choice but to use Vista.
There is also the small matter of "Vista only" games such as Halo 2 and the eagerly awaited Alan Wake from Remedy, the makers of Max Payne. that too will be a "Vista only" title.
... for your next operating system, please use Windows XP as a benchmark and starting point. Create a product that beats Windows XP in relevant categories (note that "amount of eyecandy" doesn't count - usability, speed, resource usage and security do). I'm sure you will have no problem selling that.
OTOH, people and enterprises are slowly but sure upgrading to vista. The university where I work just took the step and upgraded 25 computer labs (30 computers each) from XP to Vista. Our departments are now slowly migrating as well. There is no rush... Why do we need to rush if XP was working great for us? If it ain't broken, don't fix it.
But now every new computer we buy, we get it with Vista. Seeing the users that have Vista just make the rest of us realize that Vista is not the horror that somepeople seem to be. Knowledge is the best medicine, so people see "oh, it works well", "oh, UAC was not THAT bad, it barely comes up when you work and don't install things"..,so slowly, more and more people are willing to upgrade. This is our case, and i think this is happening everywhere.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
integrate Microsoft Bob into SP3. problem solved.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
If you already have a PC, you'll run XP (or in my case W2K SP4) 'cos it just works. If you buy a new PC, you'll run Vista.
That's basically it. A few people will have bought a Vista upgrade - maybe they're ahppy with it, maybe not. If not, they'll either live with it or revert. It's not to do with competition, it's to do with a saturated market.
The only story here is: people sometimes buy new PCs.
Until there is a killer app that only runs on Vista, I can't see why most people whould make the change.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Of course the enterprise market isn't moving to Linux they're ass slow to move to ANYTHING. These companies are so huge that it takes years to change the way they work.
What I want to know is the made up (because you know what stats are like) figures of Linux growth in the Small to Medium businesses since they make up a larger majority of businesses then a couple of giant mega corps..
For the "Apple charges for service packs" bullshit.
Lemme clue you in, sparky:
10.4, 10.5- Major versions (Paid upgrades)
10.4.1, 10.4.2...10.4.10, 10.4.11, 10.5.1- Service packs (Free downloads)
The benchmarks I've seen also put DX10 at a significant loss in performance for barely noticeable gains. For top of the line hardware to crank out some softer shadows, glossier textures, and lose 20% FPS, its not worth it. Games like MMOs that rely on the broadest spectrum of hardware won't come out with DX10 until its on 90% of target systems.
Would Microsoft consider porting DX10 to XP? I think its unlikely. Mostly they projected to end support for XP soon anyways. Plus its a step backwards, you can't push new features of Vista when your porting them to older, temporarily more attractive systems.
Halo 2 AIN'T a vista only game. It has been hacked and works just as well on XP. That isn't really suprising, it is an ancient game that ran on a P3, what the hell would it need DX10 for?
Other games like the recent system cruncher, Crysis, also can be tweaked to run with "disabled, DX10 only" settings on XP.
It seems more and more that a lot of the DX10 games just ain't there, some day there may be, but so far they are not.
MS could afford to force Halo 2 to Vista only, how many game developers can afford to be Vista only? MS better be handing over a huge sum of money to make a game just for Vista.
The problem is that a LOT of hardcore gamers are people who build their own machines, and are also the ones who need the top end Vista version, so they are faced with a very expensive purchase and for what? So that all their games run slower and take more memory?
It will be intresting to see what happens, I personally have little doubt that MS will survive this easily, but their mighty fortress has shown a tiny crack.
IF linux does indeed get DX10 support as some have claimed in the past via Wine like projects, then MS might be in real trouble.
That is a HUGE if, but in theory it is possible, already companies like Blizzard have to deal with the fact that a portion of their players are on linux and that they have to accept this.
It will be intresting to see how the Vista only titles sell in the near future. MS titles don't count, MS can afford to loose money, regular developers can't.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
does anyone see Bill and Company significantly improving Vista before they stop supporting XP?
Microsoft Support Lifecycle
No one I know wants to upgrade from XP to Vista; the only person I know that had Vista hated it and downgraded to XP. Now, I remember when XP came out lots of people loved it immediately because it was more stable than 98 -- apparently, not that many had 2000. I got 2000 myself soon after and didn't upgrade to XP until SP 2 came out. Many /.ers have said that XP was none too great until SP2. I wasn't on /. back in those days and I don't know how XP was regarded on the "nerd sites" back then. So, was it like this with XP before SP 2?
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
I too work at a college. And we will be resisting Vista until the performance is better. What is funny is how the students are continually downgrading to XP. (they will find a way) And with gaming consoles students are less likely to switch to Vista. Macs have made a surge with our students but so has Linux. (which I'm happier about) Oh and before I forget. We also offer free computer support to the students. With all the machines we touch, we have yet see a Vista machine perform better than an XP machine, even brand new out of the box.
As in most religions, it's the followers that turn people off to the religion. And Mac users are the worst.
Actually, I can think of a couple giant megacorps that do use Macs, Linux and BSD in substantial numbers. But I guess this analyst is more familiar with the middling sort of low-risk, low-growth, boring, megacorps that you never really hear about and that never really grow your portfolio, by comparison.
Make Slashdot readable! See journal.
Are people considering Linux/Mac desktops/servers and adding them to the environment. Windows 2000 Active Directory made it hard to add the non-MS LDAP/Kerberos machines to the network, Windows 2003 has made it harder, though Win2003R3 has apparently helped. This certainly helps lock in, but assuming Redhat/Novell decides to make it trivial to add a machine in time by creating a Win32 Program to add things to AD, and Win2003R2 added the SFU Schema Extensions by default, and all of a sudden, adding Linux services can help, a lot.
One of the things I loved with OS X Server was that their Kerberos/LDAP integrated solution worked great, and adding non-Apple Unix systems was pretty easy... authenticate against LDAP, accept Kerberos, and just Add Principal (host, HTTP, whatever) and export a Keytab. It helped that Apple used MIT Kerberos which is the best documented solution.
The thing is, if the computer market is growing at say, 8% a year, Microsoft needs to be grabbing a larger share of computer wallet to hit double-digit growth. If Linux/Apple grab extra growth, say 4% of the market each, Microsoft will see either a decline in revenues or need to increase fees, which will force people to look elsewhere.
Win2K/Win2K3 made things much tougher for small businesses compared to NT4, Active Directory is MUCH harder to setup and use than a simple NT 3.51/NT4 Single Domain, but the well priced SBS solution provided a reason to keep them in the market. However, if someone with an Enterprise Play like Redhat/Novell made an effort to make it EASY to install a Redhat Server with LDAP/Kerberos authentication for both the server AND the webserver and whatever else, you start seeing it easy to migrate Web Apps to the Unix land.
Microsoft's marketshare doesn't have to plummet for them to hurt. If they consistently lose 1.5% a year to Apple/Linux, that makes it really hard to grow Revenues and requires them to cut costs to keep up profit growth. That alone limits their ability to just walk into markets and destroy them. When Microsoft "cut off the oxygen" for Netscape with a free browser to stop the Netscape Server package from becoming a threat, they could easily eat the costs of the browser because their newly established desktop/Office Suite monopolies were furnishing massive profits.
If Microsoft managers start obsessing over hitting the numbers, and budget constraints become an important part of the Microsoft bonus structure, then you don't see Internet Explorer projects... You don't see $10-$20 million dollar blackholes on the budget to maintain monopolies.
The loss of Bill Gates also hurts, not because he is an irreplaceable manager, but because he alone had the clout to do strange things. When Apple fired "professional management" and brought Steve Jobs "back," he had the clout to do whatever he wanted. He pushed projects out the door, canceled others, etc., and could be a one man show with control of the business. Founders have MUCH MORE political capital than professional CEOs.
If Gates said, "we must destroy Netscape, regardless of costs" (or Java, or any other technology that he found a threat), he could turn the company on a dime as Founder/major Shareholder.
If Ballmer says, "to hell with profitability, we must destroy Sony PS3/Nintendo Wii, I don't care what we lose in the process," I don't think that he can do it. The heads of the gaming and lifestyle division will go ballistic that they won't make their numbers and get a bonus, and will find people on the Board to back them and get hep. If Gates said that it was a priority, it was a priority, and he could probably change the entire management incentive structure to make it happen. He could create budgets out of thin air for what he called a priority.
Any loss in marketshare for MS is a disaster financially because it destroys profit growth, and the current management lacks the complete control of the company necessary to move the way it moved under Gates.
I've been sitting on Vista since it nearly came out on my home PC. The primary reason was because of my job repairing computers. I knew that users would get machines with Vista pre-installed. I've wanted to switch back to XP and just live with that but I managed to talk myself out of it not because Vista is better, it's because most everyone that goes to the store will buy a Vista machine.
If the manufacturer of drivers are the problem then those people need to get their acts together. Either way I'm tired of having an OS that is suposed to be newer and better then XP but is anything but up to sub-par to XP. Get the damn thing fixed, jeeze people pay enough for that thing.
One last thing, take the dang confusion out of the 7-9 different flavors. Have two like XP and don't relabel everything just cause it's NEW. I still have a hard time finding Add/Remove Programs.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
XP and Vista finish last in terms of stability and security. Eye candy, they are the front runners. Depending on the demographic, the competition will differ. Microsoft found out that people are sick of adopting garbage, that's why Vista will not fly unless it gets forced down the consumer's throat - which it will. For now however, I disagree that XP and Vista are competing on any kind of playing field other than Microsoft's own turf. The alternatives (linux, macintosh, bsd) are becoming more available and more widely adopted.
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If he defines "enterprise" as having more than 1000 employees, he's leaving out 5,092,154 of the 5,104,331 firms (citation) that have fewer than 1,000 employees in the U.S. While I'm sure the vast majority use Windows, far more than 2% of the businesses I deal with use Macs and or Linux.
I really don't get the obsession with big business. Perhaps it's easier to survey a few hundred of the big guys than to do something meaningful. Many small businesses are part of associations (e.g., The National Small Business Alliance.) Perhaps surveying their members would be more representative of business computer use, no?
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
XP main competitor. I think its quite obvious that the computer/IT market has changed dramatically over the past 10~15 years.
:-)
;)
Let's classify the different markets into 2 categories, Business & Home.
In the business market:
It's just more expensive for a business to upgrade all the computers at the same time for no real reason at all other than "it's the new thing out there". About 10 years ago it was simpler, in the sense that most businesses were starting to enter the DotCom age and therefore, IT resources weren't as many as we have today. IT infrastructure was more simple than the IT Infrastructure we are managing. 10 Years ago, yes, we had some specific applications that we had to take into consideration before even considering a massive upgrade. Nowadays, everybody within ANY company, big or small have everything running in a computer, *everything* and to make things worse, every applications for most departments are different. We am trying to say is that is not as easy to adopt Windows Vista, as it was to adopt Windows 2000 over NT4 or even XP/2003 over Windows 2000. We tried to look at the posibility of upgrading to Vista and we have only a few computers running Windows Vista Business Edition, mainly reserved to Execs and other people. Most of our current software set is not compatible with Windows Vista and that's what's holding us back. It's not that we don't like Vista, is just not the right option at the moment if we want to keep our jobs
Now the Home market:
Again, a very very different market than what it used to be 15~10 years ago. This market specifically tends to be the ones who either adopt very fast or adopt very slow. I remember people upgrading to Windows XP years before it was released. For whatever reasons, hardware limitations, budget limitations, or simply personal taste. The home market is the type of market that when it get used to something they don't want to change it. Maybe because for the use they give to their computer, maybe it just plain works for them and getting into the hassle of learning a new system, a system you can't predict like your old system because you don't know a lot of it, will really have influence into a buyers mind. Then we get the budget limitations, well, getting Vista MEANS getting a NEW computer. But, why should they feel the urge of spending money in times like now that what we have to do is save and spend wisely, our economy is not good we can't be spending like we used to do. I mean, they won't really get anything more than what they have except for cute graphics, all they want is a web browser, and email client and an office suite, oh and an IM'ing.
I mean, really... think about it, is it Microsoft or is it something else holding people from upgrading? I don't think Vista is as bad as people put it, out of 10 people who uses Vista, 7 say its good and that they like it (and use it everyday). 1 Didn't try to get along with it much and found everything very different and didn't like it and 2 used it at the local CompUSA/BestBuy store and didn't like it (and other people who did this very same thing told em it sucked). I mean, I don't know
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
How is this Apple bigot being insightful? He just claimed that apple charges for service packs. What douchebag calls Apple's bugfix releases a service pack? The kind that thinks that MAJOR operating system upgrades are also service packs.
Look, to each his own. If you prefer the Windows way, go for it, it's your choice and your freedom, but leave the brain dead asshatery at home.
Posted this the other day, and it's at least as applicable to this thread. I'll be surprised if the larger companies switch to Vista. A general rule of thumb is that the larger the company, the slower any software transition. Many reasons for this, from testing compatibility of your apps with the new software, to layers of bureaucracy to go through. As an example, General Electric is roughly 60% WinXP and 40% Win2K, at least in Europe -- I can't speak for other territories. Office 2000 is deployed on appoximately 80% of systems, Office XP on another 15%, and only 5% or so having moved to the 'modern' Office 2003 -- this despite known errors in Excel 2000 with workbooks containing lots of pivot tables and formulae running into the 'out of memory' issue. Given that they are the world's second largest company, and that there's no way they will be upgrading to any new OS without having, say, 3-4 years to test it and get it approved by the powers that be, that's a huge number of sales Microsoft will miss out on. I can only assume that other comperably large companies have similar behavior. To expound just a bit so it's not pure copy pasta, GE seems to be more conservative under Jeff Immelt than it was under Jack Welch - not necessarily a bad thing, just a difference in leadership style. The only software that they update to the newest and greatest on a regular basis is SAV. I would be incredibly surprised to see Vista rolled out on a site- or business-unit- wide basis, let alone across the entire company. More likely is that the W2K computers are migrated to XP over the next 12-18 months.
Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am master of my fate and captain of my soul.
That report is so misguided. Yes, Vista _IS_ slower, but think about all you get for it! You get free popups, chunks of your data archived at MS for NO added cost or CPU time other than the base Vista install, and the assurances that your software is genuine. With XP, you probably would have trouble sleeping at night not knowing for SURE if your software is genuine, or that your config and IP data wasn't safe in the hands of security conscious redmondians.
So Vista _DOES_ run slower, but the security and peace of mind is well worth it. Were it not for the added speed, you might be a victim of software WMD or something, they are out there you know. Boo.
-Charlie
Microsoft competing with itself?
Someone quick invent a boomerang chair for these situations
Its just going to take time to implement, integrate & upgrade everything to support it. You would have to be kidding yourselves to think MS just made up vista without regard for its core customers. The business version includes encryption, AD, GPO, security, performance, reliability that business users demand and to think Vista isn't an upgrade over XP or 2k in these regards is simply foolish. Auditing, Reporting, Authorization, Policy Management and Manageability have all increased 10 fold if not 100 fold over xp "out of the box" - THAT is what Corporate America wanted - and got! Lord knows They will have to implement the hardware to support it as they would with any other demanding project but that isn't a fault of MS or windows. There isn't an out of the box linux distro within ear shot of a Vista Business & Windows 2008 in end user support & management - everything would be left to 3rd party systems, agent based management and user trust.
Computerworld is reporting that Windows XP Service Pack 3 runs MS Office 10% faster than XP SP2 -- and is 'considerably faster' than Vista SP1. XP SP3 isn't scheduled to be released until next year ...
So there's still time to cripple^H^H^H^H^H^H^H market-adjust SP3.
Windows XP Service Pack 3 runs MS Office 10% faster than XP SP2 -- and is 'considerably faster' than Vista SP1.
The easy fix for M$ is to "fix" XP SP3 to run things slower than Vista.
XP is nice and all, but it only has support for 3GB of memory.
There's always XP64, but last time I checked driver support was pretty sketchy.
I run Vista for this reason alone. Any performance decrease relative to XP is more than made up for by the fact that I'm not running out of memory and swapping.
Well, with the vast majority of new apps being developed are browser-based, and the majority of them indeed using Linux, it's not quite as bleak as you think.
29 mpg. YMMV.
Not to troll, but it's not always a mistake when a company issues a new operating system that is slower than the others. Unless their benchmark is rediculously unoptimized, it's difficult to increase functionality AND speed. The issue that I keep on hearing (since I haven't tried it yet) is that Microsoft created a slower operating system with less functionality. Time will tell if this is true or not. Oh wait, it's been out for a year already and we're still hearing the same complaints....
Actually, it's the whole business/enterprise functionality that most slashdotters either don't know about or conveniently choose to overlook.
Active Directory + Group Policy Management (server and client side) is the most single integrated solution from client to server that exists. There may other systems that reproduce similar functionality (like samba for instance), but nothing exists as an integrated top-to-bottom solution like Windows AD.
The only other system that came close (and some would argue was better) is Novell Netware, but that doesn't really exist any more.
throw new NoSignatureException();
Office Benchmarks? WTF? So slashdotters, if you're a hardened copy+paster, XP SP3 appears to be the way forward for you.
Any chance of a real benchmark? Say gaming performance, disk performance, memory utilisation......I dunno, anything more useful than how many word documents I can spell-check simultaneously.
throw new NoSignatureException();
I see no reason why not to do it.
If they won't do it, someone else will do it.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
These tests were done on RC version of the service pack. All Microsoft have to do now is change/add code that will make the performance suck again and release it in the final SP3 for XP.
I was using vista on my laptop, an athlon 64 dual core with 2GB ram. All I used it for was playing WoW when I'd go to my gf's house, and after several rounds of BSOD's with no solution in sight, I did a little searching and found that I could in fact install XP on there by using a quadro driver for the onboard nvidia graphics. (the vendor did not list any XP compatible drivers, but apparently it has the same motherboard in it as another model). Now, I no longer have to run WoW at 1024x768 but can run at 1280x800 widescreen, with all the mods I want and it flows effortlessly where before it would chop and lag horribly. Vista is pretty, yeah, but I need my laptop to do more than sit there like a prom queen ;-) When I hear of them fixing the performance, I might consider switching it back.
actually XP is incapable of running true DX10 applications because DX10 removes directsound. Because of buggy graphics card drivers, Directsound was all too often a cause of crash bugs. Vista, rather than talking to sound hardware uses a software layer to interface with soundcards so software makers never actually get direct access (and are less likely to crash because of this). This is what you're supposed to use instead of directsound and XP doesn't offer anything like this.
Yes I'm a BSD person and I don't mind Vista at all, excepting how expensive it was. It runs fine on my Sony ViAO laptop, but this is a new laptop so it was probably designed for Vista in mind. The only problem I ever had with Vista was some blue screens caused by the USB subsystem, but MS has fixed that and all is well now. I have to admit though that I turn off all the eye candy and crap and it ends up looking llke Win2K. Maybe I have turned off all the bugs as well.
I get your point, but if I had a small business that I want to grow into a big business, I would study the big businesses to see how they got there.
I really fail to see how parent's post can be a Flamebait... Hmm... Even if like Macs, the guy has a point...
...until it is slower than Vista SP1!
Bearded Dragon
I ran Vista on a core duo 2.4Ghz with 2GB of ram and a whopper of a video card... it seemed fast enough, but file management performance was abysmal.
Do I really need a progress bar when I move one 20kb file to the trash?
Do I really need HD DRM to do my job at work? Oh, don't worry - the network file transfer performance will improve if you just pause your iTunes music playback.
I nuked the install and installed XP last night (many of my apps I use for work are Windows only...) and haven't looked back since. The performance increase is nothing less than amazing.
Vista: "Hey XP, I want your seat!"
XP: "No way dude! I got here first! I had all that work getting those W2k users highly dependent on me. It's mine now."
Vista: "Come on, I look better. You're doomed now anyway. Just make it easier."
XP: "Get stuffed."
Onda Technology Institute
From a "look and feel" perspective I found Windows 2000 zippier than XP and NT faster than 2000.
Why? Mainly because there was less going on behind the scenes. Also the memory footprint was lower which helped a lot when the machine didn't have enough memory to avoid swapping.
Windows Server 2003 did it right: Most services are turned off by default. Until you start turning things on things are pretty zippy. Then again, a server's UI zippiness isn't usually paramount.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Windows 2000 was the biggest competition to XP, but in that case XP had advantages and disadvantages compared to 2000, but the advantages outweighed the disadvantages, especially after the service packs. In the case of Vista, at least with my experience, there is absolutely no advantage over XP, the the disadvantages are huge. I admit the new security features will help the non-technical users, but the last time I got a virus was in 1989, so I don't need the added security (and the huge hassles it incurred).
Since "zero" will never outweigh "too many" I see no reason to ever use Vista until such time as drivers are no longer available, at which point I will use Linux full time. I don't use Linux on my laptop because of too many hardware issues, but it runs on my desktops and I totally love Ubuntu. The true successors to XP will be Linux and OSX, and I couldn't think of a more deserving prize for Microsoft. All the bloat and stupidity that always plagued Office has finally spilled over into the OS, and there is now no current MS product I would willingly use.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Oh, it's much worse than you think.
For years people on slashdot made fun of Macs because the Mac-like kernel and message passing Objective C were arguably slower than more direct connection. Microsoft argued Active-X was better than java because it ran more natively to the OS and processor, and thus was faster and more capable. Flash can make similar arguments.
And indeed the market does prefer flash and active-X to Java and Windows to OS-X, so perhaps those arguments matter.
But Objective C and Mach message passing make it easier to isolate parts of the system from each other making potentially more robust and secure. As processor speeds increase that overhead means less and less. But the benefits keep paying off to users.
Faster is not neccessarly better if the trades are getting you something that is more secure or easier to program.
I don't know what benefits the Vista Architecture brings so I can't argue this is why Vista is slower than XP.
But I'm pretty sure DOS would be faster than XP.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
If you buy a new PC, you'll run Vista.
No, I won't. I built a new PC this weekend and it runs Ubuntu 7.10.
What really chaps my undies about this whole thing is if you buy a new PC that ships with Vista, I'll guarantee it ships with Home Crippled version. So the first thing you'd have to do to play those high end games is dig out the credit card and pay Microsoft more money directly for the functionality you didn't get out of the box.
I think with XP there was sort of an inevitability about switching. Even I bought a retail copy after it was out five years. But I don't get that sense with Vista. I'm sensing Vista resistance from the business and consumer world and Apple is gaining traction beating the living snot out of Microsoft in the advertising wars.
In my opinion the mindset that Vista is somehow inevitable is whistling past the graveyard.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
It would just take a few simple things. Vista needs to be as fast as XP, can't have any DRM junk, can't have all the annoying popups you have to click a thousand times, and shouldn't cost any more than XP. Even better, it needs to have an "XP Compatibility mode" that actually works with old software. Since none of this will happen, I'm waiting for Windows 7.
Why is it that every time one of Slashdot's FUD articles about Microsoft comes up, they always use old software?
Any news on how much "faster" you can run Office 2003? Or Office 2007? Because if we were benchmarking performance of OO.org from eight years ago, teh FOSSie's heads would be assploding.
Whoever wins, we lose
I think the reason they focus on big business is because big business constitutes a very large portion of Microsoft's (and many other companies') revenues. True, they don't define the entire market, but they certainly have a large effect. Take my company--one of the 5 biggest in the US. Windows XP hit the desktop users only two years ago, and the migration to SP2 happened only last year. If my company ever decides to migrate to Vista, it probably would not happen until 2010 or 2011 at the earliest. Also, keep in mind that the migration to XP came from NT4. So if we skip Vista and wait until four years after Windows 7 to migrate, that pushes that date way back.
We also have lots of suppliers. And since we won't be using Vista, all of our suppliers will have to provide us with software/hardware that we can use with XP. In other words, they have a disincentive to upgrade.
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Let's face it, the majority of the consumer Windows market is just not about high-end gaming rigs, able to play the latest games with all graphic options maxed out. They like to browse web pages, chat with friends, send email, utilize office productivity apps, and mess around with their photo/home video collections. For these purposes, just about ANY operating system in current use is adequate. The differences comes down to security, stability, and usability.
For my part, I make a point of keeping an Ubuntu machine going in my house at all times. Friends who come over and want to use a computer to check something while we are waiting for the football game to come on or the pizza to arrive invariably comment on the OS, which leads to questions, which leads to me usually offering them a burned copy of a LiveCD to take home with them. I don't spew a lot of technical jargon at these folks, nor do I assume a fan-boy posture (given the other machines in my house are Apple). I simply "make the sale" to them and answer their questions clearly, responding to their complaints regarding Vista and even XP, at times.
This effort has resulted in about 30% of my friends moving to Ubuntu, with the remainder being split almost evenly between Apple computers and Windows-based rigs. Those who remain on the fence usually sit there because of the singular issue of gaming. Quite frankly, I can think of NO reason for an average consumer to even need to pay for an OS aside from being able to play games.
Most of my Windows OSs are run under VMs now, not in primary desktop, dev box or server roles.
I still like XP though. I run it under VMWare Fusion on my main desktop Mac (and sometimes under Boot Camp) and it works brilliantly. Fusion's 'unity' mode really is the best of both worlds.
I have only one native Windows Box - an elderly ThinkPad running XP, but it still provides most of what I need on the road.
The point is, I don't see me buying into Vista, ever.
XP is a good OS, and has reached a level of maturity that SP3 will complete. I can't think of anything more I want from a Windows-based OS. XP SP3 will probably be my last Windows OS, and will help me get the most from the investment I've made in Windows software over the years.
As for the future - well, Windows it ain't (short of some ground-breaking development). For me, it looks like Mac OS on the desktop and Linux on the (small) server, with a venerable but stable version of Windows XP in a VM partition.
I think Vista may well be the undoing of Microsoft. It's a turkey. Okay, Apple's Leopard is a turkey also, but that's a temporary thing, whereas Vista represents a huge commitment for MS and seems MS misread the tolerance/gullibility or their market.
You already posted this, except that you were using your sockpuppet. Perhaps you forgot.
People are paying MS either way, so why should MS care which way people go?
Table-ized A.I.
Vista seems like a typical new Windows version here. Adoption rates are typical for a new version of Windows and are moving ahead exactly as Microsoft planned, as indicated by their recent record revenues. Vista uses substantially more hardware resources than previous versions of Windows but that has also been true for every preceeding verion of Windows and is likely to be true for future versions. Did it mean anything to say that Windows 3.0 runs a lot slower than Windows 2.0 on an 80286-based computer? No doubt that a lot of people at the time said that Windows 2.0 did everything they needed. I haven't used Vista but people who do seem to generally really like it, especially the desktop 3d windows and transparent windows and stuff. Yeah, it's just eye-candy but if people like it they're going to keep on with it. Bottom line is that Vista is the future and XP will reach end-of-life in a couple of years and I don't see the slightest thing in the article that will change that.
Tungsten Graphics (the people who get paid to develop OSS drivers for Intel's GPUs)
are creating a new technology called Gallium3D.
Basically it's a middle layer that rests between Mesa3D (openGL API) and DRI/DRM (low level drivers) and whose job is to export basic building block available on most modern hardware (shaders, etc.) in a standart way.
The thing is Gallium3D isn't restrict to Mesa3D for the API. A lot of people are speculating about the possibility offered by a potential WineD3D running natively on Gallium. (Instead of being an D3D -> OpenGL translation layer).
TGI's powerpoint presentation in fact contained an illustration where Gallium3D was used between a thin DirectX layer and low level drivers on Windows.
(Maybe, Intel could pay TGI so they also make DirectX/Windows drivers for their GPUs)
In the end such kind of technology could bring :
- Working DirectX10 on Windows XP (similar to Alky/FallingLeaf but using a thin DX10 Layer on Gallium3D backend).
- Working DirectX on Linux and ReactOS (either expanding a potential Intel i9xx D3D driver, or building a better WineD3D for Gallium3.
- Easier OpenGL 3 (which differs a lot from OGL1 and 2 - Instead of needing Mesa to be able to understand 2 radically different APIs, OGL3 could be handled by just having another API Layer running on Gallium backend)
- A nicer and simplier framework to get a 3D stack through OSS for any small player (Non-mainstream hardware maker, open hardware project or opensource team creating drivers for unsupported hardware). Up until now there was only MESA that did offer OpenGL 1/2 API, and required a lot of duplicate work inside the various hardware-specific libraries.
So, to go back to the discussion, Opensource projects (including contribution from Wine) starting to play an important role in game deployment : this is something that may become a reality sooner that we may think.
(And it's not that game developers are deeply against OSS : OpenAL, OGG/Vorbis and similar have already poped up un commercial projects from Id, Epic, etc.)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
By that time the Wine (www.winehq.org) team will have released DX10 libraries that use opengl and thus can run on Win XP or older (and of course Linux!).
Can you explain to me how WINE is going to use OpenGL to get DX10 hardware acceleration features out of video cards? I kind of like not turning my video card into a brick.
DATABASE WOW WOW
Seriously, Vista has a higher required system spec, it has more security. Any time your doing more, whether more GUI, more levels of process security etc. there will be a performance hit. It is very very rare this won't be the case with a simple app, when you add all the complexity of an OS you are vertially garranteed it will be the case.
Vista uses substantially more hardware resources than previous versions of Windows but that has also been true for every preceeding verion of Windows
Windows 2000 didn't use substantially more resources than NT4.0 and for most machines in use in 1999 it ran better than any of the Windows 9x versions... it didn't run on pre-pentium hardware and did need more base RAM but once you actually ran non-trivial programs you needed similar resources, and 2000 was snappier than 9x.
Windows 2000 was, in a lot of ways, the last real improvement in Windows. XP is just 2000 with a flashy theme and a few extra components (mostly the crippled version of Citrix terminal server, and a bluetooth stack) bundled. Vista? Most of the changes in Vista are for the benefit of the RIAA and MPAA, not you or me.
Watch and see if they don't adjust that in the final release of the service pack to dissuade people from sticking with XP :)
Not to troll, but nevertheless, it is possible to increase functionality and improve performance.
I got a Mac G4 Cube (funny little mid-range Mac) in college when they were brand new, and upgraded to 1 GB of RAM (which I needed for my digital animation work). I've gone from Mac OS 9.2 to Mac OS 10.2 to Mac OS 10.4 on the thing, and it's gotten faster every single time, with no additional upgrades.
I know XP vs Vista is a whole different ball of wax, but I'm just saying... it is still possible.
And yet, both the Fox Business News analysts (on the only good Fox News show that is on at 1 am PST) just last night said that, in fact, Apple marketshare is projected to grow as many consumers and business choose both Apple MacOS and Linux systems.
This was also reported in the Wall Street Journal (print edition) over the long weekend as well.
So, we can conclude:
1. People (and business) do not like Win Vista - and if forced to buy Windows, are specifically staying at or "downgrading" to the more efficient WinXP.
2. People (and business) have started giving up on MSFT OS - and are switching to alternatives like MacOS and Linux - in increasing numbers.
3. People want computers that work, not computers that make life difficult.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
All my family who has gotten vista has not had a single complaint about it. MY fatehr just got a new laptop with vista on it and likes it very much. In january I tranistioned their desktop to vista and havent heard one complaint since. I think its really the fanboys of each os complaining. You will disagree with me but even at work I havent heard one complaint about vista. Go ahead flame me if you want but i am going by my experience.
I'd rather see native ports for games. None of this Wine stuff!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
One part luck. One part skill. One part perseverance.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
It would be nice if that project weren't a load of hooey.
Is this article a joke? What rock does the author live under? To say that Windows XP is Vistas main competitor is completely ludicrous considering that it is obvious that Mac OS-X takes that award. Just walk into any coffee shop and tell me what OS is the most popular on a laptop...
-- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
I wonder why I keep reading this on Slashdot and other sites where there are supposed to be people who know about computers. XP wasn't meant to replace 2000. They're geared at totally different markets and users. Windows Server 2003 was the replacement for 2000.
That Vista still is not surpassing XP in sales, benchmarks and buzz nearly (?) a year out from RTM of Vista is stunning.
Yet, I hear people wish they could still use Windows NT 3.51, Windows 2000 and may settle for XP.
How Now Failed WOW!
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Never tried XP or Vista, but as a longtime NT / W2K user I can attest that you can often increase performance by manually turning off many services from the control panel.
I'm all for Microsoft bashing, but this is really ridiculous. What, they couldn't get a Vista PC to work? Oh LOLOZ, that's clever and it proves "M$" sucks, right?
Why do you feel the need to make stuff like this up?
Now Microsoft'll just tell the XP team to add some bloat and slow SP3 down.
Thanks a lot, slash'tards!
Patriotism and nationalism are not the same thing. You might consider learning the difference.
Yeah, it's been out for a year, and it's managed to eat up 8% of the overall market, an the Linux fanboys declare it a failure. Yet Linux has yet to breach the 1% mark (it won't pass up '98 until this month) (source). Kinda puts things into perspective...
Microsoft can afford to maintain XP and Vista, give users a choice. Particularly someone with an older XP system could decide to get a Mac instead of a new Vista capable PC -- but if an XP upgrade is coming they might stick with their existing system. Same reason companies try to give customers as many different products on the shelf -- to crowd out competitors.
In other news, Microsoft is also having difficulty convincing its customers to chew off their own hands.
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
I'm a Unix sysadmin. I got a new work laptop today, still on XP. I asked the IT guys if we were in any danger of Vista. They said "XP is supported for years yet!" And we all exhaled.
We have worked out that if we are ever threatened with Vista, we promptly (a) pump up the Gutmann (b) write a whole pile of in-house apps for ourselves that only work on XP. The latter already worked wonderfully for us in making an instant business case for staying on Firefox — make sure your in-house web apps are written for Firefox and SeaMonkey, and specifically break in IE. (This is easy: just write to standards).
So: to stay off Vista, stock up on in-house apps that don't work on it. Then you have the business case you need.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Offtopic, but your comment reminded me of the Booterang from World of Warcraft.
XP was great, very user friendly, very useful, very secure, but it is old protocol. Microsoft knew of its stability and it was greatly written why they made a 64 bit version.. but it still more vulnerable in certain specifics in its Core features that a small update wouldn't fix.. Most xp users only dislike Vista because it is new ground.. they would have to learn everything over again.. which it wasn't when Windows2000*CHOKE* TRIED to replace Windows98.. 2000 would crash on multiple tasks and lock up frequenty when executing programs. Vista is Very new layout and people who used XP are just new to OS changing configurations.. since computers are more popular today.. ppl dont like vista.. cause its they have to learn it all over again..
I love Vista its amazingly secure.. you can lock up your security a lot more tighter then xp, and i'm using Windows Server2008 beta.. another brilliant extention to the Windows OS trend. The net IE should be alot more secure as well.. but the new virtual machine with Vista is truly 100% more secure then any linux/unix box out on the market.. i believe it is why all the AIX mass handle/mass AIX programming are angry with Microsoft cause of the new renovations Vista has done with its core components isolation its registry from free exchange resources/swap files.. Vista has destroyed the security vulnerabilities.. only vulnerabilities right now.. are virus trends you download.. and couple mild known glitches in Internet Explorers cache, but windows defender corrects half of the resource/registry glitches in that.. active x is another vulnerability which is supose to be resolved at the new IE version comes out.. Vista should be used by the XP users Vista is more secure.. and once you get use to the Interface Vista has it becomes
||JUST AS EASY AN USER FRIENDLY AS XP IS||...
Actually, XP Pro SP2c (which is already being sold) allows additional keys: http://oem.microsoft.com/downloads/public/seo/winxp_sp2c.htm .
--== [N] ==--
...i do solemnly swear, that Microsoft Windows 2000 is the LAST Microsoft operating system in MY house!
Yeah, it's been out for a year, and it's managed to eat up 8% of the overall market, an the Linux fanboys declare it a failure. More than Linux fanboys consider it a failure. Adoption rate of Vista is significantly lower than the proportion of new desktops and laptops being sold. Nobody is comparing Vista sales to Linux sales, they're comparing it to its biggest competitor: Windows XP.
A truly delicate matter. No fear though, there is a simple solution.
Install Linux and tell your parents it cost $100 -- considering their prodigy, they'll definitely buy it.
I hate using Linux as a Desktop OS. It's really lousy for it because it's just not unified enough to deliver a seamless experience and it's really, really anemic when it comes to hardware support. I realize that users can tinker with it and customize it like crazy, and as a hobbyist I'll admit this is fun. But face it, other companies are going to develop most of their software for the platform that dominates the market, specialized products aside, and so Windows users will always have more available to them.
There are lots of decent replacements, most with cute names, for windows apps for users running under some flavor of Linux, but when I'm actually trying to get work done I don't want to have to break into the source code or recompile the kernel just to enable a feature that a company that does robust product management gives me for relatively little cost.
Linux is great for server technology, but as a desktop operating system it's a sacrifice as in my opinion.
i really tire of claims of how unstable 98SE was, and how stable XP is. i've heard all the reasons why XP is "supposed" to be stable. yet i've seen the demand for tech help go through the roof when the unwashed masses moved to XP.
my opinion is the opposite of yours, based on my experience. of course i'd like to see some large scientific study so we have more to spar with than our opinions....
i've seen plenty of well-tuned, rock solid, fast 98SE machines. sure, FAT files and folders can't have permissions assigned to user/groups like NTFS does, but that doesn't matter for most SOHO users. things that do matter are lack of native support for USB flash/jump drives, and trouble handling large individual files.
and i see WAY too many unstable XP machines that can't go a day without a reboot. i've seen WAY too many XP machines CRAWLING with trojans and other malware to ever say that it is more secure. in theory, memory protection should help, and i'm sure it does, but i believe there isn't anything besides anecdotal evidence to show which OS is more stable. XP just feels like it is riddled with bugs.
i don't know how one could do a study of a thousand machines of each OS being used in varied environments, because there are too many possible factors in the real world to have a control group, and i could see a situation where the control group could have all of its machines crash on the same bug.