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Microsoft Responds to 'Save XP' Petition
DaMassive writes "Computerworld Australia is running a story with a response from Microsoft to Infoworld's SAVE XP petition Web site, which has gathered over 75,000 signatures so far. Apparently Microsoft is aware of the petition, but says it is "listening first and foremost to feedback we hear from partners and customers about what makes sense based on their needs, that's what informed our decision to extend the availability of XP initially, and what will continue to guide us" — a somewhat strange response given that the vast majority of people signing the petition ARE Microsoft customers! The Save XP movement has attracted the attention of the software giant, despite its claims that Vista has sold more than 100 million copies and its adoption rate is in line with the company's expectations. "We're seeing positive indicators that we're already starting to move from the early adoption phase into the mainstream and that more and more businesses are beginning their planning and deployment of Windows Vista," the company said. Nevertheless vendors such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Fujitsu, and more recently NEC, all offer the opportunity to downgrade to XP Pro."
I thought there was some efforts by third parties to get directX 10 running on Windows XP. Does anybody know if any progress has been made on that front?
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Instead of plowing a field, we're moving bits and bytes.
Microsoft listens to the lords and barons, not to the serfs (barring a massive uprising and the occasional symbolic act of obligatory good faith).
You can't take the sky from me...
Quote from the article: ... a Microsoft spokesperson in the US told Computerworld: "We're aware of it, but are listening first and foremost to feedback we hear from partners and customers about what makes sense based on their needs. That's what informed our decision to extend the availability of XP initially, and what will continue to guide us."
So much of what comes from Microsoft seems depersonalized, as though employees just go through the motions, realizing that nothing they do will change the basic nature of the fundamental failures in the company.
Incompetence hangs in the air like the cold stench of death.
How many of us back in 2001 could have imagined the day when we would be fighting to save Windows XP?
It is a strange world.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
IMO, Windows XP was never really that bad, and I've always considered it a step up from Windows 2000. Most people annoyed about XP was due to the crappy skin, but that's remedied in some time less than a minute by switching to the classic skin (and saving system resources in the process). After having done that, I can only note that XP has better stability than 2000 (ya, rly! I've had registry crashes on 2000 on a magnitude I've never seen on XP; actually XP with good drivers quite rarely crash for being a consumer OS), much improved hardware support, driver rollback support, fast user switching, networking over FireWire & Bluetooth, etc.
And since XP is getting pretty old, the recommended specs to run it fairly well is still just about 256-512 MB RAM or so on a 300+ MHz CPU.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I agree with Linus Torvalds on what he said about operating systems. Basically, a regular user who's upgrading the OS should not notice a too big difference, nor should he have to upgrade the computer. The big problem with Vista is that it runs significantly slower than XP. Most of the annoyances are gone now that a year has passed since the release, so after a year of Vista, I am finally pleased (except for the exceptionally steep hardware requirements).
If only Microsoft can make Windows 7 blazing fast again, I have no doubt it will be a huge success. Imagine the millions of users out there who switch from Vista to Windows 7 to notice that things are running fast like hell now. That's what we need. Linus was right.
Full Tilt
If they offer XP for too long, Linux and Mac will begin to look significantly better, not to mention projects like Wine and Reactos are being allowed valuable catch up time the longer Vista sits rotting on the vines. Vista like all Microsoft projects is a forced upgrade, if the upgrade does not occur then there is no vendor lock-in, no lock-in, no Microsoft. Microsoft is stuck between a rock and a hard place now and it shows prominently with rumors of Windows 8 looming in the intarwebs.
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
It happens everytime really. The amount of machines I had to downgrade from 2k/XP to Windows ME (ME!!!!!!!) back when I did that kind of work, was rediculous. Its just that there was such a large time period between XP and Vista, that people forgot. Its like how hell froze over when MS released IE7...it had been so long since an IE "upgrade" (I use the term loosely) that a lot of companies that had made web applications had actually STARTED -after- IE6 came out, and had no clue how to handle a transition like that...
Same old same old.
Despite its claims that Vista has sold more than 100 million copies and its adoption rate is in line with the company's expectations.
Vista's sales are high for one reason.
Every Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc that you purchase with XP is actually sold as a computer with a Vista license and a XP downgrade license.
Classic Microsoft.
Microsoft posts record performance in its Windows client division.
In office products. In servers. In console gaming...
15-20% growth in the first and second quarters of fiscal 2008. The U.S. economy is weak. The tech sector is down. But Microsoft is on a roll.
The Slashdot response is denial.
In a crapflood of posts that put a increasingly desperate spin on news that - more realistically viewed - would silence a Twitter.
There is talk on the Wine page about adding support of DirectX 10 *soon* and that it might be an option to run Wine in Windows XP to provide DirectX 10 support.
I wonder if they are overly optimistic, or if they have truely looked into DX10 and think they can pull it off?
You also needed new drivers for DX9, DX8, DX7 and so on.
Not quite the same ballpark. In terms of MS Office dx7-dx8-dx9 is Office 2000 to Office XP to Office 2003. DX10 is Office 2007 with docx and ribbons.
Oh, and using multiple D3D applications simultaneously was supported since DX2 (via DirectDraw Clipper object). Vista allows to make _composite_ applications, i.e. a D3D surface which is in turn mapped into another surface.
I'm sorry. I meant simultaneously hardware accelerated d3d. You know, so if one program has a spinning rendered textured and shaded cube at 120fps in one window, and you switch to another program in another overlapping window with its own rendered texture mapped shaded spinning regular polyhedron, the cube in the first one doesn't drop to a framerate you can count on your fingers... its 2008. They should both be able to spin at full speed. While a movie is playing in a 3rd window, on a desktop with 3d shadow effects if that's what the user wants.
These things don't even begin to get near where I'm talking about:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa919937.aspx
You don't need new driver architecture for DX10, it can work well enough with the old one. You just won't get hot-swap support and other goodies.
Only someone in marketing would suggest that. "Hey, lets take all the revolutionary big features out of DirectX10, backport it to windows 98; and claim we've got directX10 working on Windows 98" Because, hey, you could do that. You could even show some program that checks for directx10 and makes a couple directx10 api calls to prove your programming mojo.
But, sorry, that isn't directx10.
In fact, there are projects to make DX10 emulation using OpenGL features.
See above. That isn't dx10 emulation. That's adding support for some dx10 api's using dx9/ogl. That's great if you want to run Halo on XP or something, but try something actually impressive... get AeroGlass running on XP, while playing a DVD movie in one window and WoW in another. Then click the start menu without having the other two windows choke up.
So? DX5/6/7 came out roughly every 1.5 years and driver developers somehow managed to write good drivers. And now they have several years to port DX10.
I'm sorry. I meant simultaneously hardware accelerated d3d. You know, so if one program has a spinning rendered textured and shaded cube at 120fps in one window, and you switch to another program in another overlapping window with its own rendered texture mapped shaded spinning regular polyhedron, the cube in the first one doesn't drop to a framerate you can count on your fingers... its 2008. They should both be able to spin at full speed. While a movie is playing in a 3rd window, on a desktop with 3d shadow effects if that's what the user wants.
That was supported since late 90-s. You can create several accelerated graphical contexts and they will work along nicely. Try to run several 3D-graphical applications on XP - it just works. Now, XP heavily balances CPU/GPU power in favor of the foreground application (which makes sense), but it's a purely tuning matter. If you don't believe me - look at Linux, Compiz can work along nicely with 3D applications.
These things don't even begin to get near where I'm talking about:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa919937.aspx
Yep. DirectDraw Clippers were available SINCE DIRECTDRAW 2.0 IN 1996 - the earliest version of DirectX (DirectDraw 1.0 was known as Game SDK). I know, I myself wrote applications for science graphics rendering with several graphical contexts.
Only someone in marketing would suggest that. "Hey, lets take all the revolutionary big features out of DirectX10, backport it to windows 98; and claim we've got directX10 working on Windows 98" Because, hey, you could do that. You could even show some program that checks for directx10 and makes a couple directx10 api calls to prove your programming mojo.
But, sorry, that isn't directx10.
Sorry, but what is DirectDraw/Direct3D? I somehow thought that it was a 3D API. 3D applications don't care about hotswapable graphic cards, they only care about that 'several API calls'. That API calls can certainly be ported to Windows XP, there's no great technical barriers.
See above. That isn't dx10 emulation. That's adding support for some dx10 api's using dx9/ogl.
Nope. New DX10 features are already present as OpenGL extensions. So these projects just build DX10 API on top of OpenGL. It's not emulation, it's translation.
That's great if you want to run Halo on XP or something, but try something actually impressive... get AeroGlass running on XP, while playing a DVD movie in one window and WoW in another. Then click the start menu without having the other two windows choke up.
Not a problem. I can run Compiz while playing Quake 3 and running a DVD player in Linux. All with current OpenGL.