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."

Comments

OH GOD

[barkeyrogers]

So what they are basically saying is, directx 10 costs $300 and youll never ever have it without ruining your computer

Re:OH GOD

[causality]

Except for the part where Vista Home Premium costs around $200, and $100 if you get it OEM when building a new computer (or not, newegg really doesn't care). And it doesn't ruin your computer, but thanks for trolling.

To quote a Monty Python episode ... "You're no fun anymore!"

Re:OH GOD

[vux984]

I know I can play Halo 2 on XP using a third-party tool that basically tricks Halo 2 into thinking it's on Vista. I'd link to the site, but I just checked and it's been taken over by advertiser domain squatters.

That's because Halo 2 doesn't actually need directx10. It has a 'is this vista check', and it might use a couple of minor new directx 10 direct3d calls (which can easily be captured and reimplemented in direct3d 9).

The real features of directX10 like Video memory virtualization and gpu multitasking (which allows Vista to have multiple direct3d accelerated applications (including the desktop) all running at the same time in (possibibly overlapping windows).

-That- is (amongst other reasons) why Vista has a new driver model, which in turns needs kernel support. -That- is why it hasn't been backported to XP. -That- is why its not likely to ever get backported to XP.

DirectX10 itself is a MAJOR milestone for windows, for the windows desktop, a step that brings it to parity with what linux and osx can do, in fact.

You aren't going to get a proper Compiz or Aqua class desktop for XP because XP simply can't do this stuff. Vista/DirectX10 can. But, this isn't really important 'for games' and games requiring directx10 is mostly marketing puff using minor features that can be easily redirected via a directx9 wrapper.

This is unfortunately because it undermines just how major directX10 really is, leaving gamers with the impression that its just a cheap tactic to sell Vista. (Which, to the extent of its use by current games; requiring directX10 IS a cheap tactic to sell vista.) But directX10 is quite a bit more than what these games are using. And this cheap tactic is masking that.

Re:OH GOD

[milsoRgen]

-That- is (amongst other reasons) why Vista has a new driver model, which in turns needs kernel support. -That- is why it hasn't been backported to XP. -That- is why its not likely to ever get backported to XP.
That is not correct, maximum pc had talked with a Microsoft developer that said there is no technical reason directx10 cannot be used with WinXP. The real reason is that Microsoft wants to use it as a dividing point separating Vista from XP.

Re:OH GOD

[vux984]

That is not correct, maximum pc had talked with a Microsoft developer that said there is no technical reason directx10 cannot be used with WinXP. The real reason is that Microsoft wants to use it as a dividing point separating Vista from XP.

Right, they'd just have to update the kernel, and require a bunch of manufacturers to release new drivers to support the new features. Another not-insignificant issue is the DRM stuff, which is part of directx10, and again needs kernel and driver support. Nobody wants to deal with the mess that would be. For all our MS and DRM bashing, given what the situation is it makes technical sense to use it as a dividing point, even if those technical hurdles could be overcome.

That said, there is nothing stopping MS from backporting just the new directx10 direct3d api for shaders etc back to XP and calling it directx9.2 or even really muddy the waters and call it "directx10 xp edition", and letting the games have feature parity on both platforms.

But as I've said, MS wanted to use DirectX to lure people to Vista. Although I've heard rumours that they might now release a direct9 update for XP to add the direct3d features and appease gamers.

Re:OH GOD

[ACMENEWSLLC]

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?

Re:OH GOD

[omeomi]

Shrug, Bill Gates himself could stand up and say "XP is technically incapable of running DX10" (or any of the lead engineers who worked on DX10, or any Windows XP engineer, or Jesus), and people would still say its all a plot to get you to upgrade.

Of course they would, because it is a plot to get you to upgrade. They wrote DX10, so they could have made it work with XP, but they chose not to.

Re:OH GOD

[Cyberax]

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.

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.

Re:OH GOD

[n dot l]

That's because Halo 2 doesn't actually need directx10. It has a 'is this vista check', and it might use a couple of minor new directx 10 direct3d calls (which can easily be captured and reimplemented in direct3d 9).

Correct. A lot of the rest, well, not so much. And I appologize in advance for tearing into you over this, but I do 3D graphics programming for a living and it just pisses me off to no end how MS's marketing statements have somehow morphed into technical truths when they are clearly not true at all.

In a nut shell, DX10's rendering features can be (and are, under OpenGL) implemented under the old driver model. Vista's shiny 3D desktop and ridiculous DRM (which are separate from Direct3D 10), however, cannot. Microsoft consistently choses to confuse the two, but they are distinct technologies that shouldn't probably don't rely on each other to any significant degree. Details follow.

The real features of directX10 like Video memory virtualization and gpu multitasking (which allows Vista to have multiple direct3d accelerated applications (including the desktop) all running at the same time in (possibibly overlapping windows).

This is all possible on XP with both OpenGL and Direct3D 9. Seriously, get a couple of 3D programs that run in windowed mode and drag them around your monitor. Overlap them. It works fine on XP. Managing the GPU resources is simply done inside the driver. All Vista's model does is move some functionality that used to be common to all drivers up into the kernel, because refactoring things this way allowed them to remove some of the overhead from most D3D API entry points - overhead that exists in D3D 9 (which is obviously not crippled or useless because of it).

The D3D10 feature set could be implemented in XP without rewriting the kernel. There might be more overhead when calling rendering functions, but it probably wouldn't be worse than calling D3D9 functions (and D3D9's API is a lot chattier than D3D10's). There is no D3D10 feature that requires the Vista kernel rewrite.

If you don't believe me then go put a GeForce 8 series card in a XP machine, install the latest driver, and then download GLEW. Get it to dump out a list of available OpenGL extensions (visualinfo.exe in the bin directory, assuming you downloaded the Win32 binaries). Note these extensions in particular: GL_EXT_geometry_shader4, GL_EXT_texture_array, GL_NV_transform_feedback, as well as a few others I don't care to list. Those are all the OpenGL equivalents to the new D3D10 feature set. If NVIDIA can expose D3D10 generation features through OpenGL on an XP driver running on the old XP kernel, Microsoft can do the same thing through Direct3D 10. They simply choose not to.

The only thing the old driver model can't actually do is share graphics resources among multiple processes, something that pretty much no 3D graphics application would ever really do in the first place (because launching processes and getting them to talk to each other is really expensive on Windows), and something which is not required for useful D3D 10 support. Read on to find out why they stuck in a useless feature.

You aren't going to get a proper Compiz or Aqua class desktop for XP because XP simply can't do this stuff. Vista/DirectX10 can.

The shiny 3D desktop thing in Vista is the only thing that really requires the new driver model, as it is what actually makes use of the ability to share D3D resources among multiple processes (it basically shares any 3D app's render surface into its own texture set). And note that the shiny desktop doesn't even use D3D10. It just uses D3D9 plus the extensions to D3D9 that are only available under the new driver model - extensions which only serve to notify applications that their device will (almost) never be lost (mundane window/D3D device setup thing, has nothing to do with actually rendering) and expose th

Give 'em time

[Fleet Admiral]

They will push Vista as hard as they can, as soon as they can. Its nice to appear friendly to the XP clients in the meantime, but in the end they want to make sure every computer now comes equipped with their latest VistaWare.

Re:Give 'em time

[deadlinegrunt]

Exactly.

"...listening first and foremost to feedback we hear from partners and customers about what makes sense based on their needs..."

Hearing Microsoft use the term partners and customers always strikes me as resellers and vendors not consumers of Microsoft products.

Downgrade???

[Z80xxc!]

"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'm sorry, did I see the word downgrade there? I'd consider Vista to XP an upgrade myself. Anyhow, kudos to the OEM's for providing XP as an option. It would be nice if more of them also offered linux as an option when selecting the OS. At least Dell does. (Thanks.)

It would be nice if Microsoft would at least extend the System Builder and OEM licenses for a while longer; there's really no reason not to people like XP, and they get money whether people buy Vista or XP. If they stop offering XP, then people may choose to use Linux or macs, and in the end MS may end up losing money.

Re:Downgrade???

[Miguel de Icaza]

Why hang on to the old?
Everyone should be running the newest of Windows, which is Windows Vista! People who still get by with XP are uncool and stick-in-the-muds. Windows Vista on a Wacom-enabled Tablet PC is the way to go! And Windows Vista to me seems much faster with the new wallpapers! I love Microsoft and everything they do. Products like Vista, silverlight.NET and OOXML powered Office 2007 are brilliant. Going forward vista will be the only way to get the latest version of .NET, moonlight and windows-update. I really have a mancrush on Steve Ballmer, too. I love Microsoft! I want a job at Microsoft!

Re:Downgrade???

[Vectronic]

"I don't think the OEMs are doing it out of their interest to the customer. They seem to be offering XP bcos else the customer will take his business elsewhere, never to return."

So in other words, they are providing what the customers want... instead of providing what the customers want? I see...

Re:Downgrade???

[cyphercell]

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.

Re:Downgrade???

[Firethorn]

It's probably a sign of how much MORE problems they're having with corporate customers and Vista - XP, while it would certainly have the occasional problem that 2000 didn't, it was rare enough to be a special case.

That they're offering it mainstream like this indicates to me that you have double digit percentages of customers requesting sticking with XP.

Re:Downgrade???

[cyphercell]

In a all the years I've posted to slashdot I have never bitched about a moderation, until now. Seriously, Internet Explorer lost market share because it sat there, unimproved, for years. I'm very certain that Microsoft is looking at XP vs. Vista and saying "we've got to look innovative, Now!", I mean I honestly think that most current Linux distros are way more advanced than XP, Mac is more advanced than XP, and if XP looks better than Vista, what the fuck do you think Microsoft is thinking when they schedule a release date for windows 7 (oops! ok, I get it now) next year. I think that if Microsoft doesn't get something out next year, they *will* lose market share, and more of it the longer this situation stands. XP is good enough, but when you can get something good enough plus real tangible perks (unlike a Vista deployment), it's a no-brainer - CIOs are NOT going to let their budgets dry up.

Definition of business partners and customers

[syousef]

int isBusinessPartnerOrCustomer(user) {
      if (isBusinessPartner(user))
            return TRUE;
      if (isCustomer(user) && accountSize(customer) > TenMillion) /* Thin the herd */
            return TRUE;
      return FALSE;
}

No Thanks, Microsoft. I'll Run Linux

[NeverVotedBush]

Because what I want to do today is get my work done.

Vista marketing strategy:

[QuantumG]

NAH NAH NAH NAH I can't hear you NAN NAN NAN NAN

Re:Vista marketing strategy:

[syousef]

NAH NAH NAH NAH I can't hear you NAN NAN NAN NAN

Funny. I read it as "We can year you. You're just unimportant".

Funny,,,

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always read XP as an emoticon.

Re:Funny,,,

[BronsCon]

Me too, and I'm including this somewhat longer-than-need-be run on sentence to get please the lameness filter.

I always thought the progression was something along the lines of:
:)
:|
:/
:(
X(
XP

Re:Funny,,,

[corsec67]

XP (|)

(This being slashdot, that is purely hypothetical, of course...)

Wow.

[greenguy]

I never thought there would be a day when XP would be considered a step up from the current state of affairs.

Then again, these days, Nixon would be considered a step up from the current state of affairs, so...

Re:Wow.

[Jugalator]

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.

Incompetence hangs in the air like...

[Futurepower(R)]

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.

Re:what about small businesses!

[Macthorpe]

Making the Areo interface mandatory 5 words in and your comment failed. Aero is not mandatory.

Try again, grasshopper.

Funny.

[Trogre]

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.

Re:what about small businesses!

[CastrTroy]

Yeah, but even with Aero disabled, Vista is unbearably slow. I have a laptop which came preinstalled with Vista. 512 MB of RAM, and Celeron 1.7 GHz. Even with all unnecessary services turned off, it still runs extremely slow. XP on a similarly powered machine would run just fine. Good thing I run Mandriva 99% of the time. That allows me to have all the eyecandy using Compiz, and still lets my computer run very quickly.

Re:what about small businesses!

[jo42]

Except that when you turn Aero off, and all the other eye candy, Vista looks worse than XP. They spent all that time and effort on the bling and forgot to make it look good when bling free. Last month when I was rebuilding my main work machine, I had a choice between XP and Vista. So I installed Vista on a test machine and proceeded to install all the tools that I need. Some of them didn't work right and one caused Vista to keep on trying to Windows update .NET 1.1 SP1 in an endless loop. I then installed XP on the same machine and installed the same tools. They all worked fine. And the XP install felt snappier and more responsive. So now I'm back on XP and have relegated Vista to the "Another Pile of Poop from Microsoft" heap.

Gullible fools...

[Spy der Mann]

... so they think they can make one of the most evil corporations on the planet do a good deed with just a bunch of signatures? (cue evil maniacal laughter)

Evil corporations cannot change. Well, they could change, but they WON'T. Terefore, they must be defeated. I wonder what would happen if all of the 75,000 people signing for XP would have donated 20 dollars to the ReactOS project. $1,500,000 bucks doesn't sound any bad at all.

On the other hand, this democratic exercise can help to open the eyes of the ignorant masses so they can realize that Microsoft won't change.

Same shit, different date

[That's Unpossible!]

I've read all the same stories 6 years ago.

Except back then people were bitching about the upgrade from 2000 to XP.

The end result is Microsoft will fix some of the most annoying things in Vista (or offer alternatives), but 95% of their customers will swallow Vista within the next 2 years, and only the anal-i-will-die-proving-my-point types will still run XP... err excuse me, Windows 2000.

Compiler Error:

[Mantaar]

OP.java:4: cannot find symbol
symbol : variable customer
location: class org.slashdot.it
if (isCustomer(user) && accountSize(customer) > TenMillion) /* Thin the herd */
^
1 error

Re:Cock

[kemushi88]

I don't have a great amount of experience with this particular part of OS history, but from my experiences in my school's computer lab, when they upgraded the iMacs from OS 9 to OS X, they became more responsive, crashed significantly less, and ran overall faster. The same couldn't be said for the computers I saw upgraded to vista. When I upgraded my laptop (an original MacBook Pro) from Tiger to Leopard, its performance noticeably increased, despite the fact that it was not apple's top of the line anymore. Apple's upgrades generally seem to increase performance across the board but Microsoft's just target the latest and greatest. But I am only speaking from my own experience. Yours may be different and I could be wrong.

Windows 7?

[eebra82]

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.

Run your old XP in a window on a Unix OS

[gig]

The only way to upgrade XP is to wrap a virtualizer around it as a prophylactic. You need to keep the top the same to run the apps and such, but the guts should not be touching the metal.

A Mac plus Parallels plus the XP you already own keeps all your old stuff working (XP apps on XP) while also opening up new stuff like iLife and Unix and uptime and 64-bit RAM access. XP needs to be frozen in time like a compatibility library, not improved or changed. If you can get by with a non-Mac Unix then that is an excellent solution for running your virtualized XP also.

Vista is different from XP, but not improved enough to make the switch worthwhile. If Vista had Win64 and a XP-in-a-window then that would be worth considering. No matter how much Microsoft wants to ignore it, the fact is you have to upgrade an old application platform to be compatible with a modern system. Win32 was created to run standalone or hooked onto a LAN where you trust everybody, and in 32-bits. Investing more money and time in that at this point is ridiculous.

Go ahead, buy those XP Licences..

[Nemilar]

I doubt Microsoft really cares if you buy XP with your computer instead of Vista. They way they look at it, it's even good for them - Vista is a Juggernaut that will eventually be standard on modern desktops; people who choose XP instead of Vista are going to have to buy a copy of Vista down the line.

So from Microsoft's standpoint, people buying XP is great for them - they get paid once for their old OS, and then they get paid again when you buy a boxed copy of Vista down the line.

Re:The difference between XP and Vista

[vux984]

XP was LEAPS AND BOUNDS better than win98/ME, which was what a lot of people had at the time
Vista is only marginally better than XP

XP was also a 0.1 upgrade to windows 2000; it wasn't that different at all. It used the same drivers and so forth. Businesses had relatively few troubles migrating because it was essentially the same platform.

Consumers on the other hand got a windfall:

1) XP was leaps and bounds better than 98/ME
2) XP by virtue of its close 2k/NT heritage was already effectively several years old when it launched. So by the time joe home consumers got their grubby little hands on it the drivers were largely mature and stable, and supported much of the hardware they already had... even a lot of the 'older stuff', because if there were 2k drivers, you were set.

Vista in contrast to XP is a major upgrade as far as businesses are concerned, and so its more work. And its new, really new, with a new driver model and everything so hardware even 6 months old is largely unsupported, or "coming soon". On top of all that its biggest feature is enhanced security -- which doesn't wow consumers and in fact annoys them.

Me, I've had Vista now for about 8 months, and frankly I'm very happy with it. I put it on new well supported hardware so issues of it being a resource hog, or driver issues ... haven't been issues at all. Basically I took the same care in selecting my Vista platform as I would selecting a linux platform, ensuring things like the wifi, raid, etc were all supported before I purchased.

The UAC stuff really doesn't get in my way. Fortunately I don't have a lot of programs that need to be 'run as administrator' in order to function. (And programs that DO need this were defective all along IMO; it only took Vista's forcing the issue for us to notice... and then so many blogging idiots blame vista. I mean seriously, not naming any particular software, but why should your personal accounting software need to run as root anyway?! If your annoyed that your software is constantly needing elevation, blame the vendor.)

Vista really doesn't ask for elevation much more than OSX[Unix] or Linux. Its just that the latter two OSes have a long history of security so there isn't 20 years worth of crud out there that thinks it should be running as root. The only complaint I have about UAC, is that I should be allowed into Device Manager and other places without elevation; I should only need elevation if I want to change things... they really should have copied the 'lock' metaphor from OSX. But that's a pretty minor issue. I don't go into device manager THAT much, and even then I go in a lot more than most people. My inlaws bought a new Vista laptop... I doubt they've seen more than 5 UAC elevation prompts since they got it.

Re:Upgrading because we have to!

[BronsCon]

I work for a company that has over 80,000 windows desktops and over 6,000 HP-UX servers spread across over 2,000 locations. There has been a lot of very serious talk of replacing the old XP desktops with RedHat in 2010, keeping HP-UX on the servers until the support contract is up in 2013, then running RedHat there, as well. At least two locations are running RedHat servers on the racks right next to the HP-UX boxes for testing purposes. That's about all I have to say on the issue.

Vista isn't actually selling well

[nevesis]

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.

Enough already.

[westlake]

This is becoming tiresome:

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.

Vista rocks - my 10 favorite Vista improvements

[dougnaka]

Vista has brought me *back* into the Windows using fold.

1. Vista's security is a huge step up. It's a *good* thing that it asks you before changing things, don't disable it.
2. Vista's improved memory management and added features (using extra RAM to cache disk -stolen straight outta Linux), being able to use a flash drive as swap.
3. Improved stability.
4. Start menu search rocks.
5. My absolute favorite, copy->merge. I no longer have to connect my usb disks to my linux box and rsync them, I can just drag the entire folder over on Vista and answer 2 dialogs (one for the folder and one for the files) and I can merge/update my 195GB photo archives, Vista will do this on 2 USB drives in about 15 minutes, my rsync to the USB drives is at least 45 minutes.
6. Scheduled backups go into zip files in directories, not some custom archival format.
7. Folder layout and display is neater.
8. My older laptop (Lenovo T43/1.5gb ram) runs it flawlessly.
9. Fixing the start menu so it doesn't scroll all over the desktop
10. Uptime with Hibernate and sleep. I close my laptop and it hibernates. I don't have to reboot with Vista like I did every other day with XP.

Now if I could get all my key bindings working and have my Vista on one facet of my cube, a VMware OS X on another, and 6 more for terminals and Linux programs I think I'd be happy.