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

[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

[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

[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.

No Thanks, Microsoft. I'll Run Linux

[NeverVotedBush]

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

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

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: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".

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.

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: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.