The Death of Windows XP

bsk_cw writes "Although many Windows users intend to hold onto their copies of XP until it is pried from their cold, dead fingers, Microsoft fully intends to phase out the OS in favor of Vista. If you're unwilling to move to one of the alternatives, and really don't like Vista, the least you can do is be aware of what's in store. David DeJean offers a rundown on Microsoft's timeline for Windows XP, why the company does things that way, and what you can do about it."

Comments

Re:XP?

[Brian Gordon]

At least I can generate cryptographically secure pseudorandom numbers.. http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/12/1528211

Re:Well...

[AdamReyher]

My laptop actually is slower with a standard Ubuntu install than with Vista...

Opportunity for Third Party -- maybe even Linux

[weston]

Unless MS is really going to *sell* users on Vista, trying to force them off XP is going to represent an opportunity for someone else, among them:

(1) Microsoft Systems shops that have the ability to provide support or

(2) Competition that's open source ("Don't like being moved off your platform when your *vendor* decides it's time, not when you decide it's time? When you have the source, you can maintain or hire someone to maintain it as long as the cost is worth it to you.")

What about activation servers?

[thomasdz]

Oddly enough, quite a few people still have Windows 98 running (I have a Win98 machine in my basement doing my CDEX ripping).
When Microsoft turns off the activation servers, that basically REALLY means the end of WinXP... or is there a chance, any chance, that Microsoft will release a super-secret "unlock all" patch in 2014 that will allow XP to be activated. I am pretty sure the answer is NO, but I can still hope.

Re:XP?

[Joe the Lesser]

I was at Borders the other day and saw their computers booting up Windows 98 ;-)

Re:It's nice to share.

[Lost Race]

Nope, Windows 2000 native on Opterons and Athlon64s, with a variety of Nvidia video cards, works fine and runs plenty fast. There is no malware of any kind. Seriously, I've audited the crap out of everything, it's clean. (Auditing in this case means: Hard drives physically removed and attached to non-networked machines with fresh OS installs, run the latest malware scanners from the CDs. Always comes up clean.) The Windows machines are behind Linux firewalls and basically get nothing installed beyond a few commercial 2000-era applications, plus the latest Firefox.

Unexpected Benefits

[DesScorp]

You know who benefits from this? Apple. Expect Apple to really crank up the "move to the Mac" ads.

Vista's reputation is justifiably bad, and I'm never buying a copy. If I suddenly need a new Wintel machine, there's always someone like tigerdirect that has overstocked machines with XP pre-installed, and they'll probably be selling them for a year after XP is pulled from the shelves. But I think MS is only going to cause customers to truly hate their guts for this. They'd be smarter to allow XP sales until Windows 7 is ready (assuming they don't fuck that up.... a big if).

Re:Nature of an OS

[Txiasaeia]

I know it's cliche, and people have been spouting it for a over a decade, but I suspect that the general populace has come to a point where they can see that dollars and cents are in favor of not being tied to a corporation that makes money by selling solutions for the same problems over and over again.

I'm not sure the issue is that people with XP are unwilling to fund Microsoft. The issue from where I'm standing is two-fold: first, XP works. It's a fairly stable system, and one that people have been using for the past *seven* years. Second, everybody has "heard" that Vista is terrible. My dad, not a techie by any stretch of the imagination, simply refuses to use it. Why? Well, it's not because of first-hand experience -- it's because a few of his co-workers "heard" that it was a terrible OS. More tech-oriented people are more resistant because we don't really see the advantage of switching over to a new OS when the old one works just fine. The general populace is not as savvy as you might think. They're not as concerned about Microsoft's monopoly as they are about spending an extra couple of hundred dollars to upgrade to a new OS that they've "heard" is not so great.

Besides, their business model is just fine. The product that they're selling, on the other hand, has a terrible reputation - deserved or not. I've used Vista, but I haven't put any real time into it, and I'm completely unwilling to do so until... well, I suppose until I have a final-patched Windows XP SP3 system that's been hacked because of an unfixed security hole. Let's see what happens in two years.

I've already done it

[shanen]

I started working with Ubuntu pretty seriously a couple of years ago, and at this point I can say that Ubuntu is my OS of first choice, and I have no plans to adopt Vista. Ever.

I may get forced in the Vista direction at some point, and I'm pretty sure that at some point I'll be forced to at least support it, but so far I've been able to pretend it isn't there and just hope for it to go away. My company is the main locus of such possible force, but they are so far mostly avoiding Vista. Unfortunately the in-house Linux that they prefer is Red Hat... It might be more secure, but I feel Ubuntu is much closer to being ready for the masses to work with.

Anyone care to speculate as to why?

[erroneus]

First I'd like to preface by saying if you LOVE Vista and you truly believe it's better than WindowsXP, then good for you. You are a minority according to everything I've heard and seen. (Does anyone have any studies, polls or surveys backing up either position?)

This is no classic example of market demand guiding any invisible hand to deliver. People want it, Microsoft says "too bad!"

Would anyone care to speculate for logical reasons why Microsoft would take this approach? I'm really out of ideas on this matter. Most people can agree that they dislike the idea... even people who LOVE Vista can't actually approve of Microsoft forcing people out of something they like can they? (Don't answer that, I know they can...)

So why are they doing this?

Re:Satisfying

[Rev. DeFiLEZ]

This is already happening at my (tech) company. Our "LAN" department knows that XP's support with expire, and if they don't start replacing them now they will have a large userbase with no code-support.

Developers and sysadmins were always allowed to run linux. Now anyone else can via a supported corporate image.
if you don't want linux (Sales, Product Managers, etc) you now get a MacOSX laptop or desktop.

This has impacted other Software vendors, Our ticketing system with a windows client (dev/sysadmins rdesktopped in to use) got replaced with a cross platform solution.

I think in 2 years we will be windows free, previously 60-75% of the employees were windows users. The reasons for this was the LAN department hates MacOSX less than Vista, and people heard all the buzz about Macs and were willing to give it a shot.

I am too - seriously!

[MichaelCrawford]

I was very slow to move from NT4, because Win2k was kinda half baked in its first release (though not as bad as Vista). But I've always had good results starting with Service Pack 2.

The key is to install FireFox, never use Internet Explorer or any of the apps that use it (like Outlook), and don't ever expose it directly to the Internet. (The one time I did, it only took an hour or so to get clobbered by the Welchia worm.)

My wife runs XP, but mainly because that's what came on her laptop. The only real advantage I see to XP is the fast user switching. But she's never going to be a Vista user: she just bought an iMac, to run Final Cut on for her video artwork.

Put all your efforts behind KDE

[bogaboga]

This is one more reason why all those that know how to code should put all their efforts behind KDE and its latest flagship product based on QT4. I have nothing against the other desktop environment but its association with Mono and Microsoft's .NET platform makes me very nervous. We already have voices of descent and a timeline on this issue.

One could say we in the free software business are our own enemies. We shoot ourselves in the feet all the time. Imagine...after all this time, with the [free] availability of specs of every kind, there is no decent ODF application beyond OpenOffice.org...which at version 2.4, still sucks bigtime by the way! Do not think I blindly support KDE because KDE's KOffice is a joke!

By the way, some author outlines ways for that other environment to improve.

Re:Satisfying

[LoadWB]

This will be very satisfying. I've had so many people tell me they absolutely HATE Vista, but they're stuck with it when they bought their new computer. They frequently ask me to put XP on, no matter what it takes (buy it, hack it, put their mothers key on). This is a very good point, and I am sacrificing my mod points by commenting here :(

Anyway, I see this happen with Windows 98SE quite a bit. Some old machines run perfectly well; for example, a 233MMX system with 128MB RAM with plenty of longevity cannot run Vista, let alone XP SP2. When this machine is relegated to nothing more than print server, POS, or work which would not take it onto the Internet, I will see Windows 98SE installed with a hacked or "borrowed" key, and it runs perfectly and does everything the user needs. And no body gives it a second look because Windows 98SE is perceived as perfectly functional in the context of what the user wants out of it. More staunch security advocates would prefer to pirate Windows 2000 on a such a box, and again the perception of the situation is dead-on. But whichever gets used, updates are no problem since the unofficial Windows 98SE Service Pack is available, as well as several similar post-SP4 Roll-up cluster updates for 2000.

Just a thought, my first Windows XP machine back at release was a 233MMX with 192MB RAM, and it ran surprisingly well. Those specs would not cut it today.

The same will happen with Windows XP once it leaves the market place. Although then it will not be as easy to "borrow" a Windows XP key since it requires online activation. Then an installer will have to hack the activation but, from what I understand, this is a trivial process. SP3 might change the game a little, but negligibly.

And talking about old operating systems, I took a moment this weekend to have a laugh while I was working on my internal network server upgrading the tape drive. It is an AMD K6-III/400 with 128MB RAM and 20GB IDE drive, and provides DNS, DHCP, and outbound SMTP for my home network. I built this as a study in small network management and it became permanent after I just could not kill the bugger, even with the now defunct experimentation installs of Apache and MySQL. Here is the startup banner:

Sun Microsystems Inc. SunOS 5.8 Generic February 2000

Eight years later and still rockin' strong. And I can still get cluster patches from Sun. Had I invested money in this box, I would definitely feel I saw a return on the investment over the past eight years, and I certainly would not feel like I am getting monkey-fondled to have to retire the hardware in favor of a new operating system (I drool over Solaris 10 x64.)

Not like a machine which is only two to three years old and have to be massively over-hauled or replaced just to run Vista.

I think I have said this before on /., and I feel compelled to say it again. With Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, there was more of a cozy, fuzzy feeling with Microsoft. It was like they listened to us. Server 2003 was touted as being more legacy capable to appease those not yet ready to lose on hardware investments, and I proved this by running it on a customer's 200MHz Pentium Pro with 128MB to support a five workstation office. Windows XP initially was very similar in its legacy machine support, driver issues aside.

Vista feels like Microsoft just told us to go phuq ourselves.

I am in the process of completing my migration to Windows XP x64 now that I have a 64-bit capable dual-core machine. I love it. Every piece of hardware has a driver and it is peppy and responsive, seemingly more so than XP 32-bit. I believe we should have been at 64-bit computing a decade ago, but Intel has kept beating the 25 year-old 32-bit horse well beyond death. Given both, I take a moment to ponder on how Vista x64 performance compares to Vista 32-bit, and think that perhaps I can give it a try sometime.

Of course, all things considered, Vista is still the desktop equivalent of the phone tree, and still frustrating to navigate and get things done. I hope for better from Windows 7.

I am trying Ubuntu right now.

[aepervius]

PITA. PAIN in THE ASS. You read me. First I wanted to install an application. I tryed to fudge with the network things to get it work with my german t-online dsl. Did not work. After roughly 10-12 hours of googling, trying, rebooting, I gave up. So I used my XP PC tzo download .tar and / or .deb files. Then with an USB transmit it to the Ubuntu PC. First application was cdemu. I tryed the .deb did not work. Googled. Oh so the vhsa whatever is not working has to enter cryptic command to restart it, then restart a daemon. Did nbot work. Then somebody commented in a CDEMU forum to just do a freaking mount -o whatever with the ISO. THAT did work. Then I tryed to install the application on the ISO. Spent hours. Did not work. Then finally found some post hinting that the app is not supported in any new kernel stuff (I guess I can give that in being my fault for not googling first to see if the app I got was supported or not). So I started installing an alternative instead. Have to compile it... Right now I am trying to find out why there seems to be some problem with it, some dependency with libgcc whatever. I left it for next week end. I thought, of playing a few of my oldies. I have on my XP box DOSBOX. Installed it worked like a charm without fudging anything. But with ubuntu .... Could not get-apt (remember : no network, meaning I am screwed). Turn out after installing a few app, that i have NO FREAKING MIDI SOUND! WTF ! I am now in the process of downloading timidity and some freepats.

I might be a rare bird to install some of those app, but plain freaking dosbox was runnning out of the box in windows, and I have to install and download third party stuff in ubuntu. Argue as much as you wish, but I am nowhere to recommend ubuntu to anybody without a lot of time and knowledge.

Re:Satisfying

[RodgerDodger]

You are kidding, right?

1.2 Mandatory Activation. The license rights granted under this EULA are
limited to the first thirty (30) days after you first install the Software unless you
supply information required to activate your licensed copy in the manner described
during the setup sequence of the Software. You can activate the Software through the
use of the Internet or telephone; toll charges may apply.

So they disable the internet activation, and make the telephone activation an expensive call, thus recouping the costs.

7. ADDITIONAL SOFTWARE/SERVICES. This EULA applies to updates, supplements,
add-on components, product support services, or Internet-based services components, of the
Software that you may obtain from Microsoft after the date you obtain your initial copy of the
Software, unless you accept updated terms or another agreement governs. Microsoft reserves
the right to discontinue any Internet-based services provided to you or made available to you
through the use of the Software.

There's their privilege to disable the Internet-based registration. Heck, there is their privilege to disable _your_ Internet connection. Maybe in 2014, the Windows IP stack stops working (hmm, that's one way to stop the botnets...)

HA! (still using Dos 6.0!)

[scharkalvin]

Company I used to work for is STILL shipping product based on DOS 6.1x! Granted this is an embedded use of the OS in a turnkey system. I think they bought the rights to ship as many copies as they wanted. (From IBM not M$).