Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Extends XP For Low-Cost Laptops
Ian Lamont writes "Microsoft says it will extend the sales of Windows XP Home to OEMs by several years, but it's not in response to the SaveXP petition. Microsoft is supposedly making the move in part to ensure that Linux doesn't dominate the market for certain types of 'ultra-low-cost' laptops. XP will be available for OEMs until June 30, 2010, or one year after the availability of the next client version of Windows, whichever date comes later. This greatly extends the earlier XP deadline of June 30 of this year (which was an extension itself), and means XP will potentially be installed on new computers nearly a decade after its original release. The author of the article suggests that the post-June 2008 release of Atom-based laptops encouraged Microsoft to extend XP, even though Intel says Atom can support Vista. Intel also claims that 'Moblin' Linux will be available on Atom-equipped mobile devices starting this summer."
As hardware progresses does this mean in a way that Windows XP could become the new Windows CE??
Shh.
Microsoft are doing the right thing(extending XP sales) for the wrong reason(competing with Linux in the cheap laptop market). XP may very well be the last Microsoft OS that many of us will use. It's reasonably tweekable, fast, stable, supports a shitload of wide-ranging applications, and it dosen't have DRmware integrated into it(Windows media player dosen't count :P ) -- remember that network utilization problem that Vista had while playing media files? That's like turning on the kitchen sink only to have the toilet flush! Lesser of two evils...and calm down, all you Microsoft-haters out there: WINE exists for a reason :)
We are not talking about upgrades here, but new purchases. If you are using XP in your current PC than you are perfectly right. But if in a 2008 brand new PC computer I will get an old OS, than you are wrong, because I am not upgrading to anything. 2008 hardware needs a properly designed 2008 OS.
I'm honestly confused as to why Vista was designed to require substantially higher system requirements and consume more resources. It's obvious XP is still the platform of choice because there's crap-all that Vista does which justifies the extra requirements. Yes there are some nice features such as easy resizing of Windows partitions and superfetch, but that doesn't excuse the hangups I feel when pushing my system hard because it's got less to play with than it did with XP.
Did Microsoft really think people would just stop using older, but perfectly functional hardware and buy new gear? Were they totally nuts? They could have had so much more success if Vista was designed to scale well with various grades of hardware. But it doesn't without a lot of work, and you could just as easily save yourself the trouble by slapping on XP (or Linux). Let's hope for their sake Windows 7 will have a readjustment in their perspective.
We've been using WinXP or Win2K on dual-boot machines (I have one of the few single-boot WinXP machines) due to problems with excessive CPU cycle usage by WinVista - and had to request WinXP "downgrades" for a number of new PCs with dual and quad core CPUs for our statistical genetic analyses we run.
If they only do this for "low-cost" PCs, then we'll have to completely move away from the Office suite and go to OpenOffice instead. Be a shame, but if they don't want us to use Windows, that's their problem.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I'm buying one (or two - must think of mom) Asus eee PCs. I've never felt so good about buying a computer in many years. I was very close to buying it online the past week but finally I decided I'll buy it locally in Helsinki.
The straw that broke the camel's back was the problems I had with formulas in Word for Mac on my brother-in-law's iBook. Nice machine but OO.o works much better for me - and since it runs on Linux, and I always wanted a LIGHT notebook... eee PC just won out as the logical option for my on-the-move needs. If I could run a Matlab equivalent on it (and I will definitely look into that) this little gem might replace one of my desktops as well.
By the way, this is my first experiment with Linux as a desktop OS. I have a router with CentOS at home, but as my WinXP-running desktops die out, I'll be replacing them with Linux. Sorry MS, no Vista for me.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
no great shock here.
Eee Pc opened the floodgates - the future looks to be low power, SSD, minimal RAM long battery "laptop" style devices that will never run Vista in a million years.
This is about containment of Linux - as this is the OS of choice for this new breed.
I bet MS is shitting bricks over this, I have an Eee and the Linux flavor on it is very nice indeed. I still have not put Ubuntu on it.
I keep hearing that 70% of PCs in a year or so will be laptops, if 50% of them are low power devices then that 1/4 to 1/3 of PC in a few years that will not run Vista - you can kinda see why they are doing it.
However, when customers are told that they can only have Vista on their desktop or XP on their laptop they will be annoyed. Even more when XP is being phased out but new SPs are available for the "laptop" version of XP. I can understand what MS is doing, but I think it can (and will) go wrong for them in many ways. Interesting times ahead.
Think about it, some of these low power devices are easily in the power/performance range of ARM and PowerPC chips and a couple already run them on the very low end. The Nokia N800 for example. There's no way Windows XP can run on these and Windows CE is not up to competing against a full OS like GNU/Linux. So what could Micrsoft do and why for instance don't these vendors like Asus bring out ARM and/or PowerPC versions of devices like Eeee PC? They both have MMU's now-adays and are clocking up to the GHz range and GNU/Linux and OSS port pretty easily to these platforms. Getting drivers might be alittle more of a push but isn't the ball for Linux drivers rolling along nicely already?
IMO, it would shut Microsoft out of this market and give the hardware vendors the profit margins they can build a business on. Bulking up the devices so Windows XP will fit on them and taking money from Microsoft to put Windows on them is not a sustainable business. Microsoft will pull the plug when they've limited choice to Windows and Windows only and then pull the plug on the payola for being a Microsoft supporter.
Microsoft is not a hardware vendors friend and they should know this and be doing something about keeping control of their own destiny. IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Those were significant improvements for a single company back in the 90s, but free software has completely blown them away. Most people also associate the porting of browsers and other programs to Windows with the general progress of the 90s. Since 2000, besides UI, free software hardware abstraction and device support has finally caught up to the non free world for practical purposes.
Free software portability and architecture support had already eclipsed Microsoft's ability by 2000 and totally dominates now. Slashdot started it's life on a 64 bit DEC Alpha while Microsoft was struggling with everything Intel had to offer. Today, you only have to look at BSD and Debian architecture support pages to see just how far you can port free software. There's hardly anything free software won't run on and that makes Microsoft's 32 bit accomplishments look petty.
Stability? My software is more reliable than my hardware. Now that I have a few good UPSs and drastically lower power requirements, my computers just about never go down unless I'm putting in a new part or kernel. Having used Microsoft from the DOS 3.2 days, I can say that Microsoft stability has remained about the same. It's better to just turn the old box off.
No calls now, I'm
Actually, Vista's also the best thing that's happened to XP in quite a while too. Even SP2 didn't drive XP adoption the way Vista has...
And while yes, that's funny on the surface, it's no joke.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Well a lot of these devices like the Eee don't have physical hard drives which means less vibration but those flash chips will produce heat for sure. Also, Vista will probably wear out those flash chips much faster especially if they are MLC chips.
You want fun, go home and buy a monkey!
Please, PLEASE don't lump Windows 2000 in with XP & Vista. It's still one of the best operating systems around as long as you use windiz instead of windows update (to keep the DRM & crippleware out). it plays all the games written for windows, and with VirtualPC, everything else. OpenOffice runs on it just fine. and it has a tiny hardware footprint.
It's not as secure as Debian, but Debian has never been a Prime Target of every virus writer in the world, either.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.