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Dell Will Offer XP Past Cutoff Date
Dionysius, God of Wine and Leaf, brings news that Dell will be offering Windows XP pre-installed on their computers past the June 30 cut-off date. Computers purchased with Vista Business or Vista Ultimate past June 30 will come with a copy of XP Pro. Dell plans to simply install that copy upon request to save users a step. Perhaps this will help Microsoft officials make up their minds about another extension.
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Businesses don't run based on ideals, they run based on productivity. If applications like Open Office fail to open an Office document even 1% of the time then they're useless if that document is really something you need to open. Gimp still isn't a satisfactory replacement for Photoshop. Sound in flash still doesn't work correctly out of the box on Ubuntu systems, there's no mp3 support by default, nor does Quicktime really work. There's still not a decent movie player.
This doesn't even begin to take into account that most businesses I've come across use some kind of custom industry application. CAD applications, specialized accounting applications, lending an loan applications, guess what they're all written for? Windows. Linux still doesn't work for those customers.
If the Linux community wants to advance they're going to have to give up on some of their ideals and actually provide what people are looking for, which is a stable operating systems that run applications people actually want to use with a consistent look and feel everywhere. I ran Ubuntu for over a year and reverted to XP because I couldn't deal with the slowdowns for no reason, application crashes, incompatibilities, mystery feature additions and removals based on the whims of the developers (what's pigeon going to include or disable this week!), and decisions that were made purely for philosophical reasons (no mp3 support by default? please.)
Most of my machines still run some kind of Unix (mostly FreeBSD and OSX) but when I need Windows, I really need Windows and nothing else will do.
Besides, Outlook is still the best email/productivity/calendaring application out there. Nothing I've seen on UNIX even comes close, especially when I need to share data with others.
And just because XP will be end of lifed, the security updates for it will continue for a few years, which is all anyone really needs. If 75% of the market is still on XP, developers aren't going to move to being Vista only any time soon because it'd kill their sales.
Are you really that stupid? Try blaming MSFT when exchange crashes. you can't. The most you might get if you pay for it is help restoring the old data, and reinstalling the system.
Not only do you have to pay MSFT for software, you have to pay extra for the privilege of getting help when it fails.
Save your self some money, and only Pay Novell, Red Hat, Mandriva, etc for help when the software fails and get the software for free.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
"extended support phase to Windows XP will take effect in May 2009. In Microsoft parlance, extended support is the period when all support is fee-based and non-security hotfixes are produced only for corporate customers. Until April of 2009, Windows XP Home and Media Center will remain in what is called mainstream support, which offers some no-charge support and free updates that donâ(TM)t deal with security issues."
I'd imagine that pretty soon (if not already) there will be dedicated websites to supporting XP (including custom patches to any security issues)... and if Microsoft is smart, they will allow them to do this... I dont think it would really impede on their business (much) because most business would probably contimplate "upgrading" to Windows 7 or at least Vista by 2009... and if anything, the XP "Community" would still be promoting Windows potentially saving Microsoft the loss of some customers to Linux and/or Mac who might be willing to upgrade (stick with) Windows later on... Windows 8, or Win7 SP2...or whatever...