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Microsoft Denies Call-in 'Save XP' Petition
CWmike writes "Gregg Keizer digs deeper on a report that said Microsoft was logging calls from customers who requested that the company extend the retail availability of Windows XP to find that some users claimed that they couldn't get through to the support lines. Microsoft denies that it organized any kind of call-in petition and pleaded with users not to dial its technical support numbers to ask for an XP extension. 'As a courtesy to customers in need of technical assistance, we ask callers not to call Microsoft Customer Support Services to request an extension for Windows XP,' a company representative said. Microsoft declined to comment on whether its support lines had experienced a call-volume spike starting last Friday, when the Neowin notice first appeared."
I have been using Windows XP for years, and I have never had a need to use any other operating system. I've had problems with faulty computers, but not with the Windows XP system. On the other hand, Vista is really slow and buggy, it really needs some reworking. Hopefully Windows's next version might be something more like XP.
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What I find really weird about this whole situation is that most companies would be happy if their customers were this fanatic about a product!
As a courtesy to customers in need of technical assistance, we ask callers not to call Microsoft Customer Support Services to request an extension for Windows XP,' a company representative said. Microsoft declined to comment on whether its support lines had experienced a call-volume spike starting last Friday, when the Neowin notice first appeared.
Umm, if you ask people not to call, doesn't that strongly imply that people are calling?
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Customers: Hey company, we want to buy a product from you.
Company: No!
Customers: Um...please?
This doesn't mean that people like XP, it just means that they prefer it to Vista. I'm a Mac guy and I have no beef with Vista (I somewhat prefer it to XP, not that I really care for either) and honestly think a lot of the hate just comes from the people doing the sheep thing, though HP and the like feeding it the crappiest hardware money can buy certainly doesn't help.
Especially in the context of software, the negative feedback towards the newer product puts MS in a very awkward position. Aside from security patches and trying to edge out a bit more performance, there's not a whole lot that can be done with XP. And given its lifespan, three major service packs, and hundreds of hotfixes and patches, the codebase is probably a nightmare to maintain as far as operating systems go. Furthermore, it gets them labeled with a lack of innovation right when their competition is really starting to gain on them (baby steps certainly, but look at monthly numbers rather than total market share and it's much more significant) - and the longer that XP lives on, the more trouble you'll cause when you try to get people to move to the latest and greatest. Vista could be lighting-fast and have a perfect UI and you'd still get people freaking out because they've learned and grown accustomed to the stupid quirks of XP over the past seven or so years. Despite what they say to the contrary, most people hate dealing with change so the longer you give them to get used to something, the more aggressively they'll reject the "latest and greatest".
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
No user should ever run as a local admin, even in XP. They should use RunAs to escalate privilege when needed. I would never trust my CEO with local admin rights. They're just install some variation of a britney spears virus.
The sooner XP disappears, the better. So obviously the solution is to teach users to click on Accept every time a box comes up. Because that's all that the Vista UAC has done, is train hundreds of thousands of users that when a box pops up, you hit accept to do what you were trying to do.
Here-freakin'-here. I use Vista on my laptop and desktop. I honestly can't stand XP anymore because it's stupid. Especially with the laptop. Sometimes it just wouldn't register the lid closing and it'd run the battery down while baking in my backpack.
Vista's only faults are abysmal 3rd party support and its nagging "designed by committee" aspects. But it is vastly superior to XP in many ways. Mostly they are:
1) Installation is no longer a pain in the ass. With all the new hardware coming out XP is increasingly in need of extra drivers before install. On a floppy disk... and only a floppy disk.
2) Plug and play is actually plug and play. Very rarely do I have to search online for drivers. I just plug it in and bam. Installed.
3) Connecting to a network and file sharing also no longer a pain in the ass.
4) Hibernate actually works.
5) I run 64-bit and I don't feel like an outcast of society. I run Adobe Premire and After Effects so 8GB of memory is not unreasonable. XP can't see more than 3.25GB of system memory and the 64-bit version of XP is... no. Just no.
The difference being, of course, that if Vista were lightning fast and had a perfect UI, us geeks would be proselytizing it rather than damning it.
The fact is, we're tired of the bloat. We look at other OS's (not necessarily XP, mind you) that do more with less, and we ask "really, what is this actually doing for me?".
The truth is, not much. It has gotten to the point where Vista is only really good for web browsing, and the like. Thanks to Vista's poor backwards compatibility, with both hardware and software, in a lot of business cases it just isn't an option.
And if you think the windows empire was built on the backs of home users, you are mistaken. Home users are a pleasant result of businesses requiring business machines, and the users of those business machines brought the PC into the home. It's a side market that has become nearly as large as the main market, but it's still not the main market.
I'm all for the latest and greatest, but lets try making it actually better than what was there before, yeah?
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller