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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 like it. Hammer their switchboards until they extend WinXP. That'll larm 'em!
If they gave the extension to XP, they probably wouldn't need the support line as much.
Just callin' it like I see it.
Only problem will be finding zombies with phone skills.
Imagine that! The purveyors of DOS have been DOS'd due to the bad quality of their latest revision of DOS.
I'm sure the problem will go away now that this has been posted on slashdot...
but at least is there. The sooner XP and always-administrator users who use it disappear the better for the net at large.
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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If there were a petition to save Win Xp, with Vista as the alternative, I bet it would eclipse the petition to get Uwe Boll to stop directing.
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed H
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?
doc
Customers: Hey company, we want to buy a product from you.
Company: No!
Customers: Um...please?
People who seemingly cannot get off Windows no matter what, not even move to OS X. I use Linux 90% of the time; I support Windows as a technician (one of my jobs). I can barely stand Windows any more, especially now with Vista. I recommend people things like OpenOffice, LaTeX (MikTeX on Windows), Firefox, Thunderbird, aMule (rather than eMule), FrostWire (rather than LimeWire), and why? Because these apps run on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. I try to explain the benefits of not being stuck on Windows. They may still be using Windows, but at least the day Windows loses dominance and/or the person simply wants to try something new (i.e Linux), their files will be readable on those OS's.
.docx!) and 2) Vista really is not a huge improvement over XP.
People need to stop thinking XP is going to last forever for one thing and they need to either completely switch to another OS or at least use applications that use open formats on Windows. Even preferences can be transferred from one OS to another for Thunderbird, Firefox, OpenOffice, aMule, and so many more (just have to be placed in the right folder). I am glad on Windows for my 'real work' I use applications that run on Linux and Windows.
Let's start with open formats. The two reasons people want XP to last forever: 1) They use applications that only run on Windows (and also think Wine cannot possibly match) and closed source formats (that includes
Full story.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Often times the need to have someone to blame is given as a perk of software sales models such as the one Microsoft Windows relies on. But what does that paid Windows XP license get you right now?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Next month's headline: "Microsoft to revamp XP" due to customer demand and their focus on end-user satisfaction, followed by "Vista EOL 1Q 2010: 'Oops'".
Their stock will inexplicably rise on the news that they're doing, well, nothing.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Show MS the validation it craves, tell them you love XP. call now, your love operator is standing by. Tell them how you really feel.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Me: "Hiyas! Yeah. Having a little trouble setting the clock on my XP machine."
TS: "Is that all? Right-click the clock display then drag the hands around to the desired time."
Me: "Got it. Thanks!"
TS: "Is there anything else I can do for you today?"
Me: "Well, now that you mention it, can you extend Windows XP for me?"
You forgot 3) The games I enjoy don't work in WINE. Hell, they barely work in XP, but Vista completely breaks them. But thanks for playing, we have some lovely parting gifts!
Slightly different situation, but back in the mid 90's Netscape used to have a webpage where you could submit feature requests, and have it displayed to their developers using an electronic marquee. At one point, a significant number of the requests submitted were for an OS/2 port of Navigator, which prompted Netscape to modify their page with a message akin to the following:
It would seem to me that Microsoft is finding itself in a similar situation with Windows XP, and is following the spirit of Netscape's response. However, as good news for XP users, in the end Netscape relented and released OS/2 versions of Navigator and Communicator, and to this day Firefox is built for that now unsupported platform.
So don't give up, XP users! Let them know what you want and how you feel!
Yaz.
I take it your company doesn't have many software developers or accountants (using obscure/internal accounting packages). Seriously, I gave a half hearted attempt at not running as an admin, but it makes my life impossible when I'm constantly writing code and testing things.
This morning I got to work and had to update VMWare (I work at a small shop as an intern, if I'm not using VMWare server to test stuff, then I'm playing Russian Roulette with my desktop being a testing grounds). Before I could install the new version, I had to uninstall the old version(requires escalation). After installing the update (requires escalation), it screwed up all my network settings and I had to manually set my network adapters (requires escalation). Moving on to testing my Latest And Greatest idea, I had to uninstall an app or two (requires escalation) to have enough room to create one more VM (requires escalation) to model a three computer network. I fell back to working and controlling all three VM from the VMWare web GUI (requires escalation) and tabbed terminals inside of one of the VMs. To test what effect my idea would have on files from the backup archives (requires escalation, but that is by design). Finally, I had to create a subversion repo (requires escalation, but that is by design) to commit to.
Unfortunately, I have to do things that normal users just don't do that often. And, "run as..." isn't much of an option for several reasons. As a side note, it is fun to watch automated "run as" jobs clobber each other's roaming profile on the hour as ntuser.dat gets locked and you end up with AdminUser.network.1 - AdminUser.network.12 on each desktop during contention. Furthermore, my choices are to leave a weakly hashed NTLM2 (what are they, unsalted MD5?) admin password on my harddrive or type in a mixed case, alphanumerical, finger contorting password once or twice an hour. I'll pass.
I run Firefox, keep my patches up to date, run spybotSD every morning, spyware blaster about every other week, moonsecure (clamav with real time protection for windows) and I try to be very careful when browing and opening emails. For what its worth, I'd rather waste an eight hour block of time reimaging a hosed machine than have Windows and Clippy breaking my flow and concentration every few minutes. I'd almost suspect that the aggregate time I would waste would be about equal. But, as it stands my XP install is over three years old now (although, it has 'character' after how much its been messed with). My boss is on his fourth or fifth install in that same time period, however, and he also runs as an admin...
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Why doesn't microsoft just announce an XP extension program that lasts as long as people are willing to PAY for updates.
That is, after a certain date, Microsoft would continue to allow you to update XP, you would just have to pay $20 a year or something for the privilege.
With this money, they would port over Direct X 10 and make other essential changes so that XP could be used until at least 2015.
From Microsoft: ' "we ask callers not to call Microsoft Customer Support Services to request an extension for Windows XP", a company representative said.'
That reminds me of a line from a movie: "What we have here is a failure to communicate."
Customers should not ASK Microsoft for anything. That assumes that the customers have power. Customers should do what Microsoft says and believe anything Microsoft says; that's the social position of customers, judging by the way Microsoft acts.
Microsoft is making a transition, from being badly managed to being even more badly managed.
"When XP first came out... it was uber slow, crashed apps constantly and tons of HW and SW just wouldn't run on it."
What XP are you talking about? I bought XP on release day and it was great. No hardware issues, a very few software incompatibilities, and it was much faster and more stable than 98SE which is arguably one of MS's best consumer OSes ever released. XP raised the bar several notches out of the blocks, Vista lowered it.
InfoWorld are running an online petition to extend the life of XP, with (at the time of writing) several hundred thousand signatures. Sign the petition here
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
Vista is XP
Crivens! I kicked meself in me own heid!
Well, isn't it the same thing that Microsoft FUD used against, say, Linux? Basically, "OMG, you'll need to learn a different GUI and, verily, as a company retrain everyone from CEO to janitor, if you switch from Windows."
Mind you, I use the term FUD here rather loosely, because I think that, while MS's propaganda did include a lot of exaggeration and fear-mongering, the underlying idea _is_ true. Most people don't think that learning a new OS, just for its sake, is fun. The computer is just a tool, and they want to just do their job with it with a minimum of extra effort. That includes that once they learned a skill set, they want to keep applying it all over the place. It's not even a MS invention, it's how we got the Common User Access spec from IBM. MS just adopted it (and mistreated it like the stereotypical evil stepmother;)
I see you even answered your own concerns at the end of that phrase.
If you're a Mac guy, you have a lot of disposable income to blow on hardware. Now I won't get into whether the Macs are overpriced or not debate at this point, but let's just say they don't cater to the bottom end of the market. There isn't really a new Mac that's equivalent to the 300$ boxes people buy at WalMart. Again, I'm not debating whether the hardware is worth the price, but I'm saying that it genuinely _is_ higher spec than most PCs people have at home. And than what most moms and pops on minimal wage jobs can afford, PC or Mac.
Vista _is_ a resource hog, and it crawls on most new computers. Aero alone spanks and tortures a cheap shared-memory GPU like a bad dominatrix, and once you disable it, you're left with something which, for most normal people's needs and understanding of it... still acts like a bloated and slow XP. It doesn't really offer much that Joe Average would need on his home PC, or even notice the difference, and XP didn't have.
The memory requirements alone are a problem on a cheap 512 MB RAM PC, and make stuff swap that ran perfectly well on XP... especially after half of that RAM gets filled with crapware. (And I don't mean just viruses, but also all the idiocies from RealPlayer to, yes, OOo who think it's a great idea to default to keep themselves loaded in RAM all the time to seem faster-loading. You can end up with a 500 pixel wide tray nowadays without doing anything special.)
Vista's constant indexing can make many computers crawl, especially after you install an antivirus. Which ends up basically scanning each file again and again each time the indexing accesses that file. So basically it's like running with a full antivirus scan in the background at all times. Poor or sometimes wrong IDE drivers also don't help, as they can make any version of Windows basically sit and wait for IDE transfers. Now neither of those is a MS problem as such, but the combination is deadly anyway. Vista essentially amplifies what would have been a minor problem (it's ok to wait an extra half a second when you open a file, while the antivirus scans it) into something horrible (it's not ok to have your computer busy virus-scanning all files in the background, as a result of that indexing.)
Again, that won't seem much for you, if you have a couple thousand dollars to blow on a top-of-the-line Mac, and it wouldn't seem much to anyone who can blow a comparable sum on a l33t PC either. But it can be horribly annoying to someone on a $300 beige box.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Only a few weeks ago Ballmer said:
http://www.google.com/search?q=ballmer+if+customers+want+xp
So yeah, let's ask him for it, big time. If you know a news agency get them involved, etc.
No sig today...
Now, this is odd - we just had the article Windows XP Lives, Thanks to Linux
and now it seems that Linux will be pretty much kept alive on computers amongst ordinary people thanks to Microsoft's aggressive policy towards phasing Windows XP out.
The real reason for this?
New, flash-based computers like the ASUS eee will for a couple of years still have limited resources of disk storage and RAM, and will obviously not work well with Windows Vista. ASUS eee can be delivered with Linux and Windows XP, and if Microsoft phase out XP, people WILL move over to Linux, since ultra portable PCs really are popular on the market today.
99% of the buyers would like to use that PC just to check their mail and browse the web, since the screen is to small for any great PC-games to be played comfortably anyway, and checking mail and browsing the web can be easily done with the ASUS eee with its preinstalled Linux.
Seems like ASUS have done Linux a great favour, since they during the last days of Windows XP, even have managed to sell lots of eee-PCs with Linux, and the word of mouth is spreading - if my neighbour or regular college can browse the net with a Linux PC, so can I!
Here in Norway, it even seems like you only can get the Linux version of the eee. Even my girlfriend has bought one, and it can even be used with internet banks here in Norway.
I'm guessing your 'needs' often involve whips and dominatrix types? :p Just because you can afford good resources doesn't mean you should fritter them away on something like Vista IMO - and worst of all is that even if Vista was as good as XP (but not better), it just encourages Microsoft to keep releasing sloppy software with little innovation or improvement.
which is totally what she said
Lets face it, in 2, 5, even 10 years from now will anyone still be using XP. Yes, I know there are still computers running 95, but on your desktop at home or in the office unless under special circumstances it is very unlikely you will have XP. It was an awesome OS imho but everything must die eventually. Fortunately for me wine supports Everquest 2 and I can find native apps for almost every other thing I do with my computer. So this last January I installed ubuntu and have not looked back. Microsoft has made enough mistakes to push me away as a customer and because Linux can do what I need it to, Why would I need vista? By the time Microsoft releases an OS that is as good as XP if not better it will be to late for those that have recently moved to Linux to go back.