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XP Deathwatch, T Minus 2 Weeks
CWmike writes "June 30 is Microsoft's deadline for mainstream computer makers to stop selling new PCs with the old operating system, and the date that it will stop shipping boxed copies to retailers. That's just two weeks away. Computerworld offers a FAQ about XP's approaching retirement after Microsoft's most recent relaxation of the retirement rules, with some details about which machines big-brand computer makers will be selling with XP after June 30. First FAQ: Any sign that Microsoft will reprieve Windows XP's retirement? Sort of."
Does this mean that they will stop all updates and patching for XP as well? Or is that farther down the road?
Either way, it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy, because soon enough, the updates will stop, XP machines will be virus infested and even my grandma will have beef with Microsoft!
This is a clear case of a large company making what they want and totally ignoring consumer demand. What people really want is a better version of XP and for continued support. I for one (if I am to use Windows (and then only in a virtualized environment)) would gladly pay $99 or whatever for an upgraded version of XP that is still very much like XP. Apple is making a strong move I feel with Snow Leopard. People like Leopard. They are releasing Leopard, but "better". I'd pay for it in a heartbeat, as stability and speed is well worth money to me. If they made an XP "better", I'd go for it and pay for the upgrade. That's the goal isn't it? For people to pay for the next thing?
But, that's not what they are doing. They figure people want excessively high system requirements, "more secure" environments (which aren't really better security models, just annoying prompts often) and pretty graphics. Hell, I was happy with the graphics in Windows 2000, and in fact when I use XP I turn it back to Win2K themes always.
Tibbon
tibbon.com
2014: http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=3223
Dell has already stated that they will continue to install XP if the customer requests it.
Now all you pirates will have an excuse for downloading your Windows XP disc image.
Property is theft.
I'm sure the Pirate Bay will continue to carry Windows XP for a long long time.
And the fact that our few boxen with it run like dogs even with dual core high end processors.
Even with the effects turned off it's dog slow.
If they kill the ability for us to buy XP we're going to an all Linux/Unix shop.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
XP is here. It works. It works well. It has drivers. It's fast. Vista has been a complete disaster for Microsoft. It's here, but it doesn't work well, lacks drivers and is slower than molasses. The record 'sales' of Vista that Microsoft has been bragging about is only due to preinstallations, and everyone knows it. I got Vista on a new laptop, loved the pretty colors but within a few months learned it was pure crap, deleted it, installed XP and never looked back. Microsoft: It's time to fall on your sword. Admit that Vista was the disaster it is: Every else already knows that. Sanction the developers that screwed it up so badly, and Fire the bureaucrats who would rather see Microsoft go down the tubes that admit they made a huge mistake with Vista.
The restructured Users folder, for example. Finally 'My Music' is moved out of the My Documents folder, making backups, once again, possible for basic end users.
The improved desktop rendering, which small matter though it may be, was well overdue for an overhaul.
There are some things which are worse in Vista, and we all know about them.
The copying speed.
The shutdown menu, and the fact that hibernation NEVER works.
Ultimately however, and this is where I intend to get relevant, there is nothing significant enough to recommend a switch from XP to Vista. And that's a statement that few people would argue with, and it's a damning statement. The more you think about about, the worse it gets.
And when you step into the world of Enterprise, and big business, things are even worse. In Enterprise, you really, really don't care about shiny baubles. All you care about is that it works, and it stays working, and it never works any worse than it used to.
Aging though it may be, XPs relevancy is not in decline. Windows Server 2003 does not want for much, in the way of mission critical upgrades, and what it does want for, Windows Server 2008 will not be providing.
This was foretold on the ancient Mayan Calender.
Windows: You run the software MS tells you to, according to MSs business interests.
You can run any software that is written for Windows and it will work! That's what makes Windows wonderful.
OSS: You run the software you want to run, according to your business interests.
This may be true, but, how do you run it? What libraries will you need? What the hell is a kernel? What does it mean to compile?
Until there is a bullet-proof installation method - Linux will remain out of the SMB world. The corporate world has a place for Linux on the desktop but NOT because it is open-source. It's because it works, is cheap(er) and fits a need.
Why is the Apple awesome for SMBs? Easy install using thier DMG files.
I personally use Linux for some development stuff, own an iPhone and Mac Mini AND use my Windows Vista laptop for day to day uses. Why? I use what works.
I think I missed your point here. Linux runs on more hardware, more architectures and more platforms than Windows ever has. Linux has support for hardware, protocols, filesystems and technologies LONG before Windows does. Linux had the first, working Wireless USB drivers and specification before Microsoft even thought about it. Linux has more software applications available to it (by several orders of magnitude), and even runs most Windows software if necessary.
So what exactly were you trying to say above? Because I missed it. If you want something that supports current, bleeding edge hardware and software, Linux is the only way to go. If you want something that supports 15+ year old hardware, Linux is the only way to go.
If you want to play games on your computer and not much else, Windows is probably a good fit.
There's an explicit exception for the mini-notebook market, for the very reason that Microsoft is afraid that Linux will sweep it.
Not a typewriter
that comment would be funnier if you had a 2 digit user id.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
Now I know samba has its bugs, but come on... it's not THAT bad.
</deliberate_misunderstanding>
Any sufficiently simple magic can be passed off as mere advanced technology.
I run several RHEL 4 and 5 servers at work. I have called Red Hat support a couple of times and got excellent support. I would say that Red Hat telephone support was as good as or better than Sun support is. The email support is pretty good, but it is from India.
You would be surprised. It depends on the market, but it sure is still out there and active in a none to small number of routers and closed blackboxes.
NO SIG
bullshit, my employer (and I) will support any version of GNU/Linux from the last 18 years for our clients in Chicagoland area, for a price.
iirc XP home is crippled in a number of ways. The ones that spring to mind are.
* it can't join a domain
* the file permissions and file sharing permissions sytems are crippled
* I don't think it can be a remote desktop server (but i'm pretty sure it can be a remote desktop client)
I don't see any of theese as showstoppers for an ultraportable.
BTW you will still be able to get XP pro though vista buisness or ultimate downgrade rights and the big brand OEMs are now allowed to supply downgrade media and even ship systems pre-downgraded.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
So if you won't be able to buy a new copy of XP any more, how long until one could reasonably consider it abandonware?
If I needed to build a new PC tomorrow, I'll want to install XP on it. But if Microsoft won't sell it to me, what can I do about it?
Computers are useless: they can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
> There's an explicit exception for the mini-notebook market, for the very reason that Microsoft is afraid that Linux will sweep it.
True. I wonder if that'll help. My daughter (13) last Saturday bought an EEE (with her own money!) and specifically requested Linux because the XP versions were comparatively sluggish. Was soon frustrated with easy mode, but after we got the full Xandros desktop loaded, she's been very happy with it, and hasn't looked back. (I think Asus should just default to the full Xandros desktop -- it's pretty, and even Windows users would be comfortable with it.)
Point is, she chose Linux over XP on the EEE for the same reason we've been choosing XP over Vista on desktops -- less complicated, fewer issues, faster on the same hardware. Put simply, the lighter weight OS provides a better user experience on the same hardware.
Moreover, considering the use to which these sub-subnotebooks are being put, there's very little reason to run XP, any more than a PDA or phone needs to run Windows. (They can, but they don't *have* to.)
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
So you are still on the upgrade treadmill. Its not as forced as windows
If you care about security updates and support for newer applications software the linux upgrade treadmill is far worse than the windows one.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
we do have certified Windows engineers who will do any version of windows or MS-DOS too (I only do VMS, Unix(tm), BSD and Linux). The usual model is that we sell a block of time and then the client can use the hours as they want.
> yeah I know but its still a market that Linux is very competitive in. XP cant be in that market segment for that long (they say 2011). What will Microsoft's new product for this market be?
After XP is gone, all they'll have in that space is Windows Mobile. I can't imagine Microsoft coming up with a *new*, lighter-weight OS. It's not how they work. They're stuck with Vista, and the next version will be even more hardware-intensive.
Idle thought -- how does Microsoft's business model work in today's "green" market, where running white-hot hardware and upgrading every two weeks is no longer the norm? Will it be global warming that finally kills Microsoft? :-)
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Why should they extend support beyond December 21st, 2012?
As I recall, when XP released, the tech community was quite quick to throw flak at Microsoft for releasing a "bug ridden feature bloated OS that hides it's inadequacies behind a pretty interface", with a great cluster of users vowing to never leave their precious, mature, stable, and resource-efficient Windows 2000.
Somewhere along the line, XP mostly shed it's poor reputation, and replaced it with one of stability and speed on modern to previous-generation machines. Somehow, even though Win2k's death clock was ticking, few seemed to notice or care. At some point, if you weren't running XP, you were either a die-hard 2k fan, or you were a business.
Fast forward to now. Vista has been out for 20 months and has seen a service pack. Much of the tech community still throws flak at Vista for having poor driver support, being a resource hog, and often such flak is accompanied by a vow to never leave XP. Vista's reputation may be slowly turning, but inside tech circles, throwing flak is still the norm.
What's the difference?
Quite simple really, XP had a catch-22 situation with buying a new machine. Most users with half a brain cell would turn down Windows ME, as it was as stable as a vial of Nitroglycerin. Here's where XP had the advantage: Windows 2000 was a Business OS, and wasn't put out by Microsoft for Home users, so hence system vendors didn't market it on their machines. Thus, buyers were essentially given a choice: Unstable ME, or Unproven XP.
Vista, on the other hand, isn't coming from such a situation. The 9x line has long since been discontinued. Vista's SKU's are only competing against one predecessor: XP. New system buyers have a different choice than a few years ago: Proven XP, or Unproven Vista.
As far as I'm concerned, Vista isn't half bad. If there's a faulty driver, it will be brought to it's knees, but then again, so will XP. I'm running 2 machines and both have Vista as the OS, and thus far I've had only minimal problems.
Frink: Nice try floyd, but you were designed for scrubbing, and scrubbing is what you shall do.
If the vendors don't provide documentation or aren't cooperative with our efforts to support their hardware, then they simply don't gain a huge amount of users purchasing and using their hardware.
Not a Linux problem.
If it doesn't work on Linux and it works on Windows, it's still a problem, nonetheless. Shifting the blame doesn't solve it.
Well, I don't think the OP was suggesting replacing an established Windows infrastructure with linux, but, yes, you can purchase phone support for your nfs server, from a number of vendors.
What about all the various backup products, such as tape backups and seamless server redundancy? Are there alternatives for this for Linux?
Yes. And I would venture to suggest that linux probably has much better support for remote backups and failover clusters than Windows.
What assurances does a large company who absolutely can not afford significant downtime have that the software is well supported by professionals on call and that bugs are constantly being fixed?
This is Red Hat's entire business. If you need that kind of support, they would be more than happy to oblige. A number of other vendors also can provide that level of support.
There are thousands of tools that are necessary for full production environments
Yes, you are correct. And those thousands of tools are all available for linux as well...with the added bonus that they will play nicely with your Windows clients. Novell puts together a distribution that provides all of this out of the box. The only things that is really lacking is an Exchange replacement, but I see that coming in a couple of years from the various Mozilla projects. Thing is, Exchange is slowly dating itself. There are a few web services out there already, like Google Apps, that let you easily integrate email and shared calendars...and you don't need an expensive and massively proprietary application (along with the expensive and massive hardware to run it on). As these mature, Exchange is going to have to evolve or die out.
if you go to a business and tell them that they will likely say, "and what happens if it goes down?"
Hand them the business card of your local Red Hat or IBM sales representative. This is why these companies are in business, and they know how to talk to and reassure PHBs.
Also, it doesn't come with IIS. Again, not a dealbreaker for most installations, althought if you're a web developer who uses IIS, it could be quite a problem. Also, there's no more than 5 concurrent clients allowed to connect to your file shares if I recall correctly. Again probably not a deal breaker.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
You can run any software that is written for Windows and it will work! That's what makes Windows wonderful.
No. Clearly you haven't installed much windows software or know much about how the API works, what parts of it work under which OS's. Just for example you can't run any windows software that uses DX5 specific calls under NT4. Just like there is no DX10 support for XP. Even outside of DirectX. It's trivial to find software that will install or run under one version of windows but not another.
Until there is a bullet-proof installation method - Linux will remain out of the SMB world.
Windows doesn't have a bullet-proof install method. It's not bad but please lets not play pretend.
By the time XP is really gone or starts smelling too bad, most ultra-portables will probably be able to run Vista anyway.
I suspect that they will indeed "be able" to run Vista as performance is likely to improve a bit, but it wouldn't surprise me to see the tech (and money) go to lighter, thinner, more storage, and more battery life.
So long as these things can play video and render webpages in a reasonable amount of time, people aren't going to really need more power.
So then we're right back where we are today... they can spend the extra money on Windows or they can get a machine with more space running Linux for the same coin. So long as these machines are under $300, MS (or any OS maker) is going to have a very hard time getting rich off of them.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
"Must repurchase the OS to gain feature additions and accumulated bug fixes."
Excuse me, I think you have Microsoft confused with Apple.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
MS *has* to do this because their latest OS release, well, in a word, sucks.
OTOH, Linux distros generally improve significantly with each new release, in fact so well and so quickly that supporting 12 year old tech just isn't feasible on any kind of large scale, especially when the upgrade path is so easy. Bonus - because of how Linux is designed, there isn't any need for you to run a 12 year old OS, either. There are always newer distros which run fine on really old hardware (Puppy, DSL, Antix, etc...).
I don't think that this "12 years of support" is a good comparison, there's really no basis for it that I can see. It's not like MS *wants* to do it... Instead, it's a fait accompli for them, or people will leave in droves, IMO.
"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can." ~ Mark Twain
No, Linux people should want XP withdrawn, the sooner the better. That's because there are a lot of corporate buyers who have nightmares about the support problems Vista-based machine represent. If MS pulls XP as planned, I predict that major PC vendors will start offering Linux/Wine/Microsoft Office bundles very soon. I wouldn't be surprised if they're already QAing that setup, and are ready to announce it next month.
But here's another prediction: MS will give XP another stay of execution. They don't want to — it must be damned humiliating to spend a 5 years developing an OS upgrade, only to have everybody reject it — but they must know that killing XP will give Linux a unique opportunity to break their monopoly on desktop systems. Pride will make them wait until the last minute, but dollars and cents will keep them from pulling the plug. Until Windows 7 appears, I think XP is safe.
The cost of Vista itself bars it from UMPC market. Not just it's h/w requirements. With PC price under 400USD, who wants to pay even $20 for Vista? That's a significant portion of the margin that h/w maker can't afford to give away.
Low price of h/w is a new reality that MS failed to grasp when they worked on pricing for Vista.
Interestingly, most normal suppliers that I deal with, when they want to obsolete a product introduce new one, with better specs, providing full compatibility with the old one, and costing LESS. (I'm talking about semiconductors here.) Then everybody have a good reason to migrate.
MS did exactly the opposite -- worse performance, no compatibility, and higher price.
Having used MS support, I have very limited expectations. Fortunately (no pun intended), there are alternative, more-reliable sources for Microsoft support.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
After you've used Linux for a while, or really any GPL software, listening to someone go on about your "downgrade rights" is just damn funny. People pay money for "downgrade rights". Gotta love that pointy headed boss corp speak.
So you've updated to Vista without paying? Via Microsoft's servers? WOW. How'd u manage that?
Who cares about free downgrades?
paintball
Shouldn't that then be !Bruce Perens ?
http://www.zombieapocalypse.tv/
where did you get this information? XP home supports dual core just fine (from SP1 forward IIRC).
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
UltraVNC will work just fine on WinXP Home. Though it is not suggested, but Apache will work on WinXP Home. WinXP Home is limited by the number of connections: 5. At least you will be able to do some dev testing (think the 15 year-old trying out his skills at web-dev).
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
> The cost of Vista itself bars it from UMPC market.
No. The price of an additional license of Vista is 400USD, of course. But the cost of an additional license of Vista is essentially zero. If MS want to bar Linux from entry and Vista does the job, it can start offering 10USD sub-laptop only licenses to OEM. The problem is, Vista doesn't do the job. It would run too slow. It would eat battery too fast.
In the UMPC's own little world, Linux is fine. But Linux won't talk to the big computer at home for those who run Windows there.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.