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No XP Reprieve; Windows 7 Release Set
CWmike writes "Microsoft has laid to rest rumors that it might reconsider pulling Windows XP from retail shelves and from most PC makers next Monday. Microsoft's Bill Veghte wrote to customers reiterating that June 30 would be the deadline when Microsoft halts shipments of boxed copies to retailers and stops licensing the operating system directly to OEMs. However, Veghte did leave the door open to all computer makers, even the largest, who want to continue selling new PCs with XP pre-installed. 'Additionally, Systems Builders (sometimes referred to as "local OEMs"), may continue to purchase Windows XP through Authorized Distributors [such as Ingram Micro] through January 31, 2009,' he wrote in the letter. 'All OEMs, including major OEMs, have this option,' said Veghte. At the same time, Microsoft confirmed Windows 7 would ship in January 2010. Who, if they have not already, would install Vista now?" Microsoft has said they will post the letter, but it's not up yet.
"Who, if they have not already, would install Vista now?"
I heard Mac OS X 10.6 is supposed to come out next year. Who, if they have not already, would install 10.5 now?
Typical, clueless geek-centric comment. We geeks install a new OS every other month, but almost everybody else just uses whatever came with their system. When they begin to feel out of date, they don't upgrade the OS, they get a whole new system.
So nobody's outside geekworld is saying "Should I install Vista". If they think about OS issues at all, they're thinking, "Hey, I hear Vista really sucks. Maybe I should get an XP system while I still can."
I don't remember the exact version but I think it was Netware 3 that was solid as a rock. Then the next version was total crap upon release use users didn't upgrade. Even the following update were flaky so users stayed on the old version. The Novell was in getting into deep sneakers without upgrade revenue coming in. They finally started getting the problems worked out, but users were content with the old version and still had little interest in new version. After another major upgrade users started updating slowly.
MS seems to be in the same situation the got XP patched up to be a solid Windows OS and what problems there are are well known so not a big deal. Vista price and stability isn't a attractive enough move the masses. MS has far deeper pockets than Novell so it hurts, but isn't lethal.
Personally I wish MS would grow a pair like Apple has over the years and build a new OS from scratch and not worry about backward compatibility. Apple has done it what three times since the beginning. They give developers and users a couple years of warning and move forward. MS talks about it but never does it, they definitely have the deep pockets to do it.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
When does SP1 appear? That's the date that matters. You figure 2011 and it starts to seem like a decade with XP.
I wish XP would be around for longer. Vista sucks donkey balls. I bought a Dell XPS M1530. It has some awesome specs, 4G RAM, beautiful display, wonderful keyboard... But Vista sucks. Even with the service pack it has bizarre problems. It freezes for 30 to 40 seconds every so often (the mouse won't even move), every day it goes into this weird mode where the hard drive thrashes for hours, it doesn't go to sleep properly when I close the lid, it blue-screened when I plugged in my AT&T USB Sigmatel 881 card, it keeps on bouncing between access points, etc., etc... XP works great on the machine however. I want to buy another laptop like it soon, but not with Vista. I hope this is still an option..
Windows is only $200 if your time is worth nothing.
By reducing the ability of its own customers to choose their operating environment, Microsoft drives them toward Linux and Apple.
I was just musing ... Microsoft have now effectively dictated that you can't run XP on a new computer (ignore the matter of "downgrade" rights for the time being). I guess they won't allow a customer to get a new license for XP for an existing computer (say they wanted to switch away from Linux and don't have any current Windows license). So they're effectively saying that if you want to run Windows, you have to run Vista. It's really a matter of denying choice, given how different XP and Vista are. How long can it be until Microsoft says that you're not allowed to _continue_ to run XP?
Looking at the parallels with Linux ... who would want to run a Linux distro from 2001? (That's how old XP is). Answer is nobody, unless your hardware is so old that you can't run anything newer. No linux folks will support a distro dated 2001. Isn't this a forced upgrade? I don't think so, because with linux, upgrading is a continuous process ... when you upgrade from 2001 versions of software through to 2008 what you are getting is basically the same thing, just better. Your kernel gets faster (and bigger), your devices work better, your window manager gains more features (and sometimes changes entirely, but you can choose your window manager). So, barring old/slow/small hardware, there's no reason not to upgrade linux.
Contrast with Windows - upgrade is a discontinuous process. You have to pay them for the later version, of course. And a lot of things change (for Microsoft's reasons), and you don't really get to choose much.
You know what sucks? I hate microsoft a LOT. More than most people possibly, but it doesn't matter how screwed up their OS's get, I will never switch to Linux which I love dearly (in its use and philosophy). That's because Linux will most probably NEVER:
-Let me run my old PC games
-Let me run current PC games (without great hassle)
-Let me run applications specific to my line of work (3d studio max, maya, premiere, photoshop, and various game engines)
I've a relatively good idea that a large number of people are stuck at the same problem. There's just no way, no matter how good Linux gets, that it can make up for years of an MS-owned market. They've clinched two decades of my life and PC usage, and my investigations have shown me that I need to do a great deal of tweaking to get a linux install to the level of a crippled windows OS. :(
It totally. Fucking. Blows. The open source Windows OS project someone pointed out a few months back was the only sign of a real, working alternative I've ever seen.
I recognize Vista was a turd, but can you folks even bother educating yourself about what 7 is supposed to be before bashing it? Right now this is being advertised as performance and security increases, not "a new desktop theme," as people keep saying it. The leaked internal build shows a 40-50% memory usage decrease since Vista. In my book, that's a good thing, even as a Linux user.
I think you hit the nail on the head. Vista has a bad name in the marketplace. So W7 is just going to be a fixed up version of Vista sold under another name.
My guess is the main thrust will be to speed the thing up and get it to use less memory. And then at the end they will attach some eye candy to try and entice people to buy it.
I'm suspecting that it won't work. They had 6 years to come up with a compelling reason to upgrade to their latest OS and they failed.
But what are the odds that Windows 7 will actually ship when MS says it will?
"I think so, Brain, but 'instant karma' always gets so lumpy." - Pinky
"Decepticons FOREVER!!!" - Ravage
From what I understand, you can do all of that stuff with VirtualBox (virtual machine), DOSBox (x86 emulator w/ DOS) and Wine (cross-platform implementation of the Windows API).
DOSBox takes care of basically every vintage game I've ever played and even though VirtualBox needs Windows installed in the virtual machine, it has a 'seamless' mode that allows you to have the Windows apps running 'outside' of the virtual machine. That's a sucky explanation and it'd be easier to explain if I had a pencil and paper.
Wine recently reached version 1.0 and, as I believe a sibling post pointed out, it should be able to run Photoshop perfectly well. The open source Windows project you mentioned, ReactOS, shares some of its code with Wine (which is how the two projects have managed to make some great advances in certain areas), so there's a nice little tie-in.
ReactOS is currently at about version 0.3.5, so we'll probably have to wait a while for a fully stable version to come out. The day it does will be a good day. A very good day.
Sorry guys, us mortals dont know how to run scripts and compile our own builds.
I've see this kind of comment more and more on Slashdot over the last few years. When did the average Slash user stop being able to do geeky stuff on his/her computer?
Why would you read Slashdot unless you were a hardcore geek?
Put identity in the browser.
I'm actually pretty interested in Windows 7. It looks like there's a big shift in focus in it's design, concentrating more on performance than glitz which is the opposite to vista. The 25mb customisable lightweight version looks designed to eat into Linux's increasing market share in low powered budget systems.
It's easy to forget that MS followed up Windows ME, possibly their worst ever OS with XP, their best ever OS. At least Vista doesn't BSOD unless you've major hardware/driver issues.
If it even half as bad as what I have been reading this could really be a fatal blow for MSFT,or at the very least a very serious wound. From the sounds of it any Win7 machine will have to be plugged into the Internet so it can do weekly "prove you're not a pirate" checks like are being released on certain games ATM,it will be just as buggy and dragged down with DRM crap you can't get rid of as Vista, and will retain the Vista "take 3 steps what you're used to doing in 1" layout that has my customers buying XP machines from me left and right.
One can only hope someone in power will see what a pisspoor job that Ballmer is doing filling Gate's shoes and they'll fire his ass and take a new path,perhaps replacing him with the uber efficient head of the Office team. But IMHO if the next version doesn't do some serious changes to appeal to the office clientele and the gamer crowd they better get used to seeing XP around for a VERY long time. IMHO they should have released a Windows 2007 Professional for the business (and maybe gamer?) crowd and left Vista to the newbie home user instead of trying to force everyone to use an OS so obviously geared to the home. I mean seriously WTF is a business OS doing with Aero? And Bitlocker only for Ultimate and Enterprise and NOT Business? Total stupidity. And as always this is my 02c,YMMV
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I think one of the things that geeks do best, is follow their obsessions, whatever they are, and no matter what others think about it.
/. for the areas where I'm a happy enthusiast; physics, robotics, space exploration, law...
I'm unhappy with anyone trying to tell me what defines a once hurtful, and since reclaimed label, and I can't agree with the elitism proffered, I'm a fairly hardcore computer graphics geek, but I come to
Enthusiasm is in short supply, and should be encouraged, and I think that Wicko had it right. While in the smaller picture, there is a great deal of fiddling, delving and experimentation ( see romance ) the larger urge is to make something better, often meaning 'to have things done for us with as little effort as possible.'
What are you writing these excellent 'geek' scripts to do ?
IMHO, and with my brand of geek, I like to explore the intricacies of doing math at the graphics card, with the expectation of an emotional response from the human viewing the output, and I have no knowledge, or desire to compile and build my own OS.
Please look at what you're contributing to the site, I'd rather read honest, infectious enthusiasm than another random person getting angry because someone dares to affront their ego.
I can't see why you are happier with the new transition, because most ordinary users (I have to care for) are not. For them, it's not XP or Vista, or whatever, it's the lack of ability to click and install stuff they want to, overdesigned features which confuse more, than help, slow response time, and programs that simply stop working in the new OS. Users use sometimes old software, and dont want to relearn everything, find everything, etc.
Technically Vista may even be a little bit better, than XP was, but it's not the technical issue here, it's the design issue. Vista is just terribly uncomfortable. I have to research everything AGAIN, because somebody has only the job at MS to rename "Install Software", "Software", "Add or Remove Software", whatever it is called in every language to something new. Sometimes I forget to execute an installer as Administrative User, even if my logged in user account is an administrative user. Some stuff crashes for no apparent reason. And they made i18n again something unavailable - in the basic versions.
Having a 98->XP transition may have been worlds back then. however there was win2000 between that, and ME. so basically 98->XP is nonewhatever comparable to XP->Vista, I would say, Vista is simply just the new ME. Fancy, buggy crap.
Vista already does work well, the "funny" jokes around here notwithstanding.
Maybe you shouldn't get your information on operating systems from zealots who emotionally defend some one true way.
>>As far as Aero goes, Isn't it obvious? Its a hard sell when you mention to an average consumer they should updrade because Vista has a new TCP/IP stack, or a Kernel Transaction Manager.
Funny Apple is setting Snow Leopard to be nothing more than a new software stack, removing old features, and a general code clean up. Apple will sell snow leopard for full price and people will pay for stabilty that the new system will bring. You can do under the hood changes and get people to buy.
you don't need glitz and glamour if your selling a quality product. putting makeup on pigs never makes sense.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Really? That's pretty stupid. The machines that are going to give the most obviously poorest performance with Vista and they aren't offering XP? Seems like they should be focusing on keeping XP available on those machines. Can't look good on Dell everyone someone buys a cheap machine and gets it home only to find it crawls along with pathetic performance. Odd.
No Comment.
Vista works well. Really?
/. hates Vista. It's not because we hate MSFT (we do) but it's because we see a product that lacks certain "features" that have been standard since forever. Vista truly is a step backwards, not forwards. How many issues have to be documented before you call a spade a spade?
All of the I/O functions work properly? Copying files, renaming folders, etc. All that works perfectly?
If you say yes, you lie. We already know of documented issues with file operations. It is pretty much proven that the I/O performance of Vista is substandard compared with even XP, much less Linux or some *nix flavor. We may not know why that is the case but we can definitely see it in the benchmarks. No doubt about that.
I may be out of line here but any OS that doesn't work with files/folders "perfectly" is a lemon in my mind. That might have been acceptable back in '88 but not in 2008. It's like asking whether your car comes with tires included. Of course it does! ALL cars come with the tires on the car. If one doesn't, it should stand out like a sore thumb. That is called a minimum requirement. And Vista doesn't meet the minimum requirement for the file system.
Pretending the issue isn't there doesn't make it go away. I challenge you to find a single (non-MSFT) study that shows file system performance on Vista meets what IT nerds expect in 2008. I think, if you do the research, you will find lots of evidence to the contrary.
THIS is why
You're joking, right? I watched a friend tuning a 4-barrel carb a little while ago, and I guarantee you've never seen an overclocker hover over their water cooling system more than my friend was glued to the valves on that thing.
Did you know that there's a thriving market for car geeks who replace their engine's ROMs with programmable versions so that they can tweak fuel flow and air mixtures throughout the power curve? It's not uncommon to see someone pecking away at a laptop jacked into their engine.
Computer geeks just know their particular area(s) of expertise better than anyone else. Doesn't mean someone who builds websites or administers databases for a living knows how to compile a kernel.The people who don't aren't computer geeks. Geeks are more about a general aptitude, and their focuses narrow from there. They may not have a particular skill today, but point them at some docs and give them a little while and they'll be progressing in that direction.
By analogy, all doctors get the same core curriculum from med school, then specialize. The difference between a family practice guy and a general surgeon is in what they chose to learn about afterward, but either one could pick up the other's textbooks and figure out the basics.
And thus are geeks. A web geek is a database geek who got derailed. The ones who aren't capable of switching from one field to the other? Those are just nerds.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Why not simply buy the Mac now. Why wait and hope for two years when you can have something that just works now?