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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.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
This is FANTASTIC news for operating systems competing with Windows.
The choices to a complete new users have just improved from an open source point of view:
a) Install Windows Vista. High system specs, buggy to use, even harder to fix, has stupid problems. Also very pricey.
b) Install Linux Distro. Low system specs, buggy to use, some things can be very difficult to fix, has techie aura surrounding it. Did someone say its free?
Gone is good old option c - just install XP which is pretty stable, just about everything works with it and anyone can fix it.
Rejoice opensource!
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
I actually totally agree. I have used every version of Windows from 2.0 to Vista (I have a fairly beastly tower running Home Premium and use Enterprise under Bootcamp on my Macbook Pro), and I find it to be totally stable, full featured and more problem-free than any of the previous iterations of Windows, including XP.
I am NOT a MS fanboy. The best desktop OS I have used is Leopard. I have a pile of linux boxes of various flavors whirring away in my closet. I worked for ages in X Windows on Solaris and AIX. I really, really liked KDE 3.x, though I haven't used it in a long while. Not a fan of Gnome for the same reasons people whine about Vista (bloat, bugs, UI complaints).
But I still fail to understand the reasoning of all the Vista hate. The one major negative I will give it is that it does have burly system requirements. But modern systems all ship with more than enough horsepower to deal with it fine.
If you want to pick on a current-gen Microsoft OS, I suggest you take a hard look at Windows Mobile. Garbage, even in its most current iteration.
This is really the worst of two worlds for Microsoft.
First they announce it'll come out in 2010, effectively killing what little market they had for the OS.
Second, there's no way it will come out then, effectively cutting off their future income.
Why would you announce this with those two facts glaring in their face? Wouldn't it be far wiser to announce this in say, August 2009 - when their OS is legitimately 5-6 months away?
when it comes time to upgrade, i will be looking towards the lixux distros again. i would have done it by now but my copy of xp is legit and vista isn't worth the bandwidth.
My dad went to OSX and I have migrated to Ubuntu. My employer has finaly officialy stated they are skipping Vista and will wait for the next version. My new dual core machine isn't bothering with dual boot like the old PIII machine. It's all Linux.
The truth shall set you free!
That's funny, when I talked to our rep a few days ago and asked about having it installed on a laptop I was ordering, she informed me that it was an extra $50 "labor fee" to get XP preinstalled.
I fully believe that Microsoft management asked the engineers when 7 would be ready, they replied "January 2009" and the managers said "January 2010 it is." I find it highly unlikely that it will be significantly delayed again. No matter how much you want to believe it, Microsoft is simply not retarded.
Windows 7 won't suck. It won't be great either. It'll be pretty decent, probably above average. People will use it and say, "Hey this is better than Vista, and it's sorta fast too." Linux users will keep saying that Linux is better and hipsters will keep saying that OS X is better. Status quo antebellum; this is unlikely to change in the near future. Microsoft's market share will probably dip once Linux hits its stride, but there is definitely a wall for OS X adoption (closed-down software that only runs on high-priced hardware from one manufacturer? It must appeal to the masses).
I've tried to be less extreme in predictions than I usually am. It's just that you get a few people saying that Windows will dominate again, a few people saying that Linux will rise up and defeat them, and then another few saying that OS X will take over. All are equally laughable scenarios.
But when the Mac brand is more desirable then Windows, and those who don't feel like spending a fortune on a new computer are looking at Linux... MS is in for a shock. If the $200 gPC has reviews that it is "more responsive then Vista even on higher-end hardware", MS is losing. Perhaps MS won't suddenly go broke, but slowly the monopoly they had is eroding, and every shot to the foot is increasing it. Just wait, if Windows 7 is anything like Vista, MS is dead.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
0. On my 3 different PCs that use wireless that are all running Linux (Desktop, laptop and EEE) neither my HP printer nor my various wireless drivers have had any issues. Now granted, if I want the one on my desktop to work out-of-the-box I have to use a *gasp* Ubuntu distro, or for the EEE a customized disto, but my laptop has an Intel wireless card that works perfectly with just about every distro made in '07 and some in '06. And after getting my HP printer set up, it never malfunctioned any more then it did when I ran Windows. And I disagree, Linux has various distros which give more flexibility with appealing to niche audiences (want speed, get Gentoo, want stability, try Debian, want something really easy-to-use try Ubuntu, etc).
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Things like removing drive lettering, would be quite helpful. But would break everything ever written for Windows. /blah. The problem with this is other drives; the CD drive would have to be translated to /media/cdrom for instance. I'm not sure what the list of such translations would be, and I could see this as being very ad-hoc.
It wouldn't have to. There are a couple ways that things could be done. First, the / directory could be treated as C:. If a program asked to open C:\blah, it could just translate that to
The second option would be to implicitly prepend a / before open requests starting with a drive letter; e.g. C: would become /C:, and D: would become /D:. Set up links at /C: and /D: that point to probably / and /media/cdrom, respectively.
(Actually this second option is really just like the first, just at a different layer; in the first, the translation would be done by "fopen" or whatever, in the latter by the file system.)
Things like completely redoing the start bar from scratch to make it actually useful would break every program installer that wants to create a shortcut.
Installers for Windows 3.1 are still able to create Program Groups even though Program Manager no longer exists.
Or making Internet Explorer swappable for another browser, as in, being able to completely remove it. There goes everything hard coded to use IE and expects it to be there, such a Steam.
This is actually at least close to being possible, at least in the most direct sense, in Vista. The (Windows) Explorer/IE integration I think has basically been completely severed. However, the MSHTML component, which is what actually provides the HTML rendering, is still pretty tightly coupled into Windows, and there's not really any way to remove that (unless they were to make it a pluggable API so you could replace MSHTML with something else). You remove that component, you break Windows Help and who knows what else.
Actually the fact that if you uninstalled IE it would break stuff like Steam isn't a big deal I think, because you could just not uninstall IE in that situation.
Backwards compatibility is an interesting animal for MS. I would say that MS's commitment to breaking almost nothing (you can still run many MS-DOS programs from two and a half decades ago on 32-bit Vista for instance) may be the biggest single reason why Windows is in the position it is today. If it isn't, it's at least up there. Way too many companies have old DOS programs, or Excel macros written for Excel 6, etc. that are business critical to easily change platforms. About the best they can do is stay with what they have, but they'll cease to get security updates in that case. So MS is understandably and reasonably very uncomfortable with the idea of breaking compatibility.
But at the same time, it has brought them heaps of trouble. A lot of the security vulnerabilities are due in part to it, a lot of the complexity is borne out of it (though MS has gotten very good at isolating this sort of thing).
I think the answer is to do something where for the base system they revamp and break compatibility, but they also maintain a backwards-compatible layer, probably using the technology they have in VirtualPC and in the Server 2008 hypervisor. Do basically what Apple did with OS X. I wouldn't be surprised if you see this in the next couple release cycles. (Though I may break from /. wisdom and say that I think they should base the ground kernel off of NT, not off of a Unix like Apple did. I have various reasons for thinking this which I'm too lazy to write now.)
One of my guys went to a workshop last month run by VMware, looking at some of their new technologies. We (1000 desktops) were at the small end of the attendees: the rest of the people there were mostly from large corporates. The guy in charge wanted a quick straw poll on some issues, one of which was ``are you doing or planning to do Vista?''. Seventy attendees. One hand. A common reason for home upgrades is ``that's what I'm using at work / school / etc.''. As Vista has no traction in those markets, it's losing at home as well. ian
OK. I'm really worked up now. The statement above is so anti-geek I don't even know how to deal with it.
For example:
Car geeks build them from parts in their garage on the weekend.
Audio geeks spend years building their audio set-up.
Electronics geeks build robots in their spare time.
Computer geeks write scripts, compile stuff, delve into the lowest parts of the computer, and just generally do stuff that "humans" don't do.
Geeks aren't "human" (in the sense of the average human being talked about). That's why they're called geeks, shunned, and have a reputation for not getting laid. I embrace my geekiness. I come to Slashdot to be with fellow geeks.
Is Slashdot now a site for mere "enthusiasts?" Instead of "Guy installs Linux on calculator watch" articles, are we going to start seeing "How to use your calculator watch the way it was meant to be used" articles?
Put identity in the browser.
As far as I what I meant,while I personally won't allow WGA onto my machine because I refuse to leave a PC that is in no way needing Internet access crippled with slowdowns from AV/firewall/antispyware/etc just so I can jump through a hoop to make MSFT happy. This especially pisses me off as I have always paid for my MSFT products going back to the first PC I ever owned. I have no problem with MSFT having me download a single use
But as for what I meant,I was referring to instance after instance where it seemed like changes were made simply for change sake,instead of making for a better experience. The controls for networking,for example. I would give you more,but after spending nearly a month trying to get that POS to run decently on my PC frankly I just gave up and went back to XP. My network transfers were horrible,and would only get worse when I tried to multitask,such as listening to music while I transferred files. Bootup sucked,and Vista thrashed my Maxtor so bad it actually killed the drive,even after I turned off indexing.
And this wasn't some 8 year old PC,although if you were to believe the MSFT website I can run Vista on a 800MHz with 512Mb of RAM(why haven't they been busted for false advertising?). While my machine wasn't a gamers dream, a 3Ghz Celeron with 2Gb of DDR3200 and a Geforce 6200 256Mb should have been enough to make it run smooth,and on XP SP3 it really flies. I have actually had Vista fanbois tell me with a straight face that to get the "real" Vista "experience" I should have a dual core with 4Gb of RAM. Call me crazy,but I actually use the OS to run programs,not stare at the desktop. If I require those kinds of specs to make Vista run smooth then I really don't want to "experience" it,thank you. And while I am sure I'll get the "but it runs great for me!" posts. I would like to point out that I have a neighbor that swears by WinME and thinks it's great,but that doesn't make it a good OS. And I am sorry about the length,but you asked and I am telling. And as always this is my 02c,YMMV. But I can say personally that if Win7 doesn't come out a lot more like XP and a lot less like Vista,then after sticking with MSFT since the days of DOS I will just save up and buy a Mac.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Well, their customer base is really different. A lot of them will buy it just because it's new and it's out, and it's somehow "better" since Jobs told them so.
Of course I kind of understand why the fanboys trust him: if you go by Apple's past record, upgrades from 10.0 to 10.1 to 10.2, .3, and .4, were in fact "better," the system did get a lot faster (and I mean a lot: 1 min bootup for 10.2 to 12 seconds for 10.3, on same hardware!), more responsive, etc.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.