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Microsoft Extends XP To May 2009 For OEMs
beuges writes "Microsoft has announced over the weekend that it would allow computer manufacturers to receive copies of XP until the end of May 2009, shortly before Windows 7 is expected to hit the market. This should allow users to skip Vista entirely and move straight to 7, which has been receiving cautiously favorable reviews of pre-release and leaked alphas."
If they use the same security prompts/process as Vista then Windows 7 will be another one to skip. I have found it inconsistent and incomplete.
* If your account is a local admin then should you be prompted to do some things? Probably, but not more than once. I swear there is a minimum of two prompts by default.
* Why does an admin need to choose "Run as admin" for some things?
* If the system is going to prompt me then make sure I will see it. Sometimes the security prompts pop-under. If I go off to another program while waiting for something to finish only to later find the unanswered prompt still waiting for my response.
* If a program requires admin access or "Run as admin" then clearly give the user direction to do so. Try pathping for instance and you get "0 No resources". Launch cmd "as admin" and it works fine.
The Vista security model is horrible IMHO. We are just getting started with Windows 2008 and it looks like it is going to be more of the same. If I am logged in as admin on a server I sure hope I don't get the same incomplete and inconsistent experience. If so, Windows 2008 will be the Server OS to skip from MS. (I'm sure some slashdotters will say they should all be skipped. :-) )
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
I installed over 3000 copies of vista at a local OEM over my summer break. You wouldn't believe the shit I've seen. Integrated ethernet cards only being recognized every other boot, 15 minute startups, reboots required for every other damn driver install, random "could not connect to authentication server"s...
Yeah, I'ved used vista...
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
It seems that many people really think there wasn't much recourse for Microsoft putting out such a terrible product in it's initial release of Vista.... This very much so isn't the case.
If we refer to the table here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_desktop_operating_systems you can see how much of the market has started to diversify since Vista came out. I think it would be safe to assume that the market share of Vista is somewhat inflated due to the fact that Microsoft made it very difficult to get anything but Vista on a regular consumer machine for quite some time, and now most major builders charge a fee ($150 at some!) to "downgrade" Vista to XP.
Since Q1 of 2007, Microsoft has seen both of their largest competitors in the desktop operating system market (Apple & Linux) double their penetration. Will this possibly drive them to bring us a better product? On a side note, Microsoft Server 2008 as a workstation is definitely worth taking a look at. You can download and use it free for 60 days, and a quick look at http://www.win2008workstation.com/wordpress/ will give you some pointers on setting it up. There are definitely some things lacking, but it might give you hope that M$ will do something right in their next major release.
Microsoft is the 800# gorilla in the room because it doesn't break backward compatibility. I'm not a mac fanboi but from what I've heard the various changes from one version to the next over the past ten years were not as seamless as you indicated. Most of my friends who use macs (none of whom are technical, they're all in the design space) just gave up on trying to get their old software to work with the new version and bought all new software. Compare that with Microsoft where althought they're not officially supported, almost all DOS applications will still run. So if you bought some piece of software in 1988 for DOS 3.0 chances are pretty good that it will run on Vista.
Why doesn't Slashdot ever get slashdotted?
At my office we have Vista, XP, OS X, and Linux. Anyone can use whatever OS they prefer, but all are needed for testing. All but one person uses OS X on their desktop. One uses Linux. No one uses Vista because no one likes it.
The desktops we have set up for testing with Vista are nothing but trouble from the second you sit down. Many things need to be constantly installed to get anything done; things that come native with OS X and Linux. Distracting windows and notifications pop up constantly requiring extra clicks. Debugging JavaScript is a breeze in Firefox but a nightmare with IE7. I could go on...
Your experience may be positive. But don't assume that everyone who complains about Vista is lying.
Developers: We can use your help.
Or more likely it was 3000 installs, but about 100 different configurations. We specialized in building and configuring machines for local school districts.
That's irrelevant though, my point is, we were CLONING good installs onto identical hardware and were experiencing all manner of rarely reproducible errors.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
[...] I use Vista at home, I use Vista at work. I have had absolutely no issue with it. [...]
Good for you. But actually you would be the first business user Id've encountered who has not run into an unsolvable problem caused by Vista, be it a technical or one regarding usability.
Vista was about MS standing up to OS X's fizzy design. Nothing more.
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
apple isn't very popular with enterprise for several reasons.
- price: no competition means higher price. with the PC, the cutthroat competition between hardware makers is what keeps price down.
- openess: the PC is an open architecture, you can choose your box from any manufacturer. even apple recognized this as an advantage and moved to intel/PC arch.
- relationship with developers: say what you want, but working in a large IT shop i know several programers who all agree that MS treats developers a whole lot better than apple. see the strangle hold they keep over that iPhone store.
- availability of software: the PC was created by IBM with a focus on business. the Mac wasn't. a huge library of corporate software made the diference on DOS days. the previous item does it today.
and you didn't get GP's point. emulation and virtualization, either in hardware or software helps a lot. and MS is not a newbie on this. in the early days of the transition from DOS to windows 3.0, the version for 80286 PC/ATs couldn't multitaks DOS apps. if you opened more than one DOS app, the one in the background would freeze, but in a 80386 you could multitask DOS apps because the 386 introduced hardware based "real mode" VMs. heck, you can run a binary compiled on an S/360 on a current version of Z/OS running in the latest state-of-the-art IBM mainframe.
apple's several transitions, m68k -> PPC -> intel (hardware) and Mac OS classic -> Mac OS X pretty much afected some few specialized (read: badly written) software. nothing that caused widespread problems.
it can be done, and is only the stuborness of the redmond guys that prevents them from doing it.
What ? Me, worry ?
Have you tried KDE 4.2? Give it a go, I was pleasantly surprised. 4.0 and 4.1 were still a disappointment, but it's definitely better (my configuration is back!)
Why? hmm, lets see...
Maybe because it was still using Qt3? If you are that upset about it then just use KDE 3.5.x still and wait for the 4.x line to mature as much.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
You could have installed Linux and just told the customer it was an early release of Windows 7 and much more stable. Just tell them Wine is for backward compatibility with existing Windows programs. Slap a on flying toaster screen saver and a Windows desktop image and they'd never suspect a thing.
Right-click on the start menu, and click "Properties", then click on the "Customize" button in the dialog that pops up.
Scroll down almost all the way to the bottom of the list that pops up. Select the checkbox called "Run command". Click "Ok", then "Ok".
Boom! Run command in the start menu.
Windows vista does that.
If you install the EXACT same install onto 5 identical machines. You will end up with 5 slightly diffrent end results. I've tested it over and over.
It's fucking retarded it does that. But it does.
XP does that too. but to a far far smaller degree.
The same applys to installing one copy of vista onto a single machine 5 times. You'll get slightly diffrent results every damm time.
Sounds stupid. You assume you made a mistake. But nope. Triple check everything all the way and you'll see it still happens.
Now do it for 1000 machines company wide... haha... fuck that shit. you'll have plenty to do.
vista is instant job security. unless you get fired for reccomending it or something.
You weren't at PDC then. One of the keynote demos of W7 showed off the fact that it is blisteringly fast on a 1ghz, 1gb RAM netbook; UAC is fixed/gone, and hardware compatibility is top priority early-game, instead of after the fact.
Rex is 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
1) Because then people would buy XP instead of Vista.
2) You can buy XP - here
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
You're going to need contain yourself here :)
[windows key] + R
The "R" is for Run.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
But what you are proposing is exactly what they are doing, except it isn't free. They want the money from selling it as a new OS, and they have mostly written off the Vista brand. The whole point of releasing 7 as a separate OS as opposed to a patch is to try to get away from the Vista brand as quickly as they can.
Assuming you're not just trolling ("Vista sucks so I installed Linux and it's better"), I'll post a batch file I use at work. It solves most any windows update-related problem. I kept adding to it as I encountered more and more strangely broken computers, and as of now it works fairly well.
/s /q C:\windows\SoftwareDistribution
@echo off
echo Starting Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS)...
net start bits
echo Registering DLLs...
REGSVR32 WUAUENG.DLL
REGSVR32 WUAUENG1.DLL
REGSVR32 ATL.DLL
REGSVR32 WUCLTUI.DLL
REGSVR32 WUPS.DLL
REGSVR32 WUPS2.DLL
REGSVR32 WUWEB.DLL
REGSVR32 WUAPI.DLL
echo Killing Windows Automatic Updater Service...
net stop wuauserv
echo Destroying Update Cache...
rmdir
echo Re-enabling Windows Automatic Updater Service...
net start wuauserv
echo Magic!
DATABASE WOW WOW
On OS X, we know this as Time Machine.
Gerry
That is not really accurate. When the transition to OS X started, for instance, all new Macs came with a version of OS 9 called "Mac Classic", which could be installed to run all your old applications on the new machine. There was also an interim development framework that allowed developers to easily port their programs to the new OS, until they were able to re-write them in native code.
As far as I remember, this was adequate for most users, and it helped make the transition virtually seamless.
Moreover, when Apple switched from the PowerPC to an Intel architecture, they also allowed for emulated modes and transitional frameworks, in order to ease not only users, but developers also, into the new platform. For a time, most applications for download or purchase came as "universal packages", which was just a file containing a binary for each platform. The OS launcher then could pick whichever it recognized, when executing the application. This all worked fairly seamless.
So, if anything, Mac users are conditioned to expect their applications--and their OS--to work reasonably consistent across versions, platform changes and operating system upgrades.
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
So basically Ultimate (or Vista in general) is worth the extra cash because it allows people to indiscriminately overwrite important files without regard to their accuracy, importance or completeness.... And another of your Vista's highlight is the fact that it also allows people to spread their files and folders around the filesystem without any sensible concern about where a particular document should be saved.
That's both lazy and sloppy.
Call me Old School, but if one needs this much babysitting when using a PC, one should go back to the ease of pencil and paper and save some serious cash.
WinXP (and even Win2K) is fine!
It's more convenient, because your host OS is not affected. you can keep on working while the system restore takes place. Usually a VM is for secondary activities. Anyway, I was responding to you saying that "it's not practical," when it really is very practical.
... and then they built the supercollider.
I wonder if they will let you buy the windows 7 upgrade for xp though?
From what I've seen over the years, Microsoft generally allows "upgrade" versions to work on at least the two previous versions. Upgrade versions of Vista work on Windows XP and Windows 2000. Upgrade versions of XP work on Windows 2000, NT 4, ME, and 98. Upgrade versions of Office 2007 work on Office 2000, XP, and 2003.
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...