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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."
unbelievable.
it would take a butt the size of mount everest for any company to take the plunge and trust anything from microsoft again, after the stunt they pulled with vista.
and what happens to the poor sods who DID trust microsoft and upgraded their entire office to vista, again ?
Read radical news here
Is anyone surprised by this? Many customers told them time after time that they didn't want vista, and that they would rather use XP. Now I'm not a fan of M$, but I can say that XP Pro SP3 is absolutly amazing and stable I really really don't feel the need to upgrade to vista when I've finally got XP tuned so well that I hardly have to do any maintenance on it.
It's not uncommon for companies to skip OS's , so this works out great for our 40,000 users. So we can go from XP sp3 direct to Win7 , but we will probably wait for SP1 of Win7.
The optimistic view would be that Vista is more like Windows ME, which would make Windows 7 more like XP. If that's the case, maybe Windows 7 will actually be fairly stable and we can try to pretend Vista never happened, sort of like how we try to forget Windows ME.
I'm not old enough to remember all the promises of '95/'98, etc (More like I didn't care). But I'm already seeing the same XP/Vista/7 cycle start over..
Microsoft is setting themselves up for another round of the same old shit. Vista had favorable reviews from pre-releases and leaked alphas.... and then features started to drop to meet the continually moving release date.
Microsoft is going to have to sever all backwards compatibility at some point if they want a fresh start. Microsoft BOUGHT an Emulator/Virtualizer (Virtual PC), how hard would it be to make a seamless sandboxed XP install?
Not to sound to fanboyish, but Apple has done this TWICE in the last 10 years. First OS 9 -> OS X. Sandboxed everything in Classic. Not everything worked perfect, but it bridged the gap. Then again with the release on Intel If you already had your Apps in XCode all it took was 1 checkmark in a config. That's it. Complete new binary for a new architecture. And if that didn't work you still had Rosetta, which like classic, wasn't perfect but it works. On my laptop I seamlessly run PPC code on an Intel machine with less problems than most people have had with just trying to run Vista.
Not just GUI apps either. I can compile something like coreutils on a PPC machine and run it on an Intel machine, not ideal but it works.
Microsoft is supposedly the 800# gorilla in the corner but it can't figure out how to cut all ties to the past and move on.
More like Windows ME 2, do they really think people will buy it when they haven't sorted out the problems with vista.
Do you actually use Vista? Or is this typical ignorant slashdot drivel? I use Vista at home, I use Vista at work. I have had absolutely no issue with it. Let me qualify this by saying until a couple months ago I also used OS X 10.4 at home, and I also currently dual boot into Ubuntu. Vista has been far more stable than both of these, and the support is no contest.
Now let me ask again, do you actually *use* Vista? Or are you regurgitating tired old perceptions because of a fanboyish allegiance to a free operating system?
Similes are like metaphors
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.
My gripes about it are typically more about unneeded UI changes which hurt usability. For example, what the hell was the justification for renaming "Add / Remove Programs" to "Programs and Features"? I've been a Windows user for over 15 years... there is no reason in hell I should spend 30 seconds scanning the Control Panel for a single icon.
This may sound like a petty rant, but I run across issues like this *all* the time! The mass storage driver is also flaky for my motherboard (I can't use any mass storage devices!) but that's more Asus's fault than MS.
All in all, Vista isn't terrible, and definitely usable but suffers from some very poor design decisions.
Here's the problem: Microsoft has used illegal tactics to maintain its monopoly gained from unethical practices.
Microsoft's monopoly is so entrenched, that the proto-typical "Sun Oil" case can't even compare.
In a real competitive environment, customers would have long ago abandoned Microsoft. The best analogy is WordStar vs WordPerfect. WordStar was first, but WordPerfect was better. Naturally WordStar lost and is now, no more.
Microsoft is so entrenched, and so anti-standards, that your data and business operations are held hostage. You can't escape the Widows lock-in without paying a lot of money and abandoning some of your core applications.
Furthermore, the monopoly level of Microsoft means that it is unrealistic for ISVs to develop for other platforms because Windows represents 80+% of the market and who can justify an the cost of development unless you can really identify a market. Virtually every notebook and P.C. sold at the consumer and "system" level has Windows installed.
In a real competitive environment, Windows ME, Microsoft BOB, Microsoft Dogs, or Vista would have killed any other company and we would be glad to see them go. But no, it is so bad that users CAN'T escape windows, so they are settling for an 8 year old operating system instead of modern alternatives.
If there was ever a time where clear proof existed that Microsoft needs to be broken up, this is it. Its insane.
if Windows 7 tanks, they can always ask for bailout money like all the other companies that make crappy products.
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)
Oh yeah, it's fine. As long as your usage pattern doesn't involve anything intricate like copying files...
I have both Ubuntu and Vista and I prefer dual booting into Vista... I actually like the apps more on Ubuntu (kdevelop/bash), but, Vista's start bar, control panel, and user interface just nails it for me. Makes ubuntu feel old fashioned.
Unix people can complain about Vista as much as the want, but the fact is, they screwed up as bad as MS did. Microsoft doesn't hand out opportunities to attack its desktop and certainly with some of the bad Vista buzz, they did. But, the linux community blew it.
Gnome is moving at a glacial pace, and KDE is in no man's land. It's almost like, had KDE either finished 4 or just polished 3.x, or Gnome just moved more quickly, either could have had a real Vista killer, but, both missed.
This is my sig.
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.
Yes, because people bought windows 2000 when they did not sort out the problems with windows ME.
W2K turned out to be their Best OS ever. (Yes even now compared to XP it's still better.)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Well, sometimes you need to make changes to the UI that would be more friendly to new users, even if it might confuse old users for a little bit. Yeah, the Programs and Features was a pain in the ass, but after the first couple of times, I don't even think about it (and I still use XP at work).
I have been using vista since shortly before it was released and I am not very happy about it. I am one of few that think that UAC is a good idea, but it is a bad implementation. I am tired of waiting for vista when it goes grey, and I do not think it is better than XP. It is not anything that you want to pay a lot of money for, when you already have XP. From what I hear Windows 7 is not going to be any better. All our sysadmins has moved to Linux, our servers are moving to Linux, and when our users are ready, they will go to Linux as well. ;)
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.
My gripes about it are typically more about unneeded UI changes which hurt usability.
But what about KDE? Dude, they scrapped a desktop that was popular, flexible, and working. KDE 3.5 was already better than even Vista's shell in some ways, as is gnomes. You can do a lot with the doc bars/task bars, and in KDE you could change even the clock type to one of 40 different types, and instead of just polishing that up, they went and junked it.
Unbelievable! Really, what was in KDE 3.5 that was so terrible that the whole thing needed to be junked, from an end user perspective. Plasma might wind up being cool, but its gonna need some time to gel up a bit. And, in the meantime, I'd like gnome to just do -something-.
And, along the way, I've actually got Vista growing on me. The only thing I really don't like about it is that the start bar doesn't have "run" on it the way XP does, but other than that, Vista is better.
As bad as Vista might be to some people, Microsoft won this round, again. This time, it was because while MS made mistakes with Vista, the KDE and Gnome teams made some big ones too.
This is my sig.
The optimistic view would be that Vista is more like Windows ME, which would make Windows 7 more like XP. If that's the case, maybe Windows 7 will actually be fairly stable and we can try to pretend Vista never happened, sort of like how we try to forget Windows ME.
Win ME is not nearly half as disastrous as most people will tell you, provided that you configure it correctly. Most of the out-of-the-box default settings glitchy at best and system crashing at worst, though going menu by menu and rearranging everything manually will fix most of its glaring problems (notably the RAM management and ballooning system restore folder). I've had Win ME installed on a system at home since 2001 and it's been running as close as it will get to flawlessly. When I mention how it will leap through hoops of fire if I ask it nicely, however, people always seem to recoil in fear and reach for their bible and holy water...
What are the unsorted problems with Vista?
I mean, it's not the greatest OS in the world, but it's not horrendous. Yeah, there was the crap with the 'Vista ready' BS when it came out, but at this point, most new PCs should have no problem running it with Aero.
There were tons of driver issues when it came out too (Just like when Win 2k was new, god that was a nightmare), but again, it's been a few years and the driver support seams pretty top notch at this point.
The UAV system is annoying, but easily disabled. Hopefully they will tweak it to run more like Ubuntu where I can log in as a power user with out admin rights, but perform admin tasks by providing admin credentials when attempting the task.
Other than that, I'm pleased with the system. It's a tad more bloated than my XP build, but the hardware is a bit more beefy, so the extra memory and clock cycles are negligible and it can perform all of the tasks I normally do faster than my older PC with XP.
If Windows 7 makes iterative improvements on Vista the way 98 did to 95, then I'm all for it. I'd shell out $90 for an upgrade version next time I build a PC.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I wonder if they will let you buy the windows 7 upgrade for xp though? Or will you have to buy the full retail for 7, in which case they've as good as sold you a vista upgrade (plus a windows 7 upgrade) even though you didn't want anything to do with vista?
I personally find it hilarious that they keep extending xp as the consumer mass keeps threatening to make a "true" upgrade to another os...
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
The justification? simple.
To require all MCSE's to re certify. Oh and to get the millions of employees using windows out there to take new training courses in windows. The test users here we switched to Vista were non productive for 1 week. WORSE than the linux trials we did last year, and they required more training.
that is the ONLY reason they pull that crap.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The change from Vista to 7 is more like 2000 to XP. There is very little being changed under the hood. For example (assuming version numbers still mean anything at MS) the kernel is going from 6.0 to 6.1. 2000 was kernel 5.0 and XP was 5.1. XP 64 and 2003 are kernel version 5.2.
All that aside, I'm trying to be optimistic that 7 will be what Vista promised to be.
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
Now, what Microsoft needs to do is:
(1) Offer free DOWNGRADES for anyone with a Vista license.
(2) Offer free UPGRADES to Windows Seven for anyone who buys a machine loaded with Vista.
Today I shall be installing a replacement IDE hard drive in a 6 year old system, a 1.8 GHz Pentium 4, which I'd much rather upgrade but won't simply because anything I bought today would be running Vista.
...will be the name. By not being called "Vista", users won't associate it with all the horror stories they've heard about Vista, so they'll be willing to give it a chance.
It will have a handful of minor improvements, but otherwise I expect it to be mostly identical. Vista's biggest problem is third-party compatibility, which should mostly be worked out by the time Windows 7 ships.
Personally, I hate Vista a lot less than I hate XP. Most people can't understand how I would say that, but that's because they actually like XP. Blech.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I really like the benefits of Linux, and I think that given a little more time to mature, it could really take off with less-technical users. I wouldn't mind Windows 7 sucking just to give Linux a bit more of an incubation period.
(And, given the things MS has pulled in the past, I still think it's got a big karma deficit to work off. I'm still overwhelmed with a sense of schadenfreude against MS.)
I could go on but for your sanity and mine I will not.
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)
As usual, after Vista's debacle, Microsoft communicates about their next generation OS, trying to keep the users focused on their software, to prevent them for looking for competition.
What has changed recently is that the economy crisis will force most of the companies to reduce their cost.
This will be done in two phases:
- the first one is reducing the number of employees.
- the second phase will be about reducing the cost of software.
Microsoft is as always very expensive, even though the cost of their development has been largely returned.
I think they will need to reduce the price of their software, or the next years will be difficult for them, especially when competing with free software.
If I wanted to go through my system and customize all the settings manually, I'd install Linux. In a Windows OS, given its target market, having to go through it "menu by menu" and reconfigure it is disastrous.
In fact, as I recall, when WinME was out I did have Linux installed, and the default settings were mostly good enough, with only some tweaking required for one or two components (I think the audio cards weren't supported properly then). Clearly, ME was (for most users) a disaster.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
If that's the case, maybe Windows 7 will actually be fairly stable and we can try to pretend Vista never happened
Except Vista already is stable. Maybe it's because I only use my PC for games and the Internet, but Vista (SP1) has been nearly flawless.
I guess I'll really care when they have a new OS that will run on an Atom based netbook.
Windows Embedded Standard 2009. You can actually download the trial and play with it. Build some various loadouts of the operating system. You can included exactly what you want and do some fairly cool things with how it accesses the HDD and loads.
It costs too much, so you won't actually be able to afford more than the trial as individual end user, but you will at least get to see what windows would be if Microsoft would just let us use it how we want.
[...] 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.
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!)
Windows XP is all the 32 bit OS anyone should ever need. It's fast, and pretty much scales as far as 32 bit will go. Windows 7 better have an option to be as sleek and unobtrusive as Windows XP. They lost me 2 years ago when I switched to Linux, but I spent 5 years learning the ins and outs of XP so it's almost as comfortable as my custom Fluxbox configuration (which took me all of a week to get to a reasonably functional level.)
Anyway, even if it does, $150+ is way to much to pay for an OS that has regressions in functionality (whether coming from XP or Linux, this is definitely the case on Vista, and I'd expect it for 7.)
An OS is worth about $50. Don't get me wrong, I understand the energy that goes into optimizing it. But it's unnecessary. I've used new Macs running quad cores, I've run new Fedora machines running the same, I've used Vista... sparingly, and I have to say, the performance gains of the past 4 years over my single-core integrated graphics machine are negligible. If I'm paying, I'm paying for security fixes and continued driver support plain and simple. I have yet to see anyone give me something that so blows away Windows XP that it really sounds like it's worth more than $50.
They have people willing to pay a premium ON TOP of the price of the new OS so they can use the older model and don't have to switch. Says it all really.
My experiences with Vista are similar to yours. But when I hear about Windows 7, those aren't the things they seem to be addressing. What I read is about it being cooler, having new features, etc. It doesn't sound like they are addressing the big issue: stability.
Fix the broken mixer, the performance and memory problems, the crashes in explorer, the video playback bugs, the unnecessary UAC messages, the driver installation issues... I haven't heard Microsoft even admit those problems exist, so I'm not sure they will fix them.
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)
Why? Why should an increasing number of computer literate people have to cater to the needs of an increasingly small group of utterly non technical users. Why not make them catch up, instead of the rest of us slow down.
Good interface design is not synonymous with "The user is stupid, make the interface for stupid people."
I basically agree with your point, but simply renaming 20 year old cruft to something a little less nerdy is not an improvement, it's a very cheap and ultimately damaging hack.
What really ticks me off is the way options relating to one thing have been broken up and cluttered across a myriad of places. Think display settings and desktop themes. It's even worse than GNOME.
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
I haven't forgotten Windows ME (or Vista). That's why I don't use Windows. However, 7 will be an improvement over vista. If they re-released vista today, the same code, calling it a new version, it would be an improvement, if only because hardware has caught up.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Since Windows 7 is mostly changes in the upper layers of the gui in Vista wouldnt bet it wont suck. The crappy drivers for Vista will most certainly crap out just as much on Win 7 as they do on Vista. Last i heard where supposed to use Vista drivers in Win 7.
Also, since the underlying issues arent solved performance gains will be small and the whole DRM crap is still in there slowing everything down. Any fixes arent really fixes but rather all sorts of ways of hiding performance problems from the user.
In short, Windows 7 is very, very close to being Windows Vista SP2.
HTTP/1.1 400
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.
The problem here was that the interface item itself was designed incorrectly in the first place. As a new user, if I go to control panel and know I want to do something with programs, my first inclination would be to look for Programs, or Uninstall Programs or Remove Programs. Why was it called Add/Remove Programs? For the life of me, in god knows how many years I've used Windows, I've never used that to add programs. Plus, Add/Remove Programs didn't indicate that you could also change/remove/add the features of Windows itself, hence, 'Programs and Features' makes more sense.
There's lots to hate about Vista, sure, but renaming Add/Remove Programs to Programs and Features isn't one of them. It'll take an old user all of 30 seconds to find it, and after a couple of times, you've retrained yourself easily. It's not about being friendly to utterly non technical users, it's about being friendly to new users. You know, there are new babies born, and kids grow up to use computers. What's wrong with making sure things make sense?
This isn't so wonderful if XP costs you an additional $150 (hello, Dell) over the Vista that you don't even want, but are forced to take as well. The previous $50 downgrade was just about palatable, but forcing you to virtually buy 2 OSs when you're only running one has got to be a Microsoft wetdream.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
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.
I don't see how going from "Add/Remove Programs" to "Programs and Features" is going to make it easier for new users to figure out how to add or remove a program.
This is more or less useless trivia for most of you, but when using the "Add / Remove Programs" cpl, it actually puts the machine in "Install" mode. This is extremely important for Terminal Server environments for a variety of painful registry related reasons. You can accomplish the same thing by typing "change user /install" in a cmd prompt, but the cpl applet is more convenient.
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
I thought Windows didn't have virtual desktops?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Actually, the ME disaster was a plus for MS.
They couldn't get people off the 9x platform.
Windows ME forced people to go to Windows 2000.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
if MS just dumped XP and FORCE-FED Vista on Business
Then we'd move to full volume licensing for all machines that require Windows, and use our downgrade rights for XP (unless Windows Seven is actually worth using).
I've been running Ubuntu at work partially as a test to see how easy it would be to move people over to it if necessary. Things are working pretty nicely so far, I'm thinking everyone but our engineering design department could do their jobs fine with free software. In fact our Fabrication department would probably be better off with free software than the OmniForm crap that they're using at the moment. Sure, Evolution's Exchange integration isn't perfect - the unread messages number for each folder isn't updating like it should - but apart from that it works great. If MS try to force any shit onto us I'd be happy to move all our general office workers over to Linux, and yes I'd provide full support for them - it's part of what I get paid for after all ;)
which is totally what she said
The justification? [...] To require all MCSE's to re certify. Oh and to get the millions of employees using windows out there to take new training courses in windows.
The thing is, that doesn't make sense. Microsoft make almost all of their money on exactly two product lines: Windows and Office. Everything else is just window dressing (no pun intended) to try to boost sales of Windows and Office. For example, Microsoft's developer tools are quite decent, but did you notice that they've started giving them away in recent years? That's because they don't make any serious money on them, but if they can get people using their tools then those people are going to target their platform, and the more applications are available on their platform, preferably exclusively, the more attractive that platform is for people who might buy it. Ditto for all the back office stuff. I haven't checked the figures for the gaming and Internet stuff recently, but they were lucky not to make a substantial loss lass time I looked, so I very much doubt they are more than a drop in the ocean either.
In this context, forcing people to retrain and recertify doesn't help Microsoft, because it makes their key products less attractive. It just doesn't fit into their business plan. When they've reached the unique position of having near 100% market penetration in their two primary markets, the only thing they can do to keep the serious money coming in is provide upgrades that people are willing to pay for, and Vista was so far off-target that substantial chunks of the market actively chose to go for Windows XP instead. If Windows 7 is another cock-up on that scale, then we could realistically be looking at the beginning of the end for Microsoft.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
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.
These days, it's pretty much guaranteed that any PC you buy at retail will have Vista on it. Microsoft has done a pretty good job of addressing Vista performance concerns. I hear the newest service pack is pretty good.
However, how many IT people out there are dealing with a large number of older systems? For us, it really comes down to this -- we can potentially run Vista on a fair number of our systems. Others are right in the middle of the XP system requirements (P4, 512 MB RAM.) So which do we choose?
We're just small enough to not really have a formal hardware refresh cycle, so this is a major concern for us. Windows 7 will probably have the same problems regarding hardware resources. Do you put up with lousy performance on some of your machines, or stick with good performance overall?
I earn my living supporting a few Vista laptops used by some impatient execs so I know of what I speak.
I have had absolutely no issue with it.
Well, then I'm not sure you do much with either then. There are user issues and oh there are plenty. I'll hit the highlights for you.
1. Copying large files. Why so slow? Execs want to check email while opening the latest *large* spreadsheet off the network. The dual-core 2GB RAM equipped nice laptop grinding to a halt is an issue.
2. UAC. After the first complaint I disabled it. Nevermind that UAC isn't sudo. Security is NOT shifting the responsibility of security onto the user. "Are you sure?" is not security. It's a blame-shifting mechanism and they paid handsomely for it.
3. Why is it **so** slow and suck **so** much battery power doing nothing? The disk thrashing is annoying to me, but they don't seem to notice it. The execs had way more battery time on their old XP's and they know the difference.
Vista has been far more stable than both of these,
That is a lie. Or, maybe you are using some kind of special Bill-Clinton-legal-gymnastical definition of "stable." It's one thing to prefer Vista over a Mac or Linux distro. It is another thing entirely to lie about the other OS's you do not prefer. At this point you have lost all credibility and believability.
and the support is no contest.
Another Clintonian definition of the word support perhaps? Is it the *fabulous* phone support from script readers to configure your printer? Mac users get that too. Most on slashdot have moved way, way beyond phone CSR.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
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.
As a new user, if I go to control panel and know I want to do something with programs,
Really? All the new users I've ever worked with think that the logical thing to do with a program you don't want any more is to delete it, same as you might delete a file.
You'd be amazed how many Windows users have deleted the icon from their desktop (and maybe even their start menu) and consider the application is therefore gone.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
.. In fact our Fabrication department would probably be better off with free software ..
It's nice to see companies, such as yours, naming their departments correctly and honestly. Most other companies would call it "Legal department".
You can safely skip every other one in the series.
You'd be amazed at the number of Mac users who do the same thing. Of course, that's been how you uninstall Mac software since 1984, and NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP software for almost as long...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Changes to user interfaces are nearly always negative. Even if you make a new UI that is objectively better, it will usually require relearning. Because of this, UI changes should be introduced gradually, and should require a difficult approval process to ensure that they are not made gratuitously.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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.
But have marketing got at it yet?
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
Then you explain the Incredibly stupid task of renaming and rearranging everything.
It started with XP, oh let's move things HERE, let's change it HERE, etc...
it's like some interior designer got on the programming team and said, "users is too angry of a word, let's call it 'experience prefrences' as that has more fung-schway in it."
you say it does not make any sense, then you tell us WHY they do the stupid move of rearranging and renaming things in the UI?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
What about the hiding of the file menu in IE making people think that IE doesn't support things like bookmarks and all the features they had before?
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
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
Windows 95/98/ME were just graphical shells running on DOS.
Will that myth never die? Just because you booted to DOS doesn't mean Win95 was a DOS app. Win95 was a 32-bit OS with a protected memory model. It was also the most amazing piece of backwards compatibility I've seen: it could run 16-bit drivers that expected a shared memory model.
Of course, this backwards compatibility made it Hell for those stuck supporting it, as it had all the unreliability of the old crap drivers, but it was certainly the right business decision for MS, and a heck of an engineering feat.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
All that aside, I'm trying to be optimistic that 7 will be what Vista promised to be.
Except it won't be. None of the features that were promised to be in Vista but were dropped to keep from sliding the release even further will be in Windows 7. As far as I can tell, there aren't really any new important features in Windows 7. It's a new OS in name only (and bit of spit polish and debugging) and unfortunately that might just be enough.
And that's on top of Vista having few new important features. They did of course manage to cram in all the protected path DRM crap. Guess we know their priorities.
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!
A lot of really interesting new Vista features are under the hood and only visible for developers. For example, how about a true transacted file system & registry - so you can start a transaction, create directories and move files around, write into those files, maybe delete some - and then just roll it all back with a single API call or on a system crash, with guaranteed atomicity, while no other process in the system sees any of your changes until you commit them? I'm not aware of anything even remotely similar in previous versions of Windows (or any Linux-supported FS, for that matter). And the utility of this feature should be pretty obvious to most developers - finally, you won't need a full-featured journalled database (on top of an already journalled FS) for small-scale data storage just because you happen to need atomic updates!
For one thing, MS certainly isn't giving the developer tools away - yes, you have the "Express" editions, but those have pretty heavy limitations which really only make them useful for a student and low-profile hobbyist writing simple freeware or shareware stuff. For any serious development, you're going to need VS Pro, and that still costs quite a bit.
That said, in practice, all shops that are in the business of producing software for MS platforms (even those that make it cross-platform, e.g. using Qt, but target Windows as one of the platforms), don't buy Visual Studio and other development tools directly, but have an MSDN subscription of the desired level instead. This may not always be cheaper compared to buying the boxed versions (especially if you don't update to new versions immediately), but it greatly simplifies license management when dealing with a lot of PCs; and, really, the ability to just grab a distro for some obscure Microsoft server solution (BizTalk, SharePoint) for which you suddenly have a customer is handy. So most Windows shops go for it, and I'd imagine it's also a pretty steady revenue stream for MS - at least last I heard about this, Microsoft DevDiv (Developer Division) is fully self-sufficient.
Personally I wonder why they want to abandon Windows XP support at all, Windows XP looks like a perfect cash cow for me, no need for further investments, most of the bugs are fixed and you can even skin it to look like Vista.
I don't understand why they want to abandon XP. I other word, they want to leave the Netbook market to Linux. Fine with me as long it is not Xandros. If you take LXDE instead of GNOME and KDE it still provides you with all you need. The Desktop is mature. It doesn't matter which operating system you run as long as it is fast and saves your battery.
Microsoft does not get it. The Desktop is mature. You don't need to provide Vista to your users. No one likes Vista. Instead they come up with Windows 7, in other words Vista++. Be sure Windows7 will eat even more memory. And users will again say: get us XP or we switch to Linux or we switch to Mac.
The real debacle for Microsoft is the merging business of software reselling. In other words, if Microsoft does not get you a Windows license, your used software vendor will, and you also have all the old machines and their licenses you can sell for cheap. Because Microsoft is going to get "cheap XP" and zero-cost Linux as competitors of "Windows Azurecloud".
If you run XP and your computer gets damaged then why do you have to get a new XP license with your new notebook? Bundling is a total ripoff! Time to complain. In some nations the courts made bundling illegal!
The day the bundling business dies we kiss Microsoft goodbye.
If you think this is because customers like XP over Vista, you're fooling yourself. This is because Netbooks have become a very valuable commodity. Vista runs horribly on netbooks; Microsoft would rather keep selling XP than risk losing that market share to an OS like Ubuntu. Once their newer, more responsive Windows comes out, and dual-core Atoms are available, they'll stop selling XP immediately.