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XP Reprieve, Downgrade May Continue After Win7
CWmike writes "Gregg Keizer reports that Microsoft acknowledged today it has 'broadened the options' for PC makers to continue offering Windows XP as a downgrade from Vista — and potentially even Windows 7. However, the company would not confirm specific reports that HP has been given the green light to sell new PCs with Windows XP Pro pre-installed through the end of April 2010. 'Windows XP went into semi-retirement in June 2008, when Microsoft stopped selling it at retail and withdrew Windows XP Home from use on all but netbooks, though it allowed XP Professional to be installed as a Vista downgrade. Since then, Microsoft has extended the final date it will sell XP Professional install media to large computer makers and smaller systems builders to July 31, 2009, and May 30, 2009, respectively. Today, Microsoft denied that it had extended the life span of Windows XP, and intimated that those rights were built into the newer operating system — in this case, Vista — and did not expire at some arbitrary date.'"
Update: 04/07 14:36 GMT by T : nandemoari adds "Not only will users be able to keep Windows Vista, but they'll be able to step back in time two generations, all the way to XP. "We will offer downgrade rights from Windows 7 to Windows XP in the same way we did with Windows Vista," a Microsoft rep said.
Insiders speculate that the right to use this time machine might be reserved for those purchasing licenses for only two versions of Windows 7 — Ultimate and Professional. However, that's not yet been confirmed."
Does this mean extended support will still end in 2014?
Even faster than Windows XP, most of the incentive to downgrade is gone and it'll just be a shrinking market.
The only thing I can think of is driver compatibility for that random device that they don't have Vista driver for yet or just something unsupported since then.
People are going to be allowed to buy the OS they prefer rather than the one that Microsoft prefers they buy? What a strange idea? Can American capitalism survive thinking like this?
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
"Entity X27. Your navigational hipostaticer is ready."
"I calmly express great joy"
"Do you want us to install Conscious Neurolinker MarkIII? Or Windows XP."
"Windows XP"
"Ok... Oh, wait. Your hipostaticer doesn't allow it sorry."
"Are you *expletive* making a joke on my behalf? *expletive* you! You *expletive* slow person."
Microsoft, I'll give up my obsession with XP, skip Vista and widely support Windows 7, if you guys have the testicles to release Windows 7 as a 64bit only operating system.
I dare you, I double dare you - do the right thing for a change.
Come on microsoft! Just let us be!
Let the people have their damn Win XP!!!
Or.. make something better? Is that such a novel thought?
We're still waiting.........
I dare you, I double dare you - do the right thing for a change.
Only if Elon Musk is in charge.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
People are going to be allowed to buy the OS they prefer rather than the one that Microsoft prefers they buy? What a strange idea? Can American capitalism survive thinking like this?
Ah, whether you're buying a Cobalt or a Corvette, GM is just happy you're on their damn lot to begin with. In light of the economy and the amazing shrinking budget, Microsoft would be wise to put themselves in the same humble position.
This has little to do with what's "better" at this point vs. what business customers don't want to have to deal with (driver issues, software incompatibility, buying new hardware for the sake of software, etc.)
I dare you, I double dare you - do the right thing for a change.
After seeing the efforts to 'do the right thing' in Vista, I'd prefer Microsoft sticks to doing the wrong things consistently.
Better the devil you know...
Same reasons many can't upgrade to Vista...
Spanners in the works:
-New driver model meaning much older hardware just doesn't work.
-UAC breaks lots of badly written apps. Causes huge annoyances at best in these instances.
-64bit. First serious 64 bit consumer Windows.
-No IE6. You wouldn't believe how many legacy apps require IE6 and/or ActiveX, it's quite sickening actually.
Any one of these can be a show-stopped for your app/system, and on older apps this can be a nightmare to have to work round that often isn't worth the investment until forced. I've seen many legacy business apps in particular that break because of Windows re-engineering (Vista). Same applies for Win7.
throw new NoSignatureException();
What an ironic two-edged sword the success of Windows XP has turned out to be. Wintel has been all about the upgrade cycle, keeping on the forefront of Moore's Law (and of course Gates' Corollary). Now, I'm almost a little scared.
Now, don't get me wrong, I go to great lengths to avoid supporting Microsoft. But it's time for XP to die---it's way past its expiration date. I can't think of any truly useful purpose for it: anything needing a stripped-down version of windows should do fine with Win2k, and anything else should use something more recent. Vista isn't that much of a dog, and Win7 promises to either make good on Microsoft's promises or doom the entire company to irrelevance.
XP is old, and insecure, and linux beats the pants off of it, especially on netbooks (like the one I'm typing on). I'm terribly worried that there is still such a demand for it. Enough is enough! XP was brilliant during its time, and I can understand being emotionally attached to it because of that, but it's not the solution to any problem any more. And if you're not part of the solution...
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Just bought a newly released Asus netbook pre-loaded with XP.
I don't know why they chose XP, it could have been
many reasons, but as a casual user the changes
from Vista to XP were substantial - but they
always will be - your options are always the same.
(a) Choose another, similar product from the [vendor]
(b) Choose another, similar product from another vendor
In the case of windows and its lack of ethics in ...
regards to inter-operability [or their past] this
has harmed their overall effectiveness in the market.
The consumer has been locked in, and more
importantly so has their data
Now to change means an entire platform shift, as
there is nothing that is fully compatible and as
"comfortable".
Get rid of platform dependance, version
dependance. I myself run several machines
on this little netbook, multiboot and vm,
and they all perform various functions.
If you're interested in facts I'll tell you what they are and I'll give you sources - Chomsky on The Big Idea
If 64-bit Windows 7 would be slow like the 64bit edition Ubuntu 8.10, then no thanks.
The thing uses 1 gig of RAM for mail and web browsing. Java apps use nearly twice the RAM compared to the 32-bit edition because there are too many pointers. The same with gcc, a simple build task consumes 500 megs of RAM compared to 350 in 32-bit. So one gigabyte in 64-bit Ubuntu is as slow as 512 megs in Vista.
Oh, and netbooks run on Celeron or Atom CPUs, meaning Microsoft would have to continue selling Windows XP.
I wish they were taking back the copy I bought of Vista. I don't want money, just a working XP would do... At least my money would not had been all wasted!
Why don't they just dry up and blow away?
Ballmer can provide all the 'blow' they need.
Absolutely no value added.
Don't worry, other people will support XP.
It was always obvious that if Microsoft delivered one good operating system, most users would not feel a need to have another. Windows XP SP3 is fine for most private users and businesses.
Run limited user accounts and use the latest version of Firefox available in 2015, and that should be sufficiently secure.
Pretty much any HP printer
Fuckers
About 2 years ago, it took me a month to get duplex working.
Something is wrong with your machine or you're living in the past.
PC's have stagnated for years upon years due to holding on compatibility of older operating systems and architecture.
The switch from 16bit CPU's to 32bit CPU's to true 32bit OS's was really, really far far too long.
A mandatory 64bit OS with 32bit emulation through a VM would be far smarter than damn well releasing two different copies.
Are you new to computers by any chance?
Do you even remember the 16bit to 32bit era, do you know what having multiple versions does for developers and segmenting the market?
Please, come back to this thread when you have a clue or you've been in IT for more than 2 years.
It really makes me wonder why Microsoft bothers with the continued development of Windows. The customers have spoken: they like XP, and find it so good that they do not even bother to upgrade nor switch to the much more modern Linux distributions that are available already for years. Vista flopped, and Win7 (or whatever it's going to be called upon release) is also not getting a too warm reception so far.
Just lay off >90% of the workers, keep a core of XP maintainers, and profit.
Interesting post indeed.
XP truely is a fairly slick and fast piece of operating system now.
With Firefox updates, locked down security permissions, a decent AV and firewall just how long could an XP box remain useful to a small business, perhaps a POS machine or email / web / printing / burning terminal?
This is what's causing Microsoft so much trouble, I don't know about the rest of you but the most myself, my friends and my family do on a machine is.
Browse
Email
IM
Video playback
Burning
Downloading
Printing
Collecting photos from cameras
Write documents etc.
That's 99% of the work done on 99% of the machines I support and help with, this is one of many reasons why Vista is having so much trouble.
If anything Vista is approaching things from the wrong angle, I don't believe any one of the above is significantly improved in Vista, if anything - due to the cluttered OS it's harder.
As an IT guy, I suspect I'm going to come across some really old but perfectly working XP installs over the coming 5 and maybe even 10 years, it's almost the DOS6.22 of OS's - just fire and forget.
They should change the support model for XP. Offer it for free and charge for support.
It's still a popular OS that will be in use for years to come - if people are still deploying it on new machines today.
Microsoft can't smash the competition in the Netbook market without Windows XP, which itself is a product they can't make a profit on anymore and are desperate to get rid off.
Industry has always lagged behind the consumer market.
Well into the 90s, in the right catalogs, you could still buy VESA cards and other legacy parts, to keep repairing the 286/386 boxes running DOS and your NC lathe/drill/w.e.. Why should a business upgrade to some shiny new box when the old one, completely amortized and producing pure profit, was still working just fine, thank you very much.
Likewise with the new OS and Office suite. Gartner said when Vista/Office 2K7 came out "no compelling reason to upgrade". Any bean counter worth his salt could see that the new software combination would require a considerable cash outlay in new hardware just to keep productivity at current levels. Non-adoption became a no-brainer.
What MS did was ignore the market and attempt to make too clean a break from their previous policy of the greatest backwards compatibility for hardware and software. They miscalculated and are now reaping the results of that decision.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
That's 99% of the work done on 99% of the machines I support and help with, this is one of many reasons why Vista is having so much trouble.
If anything Vista is approaching things from the wrong angle, I don't believe any one of the above is significantly improved in Vista, if anything - due to the cluttered OS it's harder.
Vista does one thing better. It is possible to run (almost?) everything in user-mode, without the need for every user to be administrator. I don't know how much this improves security, but it is an improvement. Whenever I need admin-rights, a box pops up asking for the right login.
So they're saying Windows 7 will be such a failure before it's even released, that customers may want to just stick with XP until Microsoft straightens things out?
I'll stick with Linux myself.
Having a smoking section in a public restaurant is like having a peeing section in a public swimming pool.
It's much better than no Linux options. They don't even offer XP on all their machines. Some people are never happy..
which is totally what she said
You wouldn't believe how many legacy apps require IE6
I think it's quite fitting that the self-serving proprietary bullshit and lack of standards in IE6 might actually translate into a few lost OS sales for MS some years later.
Going from Vista to XP is an UPGRADE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So, much as I like Ubuntu 8.10 which runs on my servers, it is actually useless on most of our desktops and netbooks as it cannot run two out of our essential four programs.
Because accounting programs are very conservative and stable, I expect them to be running perfectly adequately on XP in ten years time. So why do I want Vista?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
to see "Windows 8" to be NT 5.3. That is, if 7 is a failure (and by failure I mean that XP still has majority market share 2 1/2 years after 7 was released).
Yeah back when most people used the Z80 and 6502 I read an article about how people should reconsider getting an 8086 machine because the eight bit architecture is much better for word processing.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
To do this in windows xp I'm prety sure all you have to do is hold down shift and right click an icon and use the "Run As" command.
What MS needs is new hardware.
Let's ponder. WinNT to 2k. What was the reason? That NT was "too old" or that 2k was "slicker, faster, better, newer"? Nah. USB support and DirectX. Win2k to XP? Wifi. No, seriously. That's pretty much all that is so terribly different. Ok, the DirectX SDK for 9.0c doesn't want to run on 2k, but you can convince it. Oh, and I think you need XP for some of the later .NET goodies.
In a nutshell, it was always MS deciding to abandon support for "older" systems that should convince people they "want" the new system. They tried the same stunt with Vista, by not offering DirectX10 support for XP. It fizzled because neither people nor industry cared.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
coincidentally, isn't that what macOS does with programs from its pre-OSX operating systems?
The problem is the developers.
Imagine for a second you're a developer of software. Now, of course you want to sell to the biggest market. So you're developing for Windows. Yeah, you might even prefer doing stuff for Linux, but... bigger market, ok?
32 or 64 bit? Well, 64bit machines can run 32bit code. 32bit machines can't run 64bit code. So you're developing yet another 32bit application.
Why should this be bad? Does it really matter at all?
It matters because it slows down the transition to 64bit. Which means we're facing a bottleneck, or more precisely, we're already in it. You may or may not remember the days of 640k ram and "some above that". The hoops we jumped through and the ways we bent to make those 640k "last" when it was plain obvious that about 25 times that amount of ram was in order is ridiculous. Yet it had to be done, because programs were written for those 640k "and some above that" ram, systems that were stuck in offset/segment ram addressing because you couldn't really sensibly change it or break compatibility...
And we're heading there again. As long as there is a large 32 bit market, and there will be as long as there are new 32bit system, application programmers will create 32bit software which will be bought and used, and which will create quite a bit of headaches when the time comes that we HAVE to move on to 64bit.
Maybe you remember the headaches you had when you went from DOS to Win95. And not because 95 bluescreened every other minute.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Why? There are still lots of 32bit CPUs, like in most netbooks. What would be better if Windows 7 doesn't support these? Even if Windows 7 would suddenly replace every other Windows on those 64bit machines there are still big numbers of 32bit machines that the software vendors just can't ignore. It doesn't help anyone, the only result of that would be that Windows 7 doesn't work on netbooks. Why is that good?
I don't see this is much as a problem, as long as compatibility of these 32bit apps on 64bit Windows is tested and works as it should.
I don't think the client of an ERP package should be a 64bit application "just because". There's no advantage gained from doing so.
I run 64bit Windows 7 at Home, and 64bit Windows Vista on my work laptop. Both run fine.
Correct, you need to anticipate it.
As a general user this is not always intuitive.
Of course, as a general user the pop-up may be about as much protection as running as administrator.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
a POS machine
I thought it was the right software, Vista for instance, that made the machine a POS...
;-)
because there are too many pointers.
I know, let's have some short pointers so we can save memory, but let's also have long pointers so we can address all the memory.
Let's call them "near" and "far" pointers. Let's make the programmer declare them explicitly. I think it will provide for a massive productivity boost.
Oh, and let's add memory segments too ;-)
First: Linux/Unix has done this since it was created
Second: and improvements of programs to do user-mode on vista will translate to user-mode capabilities for XP, although few people will use that.
Firefox 3 does not run on OS X.3 (though this is probably due to Apple's conversion to Intel), or Windows Me, or NT4, why do you assume it will run on XP in 5 more years?
Firefox 2, End-of-lifed in 12/2008, supported OS X.2, ans Windows Me.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
I think with every version MS makes some great strides in the File Browser.
And some huge back-steps in the network one.
I am still frustrated every time there is not a network neighbourhood as I am instead left picking a network place and going up a level to get there.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Firefox 3 is very, very feature complete and Firefox 2 is still getting basic security patches.
Considering my desired use of a browser, honestly FF3 does everything I currently want and I can't see it having something so mindblowingly awesome in 4.0 that I HAVE to switch.
It will continue to work for me for 5 years, sure.
PCI wasn't introduced until the Pentium in 1993, and new consumer VESA cards were still being introduced until late '94 or early '95.
You could still get support for your PDP-11 controlling your NC lathe/drill from Mentec well into this decade, though they seem to have finally dropped out around 2007.
Well, given that netbooks are still shipping with 32 bit cores, and are probably the fastest growing (and maybe even fastest selling) segment of consumer devices right now, I think MS and any other operating system vendor would have to be damned foolish to only release a 64 bit version.
32 bit is going to be here for a while boys, get comfy.
FF2 no longer gets security updates - they EOLed the product late last year.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
- Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Seriously, teh linux now supports far more hardware than recent MS releases, and this will continue to be true unless lots of hardware vendors:
1) Put a lot of effort into porting drivers for old products. There's no revenue in that.
2) Come back from the dead
So it's XP or linux now if you want to use that more-than-three-year-old non-standard printer/scanner/modem/webcam/doohickey. I know people who are still downgrading their new machines for this very reason.
I know it's wishful thinking to hope that linux can pick up some of the downgrade traffic, but I guess that's precisely why MS have extended the life of XP again and again.
Personally, I think most folks would be fooled if they just released an XP "look and feel" skin for vista with lots of the candy and annoyances turned off.
The joys of working with a monopoly...
Run limited user accounts and use the latest version of Firefox available in 2015, and that should be sufficiently secure.
My guess is that even with a completely open, unsecured, Administrator-using WinXP you'll be secure in 2015. Take any current threat and try to run it against WinNT, 9 out of 10 won't even run.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Wifi worked fine under Win2K, but I believe you did need XP to use WPA. However, I doubt that was much of a driving force for upgrading to XP, since we saw how perfectly content most people were to use WEP (or even leave their wireless wide open) simply because they didn't know any better.
I'm an IT guy, and application developer and a user who supports their "mother". Trust me... the last thing in the world I want to do is upgrade my mothers PC and start that whole "Where is..." process again.
What do I look for in an OS?
1) Innate Driver support (finding some of these drivers is a pain in the ass)
2) Speed (opening programs, loading by default)
3) Stability (how often does it experience problems, lag, programs crashing or stalling out)
4) Finding crap (how easy is it to find what you need?)
5) Security (How easy is it to lock down with virus protection etc)
6) Intuitive design (This is huge to me and why linux still fails to be a great desktop OS)
Fact is most people don't care what runs under the hood as long as it runs well. They don't WANT to know. Me, I'm a little more focused on performance since I'm a gamer and write software for a living.
I hated Vista... I still do. It just felt clunky and overly feature laiden. Still does and it's why most IT guys I know refuse to install it (not even including the security issues, driver support, software compability etc...).
Windows 7 on the other hand... surprised me. Lets go by my list above.
1) Innate Driver support (finding some of these drivers is a pain in the ass)
Well... I had some old hardware and new hardware in my box, separate sound card, you get the idea. Typically you have to install motherboard drivers, sound card drivers, ethernet drivers, blah blah blah. After installing Windows 7 FRESH... I only had to install my NVIDIA driver. Additionally, I was able to search (through find new driver in windows) for my sound card driver even though a default one was installed and let me tell you... the driver that was found (for lack of better words) PWNED the one that came with it. the XP install when searching windows databases never could find the sound card driver... not sure why. But... the fact is ALL of the drivers I had to have to do things were there.
2) Speed (opening programs, loading by default)
From default settings... Windows 7 loaded faster than my default of XP. I'm thinking this is because of how they order things when loading, or the fact that there was a lot less that starts. However, Windows 7 does take up a buttload more ram. Idle was using 500mb. I have 8gb so I don't care. With all my software installed (Winamp, CS3, Eclipse, blah blah blah) Windows 7 STILL loaded faster than XP. This caught me off guard and frankly didn't make much since until I looked at the startup. The adobe reader wasn't starting, acrobat was starting etc etc... by default a lot of those processes that add themselves to the startup... weren't. On average (yes im sad... I timed it), out of 5 start ups it took 20 seconds from pushing power to being at the login screen.
3) Stability (how often does it experience problems, lag, programs crashing or stalling out)
I have had NO blue screens of death. Not one. I haven't even had a program crash on me where XP used to die all the time. Every single game I've tried to play installed fine and works. Some had to be run in compatibility mode (Neverwinter nights, Quake 2) but they all run. Newer games haven't had a single issue for me. I was very pleased with this.
4) Finding crap (how easy is it to find what you need?)
Okay... windows 7 requires some adjustment... It's kind of difficult to find "My documents" folder... and if you download something good luck. Your downloads folder really isn't... it's your username THEN downloads. But other than that I REALLY liked the options for viewing contents of folders and how it automatically figures stuff out and saves your settings. It started to realize I wanted to see documents in a list view, pictures in small thumbs and html, php, cfm, js files as details. I never saved the folders it just remembered AND applied it to other folders.
The taskbar grouping and configuration was done EXTREMELY well. It allows you to set it up however you want it to. Not limiting you to two or three options. It
Car Analogy!
Hi Mr. IT Guy. You'll come across them all in varying shades of disrepair from "normal" OS wear & tear. There was an article about "the 10 cars that sunk Detroit" and the Ford Taurus was one of them. That's where XP is now.
It was so midline good, and such a vacuum formed around it, that there was no successor plan properly formed. XP is kinda sloppy, but it's been patched by enough creative people to do *something*, and all these Alt Op Systems ... just have other conceptual themes in the way. (Linux Versioning vs. business software, Mac Hardware tie-ins, etc.)
Vista was a joke, Win7 is perhaps Burlesque. Someone in another post said XP needs to die ... then have someone get a grip, get hold of Tracy Kidder & do a "Soul of a New Windows". Code the successor to Win7 to be a beautifully optimized racecar that natively works for netbooks and screams on gaming rigs, add a year of nothing but tuning, and then yes XP will die & "Windows Nitro" (or such) will be the new 7 year standard.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
For the past seven or eight years I've been running three computers at my house each with Windows XP. When one dies, I buy parts and build myself another one and move XP to it. I've had no incentive to buy a new copy of XP or even try Vista, and I suspect the same will be true of 7 as well.
Jealously hoarding mod points since 2007.
...Microsoft are now saying that Windows 7 might need a beefier system (The old upgrade or die scenario again!!) than current "NetBooks" can provide, so they are keeping Windows XP.
Thought Windows 7 was to be adaptable for big desktop systems AND small netbook type systems!
But i guess MS bloat has won again...
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
Win7 on a netbook. Let's ponder this for a moment.
If anything, they should create a "Win7 netbook edition", only, and I mean only for netbooks. I wouldn't wanna run a new Windows system, designed for the current desktop/laptop market on a netbook which has the processing power (and ram space) of an oversized cell phone.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You raise an excellent point I won't deny but I'll just come out and say my opinion here.
1, I couldn't care less about netbooks, I totally don't understand the fad, give me a full 15.4" laptop anyday OR a smartphone, this inbetween thing doesn't interest me.
2, I would argue a netbook is the kind of machine you want to run quickly and seamlessly, XP, linux, or even Vista 32bit are all options you can take, if you want Windows 7 buy a 64bit netbook.
3, The CPU manufacturers should be ashamed of themselves, a 32bit CPU should not be selling anywhere anymore, my god this industry is ridiculous sometimes.
The ongoing success of Windows XP shows why Microsoft simply cannot afford to release a good operating system. Their entire revenue stream relies on keeping customers on the upgrade treadmill. When Windows 3.1 crashed, they could say, "Buy Windows 95! It will be better!" When Windows 95 crashed, they could say, "Switch to NT! It will be better!" When those both crashed, they could say, "Switch to 2000 or XP! They will be better!" But that last time, due to competition from Linux, they actually really did make 2000 and XP better. So good, in fact, that they broke their upgrade treadmill revenue stream.
The only way that Microsoft is continuing to make money is by making sure you aren't able to re-use your existing Windows XP license on a new PC. Try buying a laptop without paying for a copy of Windows Vista, and look how difficult it is and the hoops you have to jump through. So even if you want to throw away your old laptop, then install XP on your new one, you have still paid Microsoft for a full OEM license, even though you already had one.
This is their new revenue stream. It used to be a carrot-on-a-stick that you could never reach ("the next version will be better!"), but now that customers finally got their carrot, Microsoft says, "You have to pay us again and again for that same carrot."
So that's where Microsoft went wrong, they made XP good?
If you are not running as administrator you have to enter the password of an administrator. It's people who run as an admin who get the click trough dialogs. Problem is that the Windows installer still doesn't try to suggest that users should run as a mormal user. By default it should create both an admin and normal user during install and tell you to use the normal user in everyday use. Maybe even hide the admin user in the login screen.
Windows 7 already does all that.
I'm the "tech neighbor" in my rather large apartment building in New York. Word has gotten around that the guy in 12C "knows about computers," and I'm a reasonably nice guy so I do my share of silly stuff like helping with missing driver installs, helping people figure out how to shut down or reboot, helping people try to delete a file, helping people to get their flash plugin working again, or helping people to find programs that are "missing" while still installed, etc.
Note that all of the things that I just mentioned are recent problems (last couple of weeks) with Vista that I've helped people to solve.
In all cases, the problem was user confusion, user error, or simple lack of user knowledge about how to use the feature, enable the feature, find the feature, etc.
It's not that people were completely in love with XP. They bitched about "Windows" all the time, as they've done for years, sometimes seriously, sometimes half in jest. But Vista changed nearly every aspect of "how to get things done" for the average user.
I don't mean in the "flowchart by a UI designer way," in which the structures of many charts are the same. I mean in the "regular human way," which includes steps like:
- Look for icon I recognize
- Right click to find specific text
- Follow my nose intuitively through a process I've never really remembered well
Vista changed nearly all the icons, nearly all the text, replaced icons with text and text with icons, placed options in physically different locations relative to window edges, screen edges, or the shapes and levels of menus, and changed policies on some simple stuff like program installs, file renames and deletions, adding things to the start menu, what appears on the start menu, and whether prominent start menu options shut down/reboot or simply sleep/hibernate.
This stuff didn't just break software that made bad assumptions and finds itself no longer working when it was fine in XP, and it's not just a matter of drivers that are missing so that peoples hardware won't work.
It's a matter of changes silently having been made to the ways that users imagine basic things like context menus, the control panel, file behavior, and the start menu to work. I don't know how many times I've helped someone to shut down or reboot Vista after they've tried for days and only managed to sleep/hibernate repeatedly.
Basically, Microsoft made Vista a 100% learning curve for any non-technical person, and people are finding they can't get stuff done. All the cognitive maps they'd made about how "computers" operate, and all the little tricks that had evolved in their computing practices on an ad-hoc basis to get along with Windows over the previous decade were suddenly worthless, and they found themselves in many cases re-living their "first time I used a computer" experience, with all the bewilderment, time wasting, missteps, and unrealized desire to get task X or step Y done that that entailed.
They want XP rather than Vista because they are able to productively use XP in ways that they can't productively use Vista. It's not just a matter of slowness vs. fastness, it's a matter of people literally not being able to figure out how to do the things that they want to do in Vista, whether the thing that they want to do is simply shutting the computer down, visiting YouTube, or making their scanner or printer work again.
Dumbest revision by Microsoft ever; they basically negated the advantages that their massive installed userbase gave them in terms of product preferences.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I couldn't agree with you more and I'm surprised to say I agree with segmentation at this level.
Windows 7 is meant to be such a powerhouse of an OS, why tailor it to support such low end hardware and such high end?
This netbook fad is all fine and dandy but for goodness sakes don't run a fully fledged, desktop OS on a little palmtop computer.
As I said earlier also, sure if you're crazy enough to fine but if you've only got a 32bit CPU in your netbook, I wouldn't complain to Microsoft for not supporting 32bit (if only!) I'd complain to the manufacturer for using a 32bit CPU in 2009 / 2008.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit
We've had 64bit 'consumer level' desktop CPU's since 2003,.... that's only 6 years ago, sheesh.
XP is no slicker or faster than it ever was. It's you machine that's slicker and faster. In 5 years, you would feel the same way about Vista.
I really hope those old XP installs are being updated automatically, or they will pretty fast gain one more rather unwanted activity they run better than Vista...
n/t
Customers are buying what they can afford. A $300 netbook is doable, when you aren't sure you should spend the $700 for a real notebook.
Same with cars. The new car dealers are sucking wind right now, but the used car dealers are in fat city moving the 2 year old stuff at 3/4 the price. Customers are still buying cars, but are going down price.
When the economy picks up, netbooks will disappear, as will the used car market. I'd still rather have the notebook or new car, the price break doesn't normally justify going cheap.
What MS lacks is a compelling reason for people to switch from XP and I don't think they're ready to dare cutting off all support to force a switch. They're victims of their own success.
I played with win7 for about a month, became irritated at the difficulties networking with existing XP machines and failed to find a "must have" feature compelling enough for me to switch.
I also smell a screw job coming - either DRM or some other anti-consumer scheme built in to the OS that's going to offer me zero benefit and make my life more difficult.
OS's are becoming less relevant as computing becomes more browser-centric. Who cares what's under the hood if Firefox runs? The only real reason I still run xp is for gaming.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
If you are not running as administrator you have to enter the password of an administrator. It's people who run as an admin who get the click trough dialogs. Problem is that the Windows installer still doesn't try to suggest that users should run as a mormal user. By default it should create both an admin and normal user during install and tell you to use the normal user in everyday use. Maybe even hide the admin user in the login screen.
An "Administrator" in Vista _is_ a normal user, they just have the ability to elevate. Similar to an "admin" in OS X, or a user who can sudo in Linux.
Microsoft can't convince people to buy the newer versions of their software and are forced to keep the old ones going, this wouldn't have happened without a serious threat to their customers; ie Linux. Linux still has a tiny percentage of the market right now but the momentum is growing by the week and more and more regular people are seeing there IS a way to use a PC without Windows or a designer Mac.
One of the differences between closed and open source software is obvious here and should be a sales pitch for FOSS in it's own right.
With closed source, only the software developers can update it, fix it, add features etc so if they choose not to (or are not able to due to bankruptcy) the product dies, regardless of how many customers use it. It can also be cut off for commercial reasons, like a new version on sale and the company wanting even more money from their customers, regardless of the customers need for the new version.
By contrast, open sourced applications live on while there are people willing to use it and develop for it. If Windows XP was open source Microsoft would REALLY be struggling as the people hooked on Windows WANT XP. They don't want the newer versions Vista & Win7. They are paying a premium to avoid Vista. They are flooding online forums and blogs telling Microsoft they don't want Vista. They are demanding to be able to buy a new PC with XP installed, not Vista. If XP was open source it would NOT die, regardless of Microsoft's commercial intentions. Then again, if XP was open source it'd be a much better product in the first place.
With closed source applications, they can be bought (slandered or sued into bankruptcy) by competitors and closed down. As several super-corps have done over the years, when you can't compete on merit, crush or buy the competition (and their market share). An open source application can be bought and closed down, but that only affects the brand name / trademark. It will be forked by the developers / users who want it to remain open source. It will live under a different brand name, most of the developers and users will switch and the buyout will only have caused a temporary blip in the market at a huge cost. This is one of the reasons why Microsoft foam at the mouth trying to stop the concept of "open source" (specially GPL which explicitly insists on sharing the improved code) from taking off in people's minds.
It's a sad state of affairs when you have to resort to pulling the old product off the shelves, refusing your customers the product they want to buy, because you need to force them to buy the new product you want to sell them. If that's not bad enough, some people genuinely still respect Microsoft's policy of contempt for their customers. Many Microsoft apologists are paid shills, but many more have genuinely swallowed the pill, in spite of all the evidence.
1) Smartphones are not smart enough, nor convenient to type on. Also they are even slower than netbooks. Netbooks hit the "90% of tasks" pretty well. Smartphones are more like 60%. What people are calling netbooks are damn similar to what used to be called sub-notebooks. They've been a popular market segment for many years. I would love a decent smartphone that would hit that 90% mark. Even 80% would be tempting. But if that comes, I don't think it will be because the smartphones got better. I think it'll be the netbooks that get smaller.
2) You're right. However the netbook does benefit from a purpose-built OS. The Eee-specific Ubuntu distributions, for example. XP is okay since it's so highly compatible. But MS would still, IMO, realize some benefits from a netbook-specific Windows 7 if only to halt the bleeding of marketshare.
3) Nonsense. The need for 64-bit is rare. Even apps like AutoCAD didn't care whether your processor was 32 or 64 bits until v2009, I believe.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
XP 64 sucks vista 64 has more / better drivers and better backwards compatible system in it.
The need for 64bit is rare? It's 2009 my good man, how the hell is the need for 64bit rare?
I mean for goodness sakes, how hard is it to manufacture a 64bit CPU now?
I'm damned well surprised we still make 32bit chips, I'm being serious here and I swear to you I'm not being closed minded.
Ok I'd love us all to have dual core chips nowadays, I'd love to see single core disapear but I can understand why it's still here (budget segments) but really, 32bit CPU's?
It's not acceptable in the slightest.
It isn't quite that simple sadly.
Win2k to XP: From a hardware stand point "HyperThreading" comes to mind, I think Win2K sees only one proc.
Maybe it's just me, but it also seems that videogaming has been moving increasingly towards consoles. One less thing you need an increasingly powerful computer for.
It's not entirely the same, as the permission system of OS X and Linux are wildly different - while Linux and OS X effectively change the effective user the program is run under, Windows does not.
Upon login, the user receives just a restricted token - which can be elevated to a full token.
Yeah, sorry for the nitpicking.
This is not an acceptable way to make your point. Use reason rather rather than derison, no matter what you are feeling.
HyperThreading does not have to be supported by the OS, but a SMT aware scheduler leads to better performance.
It will also continue to run well in virtualization, on almost any OS capable of supporting VMware (for Windows) or Xen, KVM, or others for Linux and UNIX. It won't work well for games due to video performance limitations, but it will provide continuing support for critical systems that Microsoft will be very sad about users not buying Vista or Win7 for.
True, except that will change. DX10 is still relatively new, there are a few games that use it and even fewer that use it well. But that'll change. Gamers may not go through the hassle of upgrading their current box from XP to Vista (gotta love the Windows way of upgrading: you get to reinstall *everything* you've ever installed).
However, when people buy a new rig and are offered the choice between XP and Vista, they are already increasingly choosing Vista because of DX10. If MS delivers on its promise of a faster and better Windows 7 (my current experience with the Beta shows they are delivering just that), even more people will be convinced to select the newer OS for their new machines.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Then it's a good thing you don;t work for MS, for whom netbooks ARE a really big thing and need to be supported as first class citizens.
Your desire to expunge the "legacy" 32 bit from the record is surely a noble one, but it is misplaced.
The moment MS stop supporting 32 bit as first class citizens in the netbook world then they lose the ability to run that huge array of windows software we're always talking about and linux sneaks in at the edges.
No, MS strategy will never give up on 32 bit until it really is only old and out of date junk.
Microsoft, I'll give up my obsession with XP, skip Vista and widely support Windows 7, if you guys have the testicles to release Windows 7 as a 64bit only operating system.
To what end ?
I dare you, I double dare you - do the right thing for a change.
Why is it "the right thing" ? There are (and will be) plenty of Windows 7 capable machines out there that are not 64-bit.
you can say the same thing about Windows 2000 SP4.
and yes it IS just fine for most home users and businesses. Just less pretty, but hellishly faster.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I am still frustrated every time there is not a network neighbourhood as I am instead left picking a network place and going up a level to get there.
I completely agree with you. If I ever need to use a Windows computer for an length of time, I make a shortcut on the desktop to "Microsoft Windows Network" and I call it Network Neighborhood.
Did you read his post to me or skip over it? Why do I have to modify my behaviour because he's naive and swearing at me to boot.
Cleartype improved readability on LCD screens, although its sub-pixel rendering has been debated in tech circles.
For the corporate world, remote access was a boon and available in XP Pro.
Vista failed for many reasons -- buggy, limited driver support, marketing too many editions, etc.
I agree though that Microsoft Marketing tries to churn the market. Not sure what's in Windows 7 that will be of interest and value to customers.
Some of us go one step further, and still run Windows 2000 :) (I have XP on my laptop, but that just means I need to spend ages turning off the new interface settings, and it's annoying that the search-in-files features is broken (did they fix that in Vista?)) I remember when everyone on Slashdot was complaining about the then new XP, and how 2000 was better...
Unfortunately it's reaching the stage where manufacturers are dropping it from driver support, so I may have to upgrade just for that. Hopefully XP will have a longer life though, due to greater use as a "home" OS.
To paraphrase an old joke...
Q: What version of Windows will most people be running in 2100?
A: I don't know, but it will be called "Windows XP".
That is absolutely possible with Windows XP too. Have been doing it for years.... You only have to know how...
I agree, but then Microsoft needs to PUBLICLY DE-CERTIFY every hardware manufacturer until they make perfectly working drivers for their hardware AND 3-4 year old LEGACY HARDWARE. Sorry, but it's bullshit to make my 2 year old $4500.00 Slide scanner worthless just because the maker does not want to bother recompiling the driver.
There is a LOT stuck in the 16 bit world in windows... and that will not change until Microsoft pulls it's partner status from everyone instead of being the town whore like they are now and being everyone's partner without any effort.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You insensitive clods!
You forgot:
* WORK
M$ has re-hired the cast of Friends to film a video on the benefits of downgrading to XP.
Say hello to my little sig.
I've got an even better idea. Let's have a CPU that can run 64-bit and 32-bit programs at the same time, so we don't have to waste 64-bit pointers on a text editor.
That is really the biggest problem with all the latest windows OSs, they simply can't STFU and let you run the applications you want to run with the maximum efficiency you can. They are forever sticking in stuff that does the end user no benefit at all but gives them the opportunity to charge for extra licence fees, reinforce or establish monopolies in other areas, sell access to the OS to other companies, shut out any competition, create lock in, charge manufactures licence fees for computability, force end users to upgrade etc etc. Personally I got it with the machine and basically use it to turn my PC into a game console but I guarantee it will be absolutely the last version of windows I bother to use and kicking and screaming I will absolutely not buy a machine that does not come with Ubuntu out of the box and, I might, might mind you dual boot to windows to play games.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Excellent news! This additional extension should give the ReactOS guys enough time to finish their open-source Windows XP.
Not so. My mom's computer still has FF 2 on it. I am still able to download security updates when I go over to her house.
I believe the EOF is for new features.
I know several win2k die hards, we still use it at the govt organisation I work at.
It's simialr to XP but you'd be surprised the little things you notice when you go back.
1, the usb drive, pop a file on to your drive, wait 5 seconds, pull the drive - the file disapears on 2k - you HAVE to 'remove hardware' properly.
2, the usb drive again, pop in a drive -label isn't shown in explorer.
3, quick time has to be an old version
4, nokia pc suite has to be an old version
5, who knows what else, IE support? FF, Chrome, Office - not sure but Win2k is slowly and sadly dying, for driver and app support.
It's vastly superior to NT4 and Win98SE but it's time is over (and I'll admit XP will go too)
"too many pointers"
Who are you, the Emperor of Austria?
"I'm sorry, Herr Mozart, but your program is just too confusing. Too many pointers."
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
I just ordered a 64-bit system from Dell and they wouldn't offer it with XP (probably because it would never recognize the full 8G of RAM that I installed on it).
But now I'm stuck - I need to get a copy of XP Pro 32bit (I'll run a 64-bit linux on the machine as well). Google Products lists XP Pro for as low as $24. Is it safe to buy a copy of XP from any vendor? Or should I just buy from Dell?
Actually on my system, the only device that didn't work on XP x64 won't work on Vista x64 either: my TV tuner.
That they're missing a marketing opportunity, to market something with a name like... Windows Classic.
It will run on every OS that is popular enough for people to care in 5 years. That means it will still run on XP. There are no new features even on Win7 that Firefox needs for running. The same APIs are still present that was on XP. XP will probably still be around in large numbers in 10 years. It is somewhat lean and very stable and secure. Vista and Win7 do not really bring any more value to the user, just prettier paint.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
He was a naive idiot, granted, but that is irrelevant. You're certainly not a troll, but you don't need to respond in kind, and doing so detracts from your point.
I have to say that not having USB support in NT was a pain in the ass. We were a bit slow to upgrade, and everything started to use USB. You could get serial alternatives usually, but what a pain in the ass.
What MS needs is new hardware.
You make an interesting point here. However, to me it looks like MS tried to copy Apple, and failed. Looking at Vista, they tried to do some Vista-only things like DX10, a new paradigm for application development (not sure if the underlying binary was different, or of anyone cared) which broke "legacy" software, and a new set of hardware requirements. All in all, it's not that different than what Apple did with the release of OSX.
What is different is that MS had/has a huge share of the market, most of which was perceived to be "running just fine", and the new hardware requirements were just too steep to make it financially feasible for most corporations. I ran OSX on a g3 back when it first came out, it was sluggish, but it worked. The same can't be said for Vista (run on a computer 2+ years old).
In a nutshell, it was always MS deciding to abandon support for "older" systems that should convince people they "want" the new system. They tried the same stunt with Vista, by not offering DirectX10 support for XP. It fizzled because neither people nor industry cared.
Here I think you are a little misleading. Concerning hardware, things that are still being made may say "Vista Capable" (or whatever), but they still come with XP/2000 drivers. When making the transition from 2k to XP, you didn't need a new computer. To go from XP to Vista, all of a sudden you're asking people to put together gaming machines with fancy video cards, lots of RAM and other expensive hardware. I don't need a Geforce 8800 to run outlook, why should I be forced to buy one?
From a software side, Windows 2000 was completely capable of running Win95 and Win98 executables. Windows XP can run everything in "compatibility mode" for Win NT 4.0 and later. If you don't believe me, right click on any executable, click the compatibility tab, and look at the compatibility mode section. Windows has always had that capability, it's part of the reason that people stick with it... so they don't need to buy a new copy of every piece of software with each new OS. When Vista came along and broke it, people were up in arms because their accounting software was broken, their games no longer worked, or solitaire was in a different location. Apple at least had the common sense to get their new development platform out there quickly so the necessary applications could be ported. I remember having Photoshop designed for OSX within a few weeks of OSX being released. Here it is 2 years later, and we still can't say everything is "Vista Ready"
"I wouldn't complain to Microsoft for not supporting 32bit (if only!) I'd complain to the manufacturer for using a 32bit CPU in 2009 / 2008."
Oh sure, blame the consumer, and whilst you're busy doing that, wave goodbye to your sales into that niche.
I'm not saying leaving 32 bit behind is a bad idea, I just think it's incredibly unrealistic right now. Microsoft continues to "win" in the netbook arena precisely because they put their normal OS on there. The moment they give in and make netbooks second class to so-called normal computers, they've potentially lost the market. If you can't run your windows apps on the netbook, what's keeping you with MS? And once they've got used to the idea that there is no one true OS, why, they might try something non MS. And that would be bad, if you're an MS strategist.
I believe the EOF is for new features.
I think you were going for "EOL" (End of Life), not "EOF" (End of File).
Also, the EOL on FX 2 (the suggested abbreviation for Firefox via Mozilla is FX, not FF, see here) ended in December 2008 (according to Mozilla's FX 2 website).
Let's call them "near" and "far" pointers.
I now have the Titanic love song stuck in my head. Booooo.
Near. Far. Wherever you are...
....they have a ready made response any time they are asked about turning off XP's activation requirement.
Agreed.
I will go one step further. Make the upgrade path from Vista very inexpensive and easy.
Seeing as supposedly very few bought into it, you will not be losing a lot of revenue.
Being one of the jerks who bought Vista, I don't appreciate having to buy an new OS every 14 months. Can't you give those of us who took a chance a break?
Microsoft is going to eventually have to give in and make a XP SP4, backport some of the security improvements from Vista and 7, and leave it at that.
Here's a question. Do both nVidia and ATI have OpenGL 3.1 and GLSL 1.40 drivers on XP? If so, to hell with DirectX. Everyone can just go back to programming for openGL except the XBOX developers. And even then, there isn't exactly anyone stopping them from putting a openGL-to-directx wrapper layer... After all people have been making 3D api wrappers since the first N64 emulator.
My main beef is that Windows XP is what's keeping people from adopting 64bit quadcore systems with more than 3GB of ram. If people don't want Windows Vista or 7, they aren't going to switch to a mac, nor are they going to switch to linux. Someone out there has to make "installing Microsoft Office on Linux" as easy as "Installing Microsoft Office on Windows XP" and then we are in business. And no, I don't care that open office is better, the problem is, that millions of idiots only see "A computer" and "cd's go in the slot thingy", they click "install" and off they go. If they can't run ALL their windows apps on Linux, Vista or Windows 7, or OSX, they aren't going to bother upgrading or switching.
I had to make a misogynist comment, but when was the last time your mom or grandma cared about what was in their computer? Mine just uses it to check email.
OS's are becoming less relevant as computing becomes more browser-centric.
This sounds like a Netscape marketiod from the 90s...
The OS is, and will always be, relevant.
Many people, especially non-technical people, think of the OS as the visual presentation of the GUI.
It's the guts of the OS that is important. Even if all you needed was a browser, something has to be responsible for the filesystem, device drivers, process and thread scheduling, locks and semaphores, etc.
With multi-core processors clearly the future of hardware, the ability to accurately and efficiently manage multiple processes and threads becomes even more critical.
If anything, OS design is going to become more critical in the future.
The year doesn't really enter into it. If you have the need for more memory, or for specific number-crunching applications, then sure--64 bit is the bee's knees.
Bejeweled is not going to benefit much from a 64 bit processor.
That 64 bit processors are the new hottness does not necessitate migrating to them.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Mod up. XP64 works as advertised, although driver issues are real and nontrivial in some cases.
Sigh, I wish people would stop implying that XP is better than vista, and definitely stop implying that it's better than 7. 7 isn't even out for God's sake.
XP is pretty decent, but Vista is a better OS in pretty much every way imaginable. The number of times that my parents have bothered me about either or their computers over the last 6 months is less than the number of times that they bothered me in an average month with any of the predecessors.
I'm not suggesting that my experience alone is sufficient, but let's be a tad honest here, the vast majority of the people have no issues with Vista this is basically just pound on MS for the sake of it.
And this is coming from somebody that has a distinct dislike for MS software.
They keep using that word. I do not think it means what they think it means.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
I firmly believe any upgrade from Vista should be substantially discounted, if not 50% or more.
If you got suckered into buying Vista Ultimate for 300$ or 400$ US (whatever it was) you should get the top end Windows 7 version for no more than 199$ US, even then that seems to be stretching it.
Vista itself was overpriced (not just because it was a major flop but because XP, iirc was cheaper before hand)
I would actually not be that surprised if Microsoft did actually try and be the good guys here and drop the price for Vista owners, even if it's an upgrade edition or something, they need to get people back in their favour.
Between XP, Mac and increased linux popularity, Vista has taken a real beating for a new MS OS.
(in my opinion, rightfully so)
I have XP on my laptop, so I know the differences.
1. Good point, although I think it's better to remove safely at all times.
3. Quicktime is abysmal, and I'm not going to let Apple dictate what OS I use. I try to avoid it altogether, but if I must use it, an old version is fine with me.
4. Motorola phones are fine :)
5. No problems with the software that I use. As I say, it's starting to be a problem, as driver support is gradually ending.
And all this will one day be true of XP.
I bought grandma this HP printer this weekend to go with her Ubuntu upgrade. I knew it worked with Linux because it's HP, but went through the steps anyway. Plug it in, turn it on. It was recognized right away. Test print a PDF. There on the menu was "print both sides" so I took it. Flawless the first time. I didn't even know the printer did duplex when I bought it, so this was a nice surprise.
What's wrong with Windows that they can't even get this right?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I think the rest of the world decided to adopt "FF" rather than "FX" so that others would know what we're talking about.
"'broadened the options'"
-Translates to: "Caved into demands".
I think its about time MS finally realized that they weren't fooling anybody when they started touting Vista. I guess they finally realized that no matter what they, the manufacturers said, everybody who was a user told them otherwise.
Vista is the cadaver of software: Full of bugs and bloat.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
I always thought 2k was 32 bit only. I know server 2k saw up to 4 CPUs, i used server for the desktop since it ran cleaner then 2k pro. Everything was 32 bit. I do not remember ever seeing a 64 bit version.
Maybe the data center version? I never had that one to use.
I disagree about the "File Browser" aspect. I prefer a nice tree view with lines and +/- icons for managing my files. The only thing the file manager has done in recent Windows versions is waste more screen space and be harder to read at a glance.
This is one aspect of Gnome/Nautilus that I dislike as well, but I can change that. Vista had an option to re-enable lines, but Win7 does not.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Funny, my experience is the opposite.
I'm a desktop linux user, almost exclusively. I use lots of other OS's remotely, but linux is on most of my desktops.
I really dislike windows and consider it limited. I have a few serious (and well thought out) gripes about vista, but they're things that piss me off as a geek and a software developer. But I don't think it's the devil, or teh worst OS evar or anything like that. I just don't get on with MS except for when I have no choice, and think vista broke one or two things XP was OK at.
My non-techie friends and family hate it with an irrational passion. I don't know why, I have yet to get to the bottom of this. I think some of it is to do with older peripherals not being well supported, but it transcends reason.
Even as a penguin lover, I have to say I find it weird.
I see that a growing lack of driver support will eventually kill off XP for "home" use.
Aside from performance and compatibility problems, what has Vista offered to the average home user to encourage upgrade?
USB support was one of the most compelling reasons for home users to either buy new computers with XP or upgrade the OS to XP to make the USB hardware work better. USB connectivity of digital cameras and audio players were the devices that pushed most people toward XP.
However, many home users see no advantage in Vista as far as features they actually want or need.
I Cater to the Needs of Stupid People. - from a coffee mug Christmas gift
Now... close your eyes and imagine you're flying!
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
It's kind of funny- Teh FOSSies whined when MS stopped supporting XP... then they whined when MS said they'd still offer XP.
Although it's really as funny as Teh FOSSies saying how horrible and buggy XP was, but now they act like it's the very bestest thing since individually wrapped slices of cheese, like it's some kind of OS nirvana. And it's extremely likely that once Win7 ships, they will likewise proclaim the glory of Vista, and drone on and on about how much better it is than Win7, etc etc.
Makes me wonder how they can imagine they have any credibility.
10 Cars That Sank Detroit
How hard it is to manufacture has no impact on its uselfuness. The need for 64 is rare, and it has simply no use on a limited machine with just a bit of memory.
If economies of scale make 64 bits processors cheaper than 32 bits ones, the netbooks will adopt, but there is simply no positive price tag that makes the 64 bits desirable.
Rethinking email
Maybe it's just me, but it also seems that videogaming has been moving increasingly towards consoles. One less thing you need an increasingly powerful computer for.
...and this is a trend that needs to stop immediately.
I think we can all agree that the 640k limit was a royal pain. However, I don't see how the 32-bit/64-bit transition relates to that. Back in the day that 640k limit was hard and affected EVERY application. What situations have you run into these days where you were limited by a 32-bit operating system or application? Aside from extremely resource intensive things like databases or simulations (which are probably written to use address window techniques anyway), I think most applications won't run into any problems. I don't see how the 64-bit transition is even remotely comparable to the 640k limit.
Successfully pulling off an architecture switch seems to mainly come down to planning.
Win32 and Win64 didn't seem to be planned very well, and Linux64 seemed to have been planned by too many people. Most of Apple's changes have been smooth...mostly.
I disagree. What happens when the new camera, printer or (MS) video standard does not have driver for XP any more?
What happens when the IM system goes to a new protocol and there isn't an XP client?
Hardware and technology move on, the software including the OS) needs to too.
Now I know the ingenious can find ways around all for the above or convince themselves they don't need the options (remember you still have to stick with XP) but you can't tell 90%+ of users (mom and pops) to wait a few months for an ugly hack to help them limp along. Just like we aren't still using 3.11 and mosaic.
Was your two year old computer really old when you got it? We have vista running on a P4 1.6 gig with 1gig of that rambus RIM RAM. That machine is a lot older then 2 years. Also have it running on an old dell GX240 (that came out in 2002). We did add RAM to the GX240 and we used some old AGP video cards we had. A 128MB gforce 5200 is not a screaming video card and it was old in 2002. You most likely installed vista on a desktop with integrated graphics card. In other words, you either never looked at the min specs or installed it on a machine that was lower since that is what you had. Which on older hardware is no where in the range of what aero wants. Why did microsoft want a 3d graphics card for an os I have no clue that is a bone head decision.
If you had looked the compatibility mode is still there in vista. It also goes back to win 95, win NT 4.0, win 2000, and win XP. Did you look? I haven't tried running old apps in compatibility mode. I haven't had need to plus I try to use 64 bit OSes not 32 bit. Apple got their development team out? Photoshop is an Adobe product not an Apple product. Software manufacturers are not creating vista software. There is a change that many coders do not want to do on windows. They want to run as root/administrator. They do not want to code their software to run in user mode. So lazy 3rd party software writers are microsoft's fault? Also if product ABC is still selling. Why would company start selling product ABCD to compete with itself on a new platform that isn't selling well? Some companies (Nero, Roxio) had vista products fairly quickly. Others did not. Now we have this issue: Companies will not release vista software until XP is gone. People are still buying XP since they have a hard time finding software for vista.
Drivers who is to blame? The OS vendor or he manufacturer who makes the hardware? Last I checked microsoft is a software company. They do not sell motherboards, video cards, network cards, printers, or scanners. The manufacturers did not release drivers for their products. That is microsoft's fault?
Microsoft screws up a lot. But the hardware drivers and 3rd part software is not microsoft's fault. It is their problem, but not their fault. Remember that Apple can tell a 3rd party vender to jump and how high to work on Apple software. This is not the case with microsoft. If microsoft did that, everyone cries anti-trust! You are not letting us compete fairly.
People aren't saying or implying that XP is better. They are just saying that it's good enough.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Totally true, but you can't buy a new '68 Covrette C3 StingRay from the GM Factory.
You sure about that? Finding someone at GM desperate enough to break the glass on that '68 likely on display at the factory is probably not as hard as it used to be.
2k was 32bit only. I'm not sure why replied with that to my post, though.
A mandatory 64bit OS with 32bit emulation through a VM would be far smarter than damn well releasing two different copies.
Why do you want to emulate IA32 when all the x86_64 processors can run IA32 code natively? You don't need an IA32 kernel in order to run IA32 userland code...
http://blog.nexusuk.org
32 or 64 bit? Well, 64bit machines can run 32bit code. 32bit machines can't run 64bit code. So you're developing yet another 32bit application.
I'm an application developer. Our application is 32 bit, and it likely will be for a long, long time since our clients upgrade slowly - many are still using Windows 2000, and just last year we finally axed official support for Windows 98/95! (even though it still works)
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Most small family accounting businesses won't have a clue how to use WINE, and most commercial ones will not consider it because data protection is so important - the risk that your 7 year old data can't be read because of a minute incompatibility is just not acceptable unless you intend to keep 7 years of paper. If you can still run XP, and the software was designed to run on XP, you will not change unless it's a complete dealbreaker not to.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Hmm, I really like the print folder of photos option, the breadcrumbs, and the new sorting options added to XP/Vista (only photos to XP).
These are things that make working with files easier for me on a daily basis.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
> Run limited user accounts and use the latest version of Firefox available in 2015, and that should be sufficiently secure.
Yeah, like Firefox is going to matter in 2015. Something else will come along between now and then that will be the new browsing trend for a while.
I've got an even better idea. Let's have a CPU that can run 64-bit and 32-bit programs at the same time, so we don't have to waste 64-bit pointers on a text editor.
Great idea! And on it we'll run Everything-Made-Today-But-Windows.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Fedora has come with working multilib for a long time now.
ustr: Managed string API with ave. 44% overhead over strdup(), for 0-20B
The need for 64bit is rare? It's 2009 my good man, how the hell is the need for 64bit rare?
I think you need to question why you actually need 64 bit. There may be reasons why 64 bit is desirable, but I'm going to agree with the GP that it is rarely mandatory. The main things you get from x86_64 are a few more registers and a bigger address space.
The registers are nice because they can make things marginally faster, but you can certainly do without them. Depending on what you're doing, the benefits of more registers might be offset by the larger code size anyway.
The more important bit is the increased address space, which is only of use if you need to let a single process access more than maybe around 3.5GB of virtual memory. I'd argue that this is still a fairly rare requirement - remember, we're talking about a *single process* needing that much memory, you can quite happily address over 4GB of RAM without running in 64 bit mode so long as it isn't all going to one process.
Also, how many netbooks do you know of that ship with that much RAM? I don't really see a lot of benefit in using 64 bit processors in netbooks at the moment, especially since power consumption is so important in that formfactor - 64 bit processors have more transistors, they are going to use more power than a 32 bit device that's been manufactured with the same process. Not to mention the extra cache and RAM you need to power to accommodate the larger code sizes.
Maybe you could explain your reasoning why you don't consider it "acceptable in the slightest"?
http://blog.nexusuk.org
This may be true now with Vista SP1 but the GA version of Vista was an abomination. Slow as a dog with a huge memory footprint (but you can speed it up with a USB key /boggle), poor driver support, and multiple permission popups to do the most trivial things.
On top of that a few apps and games I had just failed completely when UAC was running and no setting I could find would allow them to run so I had to turn UAC off. What did MS expect me to do, wait for fixes for all the apps I need? At least I was able to get everything I needed running that way... I have no doubt many people couldn't get that far which is why you hear about so many people downgrading (upgrading) to XP.
Yes SP1 is getting better but they shot themselves in the foot with a terrible launch and they have been playing catch up ever since. I believe we would be seeing a lot fewer complaints today if they had delayed for a year or so and launched SP1.
we're forcing it on OEMs but pay us and you get to use one of our old products. Wow, such a deal. I wonder why they don't let the OEMs just load XP to begin with? Never mind, I know the answer, they want to force what they think people need onto as many computers as possible and they have the power to do that so they use it.
But it is fun to hear they are so sure of lucky #7 that they have to play the same old games. FYI, I had to touch a Windows XP SP2 system the other day and I was stunned how little multi-threading Microsoft's own system applications and tools have. So 1990s and no wonder their OS is a dog with more CPU cores, it's designed that way. One more thing, WTF is up with the reboots? I'm still amazed people continue to put up with such a pathetic excuse for an OS year after year after year.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
*decides to be a giant nitpicking ass about the capitalization*
From the first link you gave:
8. How do I capitalize Firefox? How do I abbreviate it?
Only the first letter is capitalized (so it's Firefox, not FireFox.) The preferred abbreviation is "Fx" or "fx".
The suggested abbreviation is not "FX". It is "Fx" or "fx".
Let q be a radix > 1. I am in ur base-q, killing 10 d00ds.
So they don't really change the real user?
I kid, I kid... ;)
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
Intuitive design (This is huge to me and why linux still fails to be a great desktop OS)
Can you explain your reasoning behind this? I have been running Ubuntu for a couple of months and I found it was far more intuitive than windows.
Firstly you have three different menu's, Applications, Places and System. This makes it easier to find things than in Windows which bungs it all in one start menu.
Secondly the applications menu is well organised by category rather than by company. So instead of windows where to find my scanner I have to remember it is in the Epson folder I can look in graphics and pick the one with XSane Image Scanner as the name.
The places menu is pretty obvious, giving a list of possible places I want to go to. Bookmarks are useful here but I didn't find these intuitive, still you get sane defaults so not being able to work out how to change them easily isn't any worse then windows.
Add/Remove Applications is pretty good because you can actually add software (I know you can add a few windows components but this is not obvious) so this makes it very easy to find new software as long as it is fairly mainstream.
XP: Point-of-Sale :)
Vista: Piece-of-Sh!t
I don't print photos. It's a waste of paper and ink if you ask me. I sort my pictures into folders for the occasion, so I don't see a need to be able to sort by camera type or whatever you're sorting by. On the rare occasion that I do print (I just recently picked up a new laser printer for document printing. I disposed of my old printer back in 1998 and have gone 10 years without printing...) I know exactly where my photos are. I also have the ability to view, place on memory card and carry it to my TV or give it to my parents if they want them.
As a programmer, I deal with TONS of folders, files and structures and the removal of the functional parts of the tree view and the addition of the breadcrumb it's only an exercise in obfuscation of the file system. The breadcrumb requires at least two clicks, along with rendering the files for each folder you click back to in order to simply go back three folders and up one. With the tree, I simply visually follow the lines back to the folder I need and click on it.
The added navigation bars in Win7/Vista are also excessive and not needed for my daily usage. I normally get rid of the back/forward/location from explorer and have one row of tool bars that come in handy. With Win7, I'm now forced to have at least 2 full length bars that I cannot remove ("Organize" and the "Navigation bar".)
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
It can't be killed... because it's ALREADY DEAD!!!
If that's all one had to do on a computer, there's no reason not to run Linux. The only reason I run windows on some machines is the application support.
If they want to move people off of XP, MS needs to include an XP VM in Windows 7. They then need to get their VM to have full pass through to the video card (or some other magic so that 3d games run well in the VM). If they did this, most die hard XP users would generally be ok with installing newer versions of Windows, as all of their old software and games would run.
Sure, there's no compelling reason to switch to Vista, but I can sum up in three words why people will want to switch to Win7:
Shiny. New. Taskbar.
There is no way that this thing wasn't a good idea. Works well, seems to use the space properly, and looks really damn cool.
That, combined with the fact that ever since I installed a Win7 build the OS itself has not yet broken (for example: holy crap, stable Windows explorer!), will sell Windows 7! :D
Let q be a radix > 1. I am in ur base-q, killing 10 d00ds.
But the user experience is pretty much the same, which is what counts. A user runs their day-to-day stuff in an account with limited privileges that has permission to elevate to an admin. If the need arises, you type in the admin password (or click OK in Vista since your default group is a little different; I'm pretty sure you can change it so a password is required) and the OS gives you the privileges to do the operation.
In any case, across all modern platforms, I do something that requires root/admin access, am asked to authenticate, and then proceed with the operation. Compare to XP, which basically just says "No, fuck you!" if you try to run in a limited-access user account. I don't particularly care what the underlying technology that powers it is, so long as it works. While I'll certainly agree with anyone that says Microsoft's implementation is much newer and therefore probably not as hardened, it seems to work well enough and I haven't read about any massive exploits yet.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
This is just too funny to watch all the defenders of XP now on Slashdot, for years since its release and even into SP2 it was bashed to hell around here and people advised to switch over to Linux. Hell it was predicted that Vista was supposed to be the collapse of MS and Linux netbooks would dominate. Crickets?
Go look at any article about XP pre-Vista release and you will see the most amazing hypocrites with the mod system.
Vista I haven't had to worry about spyware/malware/viruses and it is so relaxing not having to do that habitual run A-squared, Spybot, AVG scan. It was like a sick addiction to having to constantly scan to look for viruses/malware; very relaxing to have that kind of security.
Add to it the upcoming Win7 release which runs extrememly fast even on the oldest laptop of my Dell Inspiron 1150 which Vista ran like crap on.
I know the Open-Source agenda is pushed around here a lot; take off the shades and see that with Win7 MS has finally achieved a pretty high security level OS along with a great UI.
I will not buy a Vista laptop unless I know it comes with the free Win7 upgrade; until than I can wait until Win7 comes out and will commit to the netbook market now that hardware specs even on the cheapest laptop is kickass powerful.
When I got a brand-new HP Compaq Presario (C502US) from CompUSA, it came pre-installed with Vista. I was unhappy about this, but willing to deal with it because I figured I should get used to the new OS that was going to be everywhere soon.
Nothing worked well. WMP had codec issues, programs wouldn't run properly, and, most importantly, I could get no internet connection. None. Connecting wirelessly or through a wired connection made no difference. Looking online for solutions didn't help at all. Eventually I researched how to downgrade to XP and did so-- haven't had a single problem since. This solution worked out fine since Vista is NOT everywhere like I assumed it would be.
So, I would agree that your experience alone is not sufficient. Neither is mine, but I do have more people on my side who believe that XP is better. Vista may do SOME things better than XP, but the cost of those features outweigh the benefits.
Well, do you know a lot of apps that need to use more than 2-3GB of RAM? Ok, AutoCAD, Photoshop, video editing software, but these are specialty apps, if someone needs them they will have the 64bit computer and lots of RAM.
Internet browser and word processor shouldn't need that much RAM, so they are fine on a 32bit system. And 32bits means less transistors and less power used in a netbook.
I wonder how much of this is because there was such a big time lag between when XP was released and when Vista was released. If Microsoft had focused on continuously evolving XP instead of rewriting from scratch, I bet that people would have had an easier time adapting to the differences because there would be fewer of them. On the other hand, when Apple released OS X it was a complete rewrite after OS 9 too, but they managed to do that pretty well, much better than Microsoft has managed it. I wonder why? Could it be that by changing everything, not just icons and names, but the entire layout that people could learn from scratch rather than re-learn it? Or... maybe they just write software that's easier to use?
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
I'd say that it's still a win/win for MSFT. ON one hand, they're getting XP prices slashed up because of the netbook experience. But instead of just giving away XP, they can now have OEMs install and pay for the latest operating system, but just give them an option to downgrade back to older OSs. How many times do you get to collect current market prices on software that came out 8 years ago? You wouldn't find that happening in the games market or most other applications market.
This is just anecdotal evidence, but since the release of Vista, I've converted several people's laptops (including my own) to Xubuntu and supporting them as taken me less effort (by using online forums to figure stuff out, mostly) than supporting other Vista machines that end up in my lap (due to the all the little quirks you mention which piss me off as a former XP user :P).
In retrospective, I actually love the fuck-up that Vista is :3
Great post. Microsoft's user interface designers have no doubt been trying to justify their positions! In other words, the old adage 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it', is the last thing they want to hear - because they are out of a job if XP is 'good enough'.
The 'new' additions to the user interface that we have seen in Vista, and are seeing in 7, are laughable. Every single one of them I have looked at and thought - "Didn't you think of that 15 years ago?" None of them are ground breaking, none of them are particularly original, and none of them are worth buying a new OS for - they could all be implemented in XP with the next service pack, not that most of them are any improvement on the current methods of doing things.
ItÂs not a matter of being better or worse than XP.
It is a matter of asking yourself if you need anything that is not in the old XP.
Maybe you are going to pay for somethin extra that you dont need or want.
Well said - if I had mod points You would be +5 insightful. No better place is this whole cluster fuck demonstrated in UI overhault than networking. I am an network engineer, and every time I need to go and change, enable, or alter Vista's network settings I have to pause and think. Now I have to navigate my way through a series of idiot steps that have little trite descriptions. The underlining OS I have NO problem with. Stability, security, etc. But the UI guys should be taken out behind the building, lined against the wall and shot in the face.
It might be interesting to note that Windows XP Professional mainstream support will be retired in the US in one week.
They tried the same stunt with Vista, by not offering DirectX10 support for XP. It fizzled because neither people nor industry cared.
Ding ding ding ding! We have a winner!
It is just you.
The inputs on consoles require a 'dumbed down interface' for some genres of games.
-Flight sims
-RTSes
-FPSes
Yes, there are examples of games that work 'well' in those categories on consoles.
Also, where's the mod support, the level editor, and the SDK for the consoles? You buy the game, that's it. There's nothing more.
I buy a game for the PC (Say, anything made by Valve) - I get the SDK and level editor, free, with it. I can now take that base game (say Half-Life) and create a WWII shooter from it. Oh wait, they did that. It's called Day of Defeat, and Valve thought it was so awesome they hired the development team.
PC gaming isn't going anywhere.
You realize this isn't the place where people that have to call their kids for help with tech issues reside right?
This is where people are able to figure out highly complex computer related problems. And a lot of us have figured out that Vista is a very large, highly complex, computer related problem.
Your parents may not be able to see and identify that, but we can. And so like most highly complex computer related problems that are not open source so we can't fix it ourselves, we simply avoid it. Why pay someone lots of money for a problem?
Just give Microsoft time. They already managed to slow printing in WinXP SP3.
Sorry but you are just plain wrong in every way possible.
In my experience with Vista on many computers by this point is nothing but frustration and that is what I hear from everyone except one guy I know who is actually a self avowed MS fanboi. I see more blue screens, more lockups, more hardware and software incompatibilities than XP and it's also way more annoying than XP (UAC). And the kicker is it's noticeably slower than XP on the same spec hardware Vista is even slower on higher spec hardware than XP is on lower spec hardware in my experience. So I don't know if you work for MS or some PR agency paid to AstroTurf for MS or just horribly horribly deluded. But the myth in my opinion is that Vista is anything but suck. Please stop perpetuating this myth because people are losing time and money over it.
Sigh - I just read your ridiculous post and I wish you folks would quit lying about Vista being 'better' or even 'as good' as XP. The lock down, the bloat, the DRM. Don't want any of that crap on my computer and I'll just keep building XP machines and you can have your locked down POS VISTA and probably Windows 7 as well. Keep building crap Microsoft and then keep spending all your money on trying to convince people the steaming pile you've created is really a beautiful butterfly. Doesn't seem to be working. SIGH.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
Just from usability, XP feels much better than W2K. Just the boot time alone is much faster. You can change network setting without requiring a reboot. The big difference is probably that XP combined the office oriented stuff from W2K (ie, the kernel and stability) with the home oriented stuff from W98 (media, games).
However, the differences from NT to W2K to XP could really be rolled up into patches or updates, rather than being brand new operating systems. USB support could technically have been in NT. Improved networking could have been rolled into W2K, even Wifi. Much of the stuff in Vista could be in XP if Microsoft wanted to put it there (DirectX 10, security, even a bloated GUI option if someone really wanted that).
But Microsoft didn't market it that way. The restriction of features is what helped drive a lot of people to the newer operating systems. The problem with Vista is that is didn't really add a lot more new stuff, and brought along a whole lot of stuff people didn't want at the same time, including being a bigger resource hog. Since XP was good enough, especially in the work place, Vista didn't make much headway.
Business is relatively slow to upgrade this stuff. Stability is much more important than new features. I was still using W2K last month at work (along with XP on a newer computer) and it was still usable. If there's no compelling reason to switch, businesses won't do it. Often the switch is because of applications that no longer support older versions (probably due to developers being eager to embrace new incompatible APIs).
Especially in today's economic climate, it's silly to upgrade just for the sake of making Microsoft happy.
Windows 2000 support continues into July 2010. If it's got such a long life, then so will XP.
I wish i had mod points.
If they can't release an OS that is better than the one before the previous version, they should not release it at all. Win 7 needs to be good enough to *replace* XP for at the very least 95% of all the users. There will always be someone screaming for a previous version, but not like this, not like what happened with Vista.
And the ironic thing is, Microsoft has the money, the personnel, the knowhow, and the means to do this. What they lack is vision, guts, and leadership.
Compete fairly?
If Microsoft were in a race with a man with a wooden leg, they'd demand he remove it so that he didn't have artificial assistance.
Then beat him unconscious with it.
With so much demand for XP, you'd think they could make a fortune selling it...
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Alright, I'll bite. Since this is turning into a Flame war, why not add some gasoline.
I've been using Windows 7 for quite some time both as my main OS and as an OS that I QA on. Here are my findings with respect to the previous post.
1.) Driver Support
- Excellent. I must say, that the huge Windows 7 install comes with a ton of bundled drivers making good use of the DVD it's on. Honestly, this is not even that big of a problem. I just installed Windows XP x64 on my work machine and finding drivers for it took about an hour. In the grand scheme of things, that one hour is not all that significant.
2.) Speed (Programs, Processes)
- Eh. I honestly thing XP is way faster for this. WAY FASTER. Depending on the Application, the system could be paging a ton of information to and from main memory. This is because Windows 7 (and Vista) takes up a HUGE chunk of memory, leaving you with not that much to run a Dev Studio (as an example). The inherent thrashing of the Disk when paging slows down everything and this was my major gripe about Windows 7. XP is still the King among speed on my dev machine.
3.) Stability
- Again, Meh. No BSODs per se, but since it is a Beta, I seen some MS Applications crash on me. Mainly Explorer. But we will see when the action R1 comes out.
4.) Finding Crap.
- Next to Speed, this was a big annoyance for me. Going from XP to Win7 took some adjusting. I still do not know why MS buried settings (ie, Network Adapter Settings) so far under menus and all that bull Shit. To change a simple IP or DNS took much longer because it was all about clicking through an endless chain of menus. Vista was one thing, but it honestly seems that with Win7, they purposely added more complexity where it was not merited.
5.) Security
- I agree with the Above Poster.
6.) Intuitive Design
- Intuitive to whom? As a Power User, I feel stuck in an OS design for pre-schoolers. There is no Power-User mode. Things that annoy me cannot be turned off. I do agree that it can be Intuitive. If I gave this to my 65yr old Uncle, he would probably be at home. As for me, I want to put a chainsaw through it.
In any case, I had a bad experience with Win7, and I'm not looking forward to switching to it. Those people that say XP cannot support more then X amount of Cores, or X amount of ram were never introduced to Windows Server 2003 - Which you can run as a workstation. Supports 2TB RAM and up to 64 Cores. When I require 65 cores and 2.01TB or ram, I'll consider the next OS.
Maybe it's just me, but it also seems that videogaming has been moving increasingly towards consoles. One less thing you need an increasingly powerful computer for.
...Running Vista or Windows 7 + office could be a good start.... [rant] I work/worked for 20 + years in a business environment, started out with an 8088, and when I bought a combination Athlon/win xp I've met a really new experience in my life....I quit pestering the higher ups for a bleeding edge rig. With the core duo generation of processors, the natural tendency in "power users" has been to yell to the IT guys "keep your hands off my rig! you can take it from my cold , dead hands!!!!!!"[/rant]
On a more serious note, I work in Finance as a portfolio manager/advisor; the benchmark information system for people like me is the Bloomberg, and AFAIK their reference system for installation is a WIN XP sp3 machine with office 2003. No plans for Vista or Win7 has been circulated to the users, who for the most part are on a mix of win2000/win xp machines. Most if not all of these machines work well in their present state but would not work as well in Vista/win7. Moreover, when these rigs were bought, hardware was a bigger part of the cost of ownership than it's now. since some of these broke down, big offices know how much a rig adequate for win xp costs vis a vis one that must run Vista on a similar level of user experience....lots of things are moving in Xp's direction.....
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
Why does linux fall down on intuitive design? One need only compare the Windows "Control Panel" and the Ubuntu "System" menus and see how better organised linux is. The design is a thousand times more intuitive to new users
Many people, especially non-technical people, think of the OS as the visual presentation of the GUI.
Exactly. Consider that an increasing amount of people's daily business is conducted through the browser. Nobody cares what's under the hood. Could be windows, linux, OSX, you name it - it's increasingly irrelevant. If you integrated media file handling I'd never run any other app than a browser on my netbook. This reduces the OS to what is should be - nuts and bolts. MS started the fiction that the OS IS the computer. OS's need to fade from view and do less, not more. Who really gives a shit what file system is used?
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
This argument depends strongly on what you consider "better".
For my mom, the biggest reason to uninstall Vista on her brand new machine was because Vista was a full order of magnitude slower on her new machine than XP was on the old one. Once Vista was replaced with XP, she loved the new machine.
For me, the biggest reason to avoid Vista (and run Linux, or XP when I have to run a Windows app) is because of all the DRM that's built into the core of the OS. Vista places artificial restrictions on what I do with my own media and hardware.
On the other hand, I have a friend who bought a really expensive laptop and ran Vista on it because he liked all the slick animations and updated Microsoft applications. (Although, now that I think about it, he later replaced it with a Macbook Pro.)
Wow, just... wow. If I had mod points, I wouldn't know whether to mod you +1 Funny or -1 Troll. There should be a Slashdot Achievement for this.
On the off-chance that you're not joking... You clearly don't understand the difference between 32-bit and 64-bit architectures and software. To wit: An 64-bit application does not automatically consume twice as much memory or run twice as slow as a 32-bit application. I run 64-bit Ubuntu machines both at home and at work and they certainly do not consume 1GB of memory for web browsing and email. In fact, I have a hard time getting them to consume 1GB of memory at all no matter how many programs I have running.
So will they count a sale of windows 7 that is downgraded to XP as a windows 7 install on the books? "Biggest seller".
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Give this man a beer. He nailed it.
Microsoft would be wise to hire him. As I've been saying for years: I spend my life toying with computers, so I can figure out how they work. A video editor toys with making movies. It's best if we stay out of each other's arena.
Why did MS think that everyone wanted to re-learn Windows?
Why does the usb boggle? Low latency certainly gives a big boost...but then again, if you are running into swap enough to justify speeding it up then more RAM is really what you need to be looking at.
zosxavius photography
PC gaming has been dead for years, but every once in a while some real classics come out that make it all worthwhile. (Looking at you, morrowind) Sure there are lots of ports back and forth, but the PC is generally the better platform. PC games age like a fine wine. Yesterdays games still don't look half bad, especially when you can crank the graphics to the max. Most games are much better enjoyed after they have been patched several times. I really cannot fathom why people try to stay on the bleeding edge. When your graphics card starts costing more than the rest of the hardware put together, you may have more money than sense. It seems to me like graphics should start hitting a plateau in detail as well. I think already we are seeing character detail starting to level off, with the graphical power being spent on more characters onscreen, larger, more populated environments, etc. I don't think PC games will go away anytime soon, not with the steady stream of PC/360 cross developments at least. M$ has been very smart to convince developers to produce titles for both platforms and smarter in giving them the tools to do it with nearly a flip of the switch. I really see the transition going the other way, where the computer replaces the TV, and for a whole lot of people, the switch has already occurred. In theory the PC gaming market should be vastly larger than the 360s or the PS3s because 85% of the population apparently has a computer in their house. I'll quit ranting. Its been a long day. :P
zosxavius photography
Vista is bad and suddenly XP is a good OS? WTF? This is just like when XP was new. People bitched about Fisher-Price interface.
I used to be a Windows 2000 diehard but I found that a lot of things worked better under XP after I ended up giving in and using it for a while. It was certainly an improvement over 2000, but marginally so. Now, after security has been fixed for so many things it really has become like a comfortable well worn glove. I'm afraid that the newer flavors of my favorite apps won't run under XP forever so I guess I might be forced to upgrade. Windows 2000 is still supported under contract until 2010 though, so I doubt we'll be seeing XP going away anytime soon. M$ has really created a conundrum for themselves. They are being forced to compete with themselves with a product that the public has taken to despising. I honestly don't think Windows 7 is so mind blowingly awesome that people will just want to run out get a copy. Is NT as a technology worth hanging on to? I think their better direction would have been to embrace a UNIX-like OS as the underlying technology and restarted the GUI from scratch. You could always run XP in a virtual machine for those "gotta-have" apps. Backwards compatibility has become one of the PCs biggest crutches.
zosxavius photography
I guess it's more or less the reason why we're stuck with Unix for ~40 years. It was good enough when it came out, it is good enough today. It was more or less free, it continues to be more or less free or cheap. And it has been patched all the way to hell from there.
Some superior software design has showed up since, and more will, but it don't think we'll see Unix dying anytime soon.
entropy happens
No, what we are implying is that Vista is worse then XP and 7 does not improve upon Vista enough to make it a viable alternative. As you said, 7 isn't even out yet so it may end up sucking worse then Vista did (although this would be a monumental feat of bad software engineering but I believe Microsoft is fully capable of it). XP is terrible but whilst we are stuck with Windows its the best one we have.
Are you referring to the constant re-activations or the near complete lack of backwards compatibility. I've received more calls for help about Vista in the last year then I've received about XP in the last 3, most of them went "such and such program doesn't work, it used to work on my old computer" or "this computer is so slow, I only bought it 3 weeks ago" and in these cases there is little I can do to help, for many old programs (especially games) they haven't and can't be updated for vista and the only solution to an underpowered PC running Vista is to install Linux (as XP drivers are difficult to come by and often don't work properly, especially you Acer) or tell them to buy a new laptop.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Good enough is a reason not to upgrade, but is not a reason to install the older OS.
Yes, Windows XP is a "lighter weight" OS than Vista, and so, people get more performance out of the older OS. That still won't make Vista a bad choice for people buying a new computer, because "Vista is good enough" for the vast majority of people buying a NEW computer.
Now, there are only a few situations where people will have a real need to run XP...
Compatibility issues with certain programs, including older DOS apps(Vista can't handle running a DOS app full screen without using DOSBox?!?).
Old computers or computers with substandard hardware by the standards of today, including single-core processor machines, or machines with less than 2GB of RAM(Superfetch really wants you to have extra memory. If you turn off Superfetch, you don't need more than 1GB in theory, but performance will not be great either).
Microsoft could easily embed a VM in the new operating systems to provide FULL support for DOS, Win9x, XP for those who really need that level of compatibility. It isn't as if they need to spend licensing money for the rights to their old software. If Microsoft were to do this decently, that would make a LOT of people willing to jump on the new OS since software compatibility would no longer be an issue in most cases. Since we are not talking about a cross-platform virtual machine, performance might not be a huge issue either.
The real key is the move to 64 bit operating systems, leaving 32 bit behind. We already see a huge jump in the number of systems running Vista 64 bit compared to 64 bit Windows XP. Going to Windows 7, there should be a continuation of this, with the death of 32 bit Windows due with the OS that follows Windows 7. This is because pretty much all new computers have a 64 bit enabled processor.
So, when all new computers have a 64 bit OS, then it will only take another 4-6 years for all new applications to also take that into account.
True, except that will change. DX10 is still relatively new, there are a few games that use it and even fewer that use it well.
"Relatively new"? Relatively new compared to what? It's now nearly 2 and a half years old - I think Dx9 was the only previous version to go more than 2 years before an update.
On top of that, DX11 is promised with Windows 7. You can't call it "relatively new" if it's about to be replaced.
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
Regarding safe removal, I never used to bother clicking safely remove, then one day I pulled a fully loaded flash drive out and it was BLANK afterwards! )-: Guess its one of those things where you can be lucky for a while, but eventually...
Not acceptable? Rubbish.
Of the 250 machines I am responsible, not one has or needs 64 bit. The need is indeed very rare. In fact no one I know has a 64 bit machine, there is simply no need for most users.
Now just calm down and have a nice little lie down, you will feel better.
Great post, you have summed up the reason for XP being a continuing success perfectly!
So you've purchased machines with 32bit only CPU's in the past 12 months now have you, on a desktop PC or laptop I assume?
Please, if so - name the CPU which is only 32bit for me.
Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh........... FOSS.............
The problem is that MS continued to require bigger and badder hardware to run its new Operating SYstems. This worked well when the apps people used continued to require better hardware as well, but this is no longer the case. With so much done on the web now, and with apps not keeping pace with 64 BIT OS and multiple cores, people do not NEED better hardware in order to do their work, unless they are avid gamers. Throw in a weak economy and you spell doom for an OS that requires better hardware. No one wants to upgrade their computer just to upgrade the OS, which does nothing for them. MS took a step in the right direction with seven, as it states that it will run just as fine as Vista on the same hardware. Unfortunately the damage is already done. The computing world is stuck at XP, and don't need better hardware than that which will run XP fast and efficiently. Vista crawls on most of these systems, as seven will also likely do. MS needs to take a good hard look at what Linux does very well, and that is run on older hardware as well as the newer stuff. Lets stop throwing away perfectly good PCs and creating tons of EWaste just because MS says we need to have their new OS, which simply will not run well on your current machine. In the new world, where money is tight, and people are more conscious of waste, MS fails to recognise the shifting winds.
Open Source: Eroding the Digital Divide
I had the same experience when my work upgraded MS Office from 2003 to 2007. Yes, everything is still there and some stuff is cool, but I have to relearn how to do alot of things. Even just printing. Gone are the days when you click the simple printer icon on the top tool bar. Now you have to go through Excell's start menu, select print, and then chose how you want to print.
For god's sake, just buy a Mac :)
However, Windows 7 does take up a buttload more ram. Idle was using 500mb. I have 8gb so I don't care.
Actually, most of those 500Mb are disk cache. If you keep using your machine (esp. for several days without turning off), you'll see that number grow steadily to several Gb; but that memory is actually always available should some application need it - the OS will just dump the cache.
I have 8Gb RAM in my box as well, and this has a somewhat annoying side effect: sometimes, it caches so much in RAM that practically all files that are hit are already cached, so there is no disk access at all for a significant period of time. If it happens for 20 minutes straight (and with most of those 8Gb used for disk cache, it can), Windows turns off the HDD (the default power settings are to do so). Then, if, at some point, it actually needs something from the disk, it has to spin it up, which may take a split second - and that is noticeable when you're e.g. playing a game, and it does that in the middle of the map.