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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."
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.
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.
People have to realize Microsoft can't code their way out of the windows hell to a decent os.
People don't care. They just want it to run their favorite game and accounting software. BSD doesn't do that.
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.