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Microsoft Ending Mainstream Support For XP
Slatterz writes "Come next week, Microsoft will be in the unusual position of no longer offering mainstream support for its most widely used product. Windows XP will pass another milestone next week on the road to retirement when mainstream support ends on 14 April 2009, over seven years after the OS originally shipped. While the company said that it will continue to provide free security fixes for XP until 2014, any future bugs found in the platform will not be fixed unless customers pay. Windows XP accounts for about 63 percent of all Internet-connected computers, according to March 2009 statistics from Hitslink, while Windows Vista makes up about 24 percent."
I went to microsoft.com and looked around- I did not find the "donate now" button anywhere
how exactly are we supposed to pay?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Make one mistake and support it for the rest of your life.
Unless you are Microsoft, of course.
I wish more companies would start opening up their software once it has run out of life. If Microsoft really thought that XP was no longer going to be good enough for pc's, open it up to the community and let people learn from it and tinker with it.
Oh... wait, it is Microsoft.
"I don't have to think. I only have to do it. The results are always perfect, but that's old news." - Meat Puppets
any future bugs found in the platform will not be fixed unless customers pay
Does that mean they will fix all the bugs that have been found in the past? No.
Can someone else fix them? No.
+1 for open source
The disappearing pencil trick. Let me show you it.
So nothing has really changed then, it's still being supported with security fixes. No one really cares about features at this point. How exactly is this suppose to move people to update?
wait - stop - just kidding...
innovation (read adoption of what the surveyed herd wants and whoever we could purchase a look from, or failing that, what apple did last quarter, visually) in windows sucks.
The next step is to divorce the windows graphic interface from the underlying operating system, and make it a desktop for linux. Like apple. But with Linux.
There are few companies that work as hard at making poor decisions as MSFT. They fielded a loser OS at a time in computing history that they really needed a home run. To placate enterprise users and stop the bleeding in the netbook space they turned to XP at a time they should have been phasing it out.
So now they rush Windows 7 out the door with many of the capabilities Vista should have had and they're chopping off support for XP before Windows 7 is established.
It's not the computing world's fault MS dropped the ball on Vista but, as usual, they're making it your problem. Instead of owning up to the mistake and supporting XP until it's clear Windows 7 is an adequate replacement.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Funny. I just bought a laptop and it came with Windwos XP installed. If Vista is the "current version of Windows" why are they still shipping new PC's with XP?
So? If Microsoft doesn't want to support XP any more then fine, but that doesn't mean I have to switch from it.
At this stage in XPs life, I highly doubt any end user or consuming business will actually come across any non-security related bug that they need fixing, and if they do then their vendor will probably have several customers also with the same issue, and pony up themselves (think Oracle, Sun or Novell finding a bug which affects their products - they will be the ones to approach MS for a fix and offer payment).
Ah, I seem to recall a lot of people vowing that the changes from Win2k to Windows XP would push them into switching to Linux. Most people always seem to wind up back on Uncle Gates' products though. More's the pity.
I just need to see what's holding me back from just moving to Linux. Ah MS Money. I wonder if I can import years worth of financial data into a F/OSS version.
I have this same problem although I'm tied into Quicken and not MS Money. I've never found GNUCash to be worthwhile. You might look into Moneydance. It's not FOSS but it runs on anything (Java) and is lightweight enough to put on a thumb drive for extreme portability. I'm still married to Quicken because I like the attachments feature but a buddy of mine swears by Moneydance. He keeps it on a thumb drive within a Truecrypt container and uses it everywhere he goes.
Dual boot? I don't know. I have had issues in the past with GRUB locking up machines and no being able to rescue my system. I had to reinstall everything.
I've thought about going back to dual boot and just keeping Windows around for Quicken and games. Strange that GRUB has corrupted your whole system though -- how does such a thing happen? I've always stuck with LILO (and Slackware... yes, I'm a purist) and never had any issue with it that would have caused me to lose data. I've had LILO itself get corrupted a few times but it never took my data with it.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
But for small shops, this is a win! Since MS won't support it any more, people will have to turn to small local shops instead. It should be quite a boon to them.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
It's not the computing world's fault MS dropped the ball on Vista but, as usual, they're making it your problem.
People are always bashing Vista at every opportunity, but it's never caused me any problems, never crashed, has support for all the devices I wish to use and pretty much checks all the boxes I want from an operating system. I'm speaking as a software developer, before I get mercilessly flamed as being some kind of computing retard.
/.? Surely not..."
Now XP, before I upgraded, would crash semi-regularly and had at least as many bugs as Vista does. I think at least some of the people critcising Vista are sheeple expressing a popular opinion without much foundation. "What's that?" you cry, "People regurgitating supposed facts without verification on
You can advertise in this sig from as little as £99.99 a month!
I like Vista, Its just so dam slow!
I like Windows 7. I run them both. 7 is better in every way (except media playing. Beta has bugs)
I'm liking 7's ui and library features. Its performance is better than vista... but honestly not by much.
I would run linux if the applications were there. But as we all know... thats not the case.
I'm honestly looking at Apple for my next laptop. Honeslty i wont replace my PC workstations with MACs, but... I wouldnt mind testing the waters.
I would try linux again if they applications were there but they just arent. You can browse, IM etc... but I do more than that.
Will there still be activation support for resetting it or will activation be turned off / hardware check be turned off?
Will xp uses still get IE8 / IE7 updates / fixes?
windows media player 12?
Will there still WGA updates? .net framework updates?
daylight saving time updates till 2014?
Because people are generally not satisfied with Vista. The parent is right, Vista is the current Windows version whether you like it or not and since you don't like it retailers keep selling PCs with XP installed. The important thing here is that while Microsoft has an agenda for future revenue, retailers on the other hand are on their own. Profit for them is profit, no matter the product, but for Microsoft it's a step back if it's XP. The majority of revenue generated through XP has already been collected, thus Microsoft needs a new platform to sell to all of it's customer base. This is how business works.
I am the lawn!
Vista is slow to boot.
Vista helpfully stops me running programs I want to run at startup.
Vista takes absolutely hours to update itself.
Vista is always telling me no, I don't have permission to do that, or to look there.
Vista is generally annoying.
Vista also has a couple of more geeky irritations to me as a software engineer and a linux user. But still, it runs my games OK and that's all I ask of it these days. I don't hate it, I just don't think it's that good.
That said, you should here the vitriol and emotional reactions that come out of my none-geek family and friends. This vista hatred may have started here with us, but it's been taken to a whole new level by the general computer-using-but-not-understanding public. I don't know if that's a reflection of them buying all the media hype or if it's a genuinbe reaction to the product, but it seems that it's no longer us penguin-loving kernel botherers that are the main source of the anti-MS vitriol.
I would try linux again if they applications were there but they just arent. You can browse, IM etc... but I do more than that.
I have pretty good experience at running Windows as VM guest on Linux. Linux as host for VMs is quite good. But of course it depends for what purposes you use your Windows...
Value of Linux becomes apparent only after you are once forced to buy batch of Windows licenses. But as private buyer concerned - who generally get "Windows [whatever]" from OEMs - there are not much reasons to even try.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
You might want to take a look at Wine. It does not support all applications 100% (Adobe products being notorious for not working as they should), but it's getting there. Take a look through their appdb page, maybe your applications and all you need is already quite Linux-Ready.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Not only is what you say 100% true but is there actually going to be any reason to upgrade even a decade from now? XP is far from perfect but I feel it marks the point at which computers became "good enough" and changes became mostly minor bug fixing and moving things around. Barring a major revolution which I don't think anyone expects any time soon (e.g. hard AI) XP will continue to do everything people want for a very long time.
What will be interesting is to see how / if Mac and Linux eat into Windows market share over time. Since Windows has essentially stopped changing it gives other players a chance to become highly compatible. I don't suppose they will knock Windows off the top spot any time soon but I could imagine it getting to a point where it doesn't really matter what OS you run.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Seriously, they've shipped a near-infinite number of Windows XP licenses, and there are millions and millions of users exercising the code, so really, what is left to "debug"? But let's be clear - you may want Windows XP to function differently, but that is not a bug, that's a preference. By now, Windows XP is a tested code base, and it has value as demonstrated by the steady stream of stories discussing the end of support for Windows XP, downgrade rights from Vista to Windows XP, etc.
Ken
Vista is the current Windows version whether you like it or not and since you don't like it retailers keep selling PCs with XP installed.
You are defining "current" along the lines of Microsoft's development. However, consumers define "current" along the lines of "what can I buy new in the store today"? If XP is installed, and the computer is not marked "used," then how is it not current?
Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
I really don't think they are doing this to try and make more money. I really think they are just trying to kill XP. So they can make more money selling windows 7. Although, it's kind of stupid to do it now in my opinion, if they drive people off of XP before 7 is out those people will buy Vista, and then I really doubt they will buy 7 when it launches 6 months later.
I wonder if this makes Windows Vista the only generation not to outsell the previous one.
-m-
Then you're lucky and I'm not. It takes much, much longer than debian on my VAIO. I'm not ruling out that Sony set it up badly, but quick it is not.
You've never tried installing an ext2 filesystem driver then. Every boot I'd get this nice helpful message telling me windows had prevented programs from running at startup, with no visible way to change things.
I never run them automatically. I only boot it about once a month and it never fails to take at least an hour to update. There's even an inexplicable delay of at least a couple of minutes between selecting the updates to apply and it even starting to download them.
As a UNIX weenie, that confuses and annoys me!
Well exactly, which is why I find it so surprising that it's my dad and various non-savvy friends that get most upset with the whole thing.
Me too just a few months ago. I really don't like Linux. It has the same flaw as Macintosh OS (tends to be ignored by software vendors), but far far worse. Example: I couldn't get my Netscape Dialup to work, so I called for help and they said "We only support Windows and Mac," and then hung-up on me. Nice.
I did eventually get my Linux to connect to the ISP, but the compression engine/accelerator refuses to run, which makes everything extremely slow (50k versus ~500k). Another problem happened when I changed my resolution to 1024x800 - when I tried to change it back to 1280x1024 the dialog box was too big, and I couldn't access the OK button since it was offscreen. I'm still stuck at the wrong resolution. (With Windows pressing the enter button auto-selects OK, but not with Linux.)
So I think I'm going to use the WinXP Restore CD to wipe Linux off my laptop. From what I can see, XP and Mac OS are both more user-friendly than Ubuntu.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Hard to believe, but an 8 year old OS with life support turned off is still overwhelmingly preferred to Linux, OS X and so on...
What is so bad about Vista on decent hardware?
Their real problem is that many people are satisfied with XP. There's no "killer app" or compelling reason to upgrade. If new computer purchases didn't foist Vista (or soon...Windows 7) on consumers, nobody would bat an eye if the machines came with XP instead. As long as XP continues to get security patches, I can't imagine bothering with "upgrading" in the foreseeable future.
If Microsoft are stopping supporting XP on 14 April 2009 as reported, is it moral to sell netbooks with an unsupported (after that date) XP pre-installed? Yes they will do security fixes but will they insist on sales staff telling customers they are buying an unsupported system before they hand over cash? They like to hide the cost of the Windows license in the total purchase so the customer thinks it's free, so I don't hold much hope for their honesty.
At that point Linux (either official like RedHat or Novell, or a community Ubuntu / Feodra / Debian / Mandriva) becomes better supported than the XP version by default. Is it legal to sell an unsupported PC? Or will Microsoft be responsible and withdraw all XP netbooks from the market on April 15th? Will they be forced to?
It does show a company in desperation to make money, regardless of their customers wishes. When the carrot (advertising and shill PR) won't work use the stick. Any company behaving like this does not deserve any customers, and will eventually bring that to pass by it's own actions.
Who the hell is going to run out and buy Vista just because XP left mainstream support?!? The only time the fact that 2000 left mainstream has mattered to any company I know is when the governments of the world got cute and changed DST, and that was solved through a fairly simple if somewhat time intensive process of automating the manual workaround that Microsoft provided. Most of the time the reason you aren't running the OS that's in mainstream support is you want stability and consistency, new features and non-security fixes generally fly in the face of that concept anyways. I think most smart businesses will be waiting for Win 7 XP1/2008 R2 to perform wholesale upgrades which should mean it starts happening about the same time the economy is recovering and budgets start to loosen and allow for the upgraded hardware and manpower to do the upgrades.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Microsoft has stopped to support XP, That's their main advantage over Linux. Now they have none.
Vista is a failure, Windows 7 seem to be more of the same, so go with something you can buy support for after that the vendor no longer is interested in you.
Umm. Netbooks are shipping with XP and only XP right now. Not downgraded...
Microsoft is still selling XP as a current OS for that class of machine.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Security. XP was built in ancient times as far as Internet security is concerned. Not to mention taking some idiotic approaches (blacklisting via antivirus software and such).
Will you dare run XP connected directly to the Internet when you won't have up-to-date antimalware software on it? Or when that "security" model finally breaks for good under the assault of modern malware?
Plus, XP shouldn't be able to run natively on 2020 PC's. Which OS is still able to do run 15-20 years unmodified on constantly-evolving hardware? And then there's my personal hope that we won't still be using i386-compatible PC's a decade from now.
i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer
This is crazy... I mean here at my workplace (a hospital) we just rolled out Windows XP this past September. We dumped Win2k & Novell Netware for XP and Active Directory. We won't be upgrading for a long time yet.
They sure will. The question is rather, will someone pick up and answer?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I boot vista when I want to play a game. At that point the boot time is relevant.
There should be a way for me, as administrator and owner, to tell it to allow things to start that aren't signed by MS. It's that simple.
Last time it was 19 updates. Came out somewhere around 32MB. I have a 24Mb connection, it took a long, long time to download them. It then sat and took the rest of the hour applying them, shutting down, applying some more during shutdown, booting and applying more during startup. And then it found more. It's slow and a bit of a shambles.
19 updates totalling around that size on debian linux would take a matter of seconds.
Yes, eventually I found out it could be disabled. I switched it off and some of the annoyances went away. Great, I have to switch off the new security system to get anything much done.
FUD. Right. User experience and me explaining my annoyances, despite already having said I don't think it's awful, just wrong in a few places, that's FUD?
And you've already decided I'm some sort of Linux zealot despite my saying I use vista adequately well for what I need it for and I'm surprised by the hatred it gets from non-technical people.
Fuck off.
Service packs are supposed to fix things.
It's never too late to have a happy childhood.
Microsoft says that Windows 7 will be small enough to run on the current generation of underpowered laptops that are pretending to be netbooks. I think we can count on this being just one more feature that Microsoft ends up overpromising and underdelivering on. Frankly, I just don't believe that they can do it. They probably don't, either. When they say "Windows 7 will be small footprint enough to run on a netbook" they really mean "We're counting on our ability to strongarm the netbook vendors into fattening up their hardware so it'll run Windows 7 by the time it's released."
... get a bare desktop up and running and get out of the way. Something not larded up with stupid extras. But that's not a sustainable business model for a company that still thinks that software is something that has to be bought and sold.
Meanwhile, Linux will keep showing up in places where Windows XP can fit but Windows 7 can't. And if it's a big enough market then Microsoft will be forced to keep Windows XP running even longer.
Microsoft just doesn't get it. There is a huge market for operating systems that just give you the brass tacks
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Actually, I have a suspicion that with Microsoft's way of viewing their internal accounting, XP is no longer a "cash cow" at all.
I have no proof of this, since I'm not privy to any of their internal workings or memos - but I do see a lot of evidence to back it up.
For example, when you call in to Microsoft to activate a copy of Windows XP by telephone, you usually just reach an automated system with voice recognition capabilities, vs. a live human. You can go through the entire process without ever speaking to a real person. (It actually asks you the famous "questions", like "How many computers is this product installed on?" and "Have there been any major hardware changes to your platform since the last time Windows was installed?", and decides if it will re-activate an existing key based on your responses.)
Microsoft doesn't shuttle off these "anti piracy" measures to automated systems unless they feel it's only to support a "legacy product" that's no longer considered important enough to protect with the "higher level" of protection of interacting with a real customer service person.
I could easily see where their viewpoint might be; We already recouped our costs many times over for the XP product, and most new XP buyers are only buying heavily discounted licenses intended for refurbished machines, OEMs, etc. The money spent on manpower to keep supporting it is now just a net "negative" for us, vs. focusing on Vista and Windows 7, which will command higher retail prices on many licenses sold, and which still need to recoup their development costs ASAP.
Who the hell is going to run out and buy Vista just because XP left mainstream support?!?
Pointy Haired Bosses?
No sig for the moment.
This is the health care industry - much like the military we don't go with OSes that are as new as Vista. Many of our industry specific apps have not been properly tested on Vista, and we even have a webapp still in use that is not supported under IE7.
can you move&resize dialog window? if you can, try holding alt and dragging window upwards. yes you can move window over the top of screen - and use 1600x1200 windows in 800x600 screen. Not pretty but doable. as long as any part of window is visible you can drag it with alt - as long as window isn't maximized...
As you know, it's worse than you say.
The Slashdot story is excessively pro-Microsoft, in my opinion. Quoting the Slashdot story: "... over seven years after the OS originally shipped..." That gives a much more positive impression than is warranted, in my opinion.
Windows XP had very serious problems until the release of Service Pack 2. So Windows XP release version is only 4 1/2 years old.
Service Pack 3 fixed many, many, many bugs that Microsoft itself called "critical". So the final, fully usable version of Windows XP has been available less than a year. A year of good use is not much in return for 6 years of numerous cases of grief and hassles and huge maintenance expense.
Vista was an attempt to get people to abandon Windows XP. Vista was first released about two years ago.
So, one version of the Windows product, Windows XP, was not fully finished until more than a year after the next version, Windows Vista, was first sold, although Windows Vista was so unfinished that it was rejected in the marketplace.
When the version of Windows called Windows 7 is released, many people will be buying their third version of the Windows OS in only two years, even though one of the versions, Vista, was never finished.
That's product churning.
Sooner or later the average buyer will realize that they don't need Microsoft's pushy "upgrades", which all must use much more CPU power, because Microsoft's real customers, the big computer hardware manufacturers, want everyone to buy new hardware. Microsoft is trying to continue creating an artificial market, and the average buyer is becoming more aware of that.
> For example, when you call in to Microsoft to activate a copy of Windows XP by telephone, you
> usually just reach an automated system with voice recognition capabilities, vs. a live human.
Doesn't mean anything. You don't get a human with Vista either. I did it a month ago and got the same robot attendant.
Democrat delenda est
HP seem to be just plain weird in thier handling of this, they make the XP option the default option in the selector on thier small buisness site yet afaict they will only sell you machines with XP installed under the following conditions
"To qualify for this downgrade an end user must be a business (including governmental or educational institutions) and is expected to order annually at least 25 customer systems with the same custom image." unlike dell who make vista the default will happilly sell you XP on one off orders.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I don't understand Microsoft. MS has almost no development costs with XP anymore except what's needed to patch it and there is still a major demand for it. That makes it a cash cow. Mostly all they need to do with it is package it, ship it and let it roll the $$$$$$$ in for them. By allowing vendors to put it on computers, they don't really even have packing and shipping costs either which means even less overhead.
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*