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One Year Later, "Dead" XP Still Going Strong
snydeq writes "Microsoft pulled the plug on Windows XP a year ago today, no longer selling new copies in most venues. Yet according to a report from InfoWorld, various downgrade paths to XP are keeping the operating system very much alive, particularly among businesses. In fact, despite Microsoft trumpeting Vista as the most successful version of Windows ever sold, more than half of business PCs have subsequently downgraded Vista-based machines to XP, according to data provided by community-based performance-monitoring network of PCs. Microsoft recently planned to further limit the ability to downgrade to XP now that Windows 7 is in the pipeline, but backlash against the licensing scheme prompted the company to change course, extending downgrade rights on new PCs from April 2010 to April 2011."
(everyone who Knows Better will know I'm talking about most users, IT shops, etc - not the technical "merits")
Microsoft is finally getting bit by cultivating and preying on the culture of Good Enough. XP supports current hardware, runs current apps, ISVs are still writing for it. Users are comfortable with it, it handles games well (hey, check out the number of Big Name Games that require DX10), and while it's a security nightmare, most competent shops know enough to be able to keep their machines STD-free.
Vista is a host of new problems, support issues, and sucks on the same hardware XP zips on. Windows 7 isn't officially out yet... and when it is, most IT shops are going to wait. They'll poke it with a stick, sniff it like a dog, and rather it's a genuine improvement or not, they're not going to hop on it until they have to.
XP is the new BSD. It'll be "dying" for the next five to ten years. It's going to take a massive paradigm shift* in computing to get rid of it.
* I don't mean quad cores or eight-way cores or 64 gigs of ram for a nickel. I mean something equivalent to a massive rendering farm running an OS with a pile of APIs that'll securely handle every windows (and mac, while we're fantasizing) application ever written, with a battery life measured in decades. Said hardware would be the size of an iPhone, even easier to use, and you'd be able to buy them in vending machines at bus stations for $1.25. I mean that kind of paradigm shift.
Where I work we just started taking pre-orders on Windows 7.
An elderly gentleman came in (today) and was ecstatic to place an order. His son installed it on his computer and he said he has never been happier. He stated he hated Vista and had kept his XP until the beta. I bombarded him with questions and the jist of his satisfaction came from the simplicity and speed Win7 had.
In my opinion this guy was a prime example that Microsoft might have a winner, both in the eyes of people who are technologically savvy as well as somebody who is anything but.
I personally still run 32-bit xp on my Core i7 (Except for games, damn DX10), and I have been bitterly against an upgrade for fear of hidden DRM treats down the line. Only time will tell.
I had the same experience when change from Vista to Vista on my laptop. I formatted the machine and installed a fresh copy of just Vista, without all the crap ware, and boot times went from 2 minutes to 30 seconds. Also, the entire machine is much more responsive.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
32bit is a dead end. How much RAM would you stuff into your computers if your OS and applications could use it. The price of RAM is through the floor and nobody buys the stuff because more than 3GB is completely useless in a typical Windows PC due to architecture limitations.
Someone mod this man UP.
What he speaks is 100% the truth. 32-bit is at an end and it's only lazy program and [especially] driver developers that are keeping us using it. Vista 64-bit functions almost transparently running 32-bit applications -- I've never had a problem -- it's only drivers that it gets stuck up on (not everyone is coding 64-bit drivers). Over the lifespan of Vista, however, I've seen that problem slowly decline (been using 64-bit Vista since the day it went gold), and now (with Windows 7) I think it's time that they went 64-bit ONLY.
I see Microsoft embracing 64-bit fully internally. Forefront TMG is 64-bit ONLY, and Server 2008 R2 is going to be 64-bit only also.
Agreed. There is plenty of published benchmarks to show the tuning in Windows 7 to be significant compared to your typcial service pack patch-up. maybe foss advocates don't read those kind of articles *duck*
A closer look at 7 and you see how some of the speed was achieved, pretty much a backtrack on a shortlist of Vista mistakes. Part of tweaking Vista was to disable or delay the start of all the frivolous services Vista would start at boot. If you look at Windows 7's default services settings, you'll find many set to manual start or to delayed start by default. Infact it looks just like a tweaked vista installation.
It's almost as if microsoft scrutinist the how-to-guides on common speed-up-your-windoze sites to see what people were disabling. Indeed Microsoft actually pay attention to the modding commuity is a unprecedented thing.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.