Time To Dump XP?

An anonymous reader writes "Gartner is saying it's time to plan your migration now (if you havent already done it). I for one know my company still has loads of users still on XP, citing training costs (time and money) rather than software license fees. Is my company alone in wanting to stay in the 1990s or is Windows 7 the way forward?"

Comments

XP is the 90's?

[jamesborr]

Could have sworn that XP was not available before Windows 2000 -- but what do I know...

Re:XP is the 90's?

[NotBornYesterday]

Mods, please explain how a first post can possibly be "Redundant"? Extra credit if you can explain this as something other than censorship, since the OP actually has a valid point that applies to TFS ...

Re:XP is the 90's?

[Maxo-Texas]

I don't even see how this was offensive enough to be downmodded.

And: Windows XP Release date was August 24, 2001 so it's informative.

Re:XP is the 90's?

[Maxo-Texas]

Yes but it was also sarcastic so he could have been shooting for funny. and now he's stuck with informative and crying in his coffee, once again misunderstood by a cruel world that never comprehends his jests.

Re:XP is the 90's?

[Aqualung812]

Microsoft has simply NOT produced anything better.

While I agree that most of the marketing and Aero-fluff is useless, there are a few very big improvements I have to point out with Windows 7: -Security is MUCH better than XP. I'm not calling it *nix level or anything, but it is much better. I've seen a huge decrease in spyware infections on Win 7. -Bitlocker is secure, fast and accessible for most users. Again, Truecrypt may be better, but this is a good thing for the OS to have native. -The systems management functions (i.e. power settings controlled by GPO, proper grouping of the event logs, etc) are far superior in Windows 7. I would much rather manage 1000 Win 7 desktops than 250 XP.

Re:XP is the 90's?

[sumdumass]

It's not just hardware. Less then 24 hours ago, I was asked about running windows XP in a virtual environment so some accounting package could work without having to spend hundreds for an upgrade. This is an office where the owner just buys shit on sale and worries about the problems later (XP and windows 7 home editions and they wonder why they can't so certain things their friends talk about doing at their job).

Anyways, when I checked the package, I noticed that it would already run perfectly for what they did, they just stopped supporting online services for the program but that happens at the beginning of this year. Turns out, when they installed the accounting package on the new computer, it needed activation and someone told them they needed to buy a new version instead of activating the old one (someone being- someone at the support number for the program). I called and asked why when their web support site clearly says it works but there are known issues. None of the known issues effected the use so I demanded an activation number. They gave us one and pow.

But that is part of the "their stuff don't work" scenario too. Some printers made 2 years before windows 7 was released don't work in it either. Of course that's a driver issue and falls back on the manufacturer. I recently had one and had to use it as a network printer and print to a postscript printer in order to get it working on a one computer network.

So it's not exactly about anything failing, it's the appearance of it failing. It consumers have to go to some website to download the fixed version of driver, or read the real story about their aging apps working, then it's probably already too far into not working for most people.

Re:XP is the 90's?

[Abcd1234]

And from a user perspective, integrated indexing is *very* nice, the new Start menu is a vast improvement (quick access to integrated search, and application-specific recent documents lists are both very very nice), the ability to customize libraries is long overdue, the new explorer interface is, IMHO, much improved (not the least of which, the fact that the explorer shell doesn't hang up whilst in the middle of file operations)...

Granted, much of this was present in Vista, too, but it was such a shitshow in general that the improvements were overshadowed. Win7 brings all the aforementioned advances along from Vista while polishing up the experience substantially.

Re:XP is the 90's?

[AmiMoJo]

Windows 7 is also pretty much essential for SSDs. XP and Vista treat them the same way they treat hard drives, not aligning filesystem metadata to blocks and putting it in the middle of the disk to reduce average seek times. Only 7 supports TRIM too.

The new taskbar is pretty good too IMHO.

Not only...

[Pojut]

...is my company still using Windows XP SP2, but we are still using IE6. Feh...and they complained that Audacity was a security risk because it was "open source, so anyone could hack it".

Insanity.

Re:Not only...

[Steauengeglase]

I had the same problem. It was "open source crap". So I did the natural thing. I installed it on the prettiest employee's desktop and within a week of her lauding this "Audacity thing" there were official requests to install it on any desktop that had to manipulate audio. We would be on Asterisk by now if she hadn't left.

Re:Not only...

[shutdown -p now]

...is my company still using Windows XP SP2, but we are still using IE6. Feh...and they complained that Audacity was a security risk because it was "open source, so anyone could hack it".

You should tell them that XP has some open source bits - namely BSD TCP/IP stack - in it. That should have them scrambling to migrate to 7, then.

Not that it would make things any more secure, in the circumstances...

Re:Not only...

[Pojut]

Let me guess, you aren't in the IT department, are you?

My primary role is programming mail merge documents while maintaining all of the document templates we use within Siebel. My secondary role is maintaining validation documentation for new database releases.

How large is your organization?

The company as a whole has over 10,000 employees internationally. Our specific business unit, however, is only about 600 people.

How many folks are working in IT?

In our business unit, we have about 20 IT people, not including help desk folks. Company wide, we have literally hundreds of IT employees.

I suspect they are starving the IT department to keep the company afloat,and WinXP SP2 and IE6 may be the most recent they can get from MS - you may not have software that passes Microsoft Genuine Advantage, making IE8 (or maybe even IE7) and SP3 unavailable to you...

Last year, the company netted $1.8 billion in revenue ($106 million of which came directly from our business unit). That was the best year ever for both the company and our business unit (in fact, our unit won an award for highest year-over-year percentage increase in both income and profit). I think we can afford to upgrade our computers.

Re:Not only...

[Pojut]

what the hell does this mean?
"My primary role is programming mail merge documents while maintaining all of the document templates we use within Siebel. My secondary role is maintaining validation documentation for new database releases."

you send spam?

I'll start with the mail merge.

Our particular business unit is a pharmaceutical call center. Patients contact us when they have questions regarding their medication. We also provide Patient Assistance Programs, conduct Insurance Verifications, and also assist in claim denials. Obviously, there are a lot of forms associated with this work. My job is to design these forms based on our clients needs (our clients tend to be Pharmaceutical companies), and then program them with the necessary code to pull demographic information, therapy information, diagnosis, and dosage from our database (filled with data that has been provided by patients or doctors over the phone so that patients and physician's don't have to fill out the whole form manually. Everything we submit is explicitly requested by a patient, physician, or medical office. Our business unit receives around 20,000 calls per day and makes around 12,000 calls per day.

We have enough trouble keeping up with stuff that is actually requested, we wouldn't have the time or resources to send out unsolicited documentation even if we wanted to.

Validation Documentation is the process of ensuring that our final testing of new database releases matches what our release plan was, making sure our release plan matches our functional design, and making sure our functional design matches our requirements. Basically, it's a glorified way of saying "making sure we don't miss anything we intended to build into our monthly Siebel releases." It's simple but essential work in case we have to retrace our steps due to database errors after modifications are made to the system.

Re:Not only...

[bdenton42]

Hardware is cheap. Migration and Training is not so cheap.

Re:Not only...

[grasshoppa]

Welcome to politics, 101. People aren't going to listen to you, of all people. You are the IT troll.

So you make friends with the people they will listen to. Eventually, people will realize it's just better to listen to you instead, but until that happens you have to play the game.

Re:Not only...

[teg]

This user can't upgrade from XP/IE6:My primary role is programming mail merge documents while maintaining all of the document templates we use within Siebel

Based on my experience with the evil that is Siebel and applications built on top of it using ActiveX, I would guess that this a big reason why. It's not just replacing machines, it's all the servers and applications in the department that needs to change too. Now that Oracle has bought it and want you to use their own CRM, changing this will be a gigantic and extremely costly proposition.

Re:Not only...

[Pojut]

We decided to migrate to Siebel almost 5 years ago because of the awesome reporting we can do on the back end for our clients (we were previously using Lotus Notes, which from a reporting standpoint is about as useful as tits on a bull.) We have actually had pretty good success with it from a client satisfaction perspective as well as a productivity perspective...but, as you pointed out, it is likely the reason we are still stuck with XP and IE6.

We are staying on XP

[yakatz]

I would live to migrate on of my offices to Windows 7, but then they would need to buy all-new hardware, sinc ewhat they have will not support Windows 7.
Also, they use an old version of Navison Axapta (since renamed to Microsoft Dynamics AX) which has issues on newer OS versions.

Re:We are staying on XP

[alen]

other than the fact that new desktop PC's are dirt cheap, i'm typing this on a 6 year old P4 desktop PC that originally came with XP and runs WIndows 7 perfectly with no issues. Just get more RAM

Re:We are staying on XP

[Corporate Troll]

The reason I'm not getting 7 is because.... I already have an XP license which works perfectly fine on my 6 year old P4. It's not exactly cheap to upgrade, since you say: "Just get more RAM". Assuming you want 2GB RAM, with a typical machine having 2 or 3 DDR memory slots, thus needing 2 sticks of 1GB at about 35.99$/piece (Quick search on newegg.com, you might find better deals).

Add in the license for Windows 7 (Upgrade is out, because you're on XP).... 99.99$ for the Systems Builders 32-bit version (source: also newegg)...

Total: 171.97$/seat and that's ignoring workhours....

Only to upgrade... Which has zilch benefit....

Re:We are staying on XP

[Elektroschock]

What suprised me is that Ubuntu 10.04 feels as good or better as XP. Operating systems do not matter much anymore.

Re:We are staying on XP

[Corporate Troll]

That still doesn't justify the upgrade if everything works fine....

Gartner is shilling

[DesScorp]

Another example of why companies like Gartner are useless. They're little more another source of advertising for computer companies.

Your decisions on your OS should be driven by your needs first and foremost. If XP is still supported, and it's doing the job well for you... why switch? Switch if YOU need to, not because someone like Gartner says "Hey you, get out of the past and get with the future. All the cool kids are running *insert OS here*"

Re:Gartner is shilling

[operagost]

Well, not really. They're advocating planning the transition now instead of waiting until support ends, which will happen in 2014. That sounds really far away, but for some companies it could take that long to complete.

Re:Gartner is shilling

[eln]

If XP is still supported, and it's doing the job well for you... why switch?

The problem is, at 9 years old, XP won't be supported for very much longer. Any responsible company should be looking at a migration plan, identifying legacy apps that need to be updated, and starting up projects to do so. Companies have a bad habit of waiting until the last minute to figure this stuff out and then end up being forced to run old out of support software because they didn't give sufficient time or resources to updating their legacy internal apps that won't work right on the new platform. This is how we end up with so many companies still using IE6.

Re:Gartner is shilling

[TheLink]

Whatever it is, it's long been time to dump Gartner if you haven't already :).

Re:Gartner is shilling

[Maxo-Texas]

Another lesson my company is painfully learning is:

Do not write large applications in microsoft languages for microsoft operating systems.

We are going to hardware and operating system agnostic packages in a big way.

For the problem software tho, it's going to be a rough road until the packages are rolled out (and that will take a couple years). At any point, our current software could be killed by an arbitrary microsoft patch since the language (vb6) is out of support.

Re:Gartner is shilling

[hey!]

I've been in this software business for twenty seven years, and one thing I've learned is timing is everything. You gets tons of people trying to make money doing something, then the person who gets a good enough product out at the right time -- not too early, not too late -- wins the prize.

The same goes for upgrading. Vendors want to you to upgrade ASAP, especially if there's revenue involved. If you listened to them, you'd upgrade too early. But you can also upgrade too late. Here's how you know you've got the timing right: nothing much happens. What? I go through all that pain in the ass for nothing much to happen?

Yes. Exactly so.

The vendors do not have a solution to all your problems. They're peddling software updates. So you're a fool upgrading early to achieve IT Nirvana. But you're equally a fool to wait until your hand is forced, and you have to meet heaven and Earth to do multiple years of updating in a single quarter, disrupting the operation of your employers and leaving users in a world of unfamiliar user interfaces.

Lack of drama is the hallmark of competency. Each quarter looks more or less like the last one, with no notable emergencies or sudden "improvements" that leave people with allegedly powerful but unfamiliar tools. You can't do that if you wait until your hand is forced.

We're coming up on the one year anniversary of Windows 7. For Windows XP shops, this is a good time to start planning a transition that will be done before this time next year.

Re:Gartner is shilling

[Maxo-Texas]

The VB6 crap is a stand alone application. It took a dozen programmers about 2 years to write it. It's big. It does a lot. And, I've had to manage projects for updating it so I can say it has a pretty good design.

When the decision was made to go with VB back in 1999, it was reasonable to assume there would be a VB7 which would mean it would take a few months to rewrite it.

Instead we got .Net and no upgrade path.

So this means it would again take half dozen programmers another 2 years to rewrite it (half the programmers due to the good design). Some of the custom controls were written with closed source by companies which haven't existed for closing on a decade now.

On the other hand, our java order entry system has fared better. While the front end has been replaced with another prettier language, the core business rules continue to chug along.

Will C# be supported in 10 years? Maybe-- no way to know. Will Java be supported in 10 years-- probably.

In either case- if we simply buy a package, we don't have to code or maintain anything.

It's less flexible but an order of magnitude cheaper. We are larger now and no longer need as much flexibility to hold customers since our costs are so much cheaper than all of our competitors. And to be honest, being flexible probably ate up over 100% of the money we made on some customers (I.e. we spent $50k to keep the business of a $40k profit customer).

Personally, I think there are downsides to the packages BUT we do share development costs with several thousand other companies (and for one of them several tens of thousands) so things like legal compliance become much easier and much less expensive. It really sucks with a brittle old system being told some new law requires changes within 90 days and fully regression testing it takes 21 days alone.

Java is good for core business rules in my opinion- but anything else, it's no better than several other languages and a bit harder to develop in.

Re:Gartner is shilling

[shutdown -p now]

For the problem software tho, it's going to be a rough road until the packages are rolled out (and that will take a couple years). At any point, our current software could be killed by an arbitrary microsoft patch since the language (vb6) is out of support.

VB6 IDE is not supported now (though a paid support agreement with MS is possible). It also has known compat problems with Vista and above. That said, it works perfectly in XP Mode under Win7.

VB6 runtime is a part of Windows 7, and will be supported for at least as long as Win7 itself is supported. So, no, an "arbitrary patch" won't kill your software.

See here for details.

Re:Gartner is shilling

[techno-vampire]

As for telling Microsoft to support it, tell me how many Linux vendors support their distributions from 2001

Probably the same number of Linux vendors who charge for upgrades. This whole article is based on a false dichotomy: either this Microsoft OS or that Microsoft OS, as though there were no other possible choices. If you're going to have to migrate to a new OS, why not migrate to one that's free (no license costs to deplete your budget) stable and not subject to today's crop of viruses, malware and trojans. (Oh my!) Yes, there's training costs involved, but that's true with any new OS, especially for the rank and file who can't see for themselves that 90%+ of what they do hasn't changed and has to be led by the nose through learning how to do their jobs again.

Re:Gartner is shilling

[Jeff DeMaagd]

The support deadlines aren't rigid. Microsoft has extended support for Windows in the past. I was using Windows 2000 until late last year and was still occasionally getting security updates.

You have a point on working on a migration plan, getting the pieces in place, though the actual migration doesn't have to happen for a few years.

Re:Gartner is shilling

[Maxo-Texas]

Not to be disagreeable but patches have already disabled one part of the software. That's how we became aware of this risk.

Also, Microsoft has told us they do not test all combinations and possibilities- it's unsupported. And support is $50k+$100k+$150k+(x+$50k/year) so even for a multi-billion dollar corporation, support is practically non-existent.

If they change some sort of DLL for a current software, they do not warranty that it won't have a side effect on the VB6 application.

What you are saying may be true for smaller VB6 programs but this is a monster with lots of external DLLs, controls, etc.

Re:Gartner is shilling

[An ominous Cow art]

I bid one competent Python programmer in a beach house, 3 months.

Pfff...

[PhongUK]

If someone needs to be trained to use Windows 7 then there is something wrong with them.

Re:Pfff...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I once had a user request training when their keyboard was replaced.

To be fair, the old keyboard was a basic 101 key model, and the new one had some media control(start, stop, pause, little volume knob) buttons on it.

The user was informed, as politely as shock allowed, that the function of each key on the new keyboard was the same as that of the old, save for the additional keys, whose use was optional, and not required for the performance of any job-related function.

Re:Pfff...

[rkfig]

Hundreds of employees each spending 20+ minutes to figure out where the fuck the print button went in the new version of Office, for example. No, clicking on the ball in the top corner of the screen is not even close to intuitive, and no, there isn't anyone that actually clicks on the take a tour of $new_product to find these things out. Even if they did, multiply that half hour to hour of tour across an enterprise, and it is significant.

Re:Pfff...

[arb phd slp]

I am not the typical idiot user. I'm the guy most people come to when they have a question.

I didn't realize that the circle with the Windows logo in upper left was a menu for almost a month.

Re:Pfff...

[timeOday]

If someone needs to be trained to use Windows 7 then there is something wrong with them.

I have a PhD in computer science and still use XP (when I'm not using Linux) because of the "training costs" of migration. Am I going to go take a class on Windows 7? No. But it's annoying and time-consuming to hunt around for things and figure out how they're done now, set up all the network printer connections again, etc., when I could be getting stuff done, or posting to slashdot :) After switching to Office 2007 about 1 1/2 years ago, I am now accustomed to it, but I *still* don't see what I gained by migrating to the Ribbon interface and re-learning where to find everything. If anything, I still think it's *less* productive than the previous straightforward menu system augmented by toolbars.

You might argue I'll have to migrate eventually so why not now. In the case of Windows 7 that's true, but I did skip Vista entirely and am very glad I did.

Again, I am not against keeping up with technology and retraining myself but only when there is a benefit to doing so.

Re:Pfff...

[Anonymous Coward]

Boy do I agree with this. There must be a department of "Change for changes sake" at microsoft, and I would like to beat those people with my fists.

Re:Pfff...

[jacksonj04]

The ball isn't any more or less intuitive than why a picture of a floppy disk saves your document. It made sense once, but who uses floppies for saving documents nowadays? It's just become commonplace, much like "Exit" being under the "File" menu. Exiting the application has got absolutely nothing to do with the file.

That's why when you ran Office 2007 for the first time there was a huge bubble saying "This is the new Office Button. It has things like Save and Print in it."

Re:Pfff...

[VGPowerlord]

How did you get through ~8 years of college level education on computers and still have a user interface confuse you??

I'm not sure how 8 years of learning how to create your own computer software systems has anything to do with learning someone else's (possibly crappy) UI.

Re:Pfff...

[kscguru]

Every time someone talks about how great XP is working, I have this odd compulsion to point out the Linux equivalent.

If you ran Linux systems that old, you would be using a 2.4.18 kernel (remember LinuxThreads?). You would be using OSS, because ALSA was still incomplete and PulseAudio hadn't come around yet. Your system's compiler would be gcc-2.95, your python implementation would be 1.5.x and run none of today's code, you would still be on an XFree86 server that doesn't support any graphics card made after ~2004. Your web browser would be Mozilla, because Firefox hadn't come around yet (and today's Firefox doesn't support kernels that old). Your OpenSSL libraries would have started at version 0.9.6b, and been patched roughly twice a year since release.

The odd thing is, were this Linux you would be flamed for trying to get modern things running with such old versions. But as this is Windows, you feel entitled to complain about having to re-learn something new and brag about the "effort" you save.

As somebody who programs for both Linux and Windows for a living - your "saved effort" comes at a significant cost to me. It is increasingly hard to write Windows software that works on both XP and Win7; every new feature has to be written twice, once using the right Vista+ API and once to degrade gracefully on XP. Linux is marginally better - there's a new trendy library-of-choice every few years, but at least old ones disappear before too long. Hardware tends to be less than 5 years old, Linux installs tend to be less than 5 years old; yet tech-savvy XP users somehow feel entitled to stay with a 9-year-old OS. Most people don't keep cars that long; why expect an operating system to last?

Re:Pfff...

[the_womble]

Have you seen how much has changed since Office2000?

You missed his point. If you are going to switch too a new version of MS Office that requires that much training, then the cost of retraining is not a valid objection to switching to Open Office.

Re:Pfff...

[timeOday]

The odd thing is, were this Linux you would be flamed for trying to get modern things running with such old versions. But as this is Windows, you feel entitled to complain about having to re-learn something new and brag about the "effort" you save.

Actually there is a huge difference. For me, a primary motivation for updating linux is getting driver support for new devices. On windows, the stable driver abi and supply of 3rd party drivers means XP supports everything on my laptop, even though it came out years after XP was released.

As for python and Mozilla, you don't need the latest kernel to run those. (That's right, I don't update my linux kernel unless I have a specific need, either. Call me crazy).

Re:Pfff...

[paradxum]

I see one problem with your Rant. You assume NO UPDATES!

So that means that Windows XP without any Service packs.

This is where things fall apart since I have been running systems with linux for 9 years, applying the service packs and upgrades. And I have a fully functional system that has never been wiped and reinstalled.

So the next question is what is a service pack and what is a full version?
Windows: Service pack = free, New version = pay me
Linux: Service Pack = new version (for most distros)

The whole not having to pay each time you get a new major version number makes a difference I guess.

The thing is that if you try and take the stance that service packs do not remove functionality, then you forget all the issues we've had with SP2 (and a few with SP3)

I don't really have a 1 to 1 comparison since they are structured differently.
If you do assume NO UPDATES then in windows, most hardware does not work on bare winXP eaither. (Most requires at least SP1 most are SP2)

Re:Pfff...

[ultranova]

Sadly you can get a comp sci phd without knowing how to properly work with a computer, it's not hard given how abstract and math centric the curriculum are at many schools and universities.

As well as it should be. Computer science isn't about using any particular existing computer, it's about the theory underlaying computing and algorithms.

"Sadly, you can get an engineering degree wiihtout knowing how to drive a tractor" doesn't make any sense, for the exactly same reason your statement doesn't.

In many of those schools graphics is relegated to reams of algorithms and theory and anything UI related is pushed off to the graphic design departments.

Good. That's where it belongs. Or possibly to a whole new department - "User Interface Science"?

Dont know

[Anon-Admin]

I am at a Fortune 500 and everything is still XP. Most companies I know are not migrating at this time.

Although, if they have to retrain (Citing time and cost) Plus the cost of a new license then why not move to Linux and at least drop one of the costs (Licensing)

Re:Dont know

[courteaudotbiz]

Absolutely agree with you on this, except that you will have to convince all your software suppliers to create a version of their software for Linux, or you will have to find other software for the employees at your pretty big business to do their job.

Unless all they are using is MS Office that you can replace with OO, you're gonna have the hell of a time finding equivalent software, but in the end, it might pay. Or be painful.

Re:Dont know

[kenh]

The cost of a Win7 licesne doesn't enter into it, most llikely.

Your Fortune 500 company most likely doesn't have retail/OEM Windows XP licenses - they ar emost likely under "Software Advantage" and pay a per-desktop licesne fee for a number of MS apps per year. It is more economical if you turn your desktop operating system or MS applications over every three years.

They pay a license fee each year (software maint.) - do you really imagine a Fortune 500 company can just 'migrate off Win XP' incurring only "training costs"? Every end-user, desktop support tech, and server admin will need exhaustive retraining, plus many, many new applications will need to be evaluated to replace all those handy applications they've used for years...

Apparently you aren't in the IT part of your Fortune 500 employer...

Re:Dont know

[Anon-Admin]

I would tend to agree but in today's offices there really is not a lot of specialty software. 99.9% of the users use office, e-mail, chat, and a very small list of other common apps. Heck, where I am now, the accounting and other custom application are all run on HPUX or Solaris systems and the people open a terminal to the remote server to access them. It was done because it costs less to manage the apps that way, no need to distribute them to the desktops, etc.

Maybe I am wrong and smaller companies pay to have custom apps written for the desktop or maybe small companies are using custom apps to do stuff. Dont know, all the companies I have worked for in the last 15 years are Fortune 500.

Re:Dont know

[Lumpy]

Dont need "equilivant" Wine recently is far more stable.

I even have Sony Vegas video editing software running under it.

I am sure that crappy VB6 sales app your company pays $6800.00 a year for will run fine..... Now will they support it or blame every bug in the thing on your Install....

If they can blame it on something else, they will..

Re:Dont know

[mpe]

Dont need "equilivant" Wine recently is far more stable.

It's possible to have wine configured per app. Which can work out better than running certain combinations of apps nativly on Windows.

Re:Dont know

[utoddl]

Ill challenge the notion that end-users will need retraining. Have you tried to use anything under a Linux Desktop? There would not need to be any retraining as it works the same as the XP, 2000, etc. desktop.

Sure it does. If all you do is click on the little icon on the desktop. I hope you like tickets, because you are going to get a hell of a lot.

Of course he won't get a lot of tickets. He's not porting the icon users use to create tickets! (That would be crazy.)

XP is productive

[goombah99]

FOr business do you really need anything more than XP?

The problem with XP is not that it'snot perfectly satisfactory but that it's not maintained. New software won't be written for it. That's the reason to migrate.

On the other hand one could make a lateral move. Linux is more like XP in feel than even Win 7 is. And software is in production for Linux. So perhaps a lateral move is not so unthinkable in terms of training costs at this particular point in time.

Re:XP is productive

[mspohr]

I migrated my business and home use from XP several years ago. We now use Mac and Ubuntu Linux everywhere. Benefits:

- freedom from worry about malware (80% of XP malware runs on Win7, no malware in the wild for Mac and Linux)

- runs on my existing computers (except Mac OSX, of course)... no need for expensive computer upgrades

- Office software compatibility... we standardize on OpenOffice.org and have been pleasantly surprised that it is more compatible with MS Office than all of the various MS Office versions are with each other.

- other software... we have been pleasantly surprised that we have been able to find good quality software for everything we need. We were worried about the FUD about open source software but haven't had any problems. We have been pleasantly surprised with the quality and availability of Office, Web, eMail, graphics, video, audio, utility, etc. software. We have found everything we need. We don't have any legacy applications tied to XP or IE6.

- powerful unix utilities... we have also been pleasantly surprised to discover a wealth of powerful genuinely useful unix utilities such as rsync, dd, grep, etc. which have made our lives much easier. - training has been a minor expense... this is just not a problem... most people can transfer their Windows skills without problems or a simple introduction.

- support is easy... upgrades from repositories have been a joy...

- Peace of Mind... priceless

Re:XP is productive

[besalope]

I migrated my business and home use from XP several years ago. We now use Mac and Ubuntu Linux everywhere. Benefits:

- freedom from worry about malware (80% of XP malware runs on Win7, no malware in the wild for Mac and Linux)

-

Yeah.. except the first Mac botnet was discovered in the wild well over a year ago. While Windows is indeed a larger target for malware due to marketshare, claiming that there is no malware on MacOS and Linux is just an ignorant view of security.

Re:XP is productive

[mspohr]

Holes found and fixed. Mac and Linux are not impervious to malware, they just have a much higher level of resistance due to the Unix security model... and a much more vigilant community to fix problems promptly. I don't have the illusion that I am completely secure against malware but I do have a high level of confidence that I have a secure system. This is the opposite of Windows where I assume that the systems are compromised and insecure.

Re:XP is productive

[DrgnDancer]

Really? OK, I posted earlier about all the reasons that moving to *nix from Windows is hard, but, well, these are none of them. Every problem you list has at least one often more solutions in the Unix world:

File sharing: Several options. Assuming all Unix machines, NFS is by far the easiest. As long as all users are authenticating off the same directory their UIDs will match between systems. This is the "go to" Unix file sharing system, but there's other options. You can use Samba of course, and there's a few nifty distributed file systems out there that are starting to get mature. The first two options will work on any Unix system including Macs. The distributed solutions are spottier in what they support, being often new.

Centralized Login: Two major solutions. LDAP and NIS+. LDAP is by far the more modern and and scalable, though it can be slightly tricky to set up. Very slightly, nothing any half competent admin can't figure out. Original NIS is also an option, but is getting long in the tooth and has some security problems. Macs are perfectly capable of using LDAP, and I assume NIS as well, though I've never tried

Policy management: This is a little less defined in the Unix world than it is in Windows, but still manageable. Most of these policies are managed by various text files in Unix, so what I typically do is run a script when I first install them to set everything the way I want it. In the unlikely event I need to make a change I just change one system and propagate it to all the others. I have a script that copies a file where ever it needs to go on every machine in the network. You can also automate this through rsync though I've never personally bothered to set this up. I've never run a network complicated enough to really need it. The hard part here is if you have a heterogeneous Unix environment, since nearly all Unix's insist on using different files and different syntax to manage this stuff. I'll admit this is a slightly weak area, but definitely manageable.

Update Management: It's trivial to setup a local repository for any *nix repository system I am aware of. Setup you client to update to the local repository and test updates before you put them on the repo server.

Mostly this stuff is trivial in Unix/Mac environments. When I manage heterogeneous networks my problem is usually getting the Windows boxes to play nice with everyone else. Unix and Mac machines will all happily share files and directory data with each other, even across different OS's and hardware platforms, while the Windows boxes insist on playing their own little game. Samba helps with file sharing, but getting everyone to log in against the same network shared directory is an undertaking and a half.

Time to change your OS to OSX or BSD

[thomasdz]

Just to get the ball started... yes, I agree... it is time to dump Windows XP and change to OS X or one of the BSDs or heck, even one of the mature Linux distributions like Ubuntu.
Moderators: start your engines... am I Flamebait, or am I Insightful? Informative or Offtopic?

Re:Time to change your OS to OSX or BSD

[Trev311]

You are an insightful and informative flamebait who skewed off of the topic!

Re:Time to change your OS to OSX or BSD

[The MAZZTer]

Apparently you are none of them, just Funny. Sorry.

Re:Time to change your OS to OSX or BSD

[thomasdz]

Apparently you are none of them, just Funny. Sorry.

yeah...that's a mod I was not expecting since my post was serious... change XP to OS X ...what's funny about that?

Re:Time to change your OS to OSX or BSD

[imakemusic]

What does Windows 7 bring to your business that XP doesn't?

Shiny. Can't really think of anything else apart from the ability to quickly arrange two windows side by side.

Would that same benefit be provided by other operating systems?

Yes, OSX contains a lot of Shiny but the programs I use every day don't run on it.

Is the difference between Windows 7 and FreeBSD (for example) enough to justify the license cost (not just the initial cost, but the requirement to track licenses as well)?

Yes. My programs don't run on FreeBSD.

If you're going to need retraining anyway, it seems like now would be a good time to consider other alternatives.

Or just stick with XP for now...

Gartner the other marketing arm of Microsoft

[gmack]

Gartner has been a Microsoft/Intel shill for a long time. Their predictions tend towards the laughable as well. If you want some good laughs check out their Itanium, bing or Windows Mobile predictions.

Re:Gartner the other marketing arm of Microsoft

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

Indeed...

Gartner, 2001: "Gartner predicts that, by 2006, IPF-based servers will have a 20 percent share of the overall server market by revenue"

Gartner, 2001: '...for Windows Data Center Server and Enterprise Server, the question is not "Will it be [Itanium]?", but "When?"'

Microsoft, 2010: "Windows Server 2008 R2 to Phase Out Itanium"

Migrate this!

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

God no, you're not alone. We need stable environments for consistency of software development. We have a dozen home-grown tools, and 2x that from open source type things, and jumping service patches is a holy pain, much less an entire OS. We were still supporting Win2k machines until two years ago.

"Migration" is in Microsoft's interest, not yours.

90s?

[Moridineas]

Windows XP came out in late-2001...hardly "the 90s"

At my small office workplace we are down to one remaining Windows 2000 computer, majority XP, no Vista, and one Windows 7. It was a pain to convert our roaming desktops from 2k/XP style to Vista/7 style (samba server). I personally really like Windows 7 though it of course comes with the assortment of upgrading pains and things that make you slap your forehead and say "WHY?!" -- example, out of the box Windows 7 runs a maintenance task that deletes broken shortcuts. Unfortunately for whatever reason it believes shortcuts to documents and programs on our network shares are broken, and so they repeatedly disappeared until we figured that out. Why can't I pin a network share/document/application to the start bar? etc

We also have an OS9 computer that doesn't get used often anymore (though did up until about 3 months ago), OSX 10.4, 10.5, and 10.6.

Why upgrade if it still works? (of course barring any major security vulnerabilities that can't be protected against)

Windows 7 is actually kinda good

[superglaze]

Flamebait, I know. But honestly, having used 7 for a while on my personal machines and having to still use XP at work, it's 7 all the way. I shall pretend that Vista never happened.

Re:Windows 7 is actually kinda good

[Anonymous Coward]

That's nice, but XP is also "kinda good". It'll die when it can't run a supported version of Office anymore.

Re:Windows 7 is actually kinda good

[AndrewNeo]

As long as it can run Office 2003, there will still be people who use it. (*sigh*)

Re:Windows 7 is actually kinda good

[eldepeche]

I like Windows 7 a lot as well. I work for a cloud software company, and as a non-developer who had used prerelease versions of 7, I upgraded my machine as soon as it came out. Display hotplugging magically started working properly, and the Aero Snap feature is like a useful version of Tile from 3.1. The only issue I have is related to the Cisco VPN client, but that's because we won't pay to upgrade to the latest version.

Having spent the XP-Vista era in the Mac and Linux world, I was pleasantly surprised with 7. It doesn't seem to have all the terrible bug/features that everyone spent the 00's complaining about.

Staying with XP

[NetDanzr]

Same at my company. Given that we use largely Web-based applications, there is no cost for porting apps to Win7 (if necessary at all); the only external cost would be to retire a few older printer that we tested as not working with Win7. However, with the few Win7 machines we have, we experienced two problems:

• Retraining for Win7 is prohibitive, from a production perspective. We can't afford people to be idle for a day or two. (This also assumes converting from Office 2003 to Office 2007, which eats up most of the retraining costs
• Anti-piracy controls on Win7 are far from perfect. We have only three machines with Win7, and yet we experienced a total of four times so far a black background and a screen that our product key was invalid. A call to Microsoft has always solved the issue, but it's still a hassle.

Re:Staying with XP

[Lonewolf666]

The difference is that XP requires activation once when installing, then it does not check again (except for getting certain additional downloads). AFAIK Vista and Win7 do periodically recheck their activation, calling a Microsoft server in the process. If something goes wrong with that, you may end up with a complaining Win7.

For me this is the main reason to stick to XP (and have an eye on Linux, which might be my next OS once XP becomes impractical to support).

"...is Window 7 the way forward?"

[John Hasler]

Well, it's a way, but it may not be forward...

We'd like to but...

[painandgreed]

My company is ready to migrate once our vendor applications are compatible with Win7. Some won't run. Some haven't been verified by the company to work and our company won't move forward till the bendor says it's ok. Some are web apps that won't work with IE8. They will work in compatibility mode but once again, unless the vendor signs off on that and agrees that they won't corrupt our database or lack features doing such, management does not want to move forward. We're also a hospital and healthcare if involved directly so we don't want to beta test anything. We'd like to move forward to 64 bit Win7, but until ALL the applications we use can, we have to stick with WinXP because they are all used together on the same machines.

For the record, nobody ever considered Vista. Not us. Not the vendors.

Any concept of what's involved in migration?

[kenh]

Windows 7 has hardware requirements that many, many otherwise capable WinXP boxes can't meet either technically or economically.

It's easy to say well, upgrade your 1 Gig RAM 2 GHz P4 desktop to 2 Gig of RAM, but if you have to pitch 2x 512 Meg sticks and buy 2x 1 Gig PC3200 sticks it can get expensive fast. And that IDE drive will suffice, but it won't be very speedy - an upgrade may be in order, but unless your desktop includes a SATA port, will it really be cost-effective? Oh, and you can toss in a ReadyBoost USB flash drive to improve performance, but this is starting to get expensive...

PC3200 RAM is about $40-50 a Gig, a 4 Gig ReadyBoost USB flash drive will cost another $10 and where does that leave you? With an investment of $100/desktop plus labor in performing the hardware upgrade, or half the price of a new low-end Dell OptiPlex which will blow the socks off the 5-7 year old P4 you are investing in.

OR you could just sit on WinXP boxes for another year and start saving up for a forklift upgrade next year...

Re:1990's?

[kermyt]

Yeah but MS didn't get XP right till august of 2004. and why was the parent modded funny? Are mods modding based on sigs now??

You can't fix stupid...

[Just_Say_Duhhh]

so migrating to Win7 won't help your company. Stay on XP, keep trying to get by with IE6, and UPDATE YOUR RESUME! Oh yeah, have you pulled your money out of the employee stock plan yet?

Re:1990s?

[Anonymous Coward]

ME was released September 2000.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows

It's also time to dump dumb terminals...

[HockeyPuck]

...but we just rebranded them as Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.

-Brought to you by VMWare and Wyse.

64-Bit

[DarkSarin]

The main reason, in my mind, to upgrade is being able to effectively use 64-bit machines fully--and have more than 4GB of RAM.

Yes you need new machines to do this, but really, if you are buying NEW machines, you should probably upgrade. The question then becomes a matter of whether or not new machines are worthwhile. Your old machines may be still serviceable, but would newer machines result in getting work done enough faster to offset (even partially) the cost of the upgrade.

In many cases, the answer is no--a LOT of secretaries & folks that mainly do word processing are better off just staying where they are--their machines are fast enough for what they do, and additional RAM & extra cores aren't going to make a difference.

That said, if you are doing statistical analysis, engineering, graphic design, programming (and compiling), and a number of other jobs, then you should ABSOLUTELY be on a very aggressive upgrade schedule. Additionally, 8GB of RAM is more than just a good idea for many of those jobs--some of them should be stuffing as MUCH memory as they can into their machines so that they can do their jobs more efficiently.

In any work setting the bottleneck for employee performance should not be the environment or resources, but rather human capacities. That's the ideal. Obviously cost of achieving that and other considerations prevent most companies from getting to the point where that's true--but it should be the goal.

So either move to Win7-x64 OR move to another 64-bit OS with lots of power & memory in the hardware. Staying where you are only makes sense if you are doing mostly word processing.

Re:64-Bit

[Belegothmog]

The main reason, in my mind, to upgrade is being able to effectively use 64-bit machines fully-

This. The main reason to upgrade to Win7 is for 64-bit. Unfortunately, it's also the main reason to put off upgrading. While we haven't had too many issues with software and 64-bit (though there are some), the main problem has been with peripherals. In our IT shop, none of the PC card or USB NICs that we had have a Win7 64-bit driver. Only one of our USB to Serial adapters has a 64-bit driver. A customer has handheld scanners for their warehouse -- no 64-bit driver. Same issues with printer drivers. So in addition to the training and workstation hardware issues related to upgrading to Win7, some companies may have significant issues with drivers for peripheral hardware.

Re:64-Bit

[roachdabug]

We build 3D models of assemblies with several thousands of fully detailed parts, generate and detail production drawings based on these huge assemblies, and perform extensive FEA as well. I can't speak for others, but I can tell you for certain that in my case, computers will probably never be fast enough.

Re:64-Bit

[pavon]

The driver support for Windows 7 64-bit is far, far, better than XP 64-bit.

Re:64-Bit

[(H)elix1]

XP (x64) users here too. On a desktop, it was stupid easy. The mainboard and video card both had XP-64 drivers, which covered most of the hardware. (One thing that nVidia got right). Setting up XP-64 on my laptop took a bit more work, substituting Server 2003 drivers where the XP drivers did not do the trick.

Only a very small set of apps have issues, and most of those can be fixed by removing a brain dead installer restriction on the version of NT. Fixing ITunes was a real treat... Someone at Apple deserves a good beating for that one.

Most of my games are supported as well. A couple games, out of a very large steam collection, have issues. The worst is probably Dirt 2, where the stupid games for windows live client does not work, disabling the auto save. When I benchmarked COH, TF2, and a few of the other games I play - XP64 was faster than Win7 on the same hardware. Tis a shame that more people don't know about XP64, other than folks with an MSDN subscription or a workstation.

Lack of application and hardware support

[tepples]

Would that same benefit be provided by other operating systems?

Wine runs a surprising number of Windows applications, including Microsoft Office. But it still doesn't run everything, especially intranet web applications that rely on IE 6 and/or ActiveX. It especially doesn't run drivers for specialized peripherals or for some hardware that might be in a company's existing, paid-for PCs.

Running XP?

[Prototerm]

I'm still on 2000, you insensitive clod! I'm planning to *upgrade* to XP in the next year or so. Provided my hardware can run it, that is. Everyone knows that XP is a resource hog. :)

Re:1990's?

[Lumpy]

And places like Comcast did not migrate to it until the spring of 2006.

Here we are looking at Migrating AWAY from windows 7. We have had nothing but trouble with customer control hardware and device programming. It's probably due to using the 64 bit version of Windows 7 but Dell does not give you the option to select a 32 bit version with new laptops..

WE are downgrading field PC's to XP and office PC's are upgrading to Ubuntu with crossover office for Vertical Windows legacy apps. We switched to Open Office 3 years ago when the BSA came knocking and the boss lost his mind over how the BSA fined us for something we were legit but did not have the documentation the BSA wanted.

Open source is the first choice here and closed source a last resort. It's really refreshing.

Re:1990s?

[Lennie]

I don't think anyone can confuse Windows XP with Windows ME. :-)

Oh brother

[jav1231]

Another editor writes an idiotic title??
Let's answer this simply, since the article has a simple title: "Is it finally time to dump XP?" NO. It's 2010. By your own article's admission support ends in 2014!

FTFA: "IT departments need to dump Microsoft's Windows XP operating system (OS) before the software vendor ends support for it in April 2014"
Thanks, Capt. Obvious!
Also FTFA: "the sooner the better as many new versions of applications are not expected to support XP beyond 2012."
What applications? Do these people live in the enterprise? Vendor apps are the slowest to migrate to any new OS. That's one of the major reasons why migrations happen so slowly. The other is money. In a down economy you're simply not going to see wholesale adoption of Windows 7 when there's no funding and companies can pull profits from apps that are working now! This is all fun to sit and talk about and kick up some worry but the reality is when you go back to your CIO or IT manager funding will win out. They're going to wait till they get closer to EOL and hope the economy turns around and frankly that's what they should do.

Re:A redundant first post

[buswolley]

BUt then most /. posts are redundant. Good going.

Re:Training??????

[dn15]

Train for what?
Can people not just figure out where they moved the buttons you click on to?

As someone who does IT/support for hundreds of computers daily, believe me when I say training is always an issue. People tend to memorize the exact steps necessary to complete a task, including the appearance and location of buttons. If an icon changes or a button gets moved, they don't try to intuit where it might have gone or look in menus that sound like they're related to the function they're looking for. Instead they react as if their world has been turned upside down, and they just give up and call for help.

Re:1990's?

[jazzduck]

A future?

Re:Taskbar differences

[eldepeche]

The 7 taskbar is also very intuitive. If an application has more than one window open, you see a little stack of tiles. if you hover over the stack, you get a bunch of live previews of that application's windows.

Seriously, if you are so bad at using computers that you need training to go from the "number of windows and window list" of XP to "stack of tiles and window thumbnails", you are an automaton who can and probably should be replaced by someone younger and more mentally flexible.

If you are valuable enough for your non-computer skills, then your company should pay to send you to a week-long computer skills course at the local community center. Shouldn't cost more than $100.

Re:A redundant first post

[Gilmoure]

BUt then most /. stories are redundant.

There, fixed that for you.

Re:1990s?

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

I can confuse Windows ME and Windows Vista. :)

Upgrade... for what?

[Angst Badger]

No, seriously. What killer new features does Windows 7 have that are worth the time and expense of an upgrade from XP? The only one I've heard mentioned, that it sucks less than Vista, doesn't apply to XP users.

When it gets down to it, there are two main reasons to upgrade to Windows 7: Eventually, it will become impossible to get new machines running XP. And Microsoft really wants your money. Neither of these benefits the user.

Re:Upgrade... for what?

[Tom]

You beat me to it.

I've upgraded one machine to W7. Don't see much of a reason to upgrade the other. Aside from a few minor improvements, there really isn't all that much in W7 that is compelling. And in all the things that matter to me - user friendliness, software available, performance, in that order - it is just as bad as the other crap out of Redmond.

Yes, MS has put in incentives - IE8 (which I don't use), DX10/11 (which really doesn't make all that much of a difference so far) and probably a couple others.

It still doesn't handle misbehaving applications well, it is still obnoxious in everything it does (where is the "I know, you've told me 500 times, now fuck the fuck off and leave me alone!" button?) and the UI is at least as much an abomination as every other version.

Back to the original subject...

[mollog]

I work at a company that every reader of slashdot would know, and we are still using XP in the development environment. I suppose that Microsoft would have to stop supporting Visual Studio 2008 on XP to force this organization off of XP and onto 7.

Vista is loaded on the 'corporate' PC but XP is on the development PC. XP works, it's stable. End of story.

Re:Back to the original subject...

[SalaSSin]

Apple?

Re:Back to the original subject...

[RulerOf]

Vista is loaded on the 'corporate' PC but XP is on the development PC. XP works, it's stable. End of story.

Should I have to use or admin your products, all I care about is that you actually know how to develop for Vista or later and that your product follows its security model and conventions.

There are plenty of apps developed for Vista and 7 that do obnoxious shit like default putting downloaded files in ~\Documents\Downloads. For fuck's sake, there's ~\Downloads for that, and it works quite nicely. Yes, I'm looking at you, Chrome. Smart enough to avoid UAC by installing into AppData, but ignorant and audacious enough to break the much improved home folder in the same stroke.

If an app did that on Linux or OS X, people would pitch a fit... especially the developers.

Re:Back to the original subject...

[cyberthanasis12]

I work at a company that every reader of slashdot would know, and we are still using XP

You, Sir, work for Microsoft, don't you?

Re:Back to the original subject...

[Tubal-Cain]

Canonical

Re:Back to the original subject...

[SpryGuy]

XP is on the development PC. XP works, it's stable. End of story.

We do all our development on Win7. Win7 just works. It's stable. It's faster and feature-rich and up-to-date. It has a lot of great short-cuts and productivity enhancers in the UI. End of story.

Re:Back to the original subject...

[RulerOf]

Win7 just works. It's stable. It's faster and feature-rich and up-to-date. It has a lot of great short-cuts and productivity enhancers in the UI. End of story.

That's what so many IT pro's don't understand about Vista and 7. They install it and immediately turn a bunch of new features off and revert to the "Classic" Start menu.

Meanwhile, while they're hunting for an application buried deep inside some terrible folder hierarchy that stretches across the whole screen, I tap the Windows key, type the first three letters of an Application name, hit enter, and I'm there. Meanwhile, my colleagues whine about the lack of an "Up" button while I just click the back button on my mouse or the folder name in the breadcrumb bar.

I call the classic start menus and such "I fear change" mode. Fitting, I think :D

Re:Back to the original subject...

[V!NCENT]

Linux user here (so much for disclaimers)...

XP cold boots in under 2 minutes on... ehm... a very old Dell Pentium4 laptop with a horribly slow HDD. But maybe you are not only booting XP but also a whole cargo load of extra's along with it, like additional services, systray diver apps, potentialy malware (which you, of course, do not have because you have a virus scanner, right? *bonus points if you can see what I did here*).

Re:Back to the original subject...

[RulerOf]

I wasn't strictly speaking to development. Development is only one aspect of using a computer in a sea of virtually limitless possibilities.

Given that there are two Windows OS's that are newer and have better features tailored to the way people use Windows, software development included, it stands to reason that, even as a developer, if you don't know or are too shortsighted to see these benefits more recent versions of Windows offers, you should still target NT6 as the primary platform for your application irrespective of its compatibility with previous Windows versions.

It is woefully ignorant for a software publisher to restrict their customers to a technically inferior, harder to use operating system because its developers are too ignorant or stubborn to learn what newer ones have to offer.

I understand that I'm ranting a little bit, and my argument doesn't apply to legacy applications, but it's incredibly pig-headed and stupid for a piece of software developed after 2006 to be completely incompatible with NT6+. It's irresponsible and lazy, and is tantamount to targeting a web app at IE6 only. I'm sure I don't need to express why that is a really stupid idea.

Re:Back to the original subject...

[Will.Woodhull]

Parent post incorrectly rated "Funny".

Should be rated "Insightful".

Re:Back to the original subject...

[shutdown -p now]

Wow...so, did Vista and 7 get Unix style folders?!?! No more C: drive and the like?? Cool, I'll have to check that out!

Both yes and no.

You have been able to use slashes in file paths since DOS 1.0. All Win32 APIs that take filenames understand them. All GUI applications do, too (try navigating to e.g. C:/Users in Explorer and see what happens).

Command-line tools do as well, but the problem there is that leading "/" is also treated as an indicator to start a command-line option, and furthermore, as an option separator. So if you write dir /foo/bar, this will be parsed as argv[1]="/foo", argv[2]="/bar" to begin with, and then those will be treated as options (unrecognized, so you'll get an error) rather than paths. If you put quotes around it, however - e.g. dir "/foo/bar" - this will be properly interpreted as a path.

(As a side note, you can thank IBM for this whole mess; when DOS has got directories, it was supposed to use "/" for paths and "-" for options, as God and K&R intended.)

PowerShell disposes with all this, and uses "-" only for options, so it will never misinterpret a Unix-style path. Of course, it also understands "/" as a path separator (though will still show "\" for NTFS and registry in paths that it itself outputs). It also understands "~" as a shortcut for home directory, and expands variables with "$...", not DOS-style "%...%".

Disk letters are still there, but can be largely ignored if desired. You'll still need one for your root, but everything else can be mounted in directories underneath it, including any removable drives, USB sticks etc. At this point, you can also start omitting it in all paths you input, and always start them with "\" (or "/"), since the current drive will always be the only one in the system.

Re:Back to the original subject...

[ducomputergeek]

We run development on macs. We can then load Windows XP or Windows 7 Via Boot Camp or parallels. (Development macs all have at least 8GB some now with 16GB of RAM). OSX is stable, unix, and we can run windows exactly like it says on the tin: in a window. Heck we can even run OSX, XP, 7, and a flavor or two of linux all at the same time.

Re:Back to the original subject...

[coxymla]

You can start typing the name of a program to run or document to search for in the Classic Start menu as well, you know.

Also, "Back" is not the same as "Up" and a dedicated button for one of the most used functions in Windows Explorer would be much more user friendly and efficient than having to read, parse, and hit a variablly sized and situated breadcrumb.

Re:Back to the original subject...

[brantondaveperson]

Damn that sounds awesome, where do you work??

Re:1990's?

[Xeno man]

Why is it time exactly? What benefit would most companies exactly get from upgrading? If everything works and there is no foreseeable change in the software that the business runs to conduct business, why spend hundreds of dollars per computer for a new OS and maybe some extra RAM to do exactly what they are doing now?

My Official Recommendation

[scorp1us]

When XP is no longer getting security updates (and its not that far out) everyone install the latest LTS Ubuntu. Set up an XP theme for users resistant to visual change.

Then, for any business-essential application that requires Windows, use Citrix, RDP or VNC to some secured XP boxes. Or, use VirtualBox or VMware. You can set the VMs to use specfic MAC addrs then set the DHCP server to not assign those an internet gateway, so they can't get on the intERnet, but they can still use the intRAnet. This way your users can still use the internet but not risk infection of XP machines.

OpenOffice is usable, but the .DOC and Access DB base still represents a migration problem.

It may be possible to use CodeWeaver's Crossover office ($40) to get Office to work where you have to. However I expect the reduced support costs to pay dividends, as well as not having to upgrade hardware. It now takes XP 14 minutes to boot on a (3-year-old) dual-core laptop. Ubuntu starts in 60 seconds, and that is to a "usable" desktop.

Other things that Ubtunu beats windows on:
- centralized updater. Only one update service runs for the whole system.
- no viruses

I've really been amazed at the latest Ubuntus - as easy to use as Windows - no - in fact easier.

I'll always keep a copy of XP around, but it will be a virtual machine that I keep between my linux upgrades and it won't have internet access, so I don't have to worry about viruses.

Re:A redundant first post

[Anonymous Coward]

All "fixed that for you" posts are not just redundant. They're also stupid.

OT about /. metamoderation being broken

[glavenoid]

I think the current and recent moderator pool is from the newer users who are used to moderation on sites like reddit and digg where people tend to vote emotionally, and unused to slashdot's trend of promoting comments rather than demoting them.

It doesn't help matters any that the new(er) metamoderation system is completely unlike the old (working) system, and that metamoderation seems to do absolutely nothing these days...

Give me a reason

[Todd Knarr]

I'd cite the same reason business will give: "Give me a single business reason to migrate. Tell me what Windows 7 will do for me that Windows XP isn't doing for me today.". Note: "XP's being EOL'd." is a very weak business reason. The primary benefit's to the vendor, my only benefit is ending up exactly where I started. Various features of Windows 7 itself aren't good business reasons either. I don't run Windows for it's own features, I run it for the applications I use every day that need Windows underneath them to run. "But your applications aren't going to support XP anymore, you have to upgrade Windows to run them." also isn't a very good business reason, again it's arguing that I need to spend a lot of money and time and effort getting right where I already am today. It's also circular, because my application vendors are going "Microsoft isn't supporting XP anymore, so you're going to have to upgrade to new versions of the applications that'll run on Windows 7.".

Now, "Windows 7 provides better security and you won't have as many problems with malware." might be a better business reason. Still weak, but better. But it'll get me to thinking: what makes me think Windows 7 really will be any better? Many of the vulnerabilities in Windows come not from Windows but from things like Internet Explorer and Outlook. I can eliminate many of them by just not having those things around, by using Firefox and Thunderbird and the like instead. Except, oh look, I can't because Microsoft doesn't allow me to remove IE. It's always there, it's always active and it's always used for certain things. And Windows 7 doesn't change that. Other vulnerabilities are caused by things like Windows' file-sharing capabilities. Except, why are my desktops even sharing files? They aren't network file servers, they've no business even having the ability to give other machines network access to their filesystems at all. Except that Windows won't let me turn that service off without crippling Windows itself, and Windows 7 doesn't change that. So why am I spending time and effort upgrading to a version of Windows that has the same basic vulnerabilities built into it's design that my existing one does, as opposed to say spending that effort convincing my application vendors to support an OS where I can completely remove the things I don't need and not have to worry about whether there's vulnerabilities in them anymore?

I'll probably have to migrate this year as a purely technical matter, because support won't be there and I can't afford not to have security updates and AV support. But it won't be because I'm deriving any real benefit from the upgrade, it'll be because a vendor needs more upgrade revenue and is in a position to twist my arm. And as a pure business matter I'm going to be looking seriously at ways to get that vendor out of a position where he can twist my arm anymore, because it's just not good business to be at someone else's mercy.

Re:1990's?

[jacksonj04]

So that in a few years people don't arrive having never used XP and immediately start cursing at "this stupid system". Little things like the improved taskbar, the window snap and so on all work their way into how you interact and you suddenly feel lost without them.

Software isn't the problem, people who use 7 at home and don't want to go back to XP at work are.

That and the fact Vista and 7 don't support IE6. If the OS can't support it, IE6 is dead.

Re:Training??????

[Rockoon]

. If an icon changes or a button gets moved, they don't try to intuit where it might have gone or look in menus that sound like they're related to the function they're looking for. Instead they react as if their world has been turned upside down, and they just give up and call for help.

Only because it means that they can sit around doing nothing for awhile.

Re:1990s?

[delinear]

I used WinME back in the day... mostly because I got it for free from an MS employee.

Wow, they sure made a mess of that "the first hit is free" policy. That's like a cocaine dealer trying to get you hooked by giving you a free hit that's been cut with ground glass and lye...

Re:Taskbar differences

[Iyonesco]

Very intuitive? The Windows 7 taskbar is a massive productivity roadblock.

For example, imagine have multiple instances of the same application open and you wish to switch between instances. In XP each instance has its own button on the task bar (usually with the file you have open written on it) so you simply click on the instance you want. In Windows 7 there's only one button for each application so first you have to click that to bring up some pretty pictures. You then identify which instance you want and click that. That's two clicks instead of one, additional mouse movement and some time faffing around with pretty pictures. How is this an improvement?

Then there's the situation where you've just started using some new programs and don't know the icons for them. In XP the taskbar buttons have the names of the applications written on them so it's easy to identify your applications. In Windows 7 the taskbar only has abstract icons with no text so if you don't know the icon it can be hard to find your applications. This actually happened to me when using Windows 7 and because I didn't know the icons for some programs I ended up thoroughly pissed of trying to find what I was looking for. How is this an improvement?

The new taskbar also makes it hard to identify if a program is running (of if it's just a quicklaunch shortcut) and impossible to tell how many instances of an application are running.

Despite these reductions in the functionality of the taskbar it is now in fact bigger, so uses more desktop real estate to do less.

Sure, you can switch back to the old taskbar but how long will that last? The old start menu has been removed from Windows 7 so I'm sure the old task bar will probably be gone by Windows 8. Besides, the task bar is only one element of the Windows 7 interface that's thoroughly fucked up.

If they added the XP desktop environment to Windows 8 then I'd happily upgrade. However, there's no way I'll touch Windows 7 or any subsequent version until they provide a decent user interface.

It Is Not About The 90's

[s31523]

The question of migration is not about staying in the 90's. Ask yourself this, "If it were your money, what would you do?". Your answer would probably be, if you were a successful business, you would look at the cost-benefit of the switch. So, citing training costs is a factor. Another factor might be whether you develop application that run on Windows, or do you just use Windows as development platform at all, or just a casual Business user? In the end, if the switch will cost you (the company) thousands of dollars and you gain nothing, surely you would not want to switch because Microsoft is forcing the switch. From a training perspective, one would want to push off the switch for as long as possible to allow the market (end users) to get the familiarity with the new Windows and Office on their home PCs so that training is minimal at the work place. If you personally upgrade your home PC, which a lot of people will do, and use it for a year or three, when your Office does the switch it (the new Windows) will be old hat, and that means less training on the company dime.

Getting back to the topic...

[BrokenHalo]

I am always somewhat mystified by these companies that cite "training" issues when it comes to preparation for upgrading. Sure, some people are a bit thick, but it really isn't that hard to fumble your way around a Windows machine, especially if all you're doing is using a browser and MSOffice.

If one's staff can't cope with such minor changes, they're umemployable in the first place.

Re:Getting back to the topic...

[Scoth]

I'm not sure if you've ever had experience supporting people, either over the phone or in person, but a surprisingly large number of people immediately lock up and scream for help if anything the least bit out-of-place happens. Maybe a Word toolbar gets rearranged somehow, or they accidentally move an icon somewhere, or their Big Project drops off the Recently Used list... stuff like that utterly stops workflow. The concept of fumbling around, trying stuff out, or otherwise figuring it out is a foreign concept since they're still in the camp of fearing they're going to break it or get a "virus" somehow.

You can argue they're unemployable, but I'd hazard to say even a majority of the average non-technical office workers are like this. Now throw in Windows 7 and IE8, and suddenly there's a lot of little differences they'll have to learn and/or get used to. Maybe throw Office 2007/2010 with the ribbon in if perhaps they were still using an old version of Office as well. I do tend to think the fear and cost is overstated, but you can't discount it entirely either.

Re:Getting back to the topic...

[tbannist]

The cynic might observe that in many companies the employees are there because they are unemployable elsewhere...

Our Migration plan

[vinn]

Our migration is probably similar to many other companies. Here's what we're doing in case anyone is curious how this roadmap looks in a reasonably sized company (multilocation, etc, etc):

1. We got our first Win7 system to test a few months ago. We discovered almost everything worked, but our VPN clients should be updated, our AV needed some updating, and really we should be on Office 2010. The nice thing there is we can eradicate Office 2003 once and for all.

2. So, that really prompts some server upgrades that we've been planning for a while anyway. We're going to consolidate a lot of servers onto VM'ed boxes. Most of our stuff (was) running Server 2003, with the exceptions of our domain controllers which we updated to 2008 last year. Exchange 2010 (from 2003) was planned for a while, so we pulled the trigger on that one. That also prompts an upgrade of BES (Blackberry Enterprise Server) from 4.1 to 5.0. Our asset tracking also needed some attention in order to make sure we don't populate it with garbage when new machines arrive. We're hoping to have Exchange completely migrated by the end of July using a slow migration tactic instead of cutting over in the middle of the night. The goal here is to leave some app servers on 2003 until the new version of MS's server platform comes out, then update to that on an application by application basis.

3. So.. that means there's a fair amount of work to do before we want to consider replacing the user machines. I suspect most companies are in that boat. I think most companies are itching to replace XP - it's getting pretty tough to maintain these days and pretty outdated. Plus, no (sane) company actually upgrades machines from XP to Win7 - you transition to Win7 when your leases expire or you need to purchase a new desktop/laptop. Upgrading is in no way cost effective. Therefore, based on a lifecycle of 3 - 4 years per machine, we'll see XP still being used for 2 - 3 years at least for light duty.

Now, the really crazy part? Most suppliers are pushing 32-bit Win7. That means the 32-bit legacy is going to continue to haunt us when we could have transitioned to Win64.

Re:1990s?

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who purchased Windows ME to do their first Win install I can tell you that there is a massive difference, but IE is about as useful as it ever was.

Cost is almost never the #1 factor

[erroneus]

Cost is usually rather low on the reasons for wanting to stay with Windows XP. There is an increasing amount of Microsoft phobia in business lately... at all levels. Moving to a "newer" Microsoft product used to bring cheers from the users. Now it brings groans. Why? Lately, it seems, Microsoft has been dumping far too much change on users and it is a burden. To this day, I STILL don't know how to find my way around Office 2007 and now there is Office 2010?!

And in a business sense, change can be expensive. There is downtime, re-training/re-learning, and the cost of mistakes that happen more often when big changes occur. (Almost no one ever cites the potential cost of mistakes during a migration... they can be quite costly at times.)

Re:Cost is almost never the #1 factor

[HikingStick]

In addition, in specialty environments (e.g., some manufacturing shops), you're often constrained by what your other software vendors and equipment providers will support. A number of our key tools (e.g., 3D CAD) support Windows 7, but we have many legacy tools that only run on XP (or earlier environments!). In some cases, vendors are only supporting newer OSes if we also upgrade the machines that are tethered to the workstations--that means it's not as simple as buying a new PC and a new version of software, but instead could mean a $200,000.00 investment in a manufacturing device that will again be tethered to a specific build of Windows.

7 is nothing special

[AdmV0rl0n]

Win 7 has had some of its speed issues sorted out. But some of the glaring problems and failures from Vista simply remain and are not going to be fixed. Vista was not a good release, but unlike with ME where MS changed the underpinnings, this time they have kept them.

There has been some movement in terms of applications being recoded and reworked, or simply versioned up to close the hole, and many driver problems have been resolved. But older drivers, programs, applications - all largely the same problems as under Vista. Microsoft threatened to provide shims for none working programs and applications, but these are a sticky plaster over a bigger problem. We don't live in the 1990s any more. The enforced upgrade of hundreds of machines then now equats to thousands of machines (assuming a portion of general growth). The idea people are just going to hand over ever larger bundles of money for beta level PRE SP1 releases is really quite over. Given the state of the economy, and given the pain of trying to move, many will simply hold on until they absolutly have to - and will only change then.

Microsoft made the largest error in their history with 7. They changed the look and feel, moving many items around for no real reason apart from making it'new'. Thus the cost is retraining. They also chose the time to introduce changes at every level, breaking drivers, applications and programs, and the new OS only has partial compatability. They would have been vastly better breaking their OS into 32 bit legacy and brand new 64 bit, with a complete break from the past. They should have continued to fully rework and support XP and 2003 as the end of line 32 bit market supply, and continued to make money out of that. At the same time they should have introduced win 7 (or you may say Vista) as the 64 bit future OS. The infexible approach of saying 'we are ending xp' 'move' has no real reflection in terms of where the world sits on this.

In terms of 7 its still riddled with pathetic bugs (the deletion of a user and inability to create without having to clean registry all the way back to Vista is still there) and application, driver, and program issues are just as bad as they were with Vista. The fact is 7 has been sold across the tech world because some people wanted something new. And they for whatever reason don't see the bugs, or prefer not to talk about them. Or they cite its a new MS release and say its 'always been like this, and it will be sorted by an SP'. However, again, this is not the 1990's and people should not be 'beta' testing full releases for the vendor. Its riddled with issues on SMB/CIFS with older devices, it has numerous problems in terms of WiFi, the entire area of networking including VPN (PPTP is a spectacular screw up, dropped connections, or connections that no longer work as they should) - not to mention retarded control panel and network screens.

The only kudos I can really give it, is that the Vista speed issues and complete sluggishness of that has been turned round. But most of the very core problems remain, and are not going to be fixed. With that as a background, I think many people will simply not move yet, no matter how much Gartner thinks they should. The days of IT being handed money like confetti really died quite some time ago and the reality of this remains today.

Re:A redundant first post

[Gilmoure]

I must be new here.

Re:A redundant first post

[TheKidWho]

It seems so. Welcome to 2010, This year is really the year of Linux on the Desktop, Google is now your overlord please welcome it, and in Soviet Russia you get that fixed for you!

Windows 7 is broken for engineering/development

[Austerity Empowers]

CAD tools, lab tools both shrink wrap and otherwise work with XP and they have no plans of upgrading. Some of it is because there's not enough money in it to do so, some of it is because of signed drivers costing a fortune for these tiny shops to produce.

Then there's inhouse tools which typically require custom device drivers and what not for running low level hardware tests (I work at a large server maker), also which have either API changes at the device level, or which bitch about signed drivers. Yes this can be turned off, but typically we give this stuff off to people who aren't terribly computer literate and it becomes difficult to get things working.

Windows 7 is fine for goofing off with, certainly way better than Vista, but it's still not ready for prime time.

In the old days it was called a 'forklift upgrade'

[oh-dark-thirty]

But you only needed a forklift for the mainframe itself, usually the terminals stayed put. Migrating to Win7 from XP pretty much demands a client hardware refresh along with whatever ERP/WMS/CRM bloatware you're upgrading, so you might want to order an extra forklift for moving the pallets of desktops boxes that will be delivered. Of course, any thin-client+VM visionaries are a leg up.

Nobody comlains when we change phone systems.

[stewbacca]

Why is this conversation never about upgrading our phones, or getting new office chairs, or getting a new microwave in the break room? Sometimes it's just time for new stuff, but you never hear anyone denying a new round of phone purchases because, "it costs a lot to train users". If anyone can argue that getting a new phone system, with all of it's functionality, is easier than upgrading to the next MS OS, I'm all ears.

Change happens. We need to deal with it and quit lamenting the (mostly imaginary) productivity losses.

Sure it's time to upgrade going to be a bit though

[nsafreak]

I work at a Fortune 250 company that many slashdotters would recognize if I put out the name. Our IT department has been planning the rollout of Windows 7 for quite a while now and it's going to take time simply because of the amount of testing that has to be done. They have to make sure all of the applications that we use on a regular basis (some of which are built internally) work fine with the new operating system and work as expected. Then they have to make sure all of our hardware is compatible. When you have tens of thousands of workstations that's a lot of hardware to check. Yes there is desktop standardization to a degree but even then you have those users that have to have a custom piece of hardware for their job that isn't in other configurations. Frankly right now is about the time most companies need to start a migration plan if they haven't already. It won't be too much longer before Microsoft stops supporting XP entirely and no longer issues any security patches. And having an operating system like Windows XP operating unpatched is definitely not a good thing.

Re:If ain't broke...

[Arthur Grumbine]

How safe do you feel driving your 1960s car down the freeway at 80 mph?

Good point. I'd have a hard time restraining myself to 80mph in a 1968 Camaro SS.

But, but, but, we just GOT to XP!

[Erisian]

A little background: I work for a large (50k emp) company. We only just (Q2 this year) officially got rid of Win2k as a supported desktop. There is no way we will be ready for Win7 anytime soon. There are many issues an organization like mine faces:

-Training - non-IT people have jobs to do beyond "messing with computers". Computers aren't toys for these people, they are tools. Changing tools requires re-training.
-Training - IT people, frankly, are lazy and don't like to learn new things any more than non-IT people. Yes, there are exceptions, but lets not pretend that all tech folks are super eager to change to the latest and greatest all the time. (I really do wonder why so many geeks still write user level apps in C and like the command line.)
-Interaction - We have a very complex environment where many things are setup to interact "just so". Is this bad? Yes, but it's the way things are. Implementing a large change like WinXP->Win7 requires a HUGE amount of testing of sometimes very subtle differences.
-Legacy - We have mission critical applications (both in house and 3rd party) that are not ready to deploy on Win7 without substantial work. Could they have been developed differently so that this wouldn't be the case? Yes. AND they weren't.

To be fair, this is not a question of WinXP-to-. It a fundamental issue with how IT resources are used. While I would like to lay a lot of the blame at MS' feet, it's really an industry issue. Having (and USING) frameworks to enable forward migration is an issue technology has been facing for 40+ years. There are a handful of solutions that have been proposed and even implemented. They amount to little more than academic curiosities since they are not widely deployed.

Oh well. Here's looking toward the big news of 2020 as we finally start moving away from Win7!

Re:Taskbar differences

[jonadab]

> Sure, you can switch back to the old taskbar

Actually, you can't. You can configure the new one to do certain things a little more like the old one (e.g., you can get it to group windows only when necessary, instead of whenever possible), but you can't get back the stationary launcher icons you had in Windows 98 and XP. Every time a window opens or closes, your launchers slide to a different place on the bar, and as far as I can tell there's nothing you can do to fix this.

Not yet

[Internetuser1248]

As a gamer, I was hassled at the last big lan for my "ancient and obsolete" operating system, XP pro. So I did a quick study:
Windows 7 users were unable to play about 1/5 of the games that went up due to operating system issues.
Vista users were unable to play about 1/4 of games.
No XP users had any operating system related issues with any of the games we played.

Sure, as games are released and tested for windows 7 those numbers will start to reverse, but it hasn't happened yet.

Phone Home

[0xG]

I'm surprised that nobody has taken note of the WGA aspects of this.
Windows 7 phones home every few months, and if it can't get the answer it likes, your PC is crippled.

With XP, you don't have to worry.

Personally, I can't forsee ever wanting to give up to MS information about my PC, so I will stay on XP.

And I call it

[Well-Fed Troll]

I call the classic start menus and such "I fear change" mode. Fitting, I think :D

And I call it the "I like standards" mode.
Microsoft keeps releasing new products that break their own UI guidelines. Microsoft way back released a small book that detailed the WIMP interface, and it's sad that they threw it out just for "oooh shiny". I think it's pretty funny that you think navigating as you describe an improvement. The problem with what you described is that if you add an item to the menu the previous keystroke sequence you memorized to run an application becomes ambiguous. I much prefer hitting a sequence of keystrokes identifying the menu I set up. Part of the problem with the start menu is the lack of standardization of the categorization of applications. Way too many application developers think I care what the name of the company is that created their app. Uhhh, No, sorry, all I want to see is the application name on the start menu.
I would love to go to a Microsoft demo and have them use their fancy new products blindfolded just to show how broken their apps are.

Re:I'm staying with XP 'cause the new defrag is br

[shutdown -p now]

You do realize that defragmenting NTFS partitions is more likely to hurt than it is to help, right?

Print server support

[DigiShaman]

It's been my experience that hosting 32bit print drivers on a 64bit server is iffy at best. Same goes for hosting 64bit print drivers on a 32bit server. Specifically the Xerox and HP print drivers.

Sometimes, you have no choice but to install the printers locally using an virtual IP printing port.

Windows 7 won't run our important office software

[stoicio]

The licenses we have for various software applications require dongles that will not work
on 64 bit Windows 7.

This is a major problem. The software in question is not something we can simply
change. So, for now we are required to remain in 32 bit windows XP.

I am curious, when Gartner announces that 'Now is the time' , who the hell
is Gartner and how the hell do they know how our business works? Obviously
not at all in the last case.

  I understand that most offices just use basic applications and never do anything
more advanced than a spreadsheet and maybe the odd game of mine sweeper.
Well, great for them.

For the most part, changing to new versions of operating systems and new versions
of applications is just nonproductive. Case in point, the transition from MS Office
2000 or 2003 to Office 2007. What a nightmare! The sum was !WEEKS! of
nonproductive office time while people tried to figure out where the frick'n menus went.

We all have to pay for this unproductive crap. The least MS could do is make sure
the U.I. stays the same so real work doesn't slow to a complete standstill.
Does MS really think I, or anyone else gives a damn about bubbly shaped pop-up menus?
I guess so...what a bunch of marketing tools.

Is it any wonder I.T. departments are seriously looking at Ubuntu
and openoffice as alternatives? What does MS expect when they keep
undermining entrenched user behavior in favor of some UI design geek
that doesn't have to USE the apps they design DAILY.

Hey, M.S., In our office Windows 7 is B.R.O.K.E.N. .
32 bit Compatibility mode is B.R.O.K.E.N..
Dongles don't work anymore!!! B.R.O.K.E.N.!!!!!!!!!!!

We don't give a damn about D3D video games, because we're *WORKING*, and now it's B.R.O.K.E.N.!!!!

Where'd I leave that Ubuntu DVD ...........