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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?"
Could have sworn that XP was not available before Windows 2000 -- but what do I know...
...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.
Living With a Nerd
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.
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*"
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
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)
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.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
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?
Karma: Excellent. 15 moderator points expire sometime.
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.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
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)
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.
Well, it's a way, but it may not be forward...
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
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.
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...
Ken
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?
I need trepanation like I need a hole in the head.
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.
...but we just rebranded them as Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.
-Brought to you by VMWare and Wyse.
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.
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
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.
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. :)
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
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.
There's a perfect xkcd for my sig but I'm too lazy to look it up. sudo someone go find it.
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.
I don't think anyone can confuse Windows XP with Windows ME. :-)
New things are always on the horizon
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.
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.
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.
I can confuse Windows ME and Windows Vista. :)
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
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.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
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.
Best regards.
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?
All "fixed that for you" posts are not just redundant. They're also stupid.
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...
I, for one, am looking forward to the inevitable
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.
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.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
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.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
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?
A witty [sig] proves nothing. --Voltaire
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.
----- obSig
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"
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.
The cynic might observe that in many companies the employees are there because they are unemployable elsewhere...
Fanatically anti-fanatical
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).
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)
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.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
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.
Good. That's where it belongs. Or possibly to a whole new department - "User Interface Science"?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
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.