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10 Years of Windows XP
Julie188 writes "Windows XP – the XP stood for 'Experience' — was released October 25, 2001. With Windows XP, Microsoft hoped to have one codebase that would span everything from consumers to corporate desktops. Microsoft was fairly ambitious with XP. There was an embedded version that went everywhere, from phones to information kiosks. Banks in particular embraced it as a way to migrate off IBM's dead-end-but-once-great OS/2. Consumers have been quicker to ditch XP for Windows 7 while businesses hem and haw and slowly test a decade's-worth of custom apps on Windows 7. Some estimates show that XP still has a hold on 48% of the Windows market."
Bah, everyone knows "XP" stands for "Xtra Problems"
I wouldn't say consumers were quicker to ditch XP because they wanted to ditch it. Typically consumers get new versions of Windows when they get new computers. Businesses on the other hand have to evaluate whether it is in their best interest and most decided Vista wasn't good enough to ditch XP. Some of them were probably a little miffed about the SA deals. Windows 7 is actual usable and stable compared to Vista.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
XP itself never crashed(BSOD'd) unless you had serious hardware (or later, malware when it became sufficiently virulent) problems. It also otherwise Just Worked(TM).
Compare that to the stinking unworkable piles of shit that were the average Linux distros at the time, hell, I remember Gnome back when XP was released and it looked like some horrible blocky IRIX knockoff. That was back when ISP's gave you shell accounts and the only sane uses of Linux were running servers and taking IRC channels. As far as the speed, stability, and usability of Linux distros go; they are still playing catch-up to Windows XP, especially with respect to the dominant third-party applications.
And I'm a hardcore Linux/UNIX fan.
Windows 2000 was XP minus the play school look and feel (more or less like the classic look and feel on XP) and I think it was the last pure Windows OS that I liked without substantial customization.
Bye!
Only reason I went to windows 7 was because Xp won't recognize more than 4Gb or memory.
XP comes in a 64 bit flavor as well, although it never was supported very well by other vendors, which should have supported more RAM, assuming the mother board did (another problem altogether).
The real issue with XP vs 7 isn't 4+ GB of RAM so much as having better support for multiple processors. XP wasn't written for 6 or more CPUs/cores, and while it will run, it was never optimized for it. Originally, vanilla 2K only was "licensed" for two CPUs, not sure about XP before SP1.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
I don't miss 3.11
I don't miss watching Winsock eat itself in the debug window while connected to the internet.
I don't miss the dumb Program Manager.
I don't miss one crashed program taking down the entire "OS".
You forget how clunky it is. Go install it in a VM.
I also installed NT4 inside a virtual machine recently, out of misplaced nostalgia.
Without stealing DLLs from Windows 2000 and XP, good luck getting any software from the last 10 years to install. It was like pulling teeth just to get Opera installed, and even then, it still complained.
WordPerfect won't even install on 2000. No way, no how.
I used to be a big OS/2 fan. I have Ecomstation in a VM. Yeah, I'm sticking with Linux and not going back to OS/2.
--
BMO
Software development used to be easier when I started this life...
I don't know when you started yours, but I got going in the 80s 8-bit home computer era. Everything of consequence was assembly language, and every platform was completely incompatible. Even on the mainframes, you still had a variety of HLLs and completely different OSes & architectures.
Everything nowadays is x86/x64, everything runs C++ and hence most interpreted languages, and most everything runs Java. Graphics are fast, storage is gigantic, libraries are mature, and connectivity is pretty much a given. Software development is MUCH easier nowadays.
Even prior to SP1, XP never threw a BSOD (and rebooted) unless it was something hardware or device driver related. Even Anti-Virus programs which needed to install a driver could trip a BSOD. Which was hardly surprising because it's based off the NT lineage and not MSDOS. In fact, it's quite miracle that random bits of hardware and peripherals could be slapped together with near infinite permutations and still had XP provide all the extended functionality for that specific device with as little problems as it has. Microsoft shouldn't have caught hell for this, but rather praised.
Life is not for the lazy.
Repeat after me: "It's just an OS. The purpose of an OS is to load programs and manage resources. The OS is not the application."
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Very true. Linux is much better now than just a few years ago but Windows 7 is probably the best OS ever made. I'm thoroughly enjoying dual-booting both (Xubuntu 11.10 - I can't stand Unity).
And speaking of Unity... it appears Canonical and Microsoft BOTH are about to shoot themselves in the foot with UIs that most make most people cringe (Unity and the proposed Metro in Windows 8). Thank God that with Ubuntu, we can still choose xfce or KDE. With Windows, you're stuck with whatever MS gives you.
Consumers have been quicker to ditch XP for Windows 7 while businesses hem and haw and slowly test a decade's-worth of custom apps on Windows 7.
Consumer's haven't been given a choice..Businesses do have a choice.
Just because 90% of laptops are grey doesn't mean that 90% of people would buy a grey laptop if they had a choice.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Well, things changed for two reasons:
1) the ones that used to complain are now tired of doing so, and
2) the youngsters now don't know any better.
Also, when XP first came out most of the people were still stuck with a dial-up connection. In addition, most were used to remedy their PC problems by re-installing the operating system. So when MS demanded that you should activate your software online and restricted the amount of activations, everybody frowned.
Regardless of the above, switch back to the old model and everyone will still thank you.