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."

Comments

Re:"XP"

[lgw]

I thought XP stood for Chi Rho (the greek letters it looks like), a pun on the project name "Cairo".

Re:God enough

[PRMan]

Incorrect. Windows Server 2003 32-bit goes up to 64 GB. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa366778(v=vs.85).aspx

The reason XP/Vista/7 32-bit is limited to 4GB is because there are so many badly-written drivers that assume they will be in a physical 4GB address space, that there was no way for Windows to change it without massive bluescreens from old drivers.

To use up to 64 GB, apps and drivers have to be written to access all memory through a 2GB sliding Physical Address Extension window.

Re:Wrong

[scottbomb]

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.

It was rescued by Linux.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Microsoft had a nice coffin and a burial site carefully planned for XP. When sub 100$ notebooks with Linux appeared in the market and it was clear the designated successor Vista would not run on such puny machine, they hastily cut the noose and brought it down from the gallows and gave it another lease on life. Wonder what would have happened if that 100$ notebook had come after XP death process had moved too far to be rescued.