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What's Keeping You On XP?
Hugh Pickens writes "PC World reports that Windows XP lost more than 11 percent of its share from September to December 2011, to post a December average of 46.5 percent, a new low for the aged OS as users have gotten Microsoft's message that the operating system should be retired. Figures indicate that Windows 7 will become the most widely used version in April, several months earlier than previous estimates. Two months ago, as Microsoft quietly celebrated the 10th anniversary of XP's retail launch, the company touted the motto 'Standing still is falling behind' to promote Windows 7 and demote XP. In July, Microsoft told customers it was 'time to move on' from XP, reminding everyone that the OS would exit all support in April 2014. Before that, the Internet Explorer team had dismissed XP as the 'lowest common denominator' when they explained why it wouldn't run IE9. The deadline for ditching Windows XP is in April 2014, when Microsoft stops patching the operating system. 'Enterprises don't want to run an OS when there's no security fixes,' says Michael Silver, an analyst with Gartner Research rejecting the idea that Microsoft would extend the end-of-life date for Windows XP to please the 10% who have no plans to leave the OS. 'The longer they let them run XP, the more enterprises will slow down their migration.'"
This is a troll article. Using a decade old OS and going on about problems it has today is typical discussion for the stagnated slashdot.
Cheap PCs run XP.
MS isn't giving away free upgrades and I'm not interested in paying for a really expensive copy or Windows just to play games.
When the security patches cease, I'll just uninstall XP and replace it with whatever the best version of Linux is at that point.
If it ain't broke, why fix it? It's not like I'm running a nuclear reactor at home on my XP box.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
I use OSX, Linux and OpenBSD on a daily basis. My XP use is limited to VMs running some Windows-only utilities on the first two.
There's no compelling reason to change as yet.
Trolling is a art,
I have XP in a VirtualBox instance that I use to run some specialised software (Templot). Hardly worth upgrading that to 7.
Oh and I've reconditioned one or two old laptops recently for my nieces, and they're just too old to run anything other than XP.
Don't fix it. XP is a perfectly reliable platform. I can understand Microsoft wanting to shift more units, but no need for change-for-the-sake-of-it really. Or maybe I'm just an old codger :)
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
I just don't care. XP works as a platform for the programs I actually use, and between the lack of anything to be excited about, and lack of a clear upgrade path, I will probably use XP until I lose my key.
Most consumer Hardware and software is compatible with it
It was being shipped with netbooks till sometime in 2010 IIRC
For something like an OS, the bigger question is "Why change"
The generic consumer doesnt care about security updates
'The longer they let them run XP, the more enterprises will slow down their migration.'"
'The longer they let them run XP, the more enterprises will eat into our profit margin and not let us impliment our more restrictive and convoluted licensing...'", a Microsoft spokesperson said. "Businesses are sick of products that meet their needs and are amply tested and well-understood," he continued. "They want a product that has a restrictive licensing agreement, is much more resource-intensive, and offers little or no benefit to the business segment beyond being pretty." He went on to add, "Plus, Apple is kicking the crap out of us in the consumer market and we need extra cash to burn, and let's face it... the only successful big products we've launched are Windows and Office. We have to force business users to adopt it, or our shareholders will tar and feather us before setting our homes on fire for not creating a single smash hit in the consumer market since Halo.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
The world will end in less than a year so why bother upgrading?
I can't stand the damn thing. I have a nice 6040f printer that I paid about 11k for- and under windows 7 I can't use the booklet functions via the stupid universal print driver
I make my booklets on pc #1 (windows 7, 64 bit screamer workstation) and then shuffle them to my old xp PC so I can still use the discrete driver.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Vista kept me on XP
Work says I need to use XP so I do. They are working on a Windows 7 upgrade plan but that isn't due for an other year or so. They need to be sure everything is tested and works.
When you have a large organization Thousand+ employees it takes time to make sure the upgrade goes smooth.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Paying $100+ for Windows seems like even more of a ripoff when I've got to buy it again every 2 years.
I bought this software, its mine, and I'll use it, thank you very much.
If only more of the software industry would target linux and mac, we could get away from having to pay an arm and a leg to Redmond every few years.
Dunno about you guys, but I don't exactly have a ton of free cash to spend.
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
I have no need for windows 7 or vista, and do not plan on upgrading soon. I mean, there is an ALTERNATIVE, but I'd prefer not to take that alternative.
My XP partition finally had to be nuked to clear out an infection after 8 years of stable service, so I shifted to Ubuntu 10.04.1 (can't use a newer version due to hardware incompatabilities.)
I had been planning to upgrade to Win7, but when I realized I could get a whole laptop with Win7 Pro and more memory and CPU horsepower than my old box for under $600, I scrapped the idea of an upgrade. Why pay close to $200 for a copy of Win7 when $400 more will get me a whole machine?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Still have to support my product at customer sites where the local IT department has not allowed more recent versions of Windows...
I'm sure there will be plenty of posts here about how XP still works, how it fits the needs of some people, etc.
Even if you had a working Ford Model T, you couldn't safely use it on today's highways. Running Windows XP on today's Internet is far more dangerous, both for the operator and for everyone else, than running a more recent operating system. It will become far more hazardous after the patches stop flowing. There is a shrinking window for people to make the transition before the patches stop, and everyone still using XP would do well to take advantage of that window before it disappears.
It may have escaped PC World's notice (not like THAT ever happened before) but there are some applications and drivers that will not install on any of MS's newer OS's and that so-called XP Compatibility mode isn't. And if those applications need to be supported then XP is what you use. Maybe you hide it in a VM that is running on a newer version of Windows but chances are that you'll do like me and keep that XP machine running and wish you never got sucked into the Microsoft maelstrom.
The IT department claims that it costs too much to roll out a new OS and rebuild all the remote management tools, train the Neytwork staff in the new OS (but not any end users), and pay for upgrades for 2000+ PCs...
1) All my games work (for the most part) and I don't have to beg for a port to Linux of said game or driver.
2) I don't necessarily want to pay the Apple premium for their rendition of problems.
3) I don't necessarily want to pay Microsoft more money for their rendition of Upgrade problems.
4) I'm familar with XP and all of it's quirks. Yeah I gotta reinstall every 6 months to keep it sane again, but imaging takes care of the worst of it.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
At work we recently updated our windows installations about six months ago-- to XP service pack 3. I'm guessing we'll be sticking with XP until microsoft pries it out of our cold, dead, fingers.
Microsoft Visual Studio 6 (C++), which doesn't run on Vista and Win7. We also still have quite a bit VB6 code, God have mercy on our souls.
Nothing. I replaced it with Ubuntu. All XP software that I need run's fully well using Wine. I can still use the same 10 year old hardware, with as bonus a noticable performance boost and a considerable shorter boot time.
They are only willing to support their product for 13 years! How dare they demand that users move to new technology once a decade to maintain support!
Please, come off it. MS has a plenty lengthy support cycle. They support all their OSes for 10 years from release minimum. XP has been extended 3 years past that. That is quite reasonable.
At least with focus-follows-mouse, there's a X-mouse workaround involving a couple of registry edits, but I'm dreading Win8.
Every time Windows "evolves", I'm forced to add another 10-15 minutes to undo the latest round of dumbing-down.
It's old(ish) hardware. Running XP on a Thinkpad T43p. Whenever I scrounge up the monies (and a newer, longer-term, better paying, job) I'll probably get a newer set of hardware. Whether that be a small-ish desktop running one of AMDs new A8 Fusion chips, or a laptop, I have not decided yet.....
To be honest, the only reason I eventually chopped in 2K for XP was that MS started shipping tools and SDKs that (arbitrarily) refused to install on 2K.
Windows is a operating system for hosting applications, generally ones written by someone else. Everything else that it insists on doing is completely extraneous to my requirements - that it just shuts up and gets into the background. MS has failed to make a compelling argument in favour of 7. I don't find "or else" particularly persuasive.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
It's a Dell from 2004 but hey, it's got a 3GHZ processor and 3GB of RAM. It works fine and it's fast enough.
Word is Win7 won't work OOTB for computers this old due to driver availability etc.
For my smaller enterprise I simply can't pay out to upgrade out machines to 7. We will get Win7 on our next hardware refresh cycle but not until then. As the IT guy I am very careful to monitor for malware, script kiddies and the like. I have however, resigned myself to the fact that if some uber hacker wants to get into my system they will. I have planned for that contingency. I'm not running to Redmond with piles of cash screaming for them to protect me. Cheers
No one on / still uses that as their main PC. To the companies that do: You must be stupid, stupid, stupid.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Two things for me on my last XP machines.
1) The laptops I acquired that run XP can't run Vista or Windows 7. They are at their last Windows OS even per Microsoft specs.
2) You would have to be insane to try to upgrade an old XP box to 7 in place. I've seen enough toasted and flaky OS installations in my time that I've switched entirely to "lift and shift".
License cost? Meh - I haven't paid for Windows 7 yet or any of the other Server OS's around my house. Somehow Microsoft thinks I need lot of free samples (development editions, Windows 7 party packs, etc.) and who am I to dissuade them?
...and we still have one or two labs on XP. This is actually a good thing, as some of our students have really old machines, and we need at least some XP machines to test web sites, etc. to make sure they display properly with older browsers (Internet Explorer 7, to be specific).
December average of 46.5 percent, a new low for the aged OS
Um, every day since XP peaked in 2006 has been "a new low". Why would market share of XP do anything but decrease? And if you want to get pedantic, there would have been a time period immediately after XP hit the market that it would have been under 46.5 percent until it reached dominance. Sorry, that statement just struck me as silly.
Better known as 318230.
I'm using my laptop as a media centre in my lounge and I have a USB audio interface connected to it. The interface does not have Linux drivers. Otherwise I would have installed some Linux distribution long time ago.
My company is still on XP because it works, and works well for the vast majority of people. Stability hasn't been a problem in a long time - and most people here shut down their computer every night, so that daily reboot cycle helps keep it stable too.
In our environment, Windows is increasingly being used only to run a web browser - many of our new business apps are a web service (running in house or hosted by the vendor). As long as Firefox and/or Chrome continue to run well on XP, it will be "good enough" for most people here. If only we could get rid of Office (Office365 doesn't seem any better than local copies of Office from a licensing standpoint) then we could be more OS independent.
There are the exceptions - like people that want more than 3.5GB of RAM (and who don't want to run WinXP 64bit, which has proven to be problematic, especially in drivers).
It does what I need it to. That really says it all. It's not that I don't like Windows 7, I actually prefer it. But I can't justify spending $139 for Win7 Pro for all of my computers, when I really don't gain anything for it. There are people still running 95 and 98 for the same reasons. I know of some government offices that are still on NT. AS long as you keep those boxes off of the internet, I'm not sure what the problem is.
Main reason is I paid for it and I don't like to give up on it, it serves my purpose on a few of my PC's and if I upgrade it makes it appear that I rented XP, and renting sucks for so many reasons.
People still using XP because their computers are too old for Vista , Win 7. A lot of people are still using PC's that a 5-7 years old because they see no need to upgrade. These are the folks that play solitare and check emails once in awhile, and maybe look up simple recipes on the web. Most of the old folks are not into using computers much, so upgrading, and changes doesn't make sense for them.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Maybe Google could partner with Microsoft to get those people onto the free Android system?
XP is lighter and faster than any other Windows release, while still being compatible with almost all of the software I want. I prefer an OS I can run on my crumbling 600 MHz laptop with 256 MB of RAM and on all my modern machines (inside of a VirtualBox, since I'm a Linux user).
The price tag of course. If new releases of Windows were $30 upgrades like OSX, and upgrades were just like installing a new program from the web, I would upgrade every year. That's my excuse. However my observation is that many people hated Vista, and chose to skip that version, and when Windows 7 was out their hardware was too old to install an expensive upgrade.
Well actually I do a bit, with everyone on Windows 7 games can start to be dx11 only, which means more pretty.
Mostly I just care about people getting off ie6, and that's happening anyway so who cares what OS people use under the browser.
I stay on XP because I'm hardcore.. and i can lol at all u newbs that can't hang.
You probably don't have a good video card. Windows 7 and Even some versions of Linux run much faster when to do enable the Animations, because the OS uses this as an opportunity to go, oh you want these animations! Let me offload this to your video card. When you have them turned off, the OS thinks your card isn't fully supported so it handles the existing UI off the CPU.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
One of my most important tools -- Ulead GIF animator, which is a tool for creating animated GIFs that I use when writing about baseball hitting and pitching instruction -- is no longer available or being updated. That is a core tool for which I haven't found a substitute and it only kind of works on Vista.
Of course, this raises the problem of orphan applications; applications that small (?) numbers of people find to be ridiculously valuable.
Ok, here's the rundown as I have managed to wring out of friends and family that cling to XP.
1) it came on the computer they currently have, and works fine on that hardware.
2) they are familiar with it, and it does what they expect it to.
3) they don't want to buy new hardware when the hardware they have suits their needs already, (when running xp)
4) microsoft has switched around how the user interface works, so that now it treats you like you don't own the box. This causes issues for users who just want to make the printer they got for christmas work. Clicking OK on 3 or more scary "let this program make administrative changes?" Dialogs and other "scary" popups are not enjoyable to users, who really don't understand the significance of what the windows really mean, and who don't have an alternative to the "untrusted" 3rd party driver CD that came with the printer anyway. Windows 7 does this "less" than windows vista, which complained when you wanted to run solitare, but this is simply users chosing the lesser of two evils. They prefer the simplicity and nonverbose output of xp.
5) fewer and fewer people buy computers to play video games these days, given the rise of modern console games with online multiplayer, and the reduced hassles of competing against people with better rigs. There is much less incentive to continue driving the forced upgrade cycle, so users try to get more equity out of already owned assets, like older hardware. Let's face it, unless you turn on 3d return of clippy or some other horseshit, you don't need an i7 to print resumes or make greeting cards. You don't need gobs of resources to play mp3s while you clean your house, facebook and farmville don't need epic leetness, etc. An old windows xp era rig can do all those things just fine, and users know this. Thus, windows xp satisfies most of their needs for a general purpose computing environment.
The few issues that crop up appear to be (and are) totally contrived to continue monetizing the computing market. Driver support for devices, for instance. Unless it is some radical new slot architecture or something, there is little to make xp insufficient for a driver, especially when you are pushing a crapware consumer peripheral device like a printer or scanner, which usually use unidrv.dll for 99% of the functionality anyway. Other than drivers, you have security fixes, updates, and browsers. Browser makers don't like to support "legacy" OSes because they usually represent the dreaded "low end hardware", which forces them to make efficient code instead of quickly produced code; the impetus of which is purely due to makerting forces in the vast majority of cases. Feature creep causes a software product to require more and more resources to satisfy more and more edge case uses, which would be better satisfied with optional plugins run in sandboxed processes. Remember: "newer isn't always better." when users feel financially pinched, they stop chasing the shiny.
I use XP for virtual machines. I have MSDN, and I use XP as the OS for each Windows-based development environment I set up.
I tried using Win7 for exactly one VM, and it's three times larger than it needs to be. It wastes RAM, and subjectively feels slower. I'm sure there's some way to reduce Win7's footprint to not be THAT obnoxiously oversized... but why bother?
(The host OS is Linux-based)
At work we use some realy good 16-bit software tools, because they are essential to our business there is no reason to switch to Win7 = new tools.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
You can have my Windows NT 3.51 when you pry it out of my cold, dead 486!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Why the heck should I upgrade to Windows 7?
It probably won't even run on my computer. I only have 4 mb of ram.
I should pay extra money for more machine and a new and spiffy OS in order to do the exact same things I do now?
I should spend extra time to get equivalent programs on 7, recreate the layout I currently have, and to get them to play nicely the way they do on XP?
Is this like "new and improved" laundry detergent?
What's keeping me on XP is that it works. As long as this is true, why would I spend the $150 to upgrade?
The purpose of the OS is to manage resources and load programs. XP does that just fine. Yes, I know Microsoft is threatening to stop supporting it, but the only time I have EVER called Microsoft Support is when "Genuine Advantage" borked on a laptop and deactivated my license.
Back in the old days, when we were on the steep end of the curve, we got the next version as soon as it came out just out of self defense, to correct all the crap code in the previous version. Windows 2000 was the first truly reliable Windows, and XP after SP1 was even better.
There is no POINT, in my estimation, to upgrading an OS just to be upgrading. If you don't have a reason, leave well enough alone. We don't do our jobs just using the OS, we do our jobs with the applications the OS loads for us. It's vital to remember that.
And so, with this philosophy, I, on my work and home PCs, and all my family, completely missed out on the debacle that is Vista. I cautiously tell friends, family and co-workers that Windows 7 is ok (but not "home basic").
All that said, I do have one (1) machine running Windows 7 64 bit, upgraded from XP when I doubled the memory to 8GB. (I could have gone XP 64 bit but it was no longer available.) The overriding reason for the upgrade was that this particular machine runs an application (there that is again) that needed more than 3.6 GB or whatever the limit was under 32 bit. That's the only reason.
So, what about device support? Yeah (sarcastically), what about it. I actually *lost* a device when I went to Windows 7. The XP drivers for my scanner would not work on the Windows 7 machine, and there were never any Windows 7 drivers written for it. I had to move the scanner to another box still running.... XP... So much for upgrades.
Otherwise, leave well enough alone and continue to get real work done, as opposed to the "meta-work" of maintaining your operating system. There may be a lot of personal satisfaction in upgrading and maintaining your OS, but it is not real work unless you are a Windows admin, and even then you're doing it so someone else can run an APPLICATION.
So.... my Windows 7 64 bit machine... When Windows 8 comes out... yeah, I'm pretty much going to ignore it. Because my stuff works just fine with Windows 7. Let someone else be unpaid QA.
There was a time when Microsoft was making money hand over fist because people would line up to get the next version as soon as it became available. Someone in Redmond *had* to realize that this was not a sustainable business model.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
If they made it easier to upgrade from xp 32bit to win7 64bit, then I would have done the switch long ago. I have the upgrade disk, a new hard drive, and backups. I just can stand the thought of reinstalling or downloading all of the apps I have all over again, maintaining compatibility, etc. What a PITA.
... it's innovative edge, it needs to see the operating system as not something that users care about - users care about KILLER APPS. If microsoft would start including KILLER APPS with their new versions of windows they could sell operating systems.
I've often thought the way information and OLE has worked really needs a fucking revolution but they don't seem to have any imagination of what *computers could be* anymore, they are stuck in their engineer culture and have no visionaries. I've had tonnes of ideas over the years about user interfaces that I'd love to throw sick cash (that MS has) behind, but I doubt the knuckledraggers at MS would be able to see the merit. They have no real passion for making peoples lives better anymore IMHO.
So, over the weekend, I tried to update Curse Client on my Win7 system. It required installing the .NET 3.5 Framework Client.
It took me two bloody hours to get it to install properly. Tried the redist, tried Windows Update, remove and reinstall, nothing. I ended up having to find, download, and reinstall the update agent itself (because I can't get it off the update.microsoft site; THAT, in its infinite wisdom simply tells you to "use the Control Panel icon" which is such a brilliant help, never once assuming, hey, if they're visiting the webpage maybe there's a problem with their "Windows Update"? Naaaaaaah... ) to get the .NET stuff to install properly.
On my XP system, it Just Works.
So, thank you, Win7. Thank you for protecting me from myself.
If I wanted my dick held for me every single time I pee, I'd get a Mac...
... games in 64-bit OS is one of the things that holds me back. The main reason many stick with XP is purely not wanting to have to deal with application compatability. XP runs damn near everything /w DOSbox, there is no need for more 'upgrade headaches' that new OS's usually bring.
They are slowly rolling out 7 but there are some road blocks.
I was on a pilot project for a site to set up new systems with 7 so a few users can test it out before the full office got it.
And what happen was that there was some issues with how the image was setup it's so bad that some people on the test backed out so they where able to keep doing there job. I was just the front line guy and a lot of issues where on the back end (out of state). And I tried my best with the software they had and still some stuff did not fully work and other stuff needed work around like giving users local admin, install printer drivers local and not useing the server as useing the server locked then out of setting printer trays (big network MFP printers) and other stuff that they needed to do the job. Also I was able to get the B&W scanning software working but not the color scanning as they did not have adobe pro (it was on the old XP systems) as part of there software install tools.
..once the prevalence of XP drops far enough, and people start replacing WinXP with Win7 stickers on their bumpers, Crackers will start building Virii and looking for holes in Win7, leaving XP alone.
People will continue to use XP for ages and ages. Especially those who've grown up with it and are too stuck in their ways to upgrade or switch to a different OS. Those who stay with XP, will not suffer too much.
What will really cause XP to fall off the market though, is Gaming, Tools and Applications, Hardware etc, that might no longer work on a machine running XP. For a long time, developers and Hardware Manufacturers will continue to build backward compatible stuff for the relatively small, but nevertheless fairly numerous clientele.
So sure, 2014 maybe where XP's red-line stands, but the race does not end just then.
Geekism is your _only_ God!
When the day comes that I really need support for USB3 or some other hardware that doesn't work on XP, I'll upgrade. But not until then.
...we are starting to see Win 7 machines coming into the field. Just in the last month. Yes, we work exceedingly slow, but there is a lot to security here, and XP was well understood. I've got XP SP3 on my machine, and expect to keep it for another few months minimum.
What I'm tired of are the websites that both warn me I'm using an outdated browser and then helpfully offer to start the installation of IE9.
I'm using IE9. They don't detect it. I'm trusting these sites? One of which is Yahoo!?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Windows XP Pro has Services for Unix + support for NFS.
The _cheapest_ edition of Windows 7 which has equivalent functionality is Windows 7 Ultimate.
I can think of many far better ways to spend $300+.
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
Why would you pay $200 for a full version, when you can upgrade 3 XP machines for under $150 (with a 3-pack upgrade disc).
Free cloned xp, vs. 250$ uncloneable windows7....mmmmmm tough one to figure out
Oh noes! Can't run IE9!!!!1 What will I do?
Does anybody use any version of IE anymore?
Windows XP is pretty secure already after a decade of Security Updates. Money and laziness is bound to keep people on it years after MS stops supporting it.
Vista, and the very similar 7 are what's keeping me on XP: I dislike the UI changes they made for Vista, and didn't unmake for 7. Windows 8 is just going further down this road, and so is unlikely to make me change my mind either.
The remaining upgrade path is to Linux, but I tried that out for a couple of weeks. Turns out X.org can't do hardware acceleration on a multi-GPU multiple monitor setup unless you also want to sacrifice the ability to drag windows between monitors. Which I don't.
(I also had issues with menus rendering in the wrong place -- at least one UI toolkit would position menu popups aligned with the top of my smallest monitor, leaving a several-inch gap between the menubar and the popup depending on where the parent window was positioned. Windows gets this right...)
So in summary, if I want a desktop with 2D acceleration and a UI I don't hate... I only really have one choice.
Cheap PCs run XP.
This isn't really true any more, at least for new cheap PCs. They're all shipping with Windows 7 Starter now.
The only machine I have still running XP is my craptop... While its no spring chicken its still a 2.4GHz pentium 4 with a gig of ram, the 5 or 6 times a year I use it, it does the job just fine ... browsing the web, watching goofy youtube videos, acting as a internet gateway to my mac SE
I would love to toss windows 7 on it, BUT it has a old ATI Radieon Mobile in it, which is not DirectX 9 compatible, which is a deal breaker. So ... XP it is (though its dual boot with mint 11)
Sad thing is, I know it would run it fine, I have had 7 on a 1.6GHz Atom, my dad has it on his 2.25Ghz Athlon XP, and they both have no issue (well the atom kind of sucked) even with the dumb shit transparency and ghost effects turned on.
Oh well, your loss MS
Those two machines are special purpose boxes with migrated older XP licenses. One does streaming video output from Flash Media Encoder, which still seems to work a bit better in 32-bit XP right now. If the situation ever changes enough to justify such a change, I'll gladly move it up to a 64-bit W7 build.
The other is a dedicated JDownloader/Ventrilo/Skype/VoIP box (running an ancient P4) to allow communications and downloads to keep going while other machines are rebooting, under maintenance, or whatever.
That second machine could be migrated to W7, sure, or maybe even Linux, but I've got a perfectly servicable license for XP and the machine barely touches the internet outside of those specific apps.
Really, the risk ends up being pretty minimal after you factor in the firewall and very limited port forwarding.
Eventually they'll probably get migrated up, but I think the comm box will end up getting a total hardware change along with a new OS. That's a long ways away, though. No need to upgrade those two yet.
I don't particularly like XP, but I don't particularly dislike it either. The OS came with my older laptops, and I'm not about to spend the money to upgrade it. Like many of the /. crowd, the only way I acquire Windows is through a new PC or laptop (or netbook, or ultra-ma-jig, or whatever we call them now).
Ever see that image floating around the internet? "New Mac for Christmas - $2000 Facebook machine" That speaks volumes.
I have an ebay'ed Xeon server that runs various *nixes with Xen. That does the heavy stuff, and everything else is for Firefox and Office. What's keeping me on XP? Same thing that's making me upgrade to Windows 7... Nothing! It costs money for no material value. That's not even a decision.
-d
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
I usually use with Linux or OS X. There are times when I need to create a quickie WinNT-ish environment, and I don't care about network access. My wife has gone through several HP laptops that gave up the ghost shortly after the warranty expired. But, even in the afterlife, they can donate their drives, their displays, and even their OEM Windows licenses. It turns out that the reinstall DVDs aren't very particular about the (virtual) hardware they're run on, as long as I've got a good key.
Luke, help me take this mask off
WGA is also in windows XP. Additionally, a while back MS stopped letting you speak with humans when you call their "I promise I'm not a theif" hotline. When I tired to reinstall XP on a box for someone I spend 2 hours trying to get MS to "authorized" it. Finally while on hold I spend 5 minutes on the web and found a tool to just break the WGA so I could use the damn OEM XP that she bought with with the thing.
whereas Vista is the devil I don't.
Have fun repackaging a few thousand applications SOX compliantly, again.
It may be old PCs not cheap PCs. Old PCs run perfectly well when they are running old software, the software whose suggested hardware requirements match the hardware. Of course software that connects to the internet complicates this due to security concerns and the necessity of patches.
Tell me what Win7 does for me* that XP can't, and we can have a more meaningful discussion
Windows XP does not support ASLR, which is a powerful exploit mitigation feature. That is, given a vulnerability (which are pretty abundant in the software that we use), ASLR does a good job of preventing a large class of them from being able to be leveraged to run code (like install malware, keylogger, etc.).
Windows 7 does ASLR, which makes you less likely to get exploited by vulnerabilities.
I can't play Bad company 2 on Windows 7 because of low framerates, but I can on XP.
I have it on steam installed on both OS (tri boot).
In my experience, these two setups are equivalent in performance/appearance:
XP:
Amd 4400+ X2
2 GB DDR
Nvidia 9800 GT
W7:
AMD Phenom II 965
ATI HD 5870
8 GB DDR3
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
Additionally, a while back MS stopped letting you speak with humans when you call their "I promise I'm not a theif" hotline
Bullshit. I had to call that number 3 weeks ago after reinstalling on a friend's machine and I had no problem talking to someone.
It and my hardware are good enough, plus I cannot stand some of the UI changes such as in Explorer and the Control Panel.
I typically used to upgrade my main home systems every 3 years or so, but my old 3 Ghz single core desktop is still more than enough for the printing, scanning, and burning duties that it performs and my 2.2 Ghz Core2Duo laptop with nVidia graphics is also more than enough for my daily needs. As long as the hardware doesn't fail I have not had any need to upgrade. My upgrades used to be driven buy whatever the latest game I wanted to play was, but even my laptop can now play any game I am interested in. When some new must have piece of software comes out that I have to have and my current setup doesn't support it I may buy a new laptop, but until then I will continue to use XP.
Nevermore.
Win2k was the best desktop OS MS ever developed. All just fluff after that.
The correct question is: Why do we need to move to a new version of Windows?
Bottom line, Windows XP is a mature O/S. It had everything that people using the O/S needed from the O/S. Windows 7 is not adding anything to the O/S that real world users required. This is why the corporate world told MS to take a flying leap when MS tried to bully everyone off XP before.
The only thing that XP required was standard, ongoing patches. Users do not need any new features. They simply need what was already in XP to work correctly. This is why the corporate world forced MS to keep the O/S going past their original deadline. Why pay lots-o-money to get something which does nothing that one needs.
It is the basic problem with trying to build a business around selling an O/S. Eventually the O/S becomes mature and people need nothing more than standard patches. MS should have realized this and moved to an annual support fee structure for Windows. This would have worked better for everyone.
A lot of software I used still has not been updated for Vista/Win 7. I figure in about 5 years I won't need that software anymore. After that, I'll switch to whatever the latest is, which will probably just be Win 8!
I feel a lag when simply typing in basic text boxes, both Windows and Ubuntu.
Our clients run a product (vehicle emissions inspection analyzer) that could basically be considered an embedded system. They have no access to the operating system and are completely reliant upon us (the manufacturer) to repair it, perform software updates over the network, etc. When they purchased said system it's design was standardized by the government body that licenses them, and software upgrades were specifically dictated by the terms of the agreement between the manufacturer and the licensing body. (Typically two free updates.) Now many of these devices are quite old (some as old as 15 years old in fact), but they still perform the task that they were designed for. While we as the manufacturer sell newer devices running the software package on newer operating systems, there is no incentive for us to provide updated operating system software (Many analyzers still run Windows 98) unless the customer pays for it, and there is no reason for them to pay for it if what they have is working fine. In short the market dictates these things. If it's not broke people don't want to pay money to have it fixed.
The applications I want to use work fine in XP.
There are no features in Windows 7 that are compelling to me.
Still getting security updates for now
What's that, there are unpatched security flaws in XP with exploits in the wild? Eh, my network is reasonably secure, I have some decent anti-malware running on my computer, and I honestly don't use my XP computer to browse the web all that often.
The only reason I ever upgraded from win2k to XP was because some software I wanted to run wasn't win2k compatible. That's probably the point at which I'll upgrade away from XP as well.
XP is now a relatively lightweight OS, so runs fast even on old hardware. Its also ideal for VMs.
Apart from all the ridiculous bloat of Windows 7, I don't like the way it works. The user interaction has been dumbed down a lot from XP, (not that XP was ever that smart or user-friendly, but it assumes the user is somewhat less of a moron than Windows 7 does).
Because it just works, and that's all people need ? When will software industry wake up to the fact that users have gotten over 'upgrade cycles' and are now aware that they are just means for software companies to continually sell products to customers and make revenue ?
And no - dont blabber about 'the many great features' that are in win7 or something - get the message : people dont need them. you may think they do, but they disagree - thats another fixation in software industry; 'these features are great ! you have to have it !' -> no they dont. they just need to have what they need, and that's all there is to it.
hence the reason for a whopping 46% share of xp, even in its fallen down state.
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These parts were all spare and on hand except the CPU. But I priced it out anyway just to make a point.
Because Bethesda is a FAIL game company.
I held back because XP worked great. I knew how to use it, used it for years, the graphics were decent, the software worked with no problem, there was tons of software that worked well. Also, I did have an older system, and support under Win 7 for the older components were an issue. I knew it would mean replacing my cam. A huge stumbling block was dealing with all my files. My hard drive was nearly full. Despite having a backup drive, there are still logistics, making sure firefox is backed up, do I have passwords for all my other programs like Skype... nothing was a huge deal breaker, but everything together just outweighed the benefits and by a lot.
Finally I found my games just weren't working well. I had made some hardware upgrades that would allow me to take advantage of Win 7 features. I had a few reinstalls to do that kind of pushed me over the edge. Might as well do the whole thing right then.
Now that I have it, 7 is great. I worried about it taking up more resources, but it uses them so much better it feels like my system runs much better with the new OS than with XP. But for home users there are a lot of reasons to hold out if you already have a decent enough system.
What kept me on XP so long? Two things. First, it works. It did everything I needed it to do, ran all the software I needed to run. I don't run an OS to use the OS, I use software and have an OS only because that software requires it. If the software I need to use is happy, I see no reason to disrupt things.
Second, I can't upgrade. Microsoft dropped the ability to upgrade an XP install to Win7, retaining all the installed software, settings and the like. That makes an upgrade hellishly complex, since I've got to dig out all the old install media, product keys and such and spend hours reinstalling everything. I've got to save data, write down settings, and remember all the stuff I need to make note of or save. And after the upgrade I have the headaches of finding all the things I didn't remember to save and have to dig up or recreate. It's about a week of work per PC to get everything dealt with and settled and working smoothly again. I do not want to go through that if I don't have to.
Some FPGA programming tools require a USB driver to be installed for programming devices, and when Vista was out, there were no drivers for anything other than XP. It's been a while, but I'm afrait to break anything. Also I only have Windows in VMs, so I wouldn't benefit from any new features. I mostly use Windows for certain limited kinds of development work.
It is a pretty valid question. I know one person who has a good scanner that does not offer drivers that work with post-XP Windows, so she keeps it. Also, I know many people who have low end laptops (and of course netbooks) that don't have the disk space, graphics, memory that would make a newer OS work adequately. And then, I am seriously struggling to watch my HD-DVDs (yes, I got a few dozen in clearance - they are great!) on Windows 7, so I am considering putting the hd-dvd/BD drive on an XP box at the next sign of playback trouble.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
and 46% of users, as you see, dont give two flying shits about all the non-brokenness you described to be in win 7. their computer just works. and that's that.
Read radical news here
Well, Microsoft doesn't even allow you to do an upgrade install from XP to 7. You can only do that from Vista to 7. The "upgrade" procedure consists of it doing a full, clean install of 7 into a new folder on the drive while placing all the XP stuff into a WINDOWS.OLD folder. You have to manually move your documents and data over to the appropriate places after it's done, and reinstall all the apps from scratch.
I've done this MANY times for people already, and it works just fine but it's time consuming.
The next reason to upgrade is gonna be the Ultrabook, at list if you ask Intel.
Losing performance is why I won't switch to Windows 7 on my desktop. It's a Dell from 2003 with an AGP slot. I have an nVidia 6800 that ran most everything up through Left 4 Dead just fine. It would be silly to throw any more money into this ancient system. I have tested Windows 7 and could never get comparable frame rates with it when gaming so I went back to XP. It got hit with a virus and I went to Linux Mint 11. I'm still not gaming but if I ever go back to a MS OS on this box, it would be XP. Most likely I'd just run the same nLited derivative I made for my Eee 701.
It's a perfect time for being wasted.
A perfect time to watch the stars.
- Burden Brothers, "Beautiful Night"
anyone with a reliable antivirus/firewall that works (like kaspersky pure) will just be able to keep using it. in fact, i would question anyone who trusted microsoft with their 'security updates' as morons. microsoft repeatedly broke more than they fixed in many previous patches and packs. these patches are security liabilities in themselves.
on top of this, xp is tested and weathered. windows 7 is yet not. windows 8 isnt even out.
as long as you employ a very good security software to check everything that happens on a computer, you have no need of security patches by and large, only except extreme circumstances - but be sure - good security software companies even take the o/s vulnerabilities into account.
and no - if you are employing a good antivirus (kaspersky etc) and NOT a resource hog that screws resources more than it does any good (norton et al), you will have no problems running both an active (proactive setting) antivirus on something like a 4 gig ram, amd 4800+ cpu old (5-6 years) generation computer AND still game at the same time. (wow, simulations, fallout 3 modded, whatever ). things like norton are not antiviruses - THEY are viruses themselves.
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I have inherited obsolete laptops recently, and few have Win7 display drivers available. I can install Win7 and VGA, but accelerated graphics is more important to me, so I install XP.
You do realize that MS has been selling XP licenses as recently as 3 years ago?
So, if we go with your analogy, that's like Ford CONTINUING to sell the Model T from 1902 to 2008, and then suddenly cutting off all spare parts, safety recalls, tires, heck, they won't even sell you gas for the car because they want to FORCE you to buy a Ford Focus, which they will end of life before you've put 100,000 miles on the car or even paid it off.
Frankly, my next PC isn't going to run Windows *at all* - I'm seriously either going for Linux on the desktop or I'm going to use an iPad (or something similar) as my desktop (with an external keyboard, these devices aren't bad), as I'm quickly realizing that what I do with a desktop machine is mostly to login to other machines.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
And I'll follow it up with why businesses don't upgrade... 7 was released less than 4 years ago. Big businesses keep a PC for 4 years. Now a system built 3 years ago may not be compliant with everything on Windows 7. For lower support costs systems should be mostly interchangeable. It is a problem to have half your users on one OS and half on another. The safer bet is to run Windows XP for another 2 years while PCs that are non-7 compliant get phased out, then introduce 7 on all PCs.
I wonder how many enterprises will ended up getting a Custom Support Agreement after XP ends support in April 2014, which FYI costs $200,000 for first year (can be split into $50,000 for each quarter) and more every year afterwards.
Microsoft made the exact same announcement about "discontinuing support" for XP when they came out with Vista. Nobody took the bait, and Microsoft quietly continued supporting XP.
How about upgrade my XP when the Internet is upgraded to IPv6?
#1, XP works pretty well. There are a few missing features, but no serious bugs that I know of.
#2, I hate the UI changes in Visa and Seven. In XP I use the classic NT/2000 theme.
#3, Seven is expensive when I already own XP.
I have been thinking of upgrading, but not until I build a new machine.
its for a certain machine that i shall not mention, but its awesome.
Fair enough.
Oh noes! Higher spec netbooks cost more than lower spec ones! Riding on the rule of thumb that the most common will be the best value for money, higher spec netbooks are better value than low spec ones, thanks to windows 7. Lets make it 0% to drive down hardware price, fellow /.'s!!
In the event of catastrophe, which has now happened to me 4 times in the last 5 years, I've been able to simply wipe the C: drive and start over (100% of my user data, including all user software settings, is always on drive D, and does not get affected by the reformat, so the only thing I have to do afterwards is reinstall the actual programs, which I have CD's for).
Today, you can't buy a computer with the disks for the OS. I've tried... stores simply do not have them, and are unwilling to get them in or offer them. While they have this so-called "recovery disk" creation software that allows you to use a couple of DVD's and make an image of your computer, the problem I have with this is that this image will include all the bloatware that comes bundled with the computer. All I want to do when I re-install windows is install *WINDOWS*.
I realize I'm not a typical customer... but that doesn't mean I wouldn't *BE* a customer if places would actually be accommodating to what my demands for a computer are.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I'm in the same leaky, vermin infested paddle boat as you are, except I also have a project in VB5 (my fingers burn a bit every time I have to open that up). Good to know that 6 won't run on Vista or newer. I couldn't even upgrade until I get a new computer anyway, by which time Win8, Win9, or Win10 may be out. The code I have (VC++ 6) at least works well on XP, but I can't update it to one of the 4 newer versions of Visual Studio until we also update some vendor-supplied software which was written originally for Win2000. Sigh.
I have a Toshiba netbook running Win7 right now that I'm considering downgrading to XP. The book just can't handle the power that Win7 needs (even after I turned off all the fancy graphics and trimmed services) without stuttering along here and there (and don't get me started on HDD access--it takes forever and a day just for the Save File dialog to come up in anything).
Let's face it, 7 just doesn't cut it for older and under-power machines. Plus, if I'm running something processor-intensive that doesn't need the bells and whistles, I'm going to choose an OS that isn't as processor-intensive itself (yes, yes, *nux, but not everything runs on that.) For that I might even jump back to 2K (but not 98, blech).
Only problem I've seen is that some installers seem to think it's Windows server 2003 not Windows XP.
That's because it IS Server 2003. XP x64 is Server 2003 x64 with Serivce Pack 1, just renamed, and with different features enabled/disabled by default. Check the version numbers: they are both Windows 5.2 (true XP is 5.1). Both XP x64 and Server 2003 x64 also use the exact same SP2 and other hotfixes.
I still use it too, and greatly prefer it to Windows 7. As for the other person that said driver support is terrible for it... that's a common myth. It was terrible in 2005, but now drivers for XP x64 (or Server 2003 x64, since they are interchangeable) are actually pretty common unless you have old/obscure hardware.
Ask and ye shall receive.
-1 overrated isn't the same thing as "I disagree".
Here's what's keeping me from upgrading my XP machines to Windows 7: Upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7
That's the top (unsponsored) Google link for the query "how to upgrade windows xp to windows 7."
Note the bullet items under "what you need:"
Sorry, they want me to pay for the privilege and blow a whole weekend to update my four XP machines at home? What do I get out of this? My XP machines do what they need to do just fine.
Mojo
I use XP at home and Win7 at work. I guess many of the things which annoy me in Win7 is possible to fix, but I try to use Win7 and hopefully in the future figure out why it is better, even though I don't see it now. Here are some of the things I don't like with 7 anyway:
- Where is the good old quick launch for the small utils I use all the time?
- When clicking on an app in the menu bar I normally want to open a new instance of it, not hide/show the existing instance.
- When right clicking on an icon in the menu field for an open app the menu window opens far from the mouse cursor (not a few pixels like in XP). In XP I -really- don't need to aim at all for right click -> close app selection.
- When clicking on the calculator button on my keyboard the Win7 brings the open calculator to the front instead of opening a new instance.
- XP feels snappier / faster.
- I like the XP explorer / file manager much more than the one in Win7.
So, what's keeping me on XP? The user experience. I guess Win7 is much more powerful "under the hood" and everything, but so far I haven't experienced anything making me think "Oh, that's good.. Too bad it's not available in XP".
This is the main reason I stay with XP x64. If Microsoft had not decided to give a big "fuck you" to people who would not move to Vista, it might be a bit easier for me to move from my current XP installation to 7. But as it stands I have a few choices: 1) upgrade to Vista then to 7; 2) purchase third-party software which exports the XP software and data then imports after a complete wipe and load of 7; 3) wipe and load 7 and manually reinstall software.
Secondarily is that I despise the 7 interface inherited from Vista. I do not like having to route through a phone tree to get to the advanced functions I want to use.
I would rather migrate to a different platform. I could run Solaris 10 on my machines or move to Mac. I don't like what seems to be a constantly shifting state of Linux desktops. I would be happy just to move back to my Amiga by way of MorphOS on a G4 or AROS on an x64 PC.
In the case of my customers, I have moved them to 7-64 as much as possible. It does work very well for them, and drivers are a snap for the most part. In some cases we had to upgrade a number of items, like scanners and printers, as drivers are simply not available. To be fair, a lot of that equipment is very old and, even though it worked, it was too old to be considered reliable for critical work -- mind you, I am not dealing with industrial hardware. Customers have taken very well to 7 over-all. All of the old software which will not run in 7 runs great in XP Mode, and I have been able to virtualize a Windows 98 and a DOS machine to continue running the VERY old software contained within which would not run in XP.
Why bother with data if you store it on a server and have backups? If your workstation dies, you replace it and your data is still there. Your argument is not valid for anyone that knows a little about data safety.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
The machine will still likely last for years; it is still on the original toner cartridges. I just don't print that much in color.
*shrug*
So I keep an XP machine (a tired old laptop) running, just to print from.
I suppose I could look into printing from a virtual machine; I probably will do that some day.
And I probably will not be buying anything form HP - I'm more than a little upset that they dropped the support ball.
Maybe some day I'll like HP again, but between dropping driver support and hosing over Pre, and their board of directors' need to out-stupid one another...
*sigh* yeah, it is hard to imagine why I would want to give HP money any time soon.
This is what the HP support site says when I try downloading a driver:
Select operating system:
* Mac OS 9
* Mac OS X
* Microsoft Windows 2000
* Microsoft Windows Server 2003
* Microsoft Windows Vista
* Microsoft Windows Vista (64-bit)
* Microsoft Windows XP
* Microsoft Windows XP x64
My first thought is "Cool! Vista drivers should work on Windows 7..."
But then clicking on Vista (32 or 64 bit) brings up the following:
Sorry, your product is not supported in the Microsoft Windows Vista Operating System. For more information of upgrade programs and new product information, please go to the HP Trade-In/Trade-Up Website, or HP Shopping. We are sorry to inform you there will not be any Windows Vista operating system printer drivers available for your product. If you are using the new Windows Vista operating system on your PC, consider an upgrade to a newer HP product that will work with Microsoft’s new Vista operating system. To help you choose a new product upgrade, the following tool will be helpful: http://www.hp.com/support/hho/productreplacement For more information on HP’s Trade-in-Trade-up program: http://www.hp.com/united-states/tradein/home_flash.html Click here to see a full list of HP LaserJet and Color LaserJet products that are supported in Windows Vista.
Thank you, HP.
This upgrade cycle is (to me) insane - I only "upgraded" from Windows 2000 last year, and the only reason I did it was .net 3.5 requires XP.
I get paid to do database, c# and vb.net stuff. Windows 2000 worked just fine for me. I only upgraded to XP to run VS 2010. Honestly, from my perspective I gained *nothing* by upgrading.
Similarly, I'm seeing absolutely no reason to "upgrade" to Windows 7 or whatever they'll be calling it in two years.
For my personal machines, I'm moving to different flavors of Linux/BSD - whatever is the most stable. I don't understand Microsoft & Mozilla's persistent need to be tweaking with user interfaces.
.
Who in the world at Microsoft came up with the stunningly bad idea of putting a "preamp" stage on a digital audio input?
I was told that Microsoft does not intend to fix this bug until Windows 8, and that if I wanted a bug fix I would have to buy Windows 8.
So now I am thinking that Microsoft planted this bug intentionally in order to generate more Windows 7 to Windows 8 upgrade sales.
And that is why I am staying on Windows XP --- XP works fine with digital audio USB inputs.
Battlefield 3, I can't even use Opera (can but can't join on friends), so totally changed my "style"
It's a game I enjoy very much, so at this time I boot into Win7, XP is still available and less problematic.
-I've always had my menu bar at the top, now Win7 places it there and it causes problems.
I don't have the money. Maybe in a few months after I have money and upgrade my computer.
I have an old XP box that I would gladly upgrade if I could do it at what I consider to be a realistic cost. I'm not willing to spend 1 to 2 hundred dollars to get Win 7 on a machine that isn't worth that much after having it for 4 years now.
.Net code files will run properly under it.
The real answer is laziness is preventing me from upgrading it to a Linux distro. That and not being familiar enough with Mono to know if any of my
My office has a Windows 7 image that they will deploy on request and has been upgrading XP users. However, I am still on XP because it takes me a week to rebuild my computer with all of the apps that I regularly use for my job as a Network Engineer. One would think that all I would need is Putty, but I also do a lot of product testing, lab testing, design, and documentation, etc. In addition, I am in the middle of two business divestiture projects and one integration/merger project. I just haven't been able to afford the downtime to do this.
At home, I have always been a first adopter. I was running 2000 when it was in Beta, ran Vista when it came out, and am running Windows 7.
I ran into a problem with Windows Media Player 12 just before the holidays. It stopped synching with my old Creatlive Labs Zen Vision:M MP3 player. My thought is that a Microsoft update caused the problem because synch also fails on my laptop, which is also running Windows 7. The only way that I could get it to sync was to download the Windows XP Mode VM from Microsoft and use the older version of WMP. So, while I am running Windows 7 at home, I am still using pieces of XP for legacy devices.
(Note: I'd buy an iPod, but it doesn't integrate with WMP and I hate iTunes. I've tried the latest version of WinAMP and looked at others, but none of them offer dynamic playlists and I use playlists extensively.)
I at first wondered why you would be trying to sell him 3 upgrades instead of 1, and then it clicked that the 3 pack is cheaper. What is the thought process MS had there? What version of 7 is that upgrade pack?
With Vista x64 i could get AOE2 to run, but not the expansion pack. The reason is the DRM on the disc was not upgraded for 64bit windows. They did release a 32bit update on the website for it (was a macrovision product but i think they sold it).
Apple killed AOE2 on Mac OS with the Lion update. No PPC apps can run.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
My current employer is starting to role out Windows 7 but there was a holdup in that they dropped Windows NT 4 server for Linux. Samba didn't support all of the login features for Windows 7 guests. At this point, they're using an alpha copy of Samba 4 combined with Samba 3 to actually serve files (Samba 4 didn't work right) and it crashes about every 5 weeks on them.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
I'm not on XP, I've been totally on Linux for ages, except in my `enterprise' where I'm forced to use XP ( for security and compliance ) under pain of sanction (yea I know:)). They won't be upgrading in the near future because of budgeting cuts.
.. Gartner Research`
'Enterprises don't want to run an OS when there's no security fixes,' says
I find it highly ironic that the only way a company can ethuse people to upgrade is by drawing attention to XPees defects.
In my limited experience with these things it's not future-proofing that's the issue. It LAZY, SLOPPY PROGRAMMING that's the #1 issue. Developers who learned how to do something bad in the Win9x days, and kept doing it well into the WinXP days... and beyond.
A couple of years ago I had to deal with booking software at an agency. The entire function of this software was hooking into an SQL database. However, it REQUIRED local admin rights simply to RUN. It wouldn't run AT ALL on Vista or 7.
Why? Because it wanted to write files to a program directory. What files? I'm not really that certain. However, this was the way things were done in the Win3.1 day, devs continued lazily doing it in the Win9x days, and WinXP merely tolerated it. Vista slammed that practice to the floor. So, rather than clean up their code an adopt proper coding practices, they just said to us "You have to use it on XP on an account with local admin rights. We're not fixing that issue."
As an addendum, given local admin rights, let's just say it's hard to tell interns "Don't install things."
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
Do you have any idea how many printers and plotters HP made that they refuse to update drivers for? _ I'm not talking about $39 inkjets either. Just another reason your defense contractor hammer costs $200. XP will be here long after 2014.
I had to do some fiddling with my Win 7 install last night. I noticed that during the process, there was a period where my graphics drivers weren't installed properly. During that time, I observed exactly the kind of lagginess you're talking about.
Once I re-installed the graphics drivers, the problem went away completely. I'd suggest that you should check whether you have correctly installed & reasonably up to date drivers for your graphics hardware.
Many people have more than one home system. You can buy a single-computer upgrade for around $120 - but what's the point when 3 computers is under $150. It's Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade. You get a 32-bit and 64-bit disc, and can upgrade to any combination of the two among your 3 computers. Although violating the spirit (and probably the letter) of the license, you could split the cost 3 ways with a couple friends and share the license.
It's what finally convinced me to get my wife an upgrade from Vista to 7. That and with the sale price it was only $10 difference instead of nearly $30. With Vista, the upgrade is far more necessary, though. At least XP runs well.
Awww. Microsoft doesn't like a "Mature Product". Too bad for them!
Vista sukked. The world knows it. Windows 7 is "the New Vista" - as far as I can tell, mostly usable.
The problem is, Windows 8 is a giant unknown, with this Metro business.
So we need XP to hang on STILL LONGER until we get perspective on Windows 9, to see what the fallout of 8 will be - whether Metro is another cheap fad, or the Way Things Will Be (aka something to disable with a hack).
It's no accident I built a high grade comp with a few extra bucks and called it "Twilight of XP", riding out XP until all this crap settles down... and 2014 is about when I gander we'll know.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
After having to use windows 7 at work, here are some reasons I still use XP at home: Familiar and stable Lower memory footprint More responsive By far, the windows XP exploere.exe shell The control panel, everything is sorted across and down so if the windows resize everything moved around. The add remove programs is way at the bottom The login, in XP you could login very quickly and not even have to look up from the keyboard. Now in windows 7 you have to press ctrl+alt+del then wait, then press enter, then type your password. Makes me hate win 7 every time I logon Here are a few things I can just recall off the top of my head that I dislike about the explore shell in windows 7: No longer can drag and drop the very top left corner of folders to create a shortcut. The address bar format in a folder browser. The auto resorting or folder when you rename stuff. The hiding of the + and – icons next to folder in the explore tree, saves no space just hides information until you hover over it. The tree view always seems to jump to the wrong position than where I want. The folder and sub folder that always expands in tree view. The only places I want go is c:\ or Desktop the user file The extra backwards compatibility folders that you always get access denied on when you’re thinking XP. The fact that the Users folder starts with U so it’s always at the bottom, instead of Documents and settings towards the top. The start menu, The recent programs and files is nice but every time I try and use it, it never has the recent file or app I’m looking for. Useless if it’s not consistent. Don’t get me started with the windows search I’m sure there is some way to do some of the following but it’s not inherent. o Make it faster, even with no index XP search is way faster after the first search. o Open containing folder in new window without stopping the search. o Search for more than one thing at a time.(Ex *.jpg *.gif) o Search by size, date, etc, without having to know some weird text logic. o The title bar fills with a garbage text URL string, very unprofessional. About the only feature that I have found that makes me want to go to windows 7 at home is the nice GPU statistics you can now get in Process Explore that only shows up in windows 7. I don’t know if that’s because of a core difference or if the Process Explorer team just decided to alienate XP users.
Exactly. On my new PC, I have Windows 7. On my older PC, I see no reason to move from Windows XP.
On a direct comparison, Windows 7 does some everyday things in ways I like significantly better, the taskbar/jump lists for example. Then again, it also has several really annoying changes in the basic UI where I wonder what they were thinking. The updates to folder windows are mostly backward steps, IMHO. And as far as security goes, I can't run some scripts properly by double clicking from a folder view, yet they run fine if I open a command prompt in the same folder and type the script's name. Similarly, I can't xcopy-install utilities and such into their natural home under Program Files using one interface, but it's fine using the other. I'm a professional software developer who's been using Windows since it wasn't even an OS, and I can't figure out what the hell their security policies actually are for everyday operations any more, so what hope do non-geeks have? In any case, there is nowhere near enough benefit on balance to justify spending hard cash on an upgrade.
Moreover, Windows 7 just doesn't do some things any more that XP does. My other half has some old DOS era games she enjoys playing from time to time, but Windows 7 can't run them (without installing a whole VM and FreeDOS or something similarly dramatic). In XP, they just work. I do appreciate that Microsoft spend a lot of time and money maintaining backward compatibility for a very long time, but the fact is that they have chosen to break it in some cases in Windows 7, and that is a black-and-white loss if you happen to want to run the older stuff. Ditto for older hardware (where by older, in some cases I mean not very old at all but the vendor is an ass and never released Windows 7 drivers so you have to buy their new model instead).
There also seem to be a lot of hard to predict and half-explained networking issues with some of the "better" techniques they introduced with Windows 7, such that if you have an unfortunate combination of devices your transfer rates will be orders of magnitude slower than they should be. Again, most people probably won't notice, but this is a very serious problem if you do run into it and can't get any of the workarounds to fix it. And again, I've never seen so much as a blog post talking about how these new technologies actually make any noticeable improvement in Windows 7, so it's either a draw or a clear loss for Win7.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Last I understood, Win XP acquired a fair amount of back end drivers that became the industry norm. Sure, take two hours to turn off most of the junk - no biggie. A lot of companies (citation needed, who cares) announced they wouldn't support lower than XP, so even though you're 3/4 right, XP ended up being the OS of the decade.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I have a half dozen or so XP licenses, and only one 7 license. The latter goes to a partition on a gaming capable system, and the others go to VMs for running things like Office where needed.
Why would I update those XP instances? They serve their purpose. What would justify the multi-hundred dollar purchase of a license that's going be made as redundant as XP in a year or two?
Wanted to make sure I'm logged in for this post.
I recently built a new computer, and removed XP from my old box (now running Slack-nix). I also wanted to put XP onto the new computer, and given the whole phone-home business that XP requires (and can no-longer perform), I went the pirate route. M$ may disagree, but really I'm still only using a single copy of XP which I already am licensed to use. So long as my boot time stays under 2 minutes from totally unplugged to ready to rock (computer is a Digital Audio Workstation), and the o/s overhead eats less than 100Mb (which it does in the stripped down manner I run), I will continue to use XP (a lot of my software and hardware require support that just isn't there yet under *nix).
This computer is also set up to dual boot into Linux, and never gets the lan-cable plugged in while XP is running (don't want it trying any foolishness like telling M$ that it's alive). I wish I didn't have to resort to piracy, but I have been left with no other options.
For the holidays my younger brother picked up an extra copy of Win7 for me (through work he receives a discount, and can also legally extend it to family), but the install disc will continue to sit on my bookshelf for as far in the future as I can see. XP is stable for what I do, doesn't require me to jump through tons of hoops to keep it running how I want (even Vista has too many things standing in my way, such as twice as many registry locations I have to route through to make sure things aren't auto-starting).
In short, if MS is so gun-ho about not wanting to support XP, they should offer it free. Hell, didn't they re-code the entire kernel for 7?
There are plenty of folks who just don't need (or want) what 7 has to offer.
"It's the Law of the Universe, and I'm the sheriff." Slash-cott 2/10-2/17
On a machine with XP pre-installed, you can squash it down to about 20% of the drive to install Linux on the remainder. With later versions of Windows, you can't go below about 50%. All of my machines are dual boot XP and Linux.
My personal reason for still running an XP box are HP printers and scanners which are not as old as you might think. I think I got them a few months before Vista was released, on a sale, they were probably old stock now that I think of it. Damn HP haven't released drivers for 7, nor are they going to, so I'm forced to keep an XP box to use them. It does nothing else except scan and print.
I've personally vowed never to buy HP stuff again for that reason. Does anyone know of a hardware manufacturer who is better from a perspective of driver support of slightly out-of-date hardware?
BTW, the printer works under Linux but the scanner doesn't. I'm not sure that I understand why.
One thing I know, and that is that I am ignorant...
1. It does everything I need.
2. I'm using fairly old and underpowered hardware.
3. I'm not willing to pay for Win7.
#1 is the big one. i remember seeing it with DOS vs Win95, Win95 vs Win98 and Win98 vs XP. Its the same thing keeping people on Windows at all when there are alternatives that will work for 90% of people.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
what features and userability enhancements does XP have over 7? I'm genuinely curious, having used DOS, Linux, FreeBSD, Amiga, C64 and Windows since about 1985. 7 is far more usable than XP ever was.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Windows XP only games are not "retro". All your retro shit will work in DOSBOX.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I kinda skipped XP, 2k is better.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
win7 UI = start + type. way better than XP.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Ha! it is windows XP; it is not safe plugged into any network with their silly security patches! A decade of patches and its still a joke. You firewall that sucker down like crazy and hope nothing gets on it by other means (or in the few min its online without protection and gets hacked.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Most people I know who are running XP are running it because IT and MS have not been able to pry it away from them. Win7 might be good, but Vista gave people such a bad taste that they see no reason (and generally have no reason) to upgrade from XP.
I can't justify the dollars to upgrade to Win7, because my perfectly good hardware would not function as well as it does in XP, and I don't see value in spending dollars on a hardware upgrade for the same reason.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
You can run it virtualized forever. Hardware or drivers doesn't matter.
Especially if your main OS is something else non-Windows, then XP is by far the most sensible one to run virtualized to run Windows-only software.
Also, as market-share goes down, there will be fewer malware targeting XP. In a virtual setup used to run MS Project or whatever but no internet browsing, some common sense on which files you open and when running it as a restricted user, it is severely unlikely that malware will be a concern.
I agree it won't be viable 'in the enterprise', but I'm not replacing XP with anything else for personal Windows use. They will have to pry my XP VM from my cold dead hands! ;)
It's not my primary OS, it is an Internet Explorer delivery mechanism (for shitty MS-only websites). Why would I upgrade, except to waste RAM consumed by my VM?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence
I use Linux mostly these days, but keep XP on my older box. It works fine and is snappy.
When I boot Seven on my newer box I cringe at what they did to the control panel and explorer ... I just wanna knock heads together when I have to click five extra times to do something than it took in XP. Makes me sick... and yeah XP works just fine.
#6495ED - cornflower blue
Simple work-around: modify the ACLs on the install directory to allow the normal user to write to it. This can easily be scripted into a .CMD file (evolution of the .BAT script with NT extensions) that first calls the installer (as Admin) and then modifies the install-folder ACLs (as Admin). The program should then work as a standard user.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
As a webmaster, I notice that a majority of my visitors run Windows XP even after all of these years, it will still be around for a long time to come, a lot of businesses still run Windows XP and my local town library runs XP on their machines, they do not even have sp3 installed yet. IE 8.0 is their main browser, you will be lucky if you find a machine with Firefox 3 as an alternative. People only use the machines for Runescape, Facebook and Youtube amongst other standard web browsing activities, surely a basic Linux installation could manage this, but I guess that not everyone would be happy with this.
liberare massarum ex ignorantia, clausa descendit molestie.
The reasons for using XP are obviously:
(1) Additional hardware requirements
(2) Software incompatibility, including, but not limited to:
(a) Existing vertical market apps glued together with Visual BASIC
(b) Inability to run already purchased copies of Office on the new OS
(c) Inability to run already purchased other programs
(d) Lack of driver support for older hardware
(i) what sane printer maker is going to port a driver for their 4 year old model with broken toner/ink DRM to a new OS?
(ii) many hardware companies are out of business yet/because the hardware they made is still working fine
(3) Buying into putting all your machines online so they can phone the mothership and download god knows what
(a) Worked like a charm for the automated checkout registers at Lucky's, didn't it? Get your new Visa/BofA ATM card yet?
(b) Once it's working, leave it the hell alone; I don't need an auto-update of IE on my server/POS/home system with firefox/Chrome on it
(c) an offline machine gathers no worms
(4) There's simply no significant value proposition, unless you consider "Ooooh! Shiiiiny!" a value proposition
Get over it: Good enough is the enemy of better, particulary if (better - good enough) == nothing useful to me.
-- Terry
I am using Ubuntu and Red Hat and OpenBSD (yeah, I am one of the 3 guys who uses OpenBSD).
I also have Windows XP and Windows 2000 on 2 old laptops and on my current laptop I've got Ubuntu 10 and Windows 7, because this Thinkpad came with it and I just allocated the minimum amount of space on disk for it 56GB, 20GB of it IS Windows 7.
Booted into Windows 7 a few times and I tell you what - after Unity, this particular shell that is used in Windows 7 is the most annoying that I've used (and I touched Mac on a few occasions, and I find it completely unusable, just not a computer).
I tried Vista, it was unusable too, but I don't have Vista on any of my hardware, but I do have Windows 7, so I can try it. It's the craziest, most backwards, insane piece of garbage, everything, from file handling, to even the most primitive stuff that is supposed to be usable in Windows - File Explorer. It's horrendous.
This is my personal FEELING of it, I am not going to argue on every function (and I haven't tried every function, I won't do it, just like I won't use Mac again unless threatened with a machine gun.)
XP was the most SANE and the most USABLE Windows that I had to work with in my entire life, and I like XP GUI shell more than I like any of the Free software shells (no Gnome, no KDE, no Unity, no Xfce, no CDE, no LXDE,) they are all trash actually, but I use Gnome 2 unfortunately for me and I hate it, but I hate it less than everything else, so that's the extent of it.
You can't handle the truth.
Linux users are happy for each upgrade, cool new Features, optimizations, things running better than before.
Windows users on the other hand are fearful. What will MS ruin on the next version, which new annoyances will be added?
One of the problems holding us back at work is the software some of our designers and engineers run is brilliant on XP but second rate on Win7. They complain to me and ask me to 'fix' the versions that run on Win7 as they have bugs/flaws. I can't 'fix' the software, as the software is third party. Many times I hear the designers saying things like 'Version 11 (XP version) is great, but version 12 (Win7 Version) stuffs up and makes it look like I can't do my job.' One of the design engineers was showing me how in the Win7 version two metal beams that join perfectly in the XP software don't quite match up in the Win7 version. They join the beams perfectly in one view, swing it around and it's 5 cm out in a different view.
To cut a long story short, until the Win7 versions of the software have had the bugs ironed out and removed, the XP versions of the software are the only things we can actually use to do our jobs. We had to wait months for the Win7 versions of the software, but after testing, they just aren't up to scratch yet. We can't move to Linux or Unix (or anything else) as the software we use (and our clients use) are all Windows based.
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
For me it's because of the many versions and because of what think is a really high price for an operating system. The thing is I wouldn't mind paying a little more if I was able to use the OS without restrictions. As it is now the only reason I use a windows machine is to play games and even that reason is becoming less important to me. I think that within a year or two there will be no reason to stick with MS and just move to open source tools altogether.
We will be on XP for years more. Because in the corporation change is expensive change is evil.
The biggest reasons the majority of XP installs are still out there are crappy software in the workplace that the vendors won't even support you if you try and upgrade to anything above XP/2003. Seriously it is sad. They also are likely to require to run IE6 or maybe 7 is you are really lucky. We have had software vendors even try to tell us that they only support SQL2000 (which has been unsupported by MS for a while now) even though their company policy is to not support anything that the original vendor does not. You have management who refuses to listen to their people. All they want is someone to blame should anything go wrong. Instead of insisting with only going with vendors that can support the latest things. Until the software vendors start supporting the later versions of the OS (even if they keep supporting XP, just support 7 as well) most won't move. And users are dumb. If they see that work can't upgrade they'll think they shouldn't upgrade at home either. After all work has a IT dept. They know next to nothing.
XP is an excellent low overhead platform for server and for testing software. Very easy to reinstall, has low memory footprint.
W7 is much heavier a load on a system and more painful to manage.
We use Desktops with W7 (new machines), and XP for everything else that needs MS platform. Otherwise we use Linux,
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Just to clarify, the CPU that was mentioned (Intel Celeron E3400) is a dual core. I think it's probably a re-badged Wolfdale core, so pretty much a Core 2 chip. 2 gig is generally fine for Windows 7, especially if it isn't running 64 bit. Don't get me wrong, more memory is better up to a point, but especially if it was a 32 bit install, it doesn't seem likely to me that the extra gig and some change if he went with 4 gigs would make that much of a difference so it doesn't seem all that compelling. Agreed about the Hard drive. If he's using 80 gigs then it's probably from the spare parts bin.
Eight PCs in this house. One (offline) is stuck on Win98, but it's only used for playing Scrabble. One (the newest netbook) came with Windows7. It's not bad, but there are some UI annoyances if all-day reactions are honed to XP (notably, Explorer). I wouldn't ever buy new licenses for the other six - most don't have much memory, nor do I fancy reinstalling everything after a clean upgrade. Can't switch to fun-time Linux as it won't run many years' worth of expensive and protected applications (e.g. full OED).
Oh boy... Where to start?! Okay... Why do I "need" windows 7? Everything I have runs on XP, and runs very well. I can run XP with on a 3gb HD, 64mb's of RAM and a Pentium CPU... Why in the world does Windows 7 require over 10gb's of disk space, and 2gb's of RAM? There is absolutely, 100%, no reason for this! And cached(standby) RAM.... Really?... You are going to "cache" my programs in RAM Windows 7?... And for this, you (Windows 7) can't even run the original Fallout game. My complaints about Windows 7/Vista just go's on, and on, and on. so I'll spare everyone the rants. In the end, Windows 7 is too bloated, cumbersome, buggy, unreliable, vulnerable, and just plain incompatible with the old software and games I like to run. Just like Firefox 3.6, I have NO reason to upgrade to a fluffy, feel good browser with no menu bar just because mozilla, google, or Microsoft wants me too. I like my gray menu bars with solid black font, I like the functionality and user friendliness of it. Big squishy buttons and hidden menu's are not user friendly, their annoying and insulting. Oops, I'm ranting again. Anyways... This is why the desktop is dying, not because people don't want to upgrade, they just don't want to upgrade to something that offers them almost nothing new over XP, requires 10x the hardware to run, and breaks compatibility with their software. Why can't companies look to projects like "Menuet OS" for inspiration? It's written completely in assembly language and runs OFF OF A FLOPPY. Even for it's current alpha state, it is a full featured OS that can do almost what every other desktop OS can do, except it requires 10,416x less disk space than Win 7! The desktop is dying because of the bloat, and corporate stupidity, not because every user wants to trade their PC for a table or cell phone, it's because the desktop OS's suck so much now-a-days! So yes, XP is my very last Microsoft Desktop OS I will ever run. At least until MS gets their act together that is.
If Microsoft wants to give me a free copy of Windows 7, write drivers for all the devices I own that don't work under Win7, and kick in some hardware upgrades to ensure Win7 runs smoothly then I'm all aboard. I have a number of older machines around the house that perform various functions. It would be absolutely retarded to spend $120 for a new OS for a machine that's not even worth that. And at least another $50-$100 to upgrade them to be able to run it, not to mention the time and energy to do the upgrade and get everything configured and working. And this doesn't include all the add-in cards and peripherals I would have to replace (at least another $300+). If it ain't broke don't fix it.
We support products written in a couple of older versions of Delphi, which cannot run debug under Windows 7. There are no plans that I know about to transfer these products to a later version of Delphi, and the released products run under Windows 7. So we will need to keep XP installations around for the foreseeable future to support these products.
need a free COBOL editor for Windows?
Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!
Centos 6.2 outperforms xp and http://gambas.sourceforge.net/en/main.html works like visual basic on Linux.. Its better than visual basic and with very little modification existing vb type programs run on it. Centos works with server version and desktop on large and small systems. and it is free for the downloading.. why prey tell would you pay for something that does not out perform free? The nice part of open source is it upgrades automatically..
3 desktops and 1 netbook at home.
1 desktop on Win 7, the other 3 comps on XP. Reason? No need to upgrade, they are working fine and do everything i need them to do (Games, Skype, Office,etc).
The only reason i upgraded the one was because I had a hard drive fail (yup, the system drive) and i thought "why not?"
Actually, found it to be quite decent OS. In some ways better than Linux :-P Only in some of course!
Nothing major is wrong with XP. Several things are wrong with Win7. I do have Win7 at home, cause I got a new laptop a year ago and didn't have much choice (and even if I felt like replacing the OS with a copy of XP from elsewhere, I'd have to fight with all the hardware, which I'm sure wasn't tested on XP since it's not supposed to be supported any more).
But after getting Win7, I had to find replacements or other hacks for dang near every piece of the visible UI, before I could call it useable. Some of them were just designed to look and feel like XP, or, more accurately, like Win2k; some of them were actually better than XP/Win2k, it's not like I would claim either of those OSes were perfect. They were just entirely useable, which is more than I can say about the mess of a UI that Win7 provides.
So I'm keeping my XP at work until IT pries it out from under me, because I don't feel like dealing with the same issues again. (Plus, it's nice to have developers working on different OSes. After all, we sell to precisely the sort of people who are going to want our software to continue to work on XP and on Win2k and Win2k3 for all eternity.)
I can't buy Windows 7 that is localized to our family's preferred language in stores in the country where I live, and Microsoft won't sell it to me on the website if I give my correct billing address. The reason is, Windows is priced much lower in Russia, I guess because of the "competition" from pirates and generally poorer customer base. So they can't allow it to be sold elsewhere, where they can make more money selling basically the same software. Their web stores are segmented by language choice, which also limits the product choice. So I'm in the long tail for having emigrated to another country. I'm contemplating whether I'd better switch the last PC in our home to Linux, and buy my kids a gaming console so they don't complain about the games. I can make a point to not buy an Xbox, too.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
Let's see:
My customer's use WinXP, so we have to continue supporting WinXP.
WinXP is what our code-base is designed for, so I have to have it.
Our PCs are old and management is increasingly cutting funds for upgrades - most of my colleagues get a new PC once every 8 years or so - typically when their current one cannot perform its duties any longer (e.g. failed hardware that is non-replaceable).
Some of our required business applications are so old that XP is required, though we have found the Compatibility mode in Win7/XP to work okay too.
If I could dictate to the customer what to use, I'd move them off Windows entirely, and the same for everyone in our organization.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
It's Window Sex Pee
It's paid for. Old machine, old drivers, old software. Old user. Sucks to be MS.
Now get off my lawn.
--
Bug fixes never introduce bugs. Code just keeps getting better. Oh, yes.
> the cost of hard disks has gone up quite a bit since the flood
Noah had hard disks? What animal ate those?
I converted the XP corporate image to a VM, wiped my work box and installed Linux, and now have a constellation of XP VMs (corporate and development) that I start and suspend as needed, all running on a stable and powerful foundation. The company will start a Win7 rollout this year, but I'm perfectly happy with my current set up.
Alright, lets see what OsX gave with upgrades.
10.5: Major new features in the Objective C language; major new features in the kernel and application kit. Best of breed backup system as an automatic default, as easy to use as "hook a drive up, and click the "yes" button that pops up".
Costs? Yea, parts of the 1.4 iLife broke, and didn't tell you. Photoshop elements 2 broke, (and it wasn't clear at first that it was the OS change that did it). EOF started the descent into oblivion.
10.6? Kept 10.5 support in Rosetta. Bunch of new things that are actually good.
10.7? Significant security pluses (encrypted disks, encrypted Time Machine). Major improvements for autosaving applications, full screen apps, etc. Major minuses in lots and lots of other areas. Major changes to user interface. Major problems with batteries on laptop upgrades. Elimination of Rosetta. And most people advising that if you don't need the few new good features of 10.7 to go back to 10.6. Oddly, no one is saying go back to 10.5.
10.7 will be the mac vista. 10.8 will be better. But with a new UI and user experience, it will be the windows 7 of macintosh.
So, gee, 10.6 is the XP, 10.5 was the earlier working 2K, and 10.4 was ... halfway between 98 and NT. 10.3 was 98, 10.2 was 95, and 10.1 was 3.11.
10.0 was just like 3 -- a shell on top of another system. :-)
I am a former IT guy. I could easily install Windows 7. I even already own the install disk. But I plan to upgrade my hardware "real soon now" so I am waiting till then. I have a lot of installed software and I do not feel like installing it twice if I don't have to.
Microsoft shot themselves in the foot, IMO, when they decided you wouldn't be allowed to upgrade from XP to 7. As we know, most folks did not upgrade from XP to Vista and therefore were still running XP, and continued to run it, when 7 came out. Many of those folks might have eventually upgraded to 7 if they had been allowed. And don't tell me it was technologically impossible - it's possible to upgrade from XP to Vista, and from Vista to 7, so they could have allowed it if they wanted to.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!