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Windows Vista Enters Extended Support
yuhong writes "On April 10, the second Tuesday of April, Windows Vista will exit Mainstream Support and enter Extended Support. This means that no-charge (free) support will end, no further service packs will be created, nor will future IE versions (such as IE10) be available for Vista. Also, no new non-security hotfixes will be created or be available without an Extended Hotfix Support Agreement (EHSA). This will last for 5 years before support for Vista completely ends in 2017."
I'm apparently way behind the times -- being perfectly happy with Windows XP!!!!
I don't know why the above is rated -1. It's certainly more interesting than TFA.
No non-security hotfixes is not the same as no patches. They'll patch security flaws, but not add any features.
Not a sentence!
When are they going to put a mercy bullet in XP
You're implying that you're doing it a favour killing it? There's a reason it's still widely used. It works. I have yet to find something I can't do on the system. Every application runs on it save for the few that Microsoft's marketing department have deemed unsuitable like DirectX 11.
You shoot the race horse AFTER it breaks a leg and becomes useless, not while it's still in good racing condition.
This is assuming you are in the racing business, and not in the business of selling equestrians.
I am John Hurt.
You can of course switch to the free Llamas, but they're so unfamiliar.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
I've been dreading the day I'd have to leave Vista behind!
The two of them?
I know you're joking but there is a boatload of people out there running Vista... just about everyone I know who bought a laptop before W7 was released (excluding the people who are adept enough to install Linux, XP or W7 themselves) are running Vista. These people don't even know they're running Vista; to them it's just a computer and as long as they can write their emails, look up stuff on the internet, play FreeCell and occasionally write a document they are happy and oblivious to the fact that they're using Vista.
The longevity of XP was an accident. It was a good time to live in, but they won't make that mistake ever again. Don't expect support to last as long as the XP support for 7 either.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Let's see... Windows 7 is many times more secure than XP, has a better UI with better usability, better handling of wireless networks, better handling of external projectors, can be upgraded to IE9 (vastly more secure than IE6/7/8, even if you don't use it)...
XP needs to die. It really, really does. Win7 is better in almost every single way. Even if you only consider security issues, XP needs to die, and XP users should update to Win7.
I use Win7 at work and at home. Every time I have to go back to using XP, it's like trying to work with mittens on, or use stone knives and bear-skins. It's so ancient and obsolete and difficult to use I can't even stand it. Win7 is just better in every single way I can imagine.
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
I believe slashdot.org was around back when this was pretty much a bunch of nerds in their basement. I.E before the corporate acquisition :)
And to be slightly on topic, I still have a windows 2k disk set, I have both pro and advanced server, windows 98, and windows 95 (including 95b) as well as XP and a Vista beta disk. I don't know why I still keep them (nostalgia??) and I have them installed in VM's, which I've not turned on for years, but I guess it is good to keep them there just in case I need them in future.
Lots of things don't work on Windows XP. Just off the top of my head I can think of:
* Windows 2008 R2 RSAT Tools -- you can RDP to a server instead, but that's not always possible or recommended.
* PowerShell Active Directory module -- very handy, but doesn't work on XP at all.
* You mentioned DX11
* Internet Explorer 9 or later
* Location APIs for HTML5 apps
* Proper IPv6 support (XP has some experimental support, but in practice it's not very usable)
* Any 64-bit only software like the SharePoint 2010 design tools -- I know there's a 64-bit XP edition, I used to use it myself, but few others did, and support for it by hardware vendors was never good and even less these days.
Sure, these are all small things, but they add up. To get an XP machine to "work" you need about a bazillion hotfixes, add-ons, extras, drivers, and even some scripts. On top of that, these days it's getting hard to buy a machine with "only" 4GB of memory, but that's the most XP supports, unless you're a masochist and want to run an unsupported decade-old 64-bit OS instead of just going straight to Windows 7 64-bit like a normal person.
Sure, its leg might not be broken, but it's limping pretty badly.
I'm sure there are a lot of Fortune 500 companies still running XP. The biggest reason to upgrade by far, as has always been true for Windows, is for newer hardware support, or when security patches stop. Actually, I'm sure almost no one actually upgraded even to Windows 7, they just bought a new computer with it.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
The two of them?
There are more Vista desktops than Linux desktops out there.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
>Every time I have to go back to using Windows, it's like trying to work with mittens on ...
There, fixed that for you.
>old software and old OSes.
This is why you run a virtual machine and load up whatever software and OS you want from the old days.
It can be tricky, though. Because some of the really old stuff doesn't even expect a hard disk. I unpacked a .zip install of PFS Pro Write on to the "c:" drive in a DOS VM and it /demanded/ that I install to a drive location other than the install drive. Because the developers assumed the destination was a floppy, even with a c: drive letter.
Old software, all the games you missed playing over the years, etc. Load up a VM in a current computer. Install the legacy OS, boot it when you get all nostalgic or need to read really old files, and put it away when you're done. No need for separate hardware. DOS, Windows of all flavors, Linux, BSD, Solaris, OSX if you have an Intel processor, etc., can all be loaded in virtual machines. No need for a separate computer.
And when you're done, just close the VM and go on with your other business.
My favorite Windows for virtual machines is Windows FLP. It's like a pre-stripped XP. I tried 2k, but I wound up ripping DLLs from XP to put into 2k anyway. The same with NT4, which I needed to get DLLs from 2k and XP to just install Opera.
DRDOS 7.03 is out there for free download too. Unfortunately Windows 3.11 says that FreeDOS is "incompatible" and will refuse to run (wrong version). Hrmph. It also helps to have a serial mouse and serial port available for things like DesqView/X which demands an actual serial mouse.
My virtual machine software of choice is VirtualBox. There are others out there, like Xen, KVM, VMWare, Parallels (macintosh). Try them.
As for Win98, giving it any more RAM will be futile anyway. It maxes out at 512MB of addressable RAM. Windows 95 maxes out at 64.
A snapshot I took once to demonstrate the power of virtual machines: http://ompldr.org/vYXgzcA
--
BMO
sorry, that feature was removed before vista
It's now Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications and it appears to be deprecated as of Windows 8.
I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the "editors" didn't read.
There needs to be a new Godwin's law for when people use the term "sheeple", like when a person uses the term "sheeple" it automatically ends the argument because that person is too stupid to acknowledge they themselves are sheeple in some respect.
I mean in all honesty who thinks they can hold down a full-time job that requires a college degree and write an entire OS then support that OS for almost every instance that requires it and push those updates as fast as you can. Microsoft is in business because their specific OS is widely adopted and hasn't been supplanted because they have commercial partners and they are more than just hobbyists. Open source is /.'s mantra and all but really, open source can't solve everything and brings its own set of problems to the table (i.e. security...etc). I know you're an AC trying to get a rise but what is deemed "support" here is literally updates sent to the OS through the update tool besides the over-the-phone support as the article seems to imply. The fact it is going into the shut-down cycle this soon proves how successful Win 7 was well as how big a failure Vista ended up being.
Corporate IT runs XP because it runs a set of time-tested apps, that are either custom or extremely vertical. Updating to Windows 7 would mean:
1 - Upgrading licenses for the OS and probably office suites
2 - Possibly upgrading hardware
3 - Upgrading licenses for all your third party software
4 - Upgrading licenses for your web-based software to run in a newer browser (this is why so many companies still use IE6)
5 - Possibly upgrading server licenses to work with Windows 7
6 - Validating and testing to make sure all the new software works together (no small feat for large companies - think VPN clients competing with new active directory configurations, new authentication mechanisms, new IE mechanisms talking to new web app stacks that are probably custom, etc...)
7 - Re-train your support staff so they know the new software inside and out
8 - Finally you can re-train your users to use the new stuff
All that, for what? You're replacing a system that's known to work with an unknown quantity. The new functionality you get had better be WELL worth it, 'cause it's going to cost you.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
While you are correct with regards to supporting OSes in perpetuity, Microsoft has actually created an atmosphere of "perpetuity" to their OSes since cutting the cord with the command line all those many years ago. They wanted in the embedded device market... so they made XP work on o-scopes, etc. Well, those OSes need to last much longer than your grandma's computer OS, and Microsoft is increasingly aware that if they're not going to support their OS, someone will have an OS ready that will... and large, monolithic customers (the DoD for one) do not simply update their OS when Microsoft tells them to.
(Open Source has created much more secure and wonderful OSes than Microsoft could dream of creating, but that's for another post... and many folks did it while holding down a full time job.) They did it without forcing or requiring things to exist so they could invent a market, and in spite of Windows' sales numbers, there are many more Linux OSes run by the masses than ever before.... it's not your father's geek OS... :) Windows could cement their dominance by not dropping their OSes off the radar so quickly, but their hubris with regards to "the desktop" has shown many imperfections in the last few years... imperfections that are filled by other companies and their products.
Microsoft's OSes are manufactured to be compatible with each other. Windows 7 is just a better handled bug-fixed Windows Vista. For the most part, like Apple, Microsoft "obsoletes" their OSes artificially. The move to the NT-based kernel has solidified Microsoft's position with a real OS (anything before NT was a toy OS...), however with that comes the inevitable support dilemma that either helps Microsoft sell more OSes and keeps the package "fresh" so everyone will want the new OS with feature X, or it helps Microsoft maintain its existing base by supporting the OS so it won't be ditched in favor of the more plausible alternatives (more plausible and useable alternatives than we've seen in the history of computing I might add.)
While I agree that manpower is something Microsoft must contend with in their OS roadmap, I do not believe they are "hurting" by supporting two or three versions of their OS for at least bug fixes and the odd security patch. I'd be more inclined to believe that it is a substantial burden if Windows were a substantial rewrite each release... with the XP to Vista transition, far less of the OS was rewritten after many features promised were pulled (and still haven't seen the light of day... like WinFS, etc.)... but that is indeed a bigger difference than Vista to 7. But if they support Vista, they won't make any money peddling 7 (and soon to be 8...) That's not to say XP and Vista are twins... that's just to say that the underlying codebase (stuff that would benefit from bugfixes and security patches) is not as different as the boys at Redmond would have us believe.
My personal feeling is security and bugfixes shouldn't be something that gets dropped because of manpower shortages... after all bugfixes and security patches are repairs to something you already sold an unsuspecting public. Saying "well, buy 7 and that'll be fixed" is purely marketing... there is no technical reason to abandon an OS after a short time... Apple's just as guilty... requiring Lion for features that would work find for Snow Leopard. Apple's got the same problem Microsoft had with XP... it's good enough for most people. There's a realistic limit to support for an OS version, as we even see that in Linux, but Microsoft and Apple seem to be falling into the revenue grab trap... and the "sheeple" are not happy about it as they once were... even with smaller investments (with the OS costing more than most PCs that run it), people aren't keen on shelling out yet another $200 for an OS upgrade that just changes the second digit when you do "Ver" at the command line.
I don't believe the failure of Vista has caused Microsoft to "speed up" their shutdown cycle... I believe their increasing irrelevance in a changing market is pushing them to devote more and more resources to things they traditionally would've had "sewn up" in the bad old days of pre-convicted Microsoft.
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
At my workplace, our systems still predominantly run XP Professional, with maybe 3 or 4 running Windows 7 Pro.
Due to a budget crunch in 2009 through last year, we couldn't afford the planned upgrades, so we decided to make do with what we had. (EG. If a power supply died, we spent the $35 for another one and got the PC going again, vs. using it as a reason to upgrade to a whole new PC with a new OS on it.)
Now, we're slowly rolling out some upgraded hardware and software (just finished upgrading all of our Microsoft Office 2003 installations to Office 2010 -- which we were basically forced against a wall to do, so we could retire our old Exchange Server 2003 and utilize a cloud hosted Exchange Server 2010). But Windows 7 deployment has, quite frankly, created more negatives for us than the positives it brings.
Lack of driver support is a big issue. For example, the classic Adaptec 2940 series SCSI controller cards are no longer supported at all in 64-bit Windows 7. That's a problem for us, since we use a document management system with a group of dedicated "scan stations" people go to to scan in their documents each day. The scanners are old Ricoh SCSI based models that cost us many thousands of dollars each when we first bought them. They're still good workhorse scanners for our purposes and I can't really cost justify replacing them, at least until they fail on us. The only way I've found to make these work in Win 7 is to install the whole XP mode thing and run them in a virtualized XP session. That's ridiculous if you can just keep XP Pro on the computer instead!
Our old HP plotters aren't supported in Windows 7 either, but again -- why replace an "ancient" but still good, working plotter with a new one that costs $14,000 or more, just because you'd like to have the latest $200 or so operating system on the PC it's attached to?
From the systems administration side of things? Windows 7 annoys me because I can no longer browse the network and see the comments entered for each workstation. Under XP, I can double click the "Network Neighborhood" and look at all the PCs in the domain, and if they had description fields entered such as the name of the employee using the PC, they'd show up in the list. With 7, they decided that info was irrelevant, apparently, and no longer display it?!
Indeed. I have several games here that require Voodoo graphics support (glide or minigl). Good luck getting that in a VM.
There are also copy protections that require the floppy.
What would be useful is if Microsoft and other vendors did a "final release patch set", and offered it to the public for all foreseeable future. So even if you can't get support anymore, you can at least install the latest official patches, no matter how old those patches are.
As it is, you can't - Windows update won't work, and the patch download pages either have been removed, or made inaccessible. If you have to reinstall, your only options are to either go unpatched or to pirate the patches.
I don't expect Microsoft to support OSes forever. But I do expect them to not remove patches that have already been released. The hosting costs are negligible - an entire Win98 patch set probably takes less space than a single typical Tuesday patch, and will be downloaded by far fewer people, so the bandwidth costs are pretty low too. And, face it, it's not like customers are going to run Windows 98 instead of Windows 7/8 either, so there won't be any lost sales. Just some goodwill, which they are short on.