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Maybe With Help From Google and Adobe, Microsoft Can Kill Windows XP
colinneagle sends this excerpt from Network World:
"Google announced last Friday that, in accordance to its policy of supporting a current browser and the immediate predecessor, its Google Apps productivity suite would drop support for Internet Explorer 8 once Windows 8 ships. Neither IE9 nor IE10 are available on XP. Adobe announced on the Photoshop Blog that the next version of Photoshop CS would support only Windows 7 and 8. The current version, CS6, is available for XP but, amusingly, not for Vista, which was its successor. This is a much-needed boost for Microsoft, which anxiously wants to put XP out to pasture after 11 years. Despite efforts to get rid of the old OS, XP still holds 43% of the market, according to the latest monthly data from Net Applications. Among Steam customers, Windows 7 has 70% market share, covering both 32-bit and 64-bit, while XP has 12%. That confirms what has been known for some time: consumers are adopting Windows 7 at a much faster rate than businesses. I know there is a whole economic argument to be had, and these numbers are not precise or scientific, but if XP really can be found in only 12% of households but 43% of businesses (or something close to that), then it really is time for the enterprise to stop dragging its tail."
The main ones I have found which only work with early versions are embedded web apps in things like telephone systems. We had a Mitel 3300 which just would not work with anything later than IE6. The developers in their wisdom wrote some browser detection into the pages that if you weren't using IE6 told you it needed IE6 or later then refused to display anything else.
First, it was already posted: http://it.slashdot.org/story/12/09/15/0130219/google-kills-apps-support-for-internet-explorer-8
Second, IE8 is being dropped, not Windows XP.
IE8 does not equal Windows XP.
IE8 is a web browser.
XP is an operating system that supports many web browsers and applications, and more than one at the same time.
There are plenty of other SUPPORTED ways to access Google Apps on Windows XP:
- Google Chrome
- Mozilla Firefox
- Apple Safari
- Google Chrome Frame
- Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook
With all of the above solutions, Internet Explorer 8 will still work on the computer for other websites that are required (whether that is a technical requirement or user preference). These solutions work in ADDITION to Internet Explorer, they do NOT replace Internet Explorer.
If the organisations IT policy is so rigid that they can't allow any of these solutions onto their network but still use Windows XP, then I doubt that this kind of organisation would be using such progressive and relatively new (compared to on-premise) solutions such as Google Apps in the first place.
We'll be replacing those shop-floor Win XP machines - right after we get rid of the Novell Netware servers. Yeah - we still use Netware.
I guess you'll have to mod me 'funny' because you can't mod me "sad".
Place nail here >+
Reactivation is automated, and takes less than a minute.
Wait, why am I defending using XP?
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
My copy was not pirated, too, it came with the machine. BTW, Windows support is nonexistent, M$ directed me to the PC maker upon contact -- and the PC maker support won't talk about nothing but the original configuration, WITHOUT service packs... (this was a couple of years ago, whne XP was better "supported").
Now, I got one W7 notebook (a family member idiotically wanted so, because Windows is "easier"). IE9 refuses to be installed, gives an update error and the mysterious cryptic error codes reveal nothing. Despite being quite slef-sufficient on Linux, I'm at loss about what to do (other updates work well).
I feel I was fooled into buying a product (W7) which simply can't work.
As people always say, "you get what you pay for"... actually, this is essentially BULLSHIT, if you for it you've been had.
Bottom line, one of the sole remaining uses for Windows is using IE9. Libreoffice is more than enough at my house and we prefer Chrome/Firefox anyway. For the few remaining sites which demand IE (mainly governments), I wonder what I'll do (not that they can force me to buy M$, but the annoyance remains).
There's a third class: "Power Users". I'm sorry, but properly-configured XP on the same hardware IS faster than Windows 7. Better machines than what you describe still perform better on XP than Windows 7. To me, it's a waste of money to upgrade to Windows 7 when I'm going to take a performance hit in the process. I also waste a lot more time reconfiguring Windows 7 to the way I like it than XP.
You're right that the only compelling reason for upgrading is 64-bit, >4GB (technically >2GB) applications. You're also right that partitioning the OS on one partition, data/users on another is an exercise in frustration (there are multiple ways to do it, all of which suck. I even tried junctions. What a mess). The only other reason I can think of at this point for choosing Windows 7 (when you have the choice) will be if hardware vendors stop supporting drivers for XP.
Okay, how about Business users who don't want to have to type in the fricking domain name each time they log into a different machine.
For some utterly confounding reason, Microsoft decided to do away with the customizable msgina login system (username, password, drop-down box for Domain) and replace it with the brain-damaged domain\username, password pair. Oh, and forget about writing your own drop-in replacement, they "fixed" that too.
For more Windows 7 great ideas, how about the Shut Down button that now lacks any kind of confirmation dialog? Want to Suspend? Find the little arrow right beside the words Shut Down, but don't miss by a couple of pixels or you lose your workspace.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
As far as driver go simply make your own disc with Windows Unattended CD Creator which will let you add Driverpacks which will cover just about ANY hardware you can come across. Of course even if you NLite the hell out of it with all those drivers you'll have to move up to DVD instead of CD. as for WGA it takes like 20 seconds to re-auth but if you don't want to waste the 20 seconds or are dealing with a machine that doesn't have net and you don't want to do the whole phone thing I'm sure I don't have to tell you there is a little thing called "WGA Killer" which i'm sure you can find easily.
Now that said I have to ask...why? Why would you want to do that? You can run Win 7 on any old P4 or better so unless your hardware is from the last century you shouldn't have a problem, even with older hardware its much better memory management makes the system actually pick up speed as you use it (thanks to intelligent caching and actually using free RAM for cache instead of bitchslapping the paging file like XP does) and with Readyboost any $2 2Gb flash drive can be used like a hybrid drive to speed up small random reads thus further speeding up the system.
If there wasn't something better out? THEN I could understand, in fact while everyone was struggling with XP RTM and SP1 I stayed with Win2K pro but when XP X64 came out I switched because it was the better OS even if you didn't have 4Gb of RAM because of the larger registers and being built on the excellent Win2K3 Server meant it was very stable and a solid system. I tried Vista but got bit by one too many bugs and went back to XP X64 but I switched to Win 7 when the beta came out and never looked back. The system I'm typing this on has been running it since RTM, that's 3 years and in that time I've replaced the CPU, GPU, RAM, board, and HDD and I had to re-auth exactly ONCE when I replaced the board and it took less than 15 seconds by Internet, completely painless.
So I look forward to your reply because i honestly can't see the appeal of running XP now. Win 7 is the first one since XP X64 where I can make a list of features and say "THOSE, those right there, make it the superior OS" and not just for consumers like Win 8 metro-fied, with win 7 you have so many features that are great for workstation users too. Default 2 pane explorer, jumplists and breadcrumbs make it insanely easy to get back to work, better memory management makes large applications run better, better video subsystem with hardware acceleration support means even beta GPU drivers can't crash the whole OS like they could on XP, its just a MUCH better system.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Which is why using Steam as a statistics source isn't very useful.. gamers are less likely to be in the 'good enough' crowd, thus using it as representative of 'home users' is going to skew results rather badly.
The hold back on XP probably is not ie6 compatibility for the majority of businesses. On the other hand, business tend to make decisions based on ROI. If upgrading to Windows 7 gives a favorable ROI, businesses will upgrade. If not, they won't. For most business users, word processing and spreadsheets are the major applications. Does switching to Windows 7 make one type faster? No, of course not. Therefore there is a low ROI.
Another move has been to hosting apps on a terminal server and then just using an RDP client. Again, the ROI on moving users from XP to Win 7 in that scenario is also poor.
Businesses make business decisions based on the bottom line. If they can get a better return doing X than Y, then they will do X. It's not that businesses can't benefit from switching to Win 7. It's just that they don't benefit as much as using those resources elsewhere in the company.
I've never had to register anything with Apple.
>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
>life