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."

Comments

Kill XP?

[jawtheshark]

You'd think so.... However, you'd be mistaken. The main reason for this is that XP is used by two types of "customers":

• Business users, that are locked to a certain platform that only support IE6. I know, the vendor of that platform should adapt its code. Business software release cycles are glacial. It will eventually happen, but slowly. Also, replacing computers costs money. Many businesses won't spend money on (perceived) non-core business.
• "Good enough" users. The power of modern computers, even lower end ones, is more than most users can throw at. Let's be honest: is a P-IV 2.0GHz with 1GB or 2GB RAM not enough to run Windows XP and the few applications most normal users run? Yep, I thought so. Unlike most slashdotters, normal people keep their computers for a long time and replacing them is a hassle for them. Given replacing a computer is not only a hassle, but also costs money... money that can be used for more fun things, they won't do it. Note also, that people in this category are also very likely to stick with the software they own. They won't stand in a line for the latest Photoshop and are most likely still happily using the Microsoft Word that came bundles with the pre-installed Works package.

Those people will not switch until they get new computers and that simply is the way it works and should work. Finally! Stupid upgrade treadmill.

From an administrator point of view, Windows XP is well known and mature. Which means, you can anticipate problems and make sure everything works like expected. With 7 (let's ignore Vista) a whole slew of new problems got exposed (not necessarily for the users, but for the admins... Try partitioning a 7 machine in two parts: one drive OS/Apps, on drive Data... Results must be seamless for newly created users. Another example is to copy a user profile as a default template. 7 is a true bitch for these things)

What 7 brings to the table, and the only reason I recommend it, is 64-bit. If you need more than 4GB RAM, get 7. I think Microsoft should do a "Windows Classic" which is XP re-branded, and sell it as a subscription to finance future patches. Let's say 5€/month. I think it would sell like hotcakes. I think I'd take it for the few remaining XP machines, I haven't converted to Linux yet. (I'll probably convert one back to XP as the ATI drivers for that laptop suck donkeys balls)

Re:Kill XP?

[ajo_arctus]

Business users, that are locked to a certain platform that only support IE6.

I hear this a lot, and in some (but very few) circumstances it's certainly true. However, mostly it's not. Most internal web apps run just fine on IE7, 8 and 9 too. My feeling is that these businesses don't want to upgrade because the current tool (usually a Dell Pentium 4 with XP) is working just fine. Why would any sane businesses want to spend money replacing something that works perfectly well? Well, you and I know a few good answers to that, but we're not the decision makers here.

BTW, I'm a developer, and I wrote a lot of those apps that originally ran on IE, so I've seen this all the way through. There aren't truly that many apps that are genuinely IE6 only. Most run just fine on newer versions of IE, and often times FF and Chrome too. As a developer, even though I was targeting IE only back in the early 2000s, I actually used Firebird (which then became Firefox) to do most of my testing -- and I don't think I was alone.

Re:Kill XP?

[hairyfeet]

I had some customers like that, know what I did? I told them to buy just one new box and compare it to their P4 and if they were happier with the P4 I'd hand them their money back and sell the box.

I picked one of the secretaries that had this awful P4 that sounded like a jet taking off and just belched heat and replaced it with an AMD E350 mini, no heat and noise and of course as i pointed out her power usage dropped to less than 18w while having a faster system. She of course just raved about how much nicer it was and they were sold. So with the exception of a few of the graphics guys that needed more power most were changed out to low power units, E350s for the ones just doing basic office work and low power Phenoms for those that were doing a little more heavy lifting.

For those stuck with a boss that thinks "It ain't broke so don't fix it" let your old pal Hairyfeet tell you how to win them over...point out how much money they are tossing each month on power and AC. The Pentium 4 was probably THE worst chip ever made when it comes to power, since Intel with those long pipes on netburst just kept throwing more and more power trying to beat AMD in MHz, and of course they are nearly always paired with some big ass CRT which is also sucking juice and belching heat all over the place.

So just pick up a Kill-A-Watt and show them how much money they are flushing on electricity and then point out that they are blowing even more on top of that in waste heat that has to be dealt with. Then point out how the low power Intel and AMD chips paired with a power efficient LCDs mean they can run 3 systems for the same power 1 of those P4s is sucking and its really not hard to get them to see the big picture. Heck they can't even use IE6 as an excuse since you can run 6, 7, and 8 in XP Mode and even have it preset to ONLY go to the Intranet app, thus letting you use a safer more modern browser for everything else.

Money may be tight but with an office full of P4s and CRTs it really doesn't take long at all for energy efficient units to pay for themselves. As an added bonus Win 7 is supported until 2020 so you can point out they should be set for the rest of the decade.

Re:Kill XP?

[Tenebrousedge]

As a home user,

1. Security.
2. Security.
3. A saner driver model.
4. Support for newer hardware. Vanilla XP needs drivers slipstreamed into the installer to deal with SATA drives.
5. Support for more standards-compliant versions of IE. Only Microsoft thinks that tying improvements like that to major OS releases is a good idea.

More minor things include an updated sound system (per-app volume levels), better graphics composition, improved boot times (varies), more efficient use of hardware (e.g. SuperFetch/Readyboost), and probably half a dozen other things I've forgotten.

I don't like buying things from Microsoft either. I switched from XP to linux and haven't looked back. However, I don't ignore that they have made a number of improvements since the days of XP. People seem to really like Win7, for what it's worth. Personally, the only way that I would use XP at this point would be from read-only media; Windows before the introduction of UAC was basically without a security model.

Vista

[jrumney]

The difference between consumer and business is Vista. Businesses never went near it, and consumers can't wait to get rid of it.

Let me get this straight

[PCK]

If you are a company that has a working system that runs fine, why would you force an upgrade just because XP is n't used by consumers any more? Even if you put the economic costs at zero which it certainly is n't and the summary brushes aside way to casually; you always have a risk factor of unforseen issues getting passed testing.

No business should upgrade for the sake of technology fashion, weather it be OS or applications. Hell you see companies running custom DOS programs all the time.

Re:Let me get this straight

[somersault]

A lot of "business" computers only need email and an office suite. There was quite a big difference between Windows 98 and Windows 2000/XP. There's less difference between XP and Windows 7.w

Re:Compare 2 extreme to make one of them look bad.

[mwvdlee]

Companies have a bunch of "good" reasons to keep XP.

Rather they have no good reasons NOT to stick with XP.
Except ofcourse artificial limits created by Microsoft.
If MS would keep supporting XP, it could easily go on for another ten years.

Businesses are concerned with applications.

[couchslug]

When you have thousands of dollars in CAD software (for example) on a system which works fine for your needs, you lose time and money changing out your PC. If some of that software doesn't work well with later Windows versions, you lose even more.

The cost of the PC and OS may be trivial, but replacing it may "cost" much more than buying a new machine.