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XP's End Will Do More For PC Sales Than Win 8, Says HP Exec

Posted by timothy on from the grass-was-always-greener dept.

dcblogs writes "Hewlett-Packard executives say that the coming demise of Windows XP next year may do what Windows 8 could not, and that's boost PC sales significantly. 'We think this will bring a big opportunity for HP,' said Enrique Lore, senior vice president and general manager of HP's business PCs. Lore was asked, in a later interview, whether the demand for XP replacement systems could help sales more than Windows 8. His response was unequivocal: 'Yes, significantly more, especially on the commercial side,' he said. Lore said 40% to 50% of business users remain on XP systems."

34 of 438 comments (clear)

  1. It'll do a lot for pre-installed Linux too... by CaptainOfSpray · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ..with XP look-alikes. Yeah, OK, I can dream, can't I?

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    1. Re:It'll do a lot for pre-installed Linux too... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There is some credibility to that theory. After all, if you have to install an entirely new system anyway, it makes it easier to jump to a different OS family. especially if it has a similar UI. I hardly think the majority of businesses switching will do this, but I'm sure at least some of them will, and Linux numbers will reflect it. Hell, if you're so focusesd on saving money or maintaining stability that you've used XP for this long, something like Debian GNU/Linux might be perfect for you.

    2. Re:It'll do a lot for pre-installed Linux too... by fredprado · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Considering MS Office versions have been increasingly different from each other, I don't think it is easier anymore, from a training perspective to keep using MS programs. I mean, if you will have to train all your employees to use Office 2010, 2012, Blue or whatever, why not train them to use Libreoffice and get done with it?

    3. Re:It'll do a lot for pre-installed Linux too... by HaZardman27 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Do you really think the average MS Word user is going to deal with markup to create documents in LaTeX?

      --
      Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
    4. Re:It'll do a lot for pre-installed Linux too... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'd rather guess it will work miracles in Apple sales.

      Take my dad. He's ... well, let's say not too tech savvy. But then again, all he wants is some email, some web research for his hobbies, organize his pictures and writing documents.

      Ubuntu Linux is a cheaper alternative to Apple OS/X covering every use-case you've stated as relevant to your father. Then again maybe a Google ChromeBook would be the ideal solution for him if he prefers "the cloud".

    5. Re:It'll do a lot for pre-installed Linux too... by hlavac · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I doubt these old unmaintained Windows XP business apps will work better on Windows 8 than on Linux :)

    6. Re:It'll do a lot for pre-installed Linux too... by Mike+Frett · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Maybe it's time to buy Software Suits that are Cross-Platform eh. It's a Company's own fault for locking themselves in to one OS.

    7. Re:It'll do a lot for pre-installed Linux too... by LordLimecat · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Because there are actually things that Word / Excel / Powerpoint are better at than Libre office, and few examples of the reverse.

      Also, because there is still some degree of continuity within Office 2000-2013 whereby you can move between versions with substantially less headache than moving from Office 2003 to LibreOffice-- even with the Ribbon to deal with.

      After writing a single term paper and trying to unravel the thought process behind footnotes / endnotes in LibreOffice, I found myself pining for Word.

    8. Re:It'll do a lot for pre-installed Linux too... by sjames · · Score: 4, Funny

      I'm fairly certain that some users could set one of those on fire in under 5 minutes.

    9. Re:It'll do a lot for pre-installed Linux too... by sjames · · Score: 4, Funny

      Just put it on there and tell him it's Windows L.

    10. Re:It'll do a lot for pre-installed Linux too... by LordLimecat · · Score: 5, Informative

      Unfortunately for you that is not true. There are very few features that are better in MS suits, and the vast majority of people does not use them.

      Footnotes. Endnotes. Pagination. Cell merge. Conditional formatting. Macros. Anything at all related to powerpoint. Mail merge.

      I could go on, but these arent niche features.

    11. Re:It'll do a lot for pre-installed Linux too... by Lord+Apathy · · Score: 4, Informative

      I use both Libreoffice and MSoffice. To say that libre office is any way a competitor to MSoffice is foolish. It's like saying the gimp is a real competitor to photoshop. Libreoffice, like the gimp, gets the job done when professional tools are not available but they lack the support and integration that the professional tools have.

      The biggest issues of using libreoffice in a real office is compatibility of the documents. While it is true that both office and libreoffice can read and write each others native formats, these formats are not 100% perfect. I have written simple documents in libreoffice, saved them in docx format, and then loaded them in office 2010. The result was readable and even usable, but look completely alien to what I had on typed up under librewrite. The reverse was also true. If I had submitted the document I wrote in librewrite it would have been rejected for poor formating.

      I'm not saying this because I love Ms office. I actually prefer to work in librewrite because of its simpler interface. I'm saying this because its true.

      --

      Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification

    12. Re:It'll do a lot for pre-installed Linux too... by lgw · · Score: 4, Funny

      PowerPoint is the key. It's the most-used Office product among people making purchasing decisions, and (not coincidentally) the Office product with the most new features in the past 10 years.

      Does LibreOffice have Smart Art? (I've never had a need for PowerPoint away from work, so I've never even looked.) Do not underestimate Smart Art!

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    13. Re:It'll do a lot for pre-installed Linux too... by TheSpoom · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Long-time Linux user here. I gotta disagree. MS Office is tangibly better in a lot of ways (mostly the ones that the GP posted as a sibling to this post) than LibreOffice.

      You would do the free software community a service by not trumping up free software and simply describing it as it is. LibreOffice has a lot of use cases, but Office is still a very well put together set of productivity apps.

      --
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      - E. Debs
    14. Re:It'll do a lot for pre-installed Linux too... by mcrbids · · Score: 5, Informative

      As a programmer I rarely have to deal with the types of document scenarios you paint.

      However, my wife (who is NOT a technocrat) is an honors grad student at a California State University and has been using OpenOffice for the entirety of her educational journey. She has had to give many presentations and turn in a ridiculous amount of homework papers and in all that time, has never, not once, ran into a compatibility problem.

      She gives her OO Impress presentations on a shared computer running some flavor of MS Office/Power Point and has no chance to "preview" to make sure it "looked right" and has still never been disappointed. No, not even one time. I offered numerous times to buy MS Office and she declined, saying that "it works fine" and didn't want to "change anything", especially if it cost $$.

      I'd happily grant that she's not getting a degree in the Graphic Arts (actually, Psych) but to say that OO gives "completely alien" results is simply absurd.

      --
      I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
  2. You can pry XP from my cold, dead hands by Atomic+Fro · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For the business users still running XP, I don't see them flocking to buy new Windows 8 hardware. They are still on XP because either the software they run won't run on anything else, or they are small businesses that don't have an IT budget. As long as the hardware and software works, they aren't going to go out and buy new systems.

    --

    ==================
    Hippie Logger Jock
    ==================
    1. Re:You can pry XP from my cold, dead hands by Tharkkun · · Score: 5, Informative

      For the business users still running XP, I don't see them flocking to buy new Windows 8 hardware. They are still on XP because either the software they run won't run on anything else, or they are small businesses that don't have an IT budget. As long as the hardware and software works, they aren't going to go out and buy new systems.

      Until the first big virus hits that exploits a security hole that won't be fixed. When you realize you machines that can't be patched and will continuously be infected you may think differently about corporate security.

    2. Re:You can pry XP from my cold, dead hands by lister+king+of+smeg · · Score: 4, Insightful

      just because microsoft wont support it does not mean the antivirus vendors won't i can see them making lots of money off of xp support.

      --
      ---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
    3. Re:You can pry XP from my cold, dead hands by linebackn · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Until the first big virus hits that exploits a security hole that won't be fixed. When you realize you machines that can't be patched and will continuously be infected you may think differently about corporate security.

      At which time you discover that continuously re-cleaning the machines is STILL easier and less work and money than replacing the poorly written proprietary corporate dreck resembling a Rube Goldberg machine that only runs under Windows XP.

    4. Re:You can pry XP from my cold, dead hands by gulikoza · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So what? I still have SP2 machines working just fine. It prints receipts to the customers the same as the first day it was installed. Never patched it. The users working on it are limited and IE is prohibited with the GPO (employees have better work than surf on Facebook). LAN obviously is firewalled, not that this machine (and others similar) need to access the 'net. The only problem would be, if there was a domain wide virus that somebody would bring in with a laptop. However, that hasn't happened in the past 10 year. In my experience 95% of the "viruses" are crap people install themselves ("DHL sent me this packet, but I can't open the confirmation on my e-mail" "Are you expecting to receive something?" "No...why?"). No patches help that, unless it would patch the user, but then I'd be out of work... I have Win 98 as a retro machine here...connected to the Internet, running latest w9x supported firefox (3.6 I belive?), no AV (it's just p3-600). It won't get automagically infected as soon as it's turned on...why would it be?

    5. Re:You can pry XP from my cold, dead hands by KiloByte · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Please enlighten me, how exactly does Microsoft's security support matter? No on even remotely sane uses a version of Internet Explorer that works on XP, and all other browsers will keep security support for foreseable future. The only element that's not trivial to seamlessly replace is SMB, and that's relevant for the local network only.

      Other vital protocols:
      * DNS: when the shit hits the fan, clueful admins for some and "Security Suites" for the rest will install a reasonable resolver and tell Windows to query 127.0.0.1
      * sNTP: kill Windows Time Service; if you want replacement (I'm afraid most won't), you know what to install instead
      * ARP: this is harder, but a low-level firewall can detect and block packets that would kill Windows

      So folks will just continue the current state, slowly replacing Microsoft software. And in enterprise, block all SMB traffic other than to/from the domain controller and file servers, none of which need to run XP, or Windows for that matter.

      --
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    6. Re:You can pry XP from my cold, dead hands by ChumpusRex2003 · · Score: 4, Informative

      It depends. A/V software can hook large parts of the OS.

      Most commercial A/Vs these days hook into the network stack at the packet-driver level (below the TCP stack), into the keyboard driver (anti keylogger, the hardware driver is hooked, and an encryption routine hooked. When a browser extension, or supported tool detects confidential data such as access to online banking, the encryption hook is enabled, and the key presses are encrypted at hardware driver level, and then decrypted by the browser extension; any keylogger running at anything higher than hardware driver will see only encrypted data).

      For kernel bugs, it would likely be possible to hook the calls into the kernel at the appropriate point, and block "suspicious" activity. Similarly, for remote network attacks, an A/V system could simply drop packets known to contain an attack, before they get very far into the networking stack.

      This probably won't fix all vulnerabilities, but pro-active A/V companies could certainly reduce the attack surface significantly.

      Then, don't forget modern firewalls with deep packet inspection - many are capable of sophisticated protocol or application specific filtering.

  3. Well, I guess that's one way ... by jxander · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "Pulling the rug out from under 40-50% of our clients should really shake things up and boost sales"

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    1. Re:Well, I guess that's one way ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Would you use a circa 2001 ver of linux or macos?

      I run debian stable you insensitive clod!

  4. Wishful Thinking by rudy_wayne · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Just because XP reaches its official "end of life" doesn't mean that people will throw out their computer and go buy a new one. For most people- and businesses too - as long as existing units still get the job done there is no compelling reason to buy a new computer. The fact that Win 8 is crap is also a factor.

    1. Re:Wishful Thinking by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Many large institutions cannot legally continue using an out of support operating system.

  5. #define Win7 XP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Win7 is the new XP.

  6. Wrong question by Jawnn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The better question is how many people did not buy a new PC precisely because Windows 8?

    1. Re:Wrong question by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Interesting

      This. A billion times this.

      A lot of people don't really separate OS and hardware. They don't see the difference. To them, a computer comes with an OS and that's just something that is on the HD when they buy that thing. They don't even consider that they are essentially two very distinct things.

      So when they consider "I need a new computer", they rarely really consider buying a new OS. The OS is simply something that is already on the box when they buy it. To them, this means that "new computer" invariably means "Windows 8". Because it has become near impossible to get complete hardware+OS bundles with anything but Win8.

      And not wanting Win8 essentially means for them that they cannot buy a new computer now and have to wait until MS "fixes" this (with a new OS). Or they turn to different OSs. It might be interesting to check how Win8 affected Apple sales.

      --
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  7. I migrated my parents off XP... by voss · · Score: 4, Interesting

    to Windows 7 this year.

    Windows 8 was just too much of a learning curve for them even if it were the greatest thing since sliced bread.
    Windows 7 is similar enough to XP that I can sit them down at it and not have to reteach them everything. I can even make it look
    like XP If I really need to. I cant do that with 8 unless I buy add-ons.

      Also Windows 7 pro includes an XP virtual machine...so why bother with 8?

    Windows 7 is barely 3 years old its not like its going anywhere anytime soon.

  8. MS "relents" on the corporate side by davidwr · · Score: 5, Informative

    So unless MS relents and lets people get some boxes with Win7

    "Pro" versions of Windows 8 come with downgrade rights. Many businesses have been "buying" Windows 8 Pro but installing Windows 7.

    --
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  9. Move to Win 8 doubtful by helixcode123 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I don't know if this is any sort of indication about the popularity of Windows 8, but I got my daughter a new Acer laptop with Windows 8 for a graduation present. She asked my to put Ubuntu on instead. Interestingly, she prefers Mate to the default Unity desktop. Aside: boots in seconds because I put /boot and /usr on the SSD drive. Very nice.

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  10. That's FUD but still correct in a way .... by King_TJ · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If a big virus hits that exploits a security hole that's unpatched, SOMEONE will offer a patch. I'm 99.999% certain. Why? Because regardless of Microsoft's wishes for XP to just go away, there are still too many people using it every single day (many of whom aren't even computer savvy enough to be able to tell you for sure which version of Windows they're actually using). A serious virus infection would #1, make Microsoft look really bad if they take a stance of "Too bad... we can't fix it.", and #2 would likely put entire networks at risk with the infected files getting copied onto shared drives on servers, uploaded to cloud shared storage locations, and more. It's quite possible such an infection would need an unpatched XP machine to secretly get installed in the first place, but newer OS's would have problems too if the users open attached files sent from the originally infected XP boxes.

    If Microsoft stubbornly refused, some 3rd. party computer security firm would seize on the opportunity to get 15 minutes of fame with a free patch they'd circulate.

  11. Re:"An offer you can't refuse" by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Whatever you call it, people were excited about Windows XP because of what it brought to the consumer desktop, and people actually upgraded to it on purpose. Same for Win2k vs. Windows NT on the corporate side. Which upgrades since have not been dreaded? Windows 7, which is just Windows Vista Unfucked Edition. How about on the server side? I haven't had to go there in a while, thankfully. Regardless, only a few delusional cases clung to Windows 3.1, or Windows 95, but Windows XP is fairly compelling even today with its low resource requirements and unparalleled compatibility.

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