LOL! You can patent corners and even look and feel of websites. Algorithms are math! Yes you can patent them in hardware too and not just in software. Should we? FUCK NO. Click on an address book is math that is the sole proprietary of Apple in which they are trying to nail Google for doing just as an example.
Hardware yes I agree with Intel if they spent the R&D and want to protect as long as it is non commonly used styles or software where copyright can provide enough protection.
Go do a google search from the usenet groups from 1995? They are filled with angry middled aged men trying to re-add the program manager and file manager. Honestly go look it up?
People hate change. I didn't mind it but keep in mind many slashdotters who are middle aged today and set in their ways were teenagers then excited to learn new things.
I am not saying Windows 8 is great and all the people who hate are whinners. I am just saying it is evident with the anti Windows 7/die hard XP loyalists who grew up in IT as stagnant fear change. Windows 7 too foreign and risky? I mean come on and get with the times as it is 2012. You are incompetent if you still use XP today. Kiss my butt otherwise as people do need to run secure platforms and not expect us to support you as it is your problem not ours at this point.
I could get used to Windows 8 actually if MS improved METRO to give it a task bar and a way to put more than 1 tile on the screen and make it integrate with other desktop apps easier. Clicking like a retard on a hotcorner over and over again until the right applet comes up is retarded and why the taskbar was invented. If Windows 9 improves this I can adopt and even get excited buying a tablet or phone with it.
I think the young millenia generation will adopt fine.
These things are monsters. I do not like loud space heater machines that require large desktops but only match the lowest performing cpus in the market.
Do not get me wrong I am typing this on a phenomII and I am an ATI/AMD fan. These are not the better phenomIIs. I would have preferred it if AMD admitted their new lineup is flawed and sold more up to date phenomIIs.
I pray AMD survives but these things are even further behind icore3s. I like the extra cores do not get me wrong but the market is heading towards notebooks and tablets and these things just are not up to the task at 130 watts!
I am typing this on a phenom II which is a better chip in my opinion and fast at the time in (unfortunately in 2010 standards). But these things run well over 130 watts, are loud with huge freaking fans, 4.4 ghz, and it seems AMD is trying to pump out as much speed as possible to beat intel's lowest end chips.
Just call it pentium IV 2.0 while we are at it? I am not a fan of intel because I run vmware and hate that intel cripples its chips and the bios to exclude virtualization on all but the most expensive units. I hate the cost of a high end icore 7 which in 2010 was only 10 - 15% faster than a Phenom II but cost 400% more where I can buy a whole system for the cost of a single intel core 7 extreme.
Well gentlemen. Expect dark days ahead and a return to $1000 desktops, $500 chips, and virtualization only available on xeon chips by next year.:-(
With AMD junk status it is bound to happen now since these chips can't match intels offering.
Oh I would also like to add the answer for multi-core are browsers!... and applets as Windows 8 is about to come upon us. I thought a 6 core was excessive but I use VWare. When not I have 20 tabs open in Chrome or Firefox. IE 9 and Chrome makes each tab a seperate process and is very CPU scalable. Believe it or not I had 30+ tabs opened and have noticed 3 out of the 6 cpus doing a ton of work running some terrible actionscript or javascript several times.
HTML 5.1 or 5 (depending on W3C or Whatg implementation) supports websockets and webworkers where elements in the page can be spawn into a seperate thread/process as workers and children. Metro does this with its apps and they are always running even if you close them. A multi-core cpu will make life easier if your system has been on for awhile when you have 8 metro apps running and 15 tabs opened with half running html 5/5.1 in the next few years ahead.
I am typing this on a Phenom II 6-core system. It is quiet, 45 watts, and at the time (2010) it was only 10-15% slower than an icore5. What did I get that the intel icore5 didn't?
- My whole system including the graphics card was $599! Also an Asus motherboard by the way too and part of their extended warranty boards. - Non crippled bios where I can run virtualization extensions (most intel mobos turn this off except on icore7s) - 45 watts - My ati 5750 works well with the chipset - the AM3 socket can work with multiple cpus after bios updates.
What the icore5 has - It is made by intel - It is 15% faster - The cost of the cpu alone is 2x the price and I can pretty much include a motherboard as well if you are talking up to icore7s.
An icore7 system costs $1200 at the store. An icore5 gaming system similiarly specced cost $850 and does not include virtualization support to run VMWare or Virtualbox.
The FX systems... ble. I am not a fan. But for what I do AMD offered a quieter cheaper system that could run VMs of Linux and can upgrade easier. To me my graphics card and hard drive are the bottlenecks. I would rather save money on the cpu. I was so hoping AMD would use this to have a great graphics for tablets and notebooks:-(
Sigh... I get into some big flamewars with XP loyalists when that article of MS wanting businesses to leave XP behind hit slashdot yesterday. I would figure slashdotters would be more cutting edge.
Look if you have a computer that is more than 2.5 years old a modest upgrade can help. If you have a 5 year old system then it is obsolete and you have to watch its workload if you want to run semi modern software. It is 2012 and Windows 7 has been out for 3 years. Upgrade as browser markers plan to cut support for XP (yes even Mozilla and Google) very soon.
That is life. If you run a 11 year old operating system you can blame Mozilla or Google for a problem. The problem is yours. A modern OS can run nicely on a core2duo with 4 gigs of ram fine by the way and you need not throw your whole system out. Same with Linux.
Browsers today are mini operating systems and are whole platforms with hi def flash advertisements many megs in size, JIT javascript compilers, and complex image rendering with the css. If you have 30 tabs open any modern browser will treat them like running 30 applications at the same time. Browsers have to cache everything and even open frequently used websites in the background invisibly so people do not whine how slow their browser is and switch to a competitor.
It is 2012. 8 gigs of ram is cheap and a browser is not a simple program for displaying formatted text with a picture or two. Yes they are demanding platforms today.
The ram myth was disproven last summer by an article I submitted.
Yes Firefox 4, and even FF 3.6 sucked really badly and were falling behind. IE 9 outperformed both and so did Chrome which scared Mozilla into fixing it. It is a much better browser than it was 1.5 years ago when it changed.
Why I stick with Firefox over Seamonkey Last I checked in places like www.filehippo.com it has not been updated in YEARS! How many security vulnerabilities does it have? How far behind is it in supporting standards? I am going to sound like an IE tard but the reasons to use Firefox are: - Well supported - Issues are well known to webmasters - Has the backing of Mozilla to fix its bugs and from devleopers - Actively being patched fast (4 exploits patched in 16) - It is what most people use right there with Chrome and IE - Webmasters do QA with it
Websites will just work. I know those were the arguments for IE 6 but do not be surprised if a website doesn't work and you email the webmaster and his response will be go download chrome or firefox!
Plugins do not break as much either. They have a new api similiar to Chrome where it wont break release after release. If that still bothers you IE 10 is just around the corner and is updated every 1.5 years. IE 10 is very competitive with Chrome and Firefox and no longer blows goatballs. It is standards compliant too and fast unlike past releases and changes very slowly. Corps love it for this reason
I think it is the older crowd who hates change. People such as yourself who are set in their ways. THe users too and many (people in finance and HR who set the budget) have LOTS of power.
They all want the latest phones and on the way to work play in full HTML 5 accelerated apps with gradients and things there work computers with IE 7 can't do. Then freak out when you show them IE 9 that has some of the same capabilities as their phone and demand the 11 year old unaccelerated ugly XP back because it was what they used for 11 years, it is well supported, stable, it is what everyone uses, we can save money, etc.
I am disappointed in slashdot. If we had a time machine and showed these comments to slashdotters in 2002 I wonder what the reaction would be? No one would believe you! It is the equilivent of fighting for DOS and WP 5.1 which can read some word.doc files in 2002 when XP is out because damit why change! Dos/Win 3.1 work fine!!
In 2014 we can ignore these users and they will find out the hard way when they get hacked, cant browse websites, or open files in newer programs.
Whats really strange is that (3 stories down from this one) are those who are fighting tooth and nail agaisnt Windows 7 and grabbing hold of XP tightly and refusing to upgrade and being all mad at MS for only offering 11 years of support.
This is slashdot too, not a phb.org site or cheapcostaccoutning.org. Windows 7 is so close to XP and so much better and yet people who are so called technical experts are threatened by it due to change and learning. It shows just how irrational people can get and learn by behavior. Instead of upgarding every few months like they do in the Unix world they learn never and I mean NEVER upgrade in 10 years software and it is a learned behavior to panick when it is time to be proactive to change. Not reactive, such as when executives bring the IPADs to work and wonder why their IE 6 intranet apps wont work on htem.
After all the last post showing all the middle aged so called IT people who fear change fight tooth and nail to keep XP and expect the world to stop time to accommodate them now make up the majority of opinions here on slashdot.
I do not know what to make of this site anymore and hope you don't get modded down to -1 for such an flaming comment on innovation.
The catch is they do not lose money by making older parts. If anything they still make money. MS fixes Windows for free. Same with crappy insecure browsers like IE 6. Website makers have to put ancient IE hacks to accommodate these corporate users for free. Developers have to use tools like VB 6 and ignore.NET to make these users happy.
Meanwhile they get hackers over and over and help desk has to work overtime for free. Enough is enough. costs are rise on older vehicles and outdated software. The difference is the driver does not get a financial incentive to externalize the cost to repair shops. Corporate America is getting this as well as middle aged users who fear change.
But the cost accountants and PHB sure as hell intended to and plan to run it forever. Slashdot is turning very conservative and is is weird. Don't you agree?
Slashdot used to have articles 3 years ago claiming UPGRADE TO WIN 7 NOW! It is 2010 and you still run XP?! Back then I defended the move to stay on XP saying, OH GEEZ Financial collapse is here. How are we going to not lay off employers? I know, lets upgrade your perfectly working XP computers!... etc
Today in 2012 slashdotters now defend XP as the greatest OS ever written and I did a reverse figuring enough is enough. IE like XP is here to stay unfortunately and the only reason these people who fear change and are set in their ways will change is when we all upgrade and stop writting ancient IE 6 workarounds in websites, start using docx 2013 file formats, start sending file attachments in recent formats for other products etc.
Corporations upgraded often in the 1990s because of these reasons. When everyone sits and stops the clock it does the opposite and encourages to halt innovation.
a) it is fast even on old hardware, No it isn't. If you upgrade XP it runs slow. Slow Hardware runs slow.
b) it is supported by at least one good, secure Web browser (hint: not MSIE), For business? Businesses use IE, and the smart people break the policy and install other Browsers. Business use IT, because there are still too many stupid companies who think Active X was a good idea.
c) it supports about 15 years worth of professional applications (some of which are not available anymore), and If your application isn't available anymore. You are putting your company as risk.
d) upgrading == (pain + time) && (upgrading != c) Lazy ass IT.
This is not a -1 flamebait just because you disagree with him.
a. It is documentated that the SATA driver for XP is crippled to make Vista look faster with disk access. It only does synchronous I/O due to no command queing. OUCH. Ligher=! faster for newer hardware. I can vounch for this on my hex core system that runs much better under Windows 7 and is sluggish under XP
b. IE is standard. Love it or hate it, it is integrated with both active directory and policies. IE 9 is a decent browser and IE 10 is a great one! No you did not misread that if you do any benchmarks with IE 10. Night and day compared to an ancient Xp version of IE. It is certainly usable for corporate drones now and is standards compliant.
c. You are putting your company at risk. Yeah no shit! Security threats due to bad design are huge. Saying it is secure is like saying IE 6 is secure because it still gets updates. Using a modern browser is a much better idea. Same with the OS.
d. IT supposed to look into the future. Not only put out fires and care about making the cost accountants their bonus! It is irresponsible to wait until people start sending files in Office2k13 formats and Photoshop CS 7 formats that you cant support, or wait until XP goes EOL and then find out you can't upgrade and get 0wned, or your executives all buy Windows 8 tablets/IPADs and your ancient intranet software wont work.
You do not have to migrate but you should be prepared before these events happen. Not after someone many ranks above goes to an HTML 5 contract with salesforce in 2 years and are still running IE 7. Ooops.
You can disagree and see no reason to blow money but they are valid concerns. In the 1990s anyone still running Windows 3.0, netscape 2.0, Wordperfect 5.1 by 1999 would be fired! Not given a pat on the head for cost cutting and fearing all so scary Windows 9x. But sadly in this decade we are doing just that. It is silly.
Vista had issues even fully patched with Active Directory believe it or not. Even Windows 7 has a few of the bugs. An example is if you forget to clean the ARP tables of a Share after moving a user to a different UI Vista/7 will hang when a user logs in at the welcome screen with no error message. Networking too was problematic while XP worked fine.
MS just used Windows 7 as the fix for most of these even after SP 2. This is why businesses stuck with XP. Not just because of the hard drive thrash of death before SP 2 with its overzealous indexing.
Where I work I have to deal with clients, users, vendors, and a hospital does not have a marketing department. That was just one example. Real enterprise interacts with other people who most likely at this point run newer software. It is a mild problem now but after 2014 it will be major. People use newer software and if you can't interact they will think something is wrong with the company.
You can only go so far by staying behind the competition. Eventually you need to actually spend/invest costs, not just label everything as a cost center until your assets turn to crap.
So what happens if the marketing department at your employer receives a Photoshop CS 7 file? What if a vendor emails a word or excel 2013 file?
Me I am trying to start a business on the side catering to the corporate market. I just dumped IE 6 support and I am about to dump IE 7 and maybe 8 next year. That is another lost opportunity if you use my network, I wont support you. I may do a crappy craigslist like UI for IE 8. I am undecided on what to do in that regard.
We are networked and as a result we have catered to your needs for years and MS even neutered.NET 4 to support some of XPs limited feature set in final release. Those who do upgrade will expect you to do the same. Infact the reason people upgraded Office often in the 1990s was because the staff didn't want to look like asses asking to resend in word 95 format etc.
With salesforce and clouds using an up to date browser is going to be an increasing requirement too for office workers. The world is changing and leaving your platform behind. In the next coming years this will be a problem.
I do not give a damn about robotics and specialized equipment. I do care about trying to make an HTML 5 website work with IE 7 for free with CSSPIE javascript hacks. Newer PDF files with advanced features can't be read in older versions which are major security risks. Adobe 12 does not exist yet but will in a few years. XP will not be usable for an average office worker or person for these reasons.
If you work for military hardware I would be worried about getting hacked and someone stealing your secrets. China would love you if you work any contracts. That is a niche use case.
Sadly many who do care about these things use XP and fear change. They expect Office 2k3 to support newer versions of OpenXML in Office 2013, still expect websites to work in IE 7, and will whine when their hardware wont work. There comes a time where enough is enough and we wont support your platforms anymore as they externalize cost savings on to us.
There are newer format versions. Word 2013 docx is not compatible with Office 2003. Eventually you will get emails with someone on the other end expecting an answer.
XP does not run well on modern hardware. Not what the XP loyalists would have you believe and the SATA driver is a big issue. It can't do command queing.
So the hard drive only executes one command at a time synchronous wise while the paging algorithm goes batshit in XP. It slows down an icore7 quit nicely compared to even a Pentium IV with a UMA controller. It is time to leave it behind as hardware is barely even supported on it anymore and surely not optimized.
There is a psychological different between Windows users and non-Windows users. They hate change. They are middle aged, set in their ways, and fear change more than they look at the positives of what change may bring. If they didn't have this mentality they would be more likely to get a Mac or experiment with Linux correct?
Most people who are not reactionary have went to Windows 7 or another platform already. I find it hypocritical those in IT who love technology and change all of the sudden at 35 became neophytes and fight tooth and nail with their cost accountants by the side (their old enemies) and look for reasons on why Windows 7 is really just Vista SP 2 or is just a gui change.
There are workarounds but companies are lazy and do not want to worry about it. Citrix is a big one. NO wine is not a replacement in a real production environment.
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't think you could patent math.
LOL! You can patent corners and even look and feel of websites. Algorithms are math! Yes you can patent them in hardware too and not just in software. Should we? FUCK NO. Click on an address book is math that is the sole proprietary of Apple in which they are trying to nail Google for doing just as an example.
Hardware yes I agree with Intel if they spent the R&D and want to protect as long as it is non commonly used styles or software where copyright can provide enough protection.
Go do a google search from the usenet groups from 1995? They are filled with angry middled aged men trying to re-add the program manager and file manager. Honestly go look it up?
People hate change. I didn't mind it but keep in mind many slashdotters who are middle aged today and set in their ways were teenagers then excited to learn new things.
I am not saying Windows 8 is great and all the people who hate are whinners. I am just saying it is evident with the anti Windows 7/die hard XP loyalists who grew up in IT as stagnant fear change. Windows 7 too foreign and risky? I mean come on and get with the times as it is 2012. You are incompetent if you still use XP today. Kiss my butt otherwise as people do need to run secure platforms and not expect us to support you as it is your problem not ours at this point.
I could get used to Windows 8 actually if MS improved METRO to give it a task bar and a way to put more than 1 tile on the screen and make it integrate with other desktop apps easier. Clicking like a retard on a hotcorner over and over again until the right applet comes up is retarded and why the taskbar was invented. If Windows 9 improves this I can adopt and even get excited buying a tablet or phone with it.
I think the young millenia generation will adopt fine.
These things are monsters. I do not like loud space heater machines that require large desktops but only match the lowest performing cpus in the market.
Do not get me wrong I am typing this on a phenomII and I am an ATI/AMD fan. These are not the better phenomIIs. I would have preferred it if AMD admitted their new lineup is flawed and sold more up to date phenomIIs.
I pray AMD survives but these things are even further behind icore3s. I like the extra cores do not get me wrong but the market is heading towards notebooks and tablets and these things just are not up to the task at 130 watts!
Man I really want AMD to win!
I am typing this on a phenom II which is a better chip in my opinion and fast at the time in (unfortunately in 2010 standards). But these things run well over 130 watts, are loud with huge freaking fans, 4.4 ghz, and it seems AMD is trying to pump out as much speed as possible to beat intel's lowest end chips.
Just call it pentium IV 2.0 while we are at it? I am not a fan of intel because I run vmware and hate that intel cripples its chips and the bios to exclude virtualization on all but the most expensive units. I hate the cost of a high end icore 7 which in 2010 was only 10 - 15% faster than a Phenom II but cost 400% more where I can buy a whole system for the cost of a single intel core 7 extreme.
Well gentlemen. Expect dark days ahead and a return to $1000 desktops, $500 chips, and virtualization only available on xeon chips by next year. :-(
With AMD junk status it is bound to happen now since these chips can't match intels offering.
Oh I would also like to add the answer for multi-core are browsers! ... and applets as Windows 8 is about to come upon us. I thought a 6 core was excessive but I use VWare. When not I have 20 tabs open in Chrome or Firefox. IE 9 and Chrome makes each tab a seperate process and is very CPU scalable. Believe it or not I had 30+ tabs opened and have noticed 3 out of the 6 cpus doing a ton of work running some terrible actionscript or javascript several times.
HTML 5.1 or 5 (depending on W3C or Whatg implementation) supports websockets and webworkers where elements in the page can be spawn into a seperate thread/process as workers and children. Metro does this with its apps and they are always running even if you close them. A multi-core cpu will make life easier if your system has been on for awhile when you have 8 metro apps running and 15 tabs opened with half running html 5/5.1 in the next few years ahead.
I am typing this on a Phenom II 6-core system. It is quiet, 45 watts, and at the time (2010) it was only 10-15% slower than an icore5. What did I get that the intel icore5 didn't?
- My whole system including the graphics card was $599! Also an Asus motherboard by the way too and part of their extended warranty boards.
- Non crippled bios where I can run virtualization extensions (most intel mobos turn this off except on icore7s)
- 45 watts
- My ati 5750 works well with the chipset
- the AM3 socket can work with multiple cpus after bios updates.
What the icore5 has
- It is made by intel
- It is 15% faster
- The cost of the cpu alone is 2x the price and I can pretty much include a motherboard as well if you are talking up to icore7s.
An icore7 system costs $1200 at the store. An icore5 gaming system similiarly specced cost $850 and does not include virtualization support to run VMWare or Virtualbox.
The FX systems ... ble. I am not a fan. But for what I do AMD offered a quieter cheaper system that could run VMs of Linux and can upgrade easier. To me my graphics card and hard drive are the bottlenecks. I would rather save money on the cpu. I was so hoping AMD would use this to have a great graphics for tablets and notebooks :-(
Sigh ... I get into some big flamewars with XP loyalists when that article of MS wanting businesses to leave XP behind hit slashdot yesterday. I would figure slashdotters would be more cutting edge.
Look if you have a computer that is more than 2.5 years old a modest upgrade can help. If you have a 5 year old system then it is obsolete and you have to watch its workload if you want to run semi modern software. It is 2012 and Windows 7 has been out for 3 years. Upgrade as browser markers plan to cut support for XP (yes even Mozilla and Google) very soon.
That is life. If you run a 11 year old operating system you can blame Mozilla or Google for a problem. The problem is yours. A modern OS can run nicely on a core2duo with 4 gigs of ram fine by the way and you need not throw your whole system out. Same with Linux.
Well evidence points otherwise that Firefox does use less ram.
Browsers today are mini operating systems and are whole platforms with hi def flash advertisements many megs in size, JIT javascript compilers, and complex image rendering with the css. If you have 30 tabs open any modern browser will treat them like running 30 applications at the same time. Browsers have to cache everything and even open frequently used websites in the background invisibly so people do not whine how slow their browser is and switch to a competitor.
It is 2012. 8 gigs of ram is cheap and a browser is not a simple program for displaying formatted text with a picture or two. Yes they are demanding platforms today.
Ugh. I would rather stick my eye with a carrot than use FF 3.6 or 4 on any older system with 2 gigs of ram or less.
The ram myth was disproven last summer by an article I submitted.
Yes Firefox 4, and even FF 3.6 sucked really badly and were falling behind. IE 9 outperformed both and so did Chrome which scared Mozilla into fixing it. It is a much better browser than it was 1.5 years ago when it changed.
Why I stick with Firefox over Seamonkey
Last I checked in places like www.filehippo.com it has not been updated in YEARS! How many security vulnerabilities does it have? How far behind is it in supporting standards? I am going to sound like an IE tard but the reasons to use Firefox are:
- Well supported
- Issues are well known to webmasters
- Has the backing of Mozilla to fix its bugs and from devleopers
- Actively being patched fast (4 exploits patched in 16)
- It is what most people use right there with Chrome and IE
- Webmasters do QA with it
Websites will just work. I know those were the arguments for IE 6 but do not be surprised if a website doesn't work and you email the webmaster and his response will be go download chrome or firefox!
Plugins do not break as much either. They have a new api similiar to Chrome where it wont break release after release. If that still bothers you IE 10 is just around the corner and is updated every 1.5 years. IE 10 is very competitive with Chrome and Firefox and no longer blows goatballs. It is standards compliant too and fast unlike past releases and changes very slowly. Corps love it for this reason
I think it is the older crowd who hates change. People such as yourself who are set in their ways. THe users too and many (people in finance and HR who set the budget) have LOTS of power.
They all want the latest phones and on the way to work play in full HTML 5 accelerated apps with gradients and things there work computers with IE 7 can't do. Then freak out when you show them IE 9 that has some of the same capabilities as their phone and demand the 11 year old unaccelerated ugly XP back because it was what they used for 11 years, it is well supported, stable, it is what everyone uses, we can save money, etc.
I am disappointed in slashdot. If we had a time machine and showed these comments to slashdotters in 2002 I wonder what the reaction would be? No one would believe you! It is the equilivent of fighting for DOS and WP 5.1 which can read some word .doc files in 2002 when XP is out because damit why change! Dos/Win 3.1 work fine!!
In 2014 we can ignore these users and they will find out the hard way when they get hacked, cant browse websites, or open files in newer programs.
Whats really strange is that (3 stories down from this one) are those who are fighting tooth and nail agaisnt Windows 7 and grabbing hold of XP tightly and refusing to upgrade and being all mad at MS for only offering 11 years of support.
This is slashdot too, not a phb.org site or cheapcostaccoutning.org. Windows 7 is so close to XP and so much better and yet people who are so called technical experts are threatened by it due to change and learning. It shows just how irrational people can get and learn by behavior. Instead of upgarding every few months like they do in the Unix world they learn never and I mean NEVER upgrade in 10 years software and it is a learned behavior to panick when it is time to be proactive to change. Not reactive, such as when executives bring the IPADs to work and wonder why their IE 6 intranet apps wont work on htem.
Stop making sense Jello.
After all the last post showing all the middle aged so called IT people who fear change fight tooth and nail to keep XP and expect the world to stop time to accommodate them now make up the majority of opinions here on slashdot.
I do not know what to make of this site anymore and hope you don't get modded down to -1 for such an flaming comment on innovation.
The catch is they do not lose money by making older parts. If anything they still make money. MS fixes Windows for free. Same with crappy insecure browsers like IE 6. Website makers have to put ancient IE hacks to accommodate these corporate users for free. Developers have to use tools like VB 6 and ignore .NET to make these users happy.
Meanwhile they get hackers over and over and help desk has to work overtime for free. Enough is enough. costs are rise on older vehicles and outdated software. The difference is the driver does not get a financial incentive to externalize the cost to repair shops. Corporate America is getting this as well as middle aged users who fear change.
Kill it already!
But the cost accountants and PHB sure as hell intended to and plan to run it forever. Slashdot is turning very conservative and is is weird. Don't you agree?
Slashdot used to have articles 3 years ago claiming UPGRADE TO WIN 7 NOW! It is 2010 and you still run XP?! Back then I defended the move to stay on XP saying, OH GEEZ Financial collapse is here. How are we going to not lay off employers? I know, lets upgrade your perfectly working XP computers! ... etc
Today in 2012 slashdotters now defend XP as the greatest OS ever written and I did a reverse figuring enough is enough. IE like XP is here to stay unfortunately and the only reason these people who fear change and are set in their ways will change is when we all upgrade and stop writting ancient IE 6 workarounds in websites, start using docx 2013 file formats, start sending file attachments in recent formats for other products etc.
Corporations upgraded often in the 1990s because of these reasons. When everyone sits and stops the clock it does the opposite and encourages to halt innovation.
a) it is fast even on old hardware,
No it isn't. If you upgrade XP it runs slow. Slow Hardware runs slow.
b) it is supported by at least one good, secure Web browser (hint: not MSIE),
For business? Businesses use IE, and the smart people break the policy and install other Browsers. Business use IT, because there are still too many stupid companies who think Active X was a good idea.
c) it supports about 15 years worth of professional applications (some of which are not available anymore), and
If your application isn't available anymore. You are putting your company as risk.
d) upgrading == (pain + time) && (upgrading != c)
Lazy ass IT.
This is not a -1 flamebait just because you disagree with him.
a. It is documentated that the SATA driver for XP is crippled to make Vista look faster with disk access. It only does synchronous I/O due to no command queing. OUCH. Ligher=! faster for newer hardware. I can vounch for this on my hex core system that runs much better under Windows 7 and is sluggish under XP
b. IE is standard. Love it or hate it, it is integrated with both active directory and policies. IE 9 is a decent browser and IE 10 is a great one! No you did not misread that if you do any benchmarks with IE 10. Night and day compared to an ancient Xp version of IE. It is certainly usable for corporate drones now and is standards compliant.
c. You are putting your company at risk. Yeah no shit! Security threats due to bad design are huge. Saying it is secure is like saying IE 6 is secure because it still gets updates. Using a modern browser is a much better idea. Same with the OS.
d. IT supposed to look into the future. Not only put out fires and care about making the cost accountants their bonus! It is irresponsible to wait until people start sending files in Office2k13 formats and Photoshop CS 7 formats that you cant support, or wait until XP goes EOL and then find out you can't upgrade and get 0wned, or your executives all buy Windows 8 tablets/IPADs and your ancient intranet software wont work.
You do not have to migrate but you should be prepared before these events happen. Not after someone many ranks above goes to an HTML 5 contract with salesforce in 2 years and are still running IE 7. Ooops.
You can disagree and see no reason to blow money but they are valid concerns. In the 1990s anyone still running Windows 3.0, netscape 2.0, Wordperfect 5.1 by 1999 would be fired! Not given a pat on the head for cost cutting and fearing all so scary Windows 9x. But sadly in this decade we are doing just that. It is silly.
I meant moving a user to a different OU, not a UI.
Vista had issues even fully patched with Active Directory believe it or not. Even Windows 7 has a few of the bugs. An example is if you forget to clean the ARP tables of a Share after moving a user to a different UI Vista/7 will hang when a user logs in at the welcome screen with no error message. Networking too was problematic while XP worked fine.
MS just used Windows 7 as the fix for most of these even after SP 2. This is why businesses stuck with XP. Not just because of the hard drive thrash of death before SP 2 with its overzealous indexing.
Where I work I have to deal with clients, users, vendors, and a hospital does not have a marketing department. That was just one example. Real enterprise interacts with other people who most likely at this point run newer software. It is a mild problem now but after 2014 it will be major. People use newer software and if you can't interact they will think something is wrong with the company.
You can only go so far by staying behind the competition. Eventually you need to actually spend/invest costs, not just label everything as a cost center until your assets turn to crap.
So what happens if the marketing department at your employer receives a Photoshop CS 7 file? What if a vendor emails a word or excel 2013 file?
Me I am trying to start a business on the side catering to the corporate market. I just dumped IE 6 support and I am about to dump IE 7 and maybe 8 next year. That is another lost opportunity if you use my network, I wont support you. I may do a crappy craigslist like UI for IE 8. I am undecided on what to do in that regard.
We are networked and as a result we have catered to your needs for years and MS even neutered .NET 4 to support some of XPs limited feature set in final release. Those who do upgrade will expect you to do the same. Infact the reason people upgraded Office often in the 1990s was because the staff didn't want to look like asses asking to resend in word 95 format etc.
With salesforce and clouds using an up to date browser is going to be an increasing requirement too for office workers. The world is changing and leaving your platform behind. In the next coming years this will be a problem.
Most businesses surely do care.
I do not give a damn about robotics and specialized equipment. I do care about trying to make an HTML 5 website work with IE 7 for free with CSSPIE javascript hacks. Newer PDF files with advanced features can't be read in older versions which are major security risks. Adobe 12 does not exist yet but will in a few years. XP will not be usable for an average office worker or person for these reasons.
If you work for military hardware I would be worried about getting hacked and someone stealing your secrets. China would love you if you work any contracts. That is a niche use case.
Sadly many who do care about these things use XP and fear change. They expect Office 2k3 to support newer versions of OpenXML in Office 2013, still expect websites to work in IE 7, and will whine when their hardware wont work. There comes a time where enough is enough and we wont support your platforms anymore as they externalize cost savings on to us.
There are newer format versions. Word 2013 docx is not compatible with Office 2003. Eventually you will get emails with someone on the other end expecting an answer.
XP does not run well on modern hardware. Not what the XP loyalists would have you believe and the SATA driver is a big issue. It can't do command queing.
So the hard drive only executes one command at a time synchronous wise while the paging algorithm goes batshit in XP. It slows down an icore7 quit nicely compared to even a Pentium IV with a UMA controller. It is time to leave it behind as hardware is barely even supported on it anymore and surely not optimized.
There is a psychological different between Windows users and non-Windows users. They hate change. They are middle aged, set in their ways, and fear change more than they look at the positives of what change may bring. If they didn't have this mentality they would be more likely to get a Mac or experiment with Linux correct?
Most people who are not reactionary have went to Windows 7 or another platform already. I find it hypocritical those in IT who love technology and change all of the sudden at 35 became neophytes and fight tooth and nail with their cost accountants by the side (their old enemies) and look for reasons on why Windows 7 is really just Vista SP 2 or is just a gui change.
There are workarounds but companies are lazy and do not want to worry about it. Citrix is a big one. NO wine is not a replacement in a real production environment.