XP loyalists are the most anal and stubborn when it comes to change and not leaving. No offense to them reading this, but rather stating the facts that if you were the type to upgrade you would have do so long ago.
If it aint broke do not fix it. Or they have so many customizations, apps, files, that moving to a more modern system is too much of a hassle and a pain. They wont upgrade PERIOD. Especially for something as radical as METRO. At least Windows 7 is somewhat familiar to them even if they hate it and need to spend $$$ on 4 flash drives and lots of dvds for backup and spend 2 or more days backing up 1 tb of stuff.
And corporate XP users... ya. I wont even go there as we all know why they wont go to Win 8.
The real comptition is the cloud and the web. Clouds, salesforce.com, and Yammer all work on any browser, device, or OS.
We like to bash Bill Gates as he was anti ethical in his business practices but he was a smart man. He saw the internet and all of this as a threat back in the 1990s. OSX is not the problem old legacy apps that are tied to one obsolete platform are. With intranet apps (new ones not based on IE 6) and cloud internet ones take off the business users never need to worry about what OS or computer they run. Everything is on the cloud where they can simply log in and get to work.
Windows is in trouble for newer busiesses who do not have legacy apps. The only reason I run Windows is because I do IT support and it didn't make sense to invest time in something no one else outside the server room or graphics department used etc. HTML 5 when it takes off will be great as 90% of development will go there and only 10% will be for device specific app store integration with that platform. Most of it will be all online in HTML 5 glory when IE 6,7,and 8 finally die out which is already happening now.
Corporations main job is to boast the share price. Nothing else.
Now the financial analyst folks whose job is to do just that by cutting costs see you have $200k sitting in a cost center titled "for future upgrades", and worse when asked this IT's repsonse is "Yep! We need another $100k for something we just *might* need?". Will have one shitting his pants!
Gee, which do you think will get cut first? The one where he can free up $300k and give it to the shareholders or put it in assets to boast the share price? Or lay off some workers so the CEO can reach that target for Goldman Sachs and he can get his bonus?
IT costs go up every year for stuff like this and the beancounters fail to see what return on the investment it brings compared to 10 years ago when the economy was hot and still ran the same software.
Another thing the MBA's look at which I happen to agree with more is that the more money you throw into something the harder it is to throw it away. It is lost money that needs to go to Wall Street. Why invest in something like what the other slashdotter said "Put a cutsey interface on a 20 year old proprietary dos app so it can work on a browser via an IPAD" when it will need to be gutted anyway? Just never uprade.
"XP is fine on 10 year old computers without all the bells and whistles, 7 is a lot heavier on the resources and requires a more recent computer to run well even with all the bells and whistles turned off."
I respectfully disagree. XP SP 3 runs shittier than a stock Windows 7 when the UI dialed down and the background processes tamed. I would not run either without 4 GB of RAM (and by that I mean XP SP3 which recognizes 3.5 and thus is maxed out) and Windows 7 recovers from dumb shit like accidentally browsing a dead network share.
He said 10 years old. Of course XP runs better but I doubt many of them are still running as PSUs die, fans lose their bearings and get nosy and die out, capacitators blow, and so on.
Windows 7 runs supperior if you have a SATA drive and at least a phenom II hex core or Icore5 or greater with more than 4 gigs or ram. This is because Microsoft crippled the SATA driver on purpose with Vista/7 so it doesn't support command queing. Worse, the paging/swap algorithm in XP/NT is terrible and very aggressive compared to Win7. Worse the XP kernel is made for 1-2 cpu systems and can't scale well after that. Especially this is true on an iCore7 extreme.
Also modern cpu's have more registers and additional instructions for SSE3 mmx, compression, and other branch prediction optimization techniques that you really do not take advantage of unless you use a modern 64 bit compiler. XP 64-bit does not use all of these because it is from 2004 but at least you get more registers.
In essence the grandparent is right and XP rules because it runs lighter and well for dull office tasks on most equipment purchased circa 2002 - 2008. The flipside is that its retarded to put XP on an ultrabook with an SSD with 8 gigs of ram and an iCore7. THe SSD will be dead in a matter of months due to the lack of TRIM and the insane paging of the XP kernel.
Corporations who just finished their upgrade cycle in 2008/2009 should stay with XP. Anything older you need to go to Windows 7 as your hardware is dying and there is little sense putting it on modern hardware unless you are cheap and lazy.... take it back I just described every bean counter.
According to slashdotters there is no mac virusrs and never was as only Windows has virii. Malware doesnt count as it would jeopardize the purchasing decisions from these users.
Going to Perl where I can get a simple concise syntax that is always the same among different programmers and does not have any idiosyncracies and enforced consitancy everywhere.
Jobs did the right thing and yes he hated flash and wanted a more open web ecosystem.
In 2007 Safari did not have the same HTML 5 support to be a flash replacement yet on the Mac. Did it even support any HTML 5 at all on the mac when the Iphone came out??
In 2007 1 out of 5 users still used IE 6 and much of the internet would not work properly if you used any other browser still. This was a threat to his phone and the Mac ecosystem. HTML 5 and rapid web development started as a result of this as now desktops have inferior browsing experience compared to phones because webmasters had to cater to ancient versions of IE still. It forced IE 9 to be standards compliant and gave a much better open standard where one could now use Linux for web development again, where before you had to use only Windows/Mac because Adobe's tools were monopolizing the content creation market.
People are more forgiving on their phones if only some of the videos on youtube work versus telling all Mac Users you need a Windows PC to get that full experience etc.
The problem with flash is 2 fold 1. There is no universal codec that supports DRM, works on all platforms without the user doing anything, and streams as well as flash 2. IE 8 and XP... enough said about that.
Remember back in 2004 when slashdotters asked what great WMV editing tool existed fo the Mac as god forbid he required his users to install anything? A flamewar started etc. Flash solved that nasty delima as it just worked across all platforms. H.264 requires DRM for the licensing and only IE enables an environment where you can't take screenshots and edit them. Flash has some DRM, but it is not as perfect as Silverlight which is why Netflex refuses to support Flash. H.264 can't run on XP/IE 8 because it does not support the Microsoft Secure Path DRM nor does the WDM aero which also locks out snapshots etc.
Because XP and IE 8 can't do these things people have to still use flash. As a result corporate America and XP loyalists say with a smile there is not need to upgrade as everyone still has to cater to these luddities and beancounters. Flash is the only solution and create a catch where content creators are not lazy but have to support older systems and older systems are still in use becuase they are still supported so why change?
The only reason people stuck with browsers so long was because IE was never updated by default (As of January it now is) and corporate intranet aps requiring IE 6.
I think updating a browser now in 2012 is no different than updated flash and corporations should stop freezing versions of IE that are old for 5 years. If IE 8 can get down to 5% marketshare this might be possible. Perhaps in 2014 when XP support end this will happen and force the corporations to adopt chaning standards as IE 6 has them terrified to every update the browser unless their is a business case to do so.
I never have that problem and I have a phenom II 2.6 ghz with 8 gigs of ram. Do you run XP on that older system? Sounds like Windows rot and a fresh format can help or you have some malware on it.
My system never gets above %30 usage even when playing video and having many tabs open in 2 browsers. My older el cheapo Laptop with a AMD turon 1.7 ghz with just 2 gigs of ram and it runs Windows 8 and it can handle moderate web usage with IE 10 on it. Of course these are newer browsers that use hardware acceleration but still.
If you haven't ordered that Macbook pro I would cancel it. Unless you are a heavy duty user video editing user it is a waste of money just to browser my web. Even my phone can do it albiet slowly as it is as fast as my 1999 computer with the same ram and cpu processor power in it.
Not a problem. Newer browsers read older w3c complaint code fine. IE 6 doesn't use older standards. It uses older standards in a very different way requiring a near rewrite. Java is just as bad as programmers try to use security holes to use COM objects. When the fixes come in they break the app.
Poorly written IE 6 and Java apps are not compliant with each, let alone standards. That is why businesses can't leave dying XP behind. Java needs to go as that and not proprietary web based code is the reason for incompaibility.
Well instead of an == statement to only work with one version of java you would use >= statement to replace it for future java versions. This is a mistake of gigantic proportions that children learn in basic. These logic errors should be present in production code
Kronos should have an updated version that works with things not made 8 years ago! I guess they do not want to write 2 versions but something has to give and they should not charge corporate customers more money whichi s probably what they are doing because they are greedy and are aware of the situation.
Helpdesk calls for malware are a huge support costs and most IT departments do not have the time to make extensive whitelists of java enabled internet sites for certain workers so they have it enabled corporate wide and these same users get nailed with an ad.
Modern work sites and newer intranet software run on any W3C complaint browser and platform. The probelm isn't all browsers, but java/IE 6.
I have a VM and it is time to use one and talk to your bosses about it? No developer can survive without one anymore because everyone runs different software as we are in a period of transition. You can't function because corporate America is in a phase of change due to XP cancelling support and are busy migrating to Windows 7. Even if your own beancounters say NO, you need to document this and have your boss write a recommendation and include the costs for VMWare or VirtualPC so they can counter the beancounters so they can eventually say YES. Otherwise they are under the impression you can write a javascript program and it will always work in all platforms forever. Why change?
It is obvious IE 6 is NOT fine. Neither is the older apps and support is ending anyway and it is time to get with the program.
The whole idea of a thin client is to avoid browser lockin. Fat clients use Java crap or some software activeX control that is depenent on another server program which was written for a browser because it is old. New thin clients using HTML 4/5 can work with IE 9, FF, Chrome, and all portable devices. Just a minor CSS for a particular browser or mobile device if any issues are found. NOTHING like the hell you are going through now.
Things like Java is what is keeping platforms that should have died 5 years still running. I agree and got modded down before that Java does not belong on the desktop anymore due to issues like you described. Technology changes and Java is one of those things that have kept IE 6 and XP still around when it should have died in 2009.
That's great if you know what you're looking for, but if you're searching for a specific app you rarely use and don't remember the name of it would be highly inefficient and frustrating.
It can also read documents too. Just type in some description of what you want and files start to pop up and Windows through a MIME will auto launch the right application. I find this a great productivity boast and reason to dump XP. XP loyalists do not know about this feature and just whine about the all programs being different and miss the point.
Also it obstructs the view of the desktop and mimizes it each time you hit the Windows key to do instant search. It hides it to the user and defeats its purpose. I was very close to leaving Vista behind for XP on my el cheapo laptop 4 years ago. Instant search kept me using it despite it being slow and klunky because I had like 20 files for accounting and finance for college and with the practice tests I lost track of what was what. Just windows key Landmo Co sales fore... bingo etc!
By far my favorite feature of Win7. Windows key -> type want I want to run (usually under 4 characters) -> Enter. Very efficient.
I know of no regular users that understand pinning. Myself, I only pin my email and web browsers (by far my most frequently used programs) and nothing else.
Well if METRO had a taskbar to pin I would not be so anti Windows 8. One app maximizes the whole screen and you lose your focus to check every time is unacceptable when you have 5 programs opened or heaven forbid a half dozen word and excel files opened as well.
So this does not make sense if pinnings were so great Metro should have a task bar
Who the hell is their focus group? I've not met a single person who doesn't use the start button.
According to a different article linked on www.tomshardware.com, their focus group only includes users who signed up with the Customer Improvement program.
So basically n00bs and consumers who have it installed use it as the program is voluntary and does not include power users nor corporations who have real work to do besides browsing the internet and playing farmville. So real users who have 5 programs opened that cut and paste between a speciality program like Autocad/Great Plains/AD tools/SAP/whatever, Excel, Word, IE/Chrome, and Outlook at work are not counted. Power users rarely use the taskbar pin ups as the take up space when you have 10 minimized apps. At least I do not use it but maybe that is my preference.
So the metrics are all screwed up and frankly broken. Maybe Grandma or that 12 year old little girl who IMs her friends and occasionally write a paper for her 6th grade would love METRO and that is who was counted.
Well I guess then you use FF 3.6 right? With no sandboxing and with over 40+ security vulnerabilities that will never patched. I make this assumption because they are updated very 6 weeks and that is unacceptable in the enterprise. Especially if you use special add-ons like VMWare.
IE is the only browser that is managed via active directory and it doesn't make sense to use any other browser if you hare a large network. Times are changing and you can't keep using FF or a really out of date IE which are your options if you stick with XP.
XP does not offer the sanboxing protections with ASLR, DEP (with all services), rootkit protection, and other enhancements made in the last 11 years. A license for h.264 requires DRM in the video subsystem and XP's video hardware acceleration lacks things that Vista and higher have. For example hardware assisted font rasterization and zooming in and out of textures done in hardware can not be done in DX 9.
As a result Chrome and FF offer an inferior multimedia experience and is more choppy compared to IE 9. However, both are ahead in HTML 5 support.
It would cost so much to bring that into an 11 year old OS that the costs are not worth it. You can't just recompile IE 9 for XP. You would have to make it IE 8.5 or make the XP kernel Vista lite.
There are other issues as well. Boeing still updates the 737s with minor tweaks in comparison. XP just can't scale with icore5 processors or higher and will ruin SSDs which are taking over due to the lack of TRIM. With Windows 7 your coworkers wont have to sit while the computer is unresponsive doing a mcCrappy virus scan because it supports i/0 command queing. XP goes into a fallback dummy mode with an all so exotic SATA drive and limits the amount of reads per second. It really is an anchor on a modern system and there is great productivity enhancements and improvements if you use modern hardware.
Then how do you get this fat client to install on 20,000 desktops and have it work on the graphics teams macs and the CEO's ipad and iPhone?
HTML 5 is just the graphics and presentation part, but webSQL is interesting to say the least. Java, or any other frameworks belong on the cloud or server and with HTML 5 you can output it to any client and not have to maintain it or debug it. Web apps do work if you look at salesforce.com and Google? Now if we can leave IE 8 and earlier behind we can all switch to AJAX, HTML 5, and CSS 3. That is going to be challenging with all the XP loyalists out there and IT departments scarred from IE compatibility with version 6 wanting to upgrade anytime soon.
If you know anyone who works in finance all the big banks use Java that require particular versions to do corporate banking. This is not the same Bank of America we get to check out accountants but rather ones that deal with complex stuff like investments, lines of credit, investing etc. Almost everyone uses manpower or Kronos to clock hourly employees in and out and to process payroll for HR. These use Java heavily as well and do not run well with anything made in the last 5 years... yes dead serious unless there are major upgrades I am not aware of.
My Android SDK wont work on Java 7 yet, and to add insult to injury these same PHBs who refuse to leave XP also have older corporate software like Kronos and Oracle that require IE 6 and java 1.4 from 2004 and refuse to upgrade. Ironically Java is preventing Windows 7 migration as well because old java is not Windows 7 compatible and their intranet apps that use Java are optimized for IE 6 & 7 so you are talking millions to upgrade.
Sap, Kronos, every financial institution, all use old java and wont upgrade until more corporate cusotmers upgrade and corporate customers wont upgrade until banks require it etc. It is a catch 22 and why slashdotters scratch their head.... ok end rant.
As you can tell I do not like Java anymore as its costs are terrible.
Slashdot Mirror
XP loyalists are the most anal and stubborn when it comes to change and not leaving. No offense to them reading this, but rather stating the facts that if you were the type to upgrade you would have do so long ago.
If it aint broke do not fix it. Or they have so many customizations, apps, files, that moving to a more modern system is too much of a hassle and a pain. They wont upgrade PERIOD. Especially for something as radical as METRO. At least Windows 7 is somewhat familiar to them even if they hate it and need to spend $$$ on 4 flash drives and lots of dvds for backup and spend 2 or more days backing up 1 tb of stuff.
And corporate XP users ... ya. I wont even go there as we all know why they wont go to Win 8.
The real comptition is the cloud and the web. Clouds, salesforce.com, and Yammer all work on any browser, device, or OS.
We like to bash Bill Gates as he was anti ethical in his business practices but he was a smart man. He saw the internet and all of this as a threat back in the 1990s. OSX is not the problem old legacy apps that are tied to one obsolete platform are. With intranet apps (new ones not based on IE 6) and cloud internet ones take off the business users never need to worry about what OS or computer they run. Everything is on the cloud where they can simply log in and get to work.
Windows is in trouble for newer busiesses who do not have legacy apps. The only reason I run Windows is because I do IT support and it didn't make sense to invest time in something no one else outside the server room or graphics department used etc. HTML 5 when it takes off will be great as 90% of development will go there and only 10% will be for device specific app store integration with that platform. Most of it will be all online in HTML 5 glory when IE 6,7,and 8 finally die out which is already happening now.
Corporations main job is to boast the share price. Nothing else.
Now the financial analyst folks whose job is to do just that by cutting costs see you have $200k sitting in a cost center titled "for future upgrades", and worse when asked this IT's repsonse is "Yep! We need another $100k for something we just *might* need?". Will have one shitting his pants!
Gee, which do you think will get cut first? The one where he can free up $300k and give it to the shareholders or put it in assets to boast the share price? Or lay off some workers so the CEO can reach that target for Goldman Sachs and he can get his bonus?
IT costs go up every year for stuff like this and the beancounters fail to see what return on the investment it brings compared to 10 years ago when the economy was hot and still ran the same software.
Another thing the MBA's look at which I happen to agree with more is that the more money you throw into something the harder it is to throw it away. It is lost money that needs to go to Wall Street. Why invest in something like what the other slashdotter said "Put a cutsey interface on a 20 year old proprietary dos app so it can work on a browser via an IPAD" when it will need to be gutted anyway? Just never uprade.
"XP is fine on 10 year old computers without all the bells and whistles, 7 is a lot heavier on the resources and requires a more recent computer to run well even with all the bells and whistles turned off."
I respectfully disagree. XP SP 3 runs shittier than a stock Windows 7 when the UI dialed down and the background processes tamed. I would not run either without 4 GB of RAM (and by that I mean XP SP3 which recognizes 3.5 and thus is maxed out) and Windows 7 recovers from dumb shit like accidentally browsing a dead network share.
He said 10 years old. Of course XP runs better but I doubt many of them are still running as PSUs die, fans lose their bearings and get nosy and die out, capacitators blow, and so on.
Windows 7 runs supperior if you have a SATA drive and at least a phenom II hex core or Icore5 or greater with more than 4 gigs or ram. This is because Microsoft crippled the SATA driver on purpose with Vista/7 so it doesn't support command queing. Worse, the paging/swap algorithm in XP/NT is terrible and very aggressive compared to Win7. Worse the XP kernel is made for 1-2 cpu systems and can't scale well after that. Especially this is true on an iCore7 extreme.
Also modern cpu's have more registers and additional instructions for SSE3 mmx, compression, and other branch prediction optimization techniques that you really do not take advantage of unless you use a modern 64 bit compiler. XP 64-bit does not use all of these because it is from 2004 but at least you get more registers.
In essence the grandparent is right and XP rules because it runs lighter and well for dull office tasks on most equipment purchased circa 2002 - 2008. The flipside is that its retarded to put XP on an ultrabook with an SSD with 8 gigs of ram and an iCore7. THe SSD will be dead in a matter of months due to the lack of TRIM and the insane paging of the XP kernel.
Corporations who just finished their upgrade cycle in 2008/2009 should stay with XP. Anything older you need to go to Windows 7 as your hardware is dying and there is little sense putting it on modern hardware unless you are cheap and lazy. ... take it back I just described every bean counter.
According to slashdotters there is no mac
virusrs and never was as only Windows has virii. Malware doesnt count as it would jeopardize the purchasing decisions from these users.
Going to Perl where I can get a simple concise syntax that is always the same among different programmers and does not have any idiosyncracies and enforced consitancy everywhere.
Jobs did the right thing and yes he hated flash and wanted a more open web ecosystem.
In 2007 Safari did not have the same HTML 5 support to be a flash replacement yet on the Mac. Did it even support any HTML 5 at all on the mac when the Iphone came out??
In 2007 1 out of 5 users still used IE 6 and much of the internet would not work properly if you used any other browser still. This was a threat to his phone and the Mac ecosystem. HTML 5 and rapid web development started as a result of this as now desktops have inferior browsing experience compared to phones because webmasters had to cater to ancient versions of IE still. It forced IE 9 to be standards compliant and gave a much better open standard where one could now use Linux for web development again, where before you had to use only Windows/Mac because Adobe's tools were monopolizing the content creation market.
People are more forgiving on their phones if only some of the videos on youtube work versus telling all Mac Users you need a Windows PC to get that full experience etc.
The problem with flash is 2 fold ... enough said about that.
1. There is no universal codec that supports DRM, works on all platforms without the user doing anything, and streams as well as flash
2. IE 8 and XP
Remember back in 2004 when slashdotters asked what great WMV editing tool existed fo the Mac as god forbid he required his users to install anything? A flamewar started etc. Flash solved that nasty delima as it just worked across all platforms. H.264 requires DRM for the licensing and only IE enables an environment where you can't take screenshots and edit them. Flash has some DRM, but it is not as perfect as Silverlight which is why Netflex refuses to support Flash. H.264 can't run on XP/IE 8 because it does not support the Microsoft Secure Path DRM nor does the WDM aero which also locks out snapshots etc.
Because XP and IE 8 can't do these things people have to still use flash. As a result corporate America and XP loyalists say with a smile there is not need to upgrade as everyone still has to cater to these luddities and beancounters. Flash is the only solution and create a catch where content creators are not lazy but have to support older systems and older systems are still in use becuase they are still supported so why change?
The only reason people stuck with browsers so long was because IE was never updated by default (As of January it now is) and corporate intranet aps requiring IE 6.
I think updating a browser now in 2012 is no different than updated flash and corporations should stop freezing versions of IE that are old for 5 years. If IE 8 can get down to 5% marketshare this might be possible. Perhaps in 2014 when XP support end this will happen and force the corporations to adopt chaning standards as IE 6 has them terrified to every update the browser unless their is a business case to do so.
MS touted IE 9 as the only browser that fully supports SVG when it came out. I find that surprising
I never have that problem and I have a phenom II 2.6 ghz with 8 gigs of ram. Do you run XP on that older system? Sounds like Windows rot and a fresh format can help or you have some malware on it.
My system never gets above %30 usage even when playing video and having many tabs open in 2 browsers. My older el cheapo Laptop with a AMD turon 1.7 ghz with just 2 gigs of ram and it runs Windows 8 and it can handle moderate web usage with IE 10 on it. Of course these are newer browsers that use hardware acceleration but still.
If you haven't ordered that Macbook pro I would cancel it. Unless you are a heavy duty user video editing user it is a waste of money just to browser my web. Even my phone can do it albiet slowly as it is as fast as my 1999 computer with the same ram and cpu processor power in it.
Not a problem. Newer browsers read older w3c complaint code fine. IE 6 doesn't use older standards. It uses older standards in a very different way requiring a near rewrite. Java is just as bad as programmers try to use security holes to use COM objects. When the fixes come in they break the app.
Poorly written IE 6 and Java apps are not compliant with each, let alone standards. That is why businesses can't leave dying XP behind. Java needs to go as that and not proprietary web based code is the reason for incompaibility.
Well instead of an == statement to only work with one version of java you would use >= statement to replace it for future java versions. This is a mistake of gigantic proportions that children learn in basic. These logic errors should be present in production code
Well if you do not want Windows 8 I suggest your change your buying plans and get something with Windows 7 while you still can.
So I can deploy those VB 5 apps with Macros for Microsoft Access on the IPAD? Sweet!
Kronos should have an updated version that works with things not made 8 years ago! I guess they do not want to write 2 versions but something has to give and they should not charge corporate customers more money whichi s probably what they are doing because they are greedy and are aware of the situation.
Helpdesk calls for malware are a huge support costs and most IT departments do not have the time to make extensive whitelists of java enabled internet sites for certain workers so they have it enabled corporate wide and these same users get nailed with an ad.
Modern work sites and newer intranet software run on any W3C complaint browser and platform. The probelm isn't all browsers, but java/IE 6.
I have a VM and it is time to use one and talk to your bosses about it? No developer can survive without one anymore because everyone runs different software as we are in a period of transition. You can't function because corporate America is in a phase of change due to XP cancelling support and are busy migrating to Windows 7. Even if your own beancounters say NO, you need to document this and have your boss write a recommendation and include the costs for VMWare or VirtualPC so they can counter the beancounters so they can eventually say YES. Otherwise they are under the impression you can write a javascript program and it will always work in all platforms forever. Why change?
It is obvious IE 6 is NOT fine. Neither is the older apps and support is ending anyway and it is time to get with the program.
The whole idea of a thin client is to avoid browser lockin. Fat clients use Java crap or some software activeX control that is depenent on another server program which was written for a browser because it is old. New thin clients using HTML 4/5 can work with IE 9, FF, Chrome, and all portable devices. Just a minor CSS for a particular browser or mobile device if any issues are found. NOTHING like the hell you are going through now.
Things like Java is what is keeping platforms that should have died 5 years still running. I agree and got modded down before that Java does not belong on the desktop anymore due to issues like you described. Technology changes and Java is one of those things that have kept IE 6 and XP still around when it should have died in 2009.
That's great if you know what you're looking for, but if you're searching for a specific app you rarely use and don't remember the name of it would be highly inefficient and frustrating.
It can also read documents too. Just type in some description of what you want and files start to pop up and Windows through a MIME will auto launch the right application. I find this a great productivity boast and reason to dump XP. XP loyalists do not know about this feature and just whine about the all programs being different and miss the point.
Also it obstructs the view of the desktop and mimizes it each time you hit the Windows key to do instant search. It hides it to the user and defeats its purpose. I was very close to leaving Vista behind for XP on my el cheapo laptop 4 years ago. Instant search kept me using it despite it being slow and klunky because I had like 20 files for accounting and finance for college and with the practice tests I lost track of what was what. Just windows key Landmo Co sales fore... bingo etc!
By far my favorite feature of Win7. Windows key -> type want I want to run (usually under 4 characters) -> Enter. Very efficient.
I know of no regular users that understand pinning. Myself, I only pin my email and web browsers (by far my most frequently used programs) and nothing else.
Well if METRO had a taskbar to pin I would not be so anti Windows 8. One app maximizes the whole screen and you lose your focus to check every time is unacceptable when you have 5 programs opened or heaven forbid a half dozen word and excel files opened as well.
So this does not make sense if pinnings were so great Metro should have a task bar
Who the hell is their focus group? I've not met a single person who doesn't use the start button.
According to a different article linked on www.tomshardware.com, their focus group only includes users who signed up with the Customer Improvement program.
So basically n00bs and consumers who have it installed use it as the program is voluntary and does not include power users nor corporations who have real work to do besides browsing the internet and playing farmville. So real users who have 5 programs opened that cut and paste between a speciality program like Autocad/Great Plains/AD tools/SAP/whatever, Excel, Word, IE/Chrome, and Outlook at work are not counted. Power users rarely use the taskbar pin ups as the take up space when you have 10 minimized apps. At least I do not use it but maybe that is my preference.
So the metrics are all screwed up and frankly broken. Maybe Grandma or that 12 year old little girl who IMs her friends and occasionally write a paper for her 6th grade would love METRO and that is who was counted.
Well I guess then you use FF 3.6 right? With no sandboxing and with over 40+ security vulnerabilities that will never patched. I make this assumption because they are updated very 6 weeks and that is unacceptable in the enterprise. Especially if you use special add-ons like VMWare.
IE is the only browser that is managed via active directory and it doesn't make sense to use any other browser if you hare a large network. Times are changing and you can't keep using FF or a really out of date IE which are your options if you stick with XP.
XP does not offer the sanboxing protections with ASLR, DEP (with all services), rootkit protection, and other enhancements made in the last 11 years. A license for h.264 requires DRM in the video subsystem and XP's video hardware acceleration lacks things that Vista and higher have. For example hardware assisted font rasterization and zooming in and out of textures done in hardware can not be done in DX 9.
As a result Chrome and FF offer an inferior multimedia experience and is more choppy compared to IE 9. However, both are ahead in HTML 5 support.
It would cost so much to bring that into an 11 year old OS that the costs are not worth it. You can't just recompile IE 9 for XP. You would have to make it IE 8.5 or make the XP kernel Vista lite.
There are other issues as well. Boeing still updates the 737s with minor tweaks in comparison. XP just can't scale with icore5 processors or higher and will ruin SSDs which are taking over due to the lack of TRIM. With Windows 7 your coworkers wont have to sit while the computer is unresponsive doing a mcCrappy virus scan because it supports i/0 command queing. XP goes into a fallback dummy mode with an all so exotic SATA drive and limits the amount of reads per second. It really is an anchor on a modern system and there is great productivity enhancements and improvements if you use modern hardware.
Then how do you get this fat client to install on 20,000 desktops and have it work on the graphics teams macs and the CEO's ipad and iPhone?
HTML 5 is just the graphics and presentation part, but webSQL is interesting to say the least. Java, or any other frameworks belong on the cloud or server and with HTML 5 you can output it to any client and not have to maintain it or debug it. Web apps do work if you look at salesforce.com and Google? Now if we can leave IE 8 and earlier behind we can all switch to AJAX, HTML 5, and CSS 3. That is going to be challenging with all the XP loyalists out there and IT departments scarred from IE compatibility with version 6 wanting to upgrade anytime soon.
They are mostly enterprise web apps.
If you know anyone who works in finance all the big banks use Java that require particular versions to do corporate banking. This is not the same Bank of America we get to check out accountants but rather ones that deal with complex stuff like investments, lines of credit, investing etc. Almost everyone uses manpower or Kronos to clock hourly employees in and out and to process payroll for HR. These use Java heavily as well and do not run well with anything made in the last 5 years ... yes dead serious unless there are major upgrades I am not aware of.
My Android SDK wont work on Java 7 yet, and to add insult to injury these same PHBs who refuse to leave XP also have older corporate software like Kronos and Oracle that require IE 6 and java 1.4 from 2004 and refuse to upgrade. Ironically Java is preventing Windows 7 migration as well because old java is not Windows 7 compatible and their intranet apps that use Java are optimized for IE 6 & 7 so you are talking millions to upgrade.
Sap, Kronos, every financial institution, all use old java and wont upgrade until more corporate cusotmers upgrade and corporate customers wont upgrade until banks require it etc. It is a catch 22 and why slashdotters scratch their head. ... ok end rant.
As you can tell I do not like Java anymore as its costs are terrible.