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Microsoft Ending Mainstream Support For XP
Posted by
kdawson
on Wed Apr 08, 2009 07:12 AM
from the population-inversion dept.
from the population-inversion dept.
Slatterz writes "Come next week, Microsoft will be in the unusual position of no longer offering mainstream support for its most widely used product. Windows XP will pass another milestone next week on the road to retirement when mainstream support ends on 14 April 2009, over seven years after the OS originally shipped. While the company said that it will continue to provide free security fixes for XP until 2014, any future bugs found in the platform will not be fixed unless customers pay. Windows XP accounts for about 63 percent of all Internet-connected computers, according to March 2009 statistics from Hitslink, while Windows Vista makes up about 24 percent."
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Submission: Microsoft kicks Windows XP off support list by Anonymous Coward
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ok.. so where is it? (Score:5, Funny)
I went to microsoft.com and looked around- I did not find the "donate now" button anywhere
how exactly are we supposed to pay?
Re:ok.. so where is it? (Score:5, Funny)
how exactly are we supposed to pay?
I'm not sure how the whole process works but I'm guessing that it involves bending over at some point.....
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Re:ok.. so where is it? (Score:5, Interesting)
how exactly are we supposed to pay? ;)
Through the nose
Seriously you buy a volume license and then buy the extended hotfix agreement through your volume license account. You also have to pay for the individual fixes on top of that. MS don't seem to show prices on thier website but I doubt it is cheap.
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Re:ok.. so where is it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously you buy a volume license and then buy the extended hotfix agreement through your volume license account. You also have to pay for the individual fixes on top of that. MS don't seem to show prices on thier website but I doubt it is cheap.
The most interesting comparison, of course, would be how it compares to hiring J. Random Linux Hacker to work on $OLD_DISTRO.
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Only ONE good year of Windows XP (Score:5, Interesting)
The Slashdot story is excessively pro-Microsoft, in my opinion. Quoting the Slashdot story: "... over seven years after the OS originally shipped..." That gives a much more positive impression than is warranted, in my opinion.
Windows XP had very serious problems until the release of Service Pack 2. So Windows XP release version is only 4 1/2 years old [microsoft.com].
Service Pack 3 fixed many, many, many bugs that Microsoft itself called "critical". So the final, fully usable version of Windows XP has been available less than a year [microsoft.com]. A year of good use is not much in return for 6 years of numerous cases of grief and hassles and huge maintenance expense.
Vista was an attempt to get people to abandon Windows XP. Vista was first released about two years ago.
So, one version of the Windows product, Windows XP, was not fully finished until more than a year after the next version, Windows Vista, was first sold, although Windows Vista was so unfinished that it was rejected in the marketplace.
When the version of Windows called Windows 7 is released, many people will be buying their third version of the Windows OS in only two years, even though one of the versions, Vista, was never finished.
That's product churning.
Sooner or later the average buyer will realize that they don't need Microsoft's pushy "upgrades", which all must use much more CPU power, because Microsoft's real customers, the big computer hardware manufacturers, want everyone to buy new hardware. Microsoft is trying to continue creating an artificial market, and the average buyer is becoming more aware of that.
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Re:Only ONE good year of Windows XP (Score:5, Informative)
And Microsoft thinks it is OK to discontinue support?
Microsoft is still providing support; security updates will be available until sometime in 2014. There is right now one, and only one Linux distribution available today guaranteed to still be supported in 2014: Red Hat Enterprise Linux (and its knock-offs like CentOS)
The things Microsoft is not support is updates Microsoft has been giving XP over the years like giving XP Clear type support, support for WPA2 networks, support for SDHC cards, etc.
New drivers will continue to be available for Microsoft Windows XP for the foreseeable future, it's up to hardware makers to decide when to stop supporting XP.
This, should I point out, is better than the situation with RHEL 5 where new hardware doesn't work since the Linux driver model isn't stable; I tried to install CentOS 5 last week and gave up when I couldn't get drivers for my touchpad (Windows XP, of course, has drivers) nor current stable drivers for my WiFi card (supposedly there are drivers, but the last time I was able to use WiFi with my laptop in CentOS 5, the driver would crash unless I pinged the router every second).
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Re:ok.. so where is it? (Score:5, Funny)
Damn. I knew using Open Office would backfire on me one day.
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Programming... (Score:5, Insightful)
Make one mistake and support it for the rest of your life.
Unless you are Microsoft, of course.
Why not open it up (Score:5, Interesting)
I wish more companies would start opening up their software once it has run out of life. If Microsoft really thought that XP was no longer going to be good enough for pc's, open it up to the community and let people learn from it and tinker with it.
Oh... wait, it is Microsoft.
Re:Why not open it up (Score:5, Informative)
Because while Vista may have changed quite a bit, I'm sure there's still a lot of XP code in there.
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Re:Why not open it up (Score:5, Insightful)
If they did this, their old XP codebase would be competing with new Vista / Vista 2 sales. Given full options, most companies wouldn't open them to the community. Most companies would erase all previous installs, burn all install disks, and sell upgrades left and right.
Also, I severely doubt any commercial project as large as XP has the rights to open all of their code.
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Re:Why not open it up (Score:4, Insightful)
Nonono, you didn't get it. They don't want to stop supporting XP. They want you to buy Vista/Win7. There is no money in supporting systems, there is some in selling you a new one. Not to mention that they certainly don't want another "people refuse to buy $new_ms_system" PR disaster.
In other words, "Yes, you can still get XP. But do you really, really wanna be stuck with a system that's no longer supported, hmmm? Here, look, new and shiny! Buy Win7!"
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Re:Why not open it up (Score:5, Insightful)
Compare that to the support lifecycles of most linux distros and see who comes out ahead.
Alright. Windows: Pony up $199 for Vista now and Win7 next year, or pay for each separate XP hotfix.
Linux: Free upgrade to either a cutting-edge new distro or a year-old stable distro, free updates of each component from apache to KDE via the package manager of your choice (or you can pay for development of hotfixes as well if that floats your boat).
I think it is pretty clear who comes out ahead.
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Re:Why not open it up (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux is only free if you know how to use/maintain it.
Let me put it differently: I didn't have to pay for my OS, but I did spend countless hours learning how to make it work for me. For Windows, most people have already spent that time, and only need a step-up to the new features and annoyances. For Linux, a far larger number are starting from scratch, and let's be honest: Linux help is rare, good help is virtually impossible to find. Google anything and you will find a million forum posts and mailing list aggregators, all repeating the same question with zero answers.
I like my Linux desktop, as a coder it works well for me, but with so many cooks in the kitchen, a lot of stuff can and does go wrong, and the general attitude is "Well, you have the source. FIX IT YOURSELF, LUSER!".
The motivation simply isn't there for the developers and project maintainers, because Linux won't feed your kid or put fuel in your Honda. The free software model has very real limitations, it's amazing that things have gotten this far and continue to evolve, but we're still struggling on some aspects that cannot be solved via technological means.
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Re:Why not open it up (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux is only free if you know how to use/maintain it.
And Windows is only $STICKER_PRICE if you know how to use/maintain it. Otherwise, it's much more expensive. So? Whatcherpoint?
the general attitude is "Well, you have the source. FIX IT YOURSELF, LUSER!".
As opposed to the oh-so-helpful Microsoft Support [joke-archives.com]. :)
Granted, the MS "support" may be more polite. Aside from that, I don't see much benefit.
(As a side note, you might want to check out Ubuntu support rather than Gentoo!) :)
The motivation simply isn't there for the developers and project maintainers, because Linux won't feed your kid or put fuel in your Honda.
Except, of course, for the many many many many MANY people for whom it does.
Actually, while I'm picking on some of the more egregious parts of your post, you do raise some valid issues. Support really isn't there for a lot of people yet (although the same can be said for MS). But just like MS, Linux can develop more of its own homegrown support infrastructure--the reason MS isn't a total disaster isn't an 800- phone number that directs to India. The reason is the number of people who more-or-less understand it and help each other. Linux hasn't grown to that point yet, but it's silly to think that it can't or won't. It is, in fact, getting there.
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Re:Why not open it up (Score:5, Insightful)
Compare that to the support lifecycles of most linux distros and see who comes out ahead.
When MS gives me the successor of a system I use for free (or at least at a discount) we can start talking.
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Re:Why not open it up (Score:5, Informative)
They do already. It's called the "Upgrade Edtition" which, contrary to popular belief *CAN* be used to perform a clean install of the OS, rather than requiring an older version to be installed first.
As can be seen on Microsoft's own website [microsoft.com], the upgrade editions are all discounted $100 from the price of the full (new license) version.
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Re:Why not open it up (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Why not open it up (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the policy is not unreasonable in general. However, XP is the OS that works, and they have nothing that is better to replace it. And doesn't it take less money to support a solid, familiar OS than it does to support a new, flaky one?
I don't get it. Isn't XP a cash cow?
Does this mean MSFT engineers will no longer "talk users through" the downgrade process.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9040318 [computerworld.com]
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re: Is XP a cash cow? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I have a suspicion that with Microsoft's way of viewing their internal accounting, XP is no longer a "cash cow" at all.
I have no proof of this, since I'm not privy to any of their internal workings or memos - but I do see a lot of evidence to back it up.
For example, when you call in to Microsoft to activate a copy of Windows XP by telephone, you usually just reach an automated system with voice recognition capabilities, vs. a live human. You can go through the entire process without ever speaking to a real person. (It actually asks you the famous "questions", like "How many computers is this product installed on?" and "Have there been any major hardware changes to your platform since the last time Windows was installed?", and decides if it will re-activate an existing key based on your responses.)
Microsoft doesn't shuttle off these "anti piracy" measures to automated systems unless they feel it's only to support a "legacy product" that's no longer considered important enough to protect with the "higher level" of protection of interacting with a real customer service person.
I could easily see where their viewpoint might be; We already recouped our costs many times over for the XP product, and most new XP buyers are only buying heavily discounted licenses intended for refurbished machines, OEMs, etc. The money spent on manpower to keep supporting it is now just a net "negative" for us, vs. focusing on Vista and Windows 7, which will command higher retail prices on many licenses sold, and which still need to recoup their development costs ASAP.
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Re:Why not open it up (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh... wait, it is Microsoft.
And is Apple going to open source OS X 10.4 now that 10.5 is out? Can we criticise them for not doing so?[*]
Don't get me wrong, I agree with the general principle of opening old products that are abandoned by the company. But it would be complete madness for any company to open source one of their major products, one that is still widely used. Working out how to encourage people to upgrade is bad enough of a problem as it is - but open sourcing a discontinued product would create a major new competitor for them.
Yes, we know how the source code for Doom was released just 4 years after Doom's release, but the computer games industry moves much faster, such that in 1997, Doom was no competition for ID's new releases, nor would it provide much of a boost to anyone wanting to update it to be a competing engine. The OS market, by contrast, is fairly mature now - indeed, this is why Microsoft have so much trouble getting people to upgrade, because XP is good enough for most people.
(Are there any examples of application software that get open sourced, OOI?)
[*] For the pedants - yes, I know Darwin is open source, but that's not OS X.
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Re:Why not open it up (Score:5, Informative)
I remember something about headers for the kernel being no longer available, but I just logged into my Apple Developer account and was able to download all the publically available source for the kernel for OS X 10.5.6 just fine: http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/10.5.6/ [apple.com]
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not really.. (Score:4, Insightful)
So nothing has really changed then, it's still being supported with security fixes. No one really cares about features at this point. How exactly is this suppose to move people to update?
activation support for resetting and other updates (Score:5, Insightful)
Will there still be activation support for resetting it or will activation be turned off / hardware check be turned off?
Will xp uses still get IE8 / IE7 updates / fixes?
windows media player 12?
Will there still WGA updates? .net framework updates?
daylight saving time updates till 2014?
After seven years, what's left but security fixes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, they've shipped a near-infinite number of Windows XP licenses, and there are millions and millions of users exercising the code, so really, what is left to "debug"? But let's be clear - you may want Windows XP to function differently, but that is not a bug, that's a preference. By now, Windows XP is a tested code base, and it has value as demonstrated by the steady stream of stories discussing the end of support for Windows XP, downgrade rights from Vista to Windows XP, etc.
Not enough time until Windows 7 (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder if this makes Windows Vista the only generation not to outsell the previous one.
-m-
And people still choose XP over Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
Hard to believe, but an 8 year old OS with life support turned off is still overwhelmingly preferred to Linux, OS X and so on...
Microsoft's real problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Their real problem is that many people are satisfied with XP. There's no "killer app" or compelling reason to upgrade. If new computer purchases didn't foist Vista (or soon...Windows 7) on consumers, nobody would bat an eye if the machines came with XP instead. As long as XP continues to get security patches, I can't imagine bothering with "upgrading" in the foreseeable future.
A netbook question (Score:5, Insightful)
At that point Linux (either official like RedHat or Novell, or a community Ubuntu / Feodra / Debian / Mandriva) becomes better supported than the XP version by default. Is it legal to sell an unsupported PC? Or will Microsoft be responsible and withdraw all XP netbooks from the market on April 15th? Will they be forced to?
It does show a company in desperation to make money, regardless of their customers wishes. When the carrot (advertising and shill PR) won't work use the stick. Any company behaving like this does not deserve any customers, and will eventually bring that to pass by it's own actions.
Re:XP Sucks, Vista is Better (Score:4, Informative)
Funny. I just bought a laptop and it came with Windwos XP installed. If Vista is the "current version of Windows" why are they still shipping new PC's with XP?
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Re:XP Sucks, Vista is Better (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:XP Sucks, Vista is Better (Score:5, Insightful)
So? If Microsoft doesn't want to support XP any more then fine, but that doesn't mean I have to switch from it.
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Re:XP Sucks, Vista is Better (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only is what you say 100% true but is there actually going to be any reason to upgrade even a decade from now? XP is far from perfect but I feel it marks the point at which computers became "good enough" and changes became mostly minor bug fixing and moving things around. Barring a major revolution which I don't think anyone expects any time soon (e.g. hard AI) XP will continue to do everything people want for a very long time.
What will be interesting is to see how / if Mac and Linux eat into Windows market share over time. Since Windows has essentially stopped changing it gives other players a chance to become highly compatible. I don't suppose they will knock Windows off the top spot any time soon but I could imagine it getting to a point where it doesn't really matter what OS you run.
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Re:XP Sucks, Vista is Better (Score:4, Interesting)
I like Vista, Its just so dam slow!
I like Windows 7. I run them both. 7 is better in every way (except media playing. Beta has bugs)
I'm liking 7's ui and library features. Its performance is better than vista... but honestly not by much.
I would run linux if the applications were there. But as we all know... thats not the case.
I'm honestly looking at Apple for my next laptop. Honeslty i wont replace my PC workstations with MACs, but... I wouldnt mind testing the waters.
I would try linux again if they applications were there but they just arent. You can browse, IM etc... but I do more than that.
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Re:XP Sucks, Vista is Better (Score:4, Informative)
I would try linux again if they applications were there but they just arent. You can browse, IM etc... but I do more than that.
I have pretty good experience at running Windows as VM guest on Linux. Linux as host for VMs is quite good. But of course it depends for what purposes you use your Windows...
Value of Linux becomes apparent only after you are once forced to buy batch of Windows licenses. But as private buyer concerned - who generally get "Windows [whatever]" from OEMs - there are not much reasons to even try.
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Re:XP Sucks, Vista is Better (Score:4, Informative)
You might want to take a look at Wine [winehq.org]. It does not support all applications 100% (Adobe products being notorious for not working as they should), but it's getting there. Take a look through their appdb page, maybe your applications and all you need is already quite Linux-Ready.
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Re:Went with Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
Me too just a few months ago. I really don't like Linux. It has the same flaw as Macintosh OS (tends to be ignored by software vendors), but far far worse. Example: I couldn't get my Netscape Dialup to work, so I called for help and they said "We only support Windows and Mac," and then hung-up on me. Nice.
I did eventually get my Linux to connect to the ISP, but the compression engine/accelerator refuses to run, which makes everything extremely slow (50k versus ~500k). Another problem happened when I changed my resolution to 1024x800 - when I tried to change it back to 1280x1024 the dialog box was too big, and I couldn't access the OK button since it was offscreen. I'm still stuck at the wrong resolution. (With Windows pressing the enter button auto-selects OK, but not with Linux.)
So I think I'm going to use the WinXP Restore CD to wipe Linux off my laptop. From what I can see, XP and Mac OS are both more user-friendly than Ubuntu.
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Re:Few companies work as hard to make bad decision (Score:5, Insightful)
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Small shop (Score:5, Interesting)
But for small shops, this is a win! Since MS won't support it any more, people will have to turn to small local shops instead. It should be quite a boon to them.
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Re:Few companies work as hard to make bad decision (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not the computing world's fault MS dropped the ball on Vista but, as usual, they're making it your problem.
People are always bashing Vista at every opportunity, but it's never caused me any problems, never crashed, has support for all the devices I wish to use and pretty much checks all the boxes I want from an operating system. I'm speaking as a software developer, before I get mercilessly flamed as being some kind of computing retard.
/.? Surely not..."
Now XP, before I upgraded, would crash semi-regularly and had at least as many bugs as Vista does. I think at least some of the people critcising Vista are sheeple expressing a popular opinion without much foundation. "What's that?" you cry, "People regurgitating supposed facts without verification on
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Re:Few companies work as hard to make bad decision (Score:5, Interesting)
Vista is slow to boot.
Vista helpfully stops me running programs I want to run at startup.
Vista takes absolutely hours to update itself.
Vista is always telling me no, I don't have permission to do that, or to look there.
Vista is generally annoying.
Vista also has a couple of more geeky irritations to me as a software engineer and a linux user. But still, it runs my games OK and that's all I ask of it these days. I don't hate it, I just don't think it's that good.
That said, you should here the vitriol and emotional reactions that come out of my none-geek family and friends. This vista hatred may have started here with us, but it's been taken to a whole new level by the general computer-using-but-not-understanding public. I don't know if that's a reflection of them buying all the media hype or if it's a genuinbe reaction to the product, but it seems that it's no longer us penguin-loving kernel botherers that are the main source of the anti-MS vitriol.
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Re:Few companies work as hard to make bad decision (Score:5, Insightful)
I boot vista when I want to play a game. At that point the boot time is relevant.
There should be a way for me, as administrator and owner, to tell it to allow things to start that aren't signed by MS. It's that simple.
Last time it was 19 updates. Came out somewhere around 32MB. I have a 24Mb connection, it took a long, long time to download them. It then sat and took the rest of the hour applying them, shutting down, applying some more during shutdown, booting and applying more during startup. And then it found more. It's slow and a bit of a shambles.
19 updates totalling around that size on debian linux would take a matter of seconds.
Yes, eventually I found out it could be disabled. I switched it off and some of the annoyances went away. Great, I have to switch off the new security system to get anything much done.
FUD. Right. User experience and me explaining my annoyances, despite already having said I don't think it's awful, just wrong in a few places, that's FUD?
And you've already decided I'm some sort of Linux zealot despite my saying I use vista adequately well for what I need it for and I'm surprised by the hatred it gets from non-technical people.
Fuck off.
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Re:This may push me away from MS for good. (Score:4, Interesting)
Ah, I seem to recall a lot of people vowing that the changes from Win2k to Windows XP would push them into switching to Linux. Most people always seem to wind up back on Uncle Gates' products though. More's the pity.
I just need to see what's holding me back from just moving to Linux. Ah MS Money. I wonder if I can import years worth of financial data into a F/OSS version.
I have this same problem although I'm tied into Quicken and not MS Money. I've never found GNUCash to be worthwhile. You might look into Moneydance [moneydance.com]. It's not FOSS but it runs on anything (Java) and is lightweight enough to put on a thumb drive for extreme portability. I'm still married to Quicken because I like the attachments feature but a buddy of mine swears by Moneydance. He keeps it on a thumb drive within a Truecrypt container and uses it everywhere he goes.
Dual boot? I don't know. I have had issues in the past with GRUB locking up machines and no being able to rescue my system. I had to reinstall everything.
I've thought about going back to dual boot and just keeping Windows around for Quicken and games. Strange that GRUB has corrupted your whole system though -- how does such a thing happen? I've always stuck with LILO (and Slackware... yes, I'm a purist) and never had any issue with it that would have caused me to lose data. I've had LILO itself get corrupted a few times but it never took my data with it.
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Re:Wait.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Does that mean they will fix all the bugs that have been found in the past? No.
Can someone else fix them? No.
That does raise an interesting discussion... if a company is officially going to stop supporting a product that is still heavily in use, should they have an obligation to open up the source? I think so.
Of course with xp goes an obvious problem... imagine just how much worse the malware scene would be if they had access to windows source code? (tho from the levels of sophistication seen in modern malware, it's painfully obvious they've already grown very skilled with a decompiler)
Guessing the main reason MS would say NO is that many security problems in XP also exist in Vista/7 also due to inheritance, most of which MS is relying purely on protection from security-through-obscurity, and we all know how good a model that is. "Hmm this is vulnerable in XP, wonder if it still works in 7? well isn't that useful!"
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Re:Wait.. (Score:5, Insightful)
That does raise an interesting discussion... if a company is officially going to stop supporting a product that is still heavily in use, should they have an obligation to open up the source? I think so.
No. No such obligation should ever exist.
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Re:Wait.. (Score:5, Insightful)
How about: Because the XP Source code is private property and obligating any company to give away their private property is basically theft via laws.
I'm as much of a fan of Open Source as the next guy, but Open Sourcing something MUST be a voluntary thing that a company is Free to do if they think it best. Obligating via the law is nothing short of legalized looting of IP. YOU wouldn't want to be forced, would you? Neither should Microsoft or any other company be forced. Open Source must remain VOLUNTARY if it is to continue to represent Freedom.
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Re:Wait.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I can very well understand why people feel that Microsoft should open source ( at least older ) Windows.
I think the reason why is because what they do with their code affects *everyone* ( if not everyone, very close ) with a computer. Even ones not connected to any other computer! For example, the BIOS re-ordering of drives to work-around the fact Windows can only boot from the "first" drive can cause issues when installing Linux.
I do agree that open source should be voluntary because it undermines the core concept if it is forced.
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Re:Wait.. (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think we'd see drastically more malware for Windows if it were open sourced, partly because bits of source have been leaked in the past and partly because there is an upper limit to the number of competent malware authors out there.
But the codebase for one Windows version does not stand alone. It includes code licensed from third parties that Microsoft may not have the right to open, it includes large chunks of code which will still exist in more recent versions. You don't honestly think Microsoft started out entirely from scratch when they wrote Vista, do you?
Furthermore, if the codebase can still be maintained by someone else then that someone can simply say "Continue to install XP and we'll support you!". Microsoft are having a hard enough time selling Vista as it is, that would really hurt.
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Re:Wow I'm First (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re: Dilbert's Boss (Score:5, Funny)
Who the hell is going to run out and buy Vista just because XP left mainstream support?!?
Pointy Haired Bosses?
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