Microsoft Extends XP For Low-Cost Laptops 388
Ian Lamont writes "Microsoft says it will extend the sales of Windows XP Home to OEMs by several years, but it's not in response to the SaveXP petition. Microsoft is supposedly making the move in part to ensure that Linux doesn't dominate the market for certain types of 'ultra-low-cost' laptops. XP will be available for OEMs until June 30, 2010, or one year after the availability of the next client version of Windows, whichever date comes later. This greatly extends the earlier XP deadline of June 30 of this year (which was an extension itself), and means XP will potentially be installed on new computers nearly a decade after its original release. The author of the article suggests that the post-June 2008 release of Atom-based laptops encouraged Microsoft to extend XP, even though Intel says Atom can support Vista. Intel also claims that 'Moblin' Linux will be available on Atom-equipped mobile devices starting this summer."
"can support vista" (Score:4, Insightful)
It's really sad... (Score:1, Insightful)
This shows Microsoft's priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's really sad... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's really sad... (Score:3, Insightful)
People know how to use XP, and how to fix it when it's broken. Who needs an upgrade?
Re:This shows Microsoft's priorities (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's really sad... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not really.
Software isn't hardware, and just because the public is groomed to accept drastic OS changes doesn't mean that we need to replace systems that work sufficiently well for their intended purpose. Refinement instead of replacement can avoid all sorts of problems such as, well, Vista. Given the MSFT market share, they could have gradually improved XP and made even more money than they have by dumping capital into Vista.
Market Presence (Score:4, Insightful)
Vista isn't going to do it and Windows Mobile is less than satisfying. XP is Microsofts only offering that can be squeezed onto machines that otherwise might have been exclusively Linux powered. I think this sucks for developers more than anything in that effectively Microsoft is asking them to support two platforms.
Re:It's really sad... (Score:3, Insightful)
A shift in the market, not in MS. (Score:5, Insightful)
They didn't release it to the public because it wasn't as effective as a full desktop version of Windows (although if you've used it you'll see it's more user friendly than Starter Edition) and because not enough people were buying new computers that couldn't run what they saw as the current OS.
Now with a shift towards lower powered ultra mobiles, people are buying computers that aren't really suited to run what they see as the current OS.
They are already maintaining a way to run a supported version of Windows on PCs going back to P233 with 64MB RAM because they saw a market driven reason for it. Extending the availability of XP Home just means they are recognizing a similar market in consumer space now.
Re:It's really sad... (Score:5, Insightful)
1) The hardware manufacturers make more money. Then then repay MS by not supporting other OSes.
2) The cost of the software remains low in relation to the cost of the total system. People won't notice a $200 OS buried in $1000 of hardware. But in $200 of hardware another $200 stands out.
Even a blind pig finds an acorn from time to time (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a long way of setting some background; what I'm trying to say is that when a company that's enjoyed success for years decides that their success is due to some special insight or knowledge - the market corrects them. IBM thought they were the leaders in PC technology and made a turn and marched off into the distance. They didn't realize that nobody followed them until much later.
For IBM, this was the thing that changed them from being the leaders in PCs to an also-ran PC company in just a few short years. In their pride, they dictated how the future of PCs should be and ignored their market. Too bad for them; they're completely out of the PC business now.
For Microsoft, Vista is their "Microchannel" moment. They lost sight of the need to satisfy their customer's needs and decided to make some fundamental changes (baked in DRM) on their own. Now they're enjoying the result of that decision; sales of Vista are far, far lower than they expected. And those sales figures don't include all the new machines that came with Vista that have since been upgraded to XP. I know that Vista will never touch any PC I own or control.
Since there's a few smart people at Microsoft they've extended XP's life a few more years. A decent choice; better to sell the obsolete OS than lose more customers to Linux. This won't fix the real problem, though - Microsoft needs to decide which customers they're actually serving. If it's the end user then the next version of Windows is critical; another DRM infested release will spell the end. If they're actually serving corporate interests then it doesn't matter; they've failed already and we're just watching the death throes.
While Microsoft plays their games, Linux continues to evolve and improve. This is a golden opportunity for Linux on the desktop...
Microsoft stuck in the middle.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds like their chess pieces are going to get taken whatever move they make.
This is why they are failing over and over (Score:3, Insightful)
get a load of that.
in which business school they teach students to ditch successful products and to only use them to prevent competitors from getting a slice of some low cost market ?
leave that aside, what kind of logic can justify this ? if you have something successful, you stick by it and make a pillar out of it.
no sir. ms doesnt do that. because they are much involved in their years long legacy of playing dirty, screwing customers AND partners alike and that. in recent years, they have also shifted much attention to 'preventing competitors from being successful' rather than trying to be successful themselves.
excuse me, microsoft lovers in slashdot, im no fanboy of anything, but this picture isnt a neat picture and there is nothing about it to even try defending against any criticism.
Re:It's really sad... (Score:4, Insightful)
In my opinion the only thing Vista was properly designed to do is strip money from customers.
Vista is a placeholder (Score:5, Insightful)
If we assume that business customers are where MS's real profits come from, then Vista is a fuck-up of epic proportions. I don't know of ANY business that plans to "upgrade" to Vista. Why would they? A five-year-old PC will run XP and basic office-type appliations at full-speed (especially if those machines have 1GB of RAM or more). What does Vista offer as an improvement? Yeah, the security is better, but in a corporate setting, those machines are (hopefully) locked down via Group Policies and permissions anyway.
It's just impossible to justify in a corporate setting. Upgrade all the machines, to get performance rougly equal to what you already have. Oh, and lets not forget that quite a few peripherals don't and WON'T have Vista drivers.
Now, the next version of Windows will come on a hardware-upgrade cycle for a lot of companies, so it will probably sell better. But even then, I imagine that many companies are planning to stick with XP until it's just no longer possible to run it on new machines. And that could be a long time.
I'm with you on this, but for a different reason. (Score:5, Insightful)
Be happy, Microsoft might be an evil entity or a tool of evil men, but at the very least, many of its users found Linux or BSD or even Darwin because of this. By the same token, competition has been good for the Linux geeks. If the arena full of evil tyrants wasn't there, they would've never received the same press they got now. Had it not been for gaming, some geeks might have never discovered they were geeks.
Microsoft was a stage in evolution, if one seeks to see it as such. They put lots of cheap computers into the homes of those who would've been too inept to make use of the various Unices. Be happy for it, is what I say. Competition has been great for Linux, and would you truly wish to have the OS that is the world's biggest target?
If those in the community decide to fight against Microsoft, they will become what they kill. Microsoft became what they killed (IBM in 87 anyone?). Don't strive to kill Microsoft's joy. Microsoft is sinking themselves. Just keep doing what we've all been doing. It works far more than aggressively fighting for ground. Remember Sun Tzu: "Any warrior can fight a battle and win, but a master wins the war before the battle is fought." Try it. Microsoft is doing admirably at shoving their own foot in their own mouth. All the rest of us have to do is just help the "lusers" in our lives learn to use something else, and make that transition less painful than it would've been for them when many of us got into Unix.
You don't have to be a "guru" or a "wizard" or "3l33t" to help someone less technically inclined. Who knows, they might be able to help elsewhere.
Re:It's really sad... (Score:5, Insightful)
On top of that it needs to be actually secure, table and reliable. It would also be nice that it be readily repairable and not self destruct at random intervals.
The only real difference between 2000 and 2008, it should have the latest drivers properly implemented.
So all I want is an OS that I will be able to use for the rest of my life, without being extorted for upgrades, without being forced to use applications I have no interest in, without being subjected to inconveniences due to ill conceived anti-piracy methods, without bugs the will never get repaired because you should buy the latest version that has those faults supposedly repaired, without having to pay more for detailed help files and, most importantly without wasting hardware performance on the OS that should be used for applications.
I gotta tell you that those 8 years have taught me one thing for sure and certain, M$ ain't the company to provide the required solution but the have certainly demonstrated time and again the problems caused when those 'withouts' are replaced by 'withs'.
Re:Even a blind pig finds an acorn from time to ti (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:It's really sad... (Score:5, Insightful)
Vista is often criticized for its lack of killer features to justify its increased greediness. I personally think the UI's improvements are handy, but if I could have them in XP, I'd be just as happy. And I certainly couldn't justify spending $1000 more on a document handling laptop just so I can run Vista vs XP. Linux resource requirements seem to be relatively stable compared to MS operating systems. Really, only media-intensive work (eg transcoding) and "blockbuster" games are even capable of significantly loading a modern machine. For many tasks, people are now preferring to take their Moore's Law profits in money rather than performance.
Another factor might be that the GHz wall and relative difficulty of parallel programming means that there's just no perceived performance benefit to typical tasks from the newest hardware, and the benefits can be cancelled out by suboptimal software design (see again Vista benchmark results). Due to this lack of progress, people are choosing (for the first time since the eighties?) that cheaper hardware running less inefficient software is a better use of their resources.
Re:Change is overrated (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's really sad... (Score:5, Insightful)
Speak for Microsoft. I see great improvment. (Score:4, Insightful)
It might also be a recognition that the upgrade treadmill is no longer providing much in the way of new value for the end users, compared to the nineties and early this century.
Recognition? It's a downright admission to market failure. This is not something that can be said for free software though.
The last seven years have provided all sorts of great things for free software users that were stuffed into the same modest hardware requirements. Interfaces that were functional and stable have become beautiful without excessive bloat. There are all sorts of productivity increasing features. Printer support has gone from decent to phenomenal. Media playing and transcoding was very hard to come by seven years ago, now it's common and very good. Network integration in both KDE and Gnome is astonishing and this feature alone would make it impossible for me to consider running XP outside of Parallels or some other Virtual Box. Then there are all the specialty applications. The exponentially growing Debian tree has applications for just about any purpose you can think of and it reflects an even larger body of free code.
Free software is not standing still either. People have new itches and they are scratching them so things are not going to slow down anytime soon. Besides better interfaces and specialty applications there are basic communications and sharing needs that people have. I imagine greater speech recognition, better wireless communication in general, better automation of wireless file transfer and synchronization based on location and a host of other digital life uses. Better and cheaper displays will create all sorts of information surfaces and free computing will be the first to really fill the smart house. People have made a good start with X10 type stuff but the ease of porting to ever smaller and more powerful platforms finally will make these things common.
Re:This shows Microsoft's priorities (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft's customers are and always have been, developers. Why? No business goes out and puts in a Windows network because they think it's great - they do it because they need to run XYZ application that runs their business, and *IT* requires a Windows network.
Remember the monkey boy.
Re:It's really sad... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:It's really sad... (Score:5, Insightful)
I used Vista for months before finally getting fed up and switching to Linux. The fact that Linux can do *more* eye candy than Vista and still run on more meagre hardware is one of hundreds of testaments to Linux's actual superiority to Windows. It infuriates me that the most we get out of Vista visual effects is a glass engine, a 3d switcher, and somewhat boring window open/close animations that requires ~ 2 GiB of RAM to do it with any measure of decent speed.
The obvious answer, of course, is that Windows is and always has been a bloated piece of shit. It becomes more apparent with each Windows release: Windows because more massive, memory intensive, and insecure, and only a minuscule amount of improved stability against a typical Linux distro, which is small, nimble, efficient, inherently secure, and extremely stable, and increases in this way on every upgrade curve.
Vista pretty much proves this. How massive is it? Did we just double the system requirements for Windows *again* like with XP? What about that whatyamacallit system: Lunix? Lanex? Linux? Whatever the hell it is. Doesn't that run on my computer with all them snazzy features Windows claims to have without being s bitch to run?
No wonder there's been a noticeable increase of Windows migration and Linux/Mac OS X adoption, even the not-so-much-technical users are starting to notice how crappy Windows is.
FEAR. (Score:2, Insightful)
It's total EEE panic. Asus is selling better than either Microsoft or Asus imagined. It's reaching into Microsoft's core market and teaching them that free software is just as easy to use as any other if it has vendor support. It's also teaching makers that there's a pot of gold waiting for them outside of Microsoft control.
It won't work because XP can't really compete against free software on the same hardware. Compare Works to Open Office, then imagine trying to make the whole Microsoft Office thing work in 8GB of flash memory. IE 7 or IE 8 or Firefox and Konqueror? Outlook Express or Kmail or the whole KDE PIM package? The choice is obvious and the difference is going to grow. The price of hardware that will run free software will continue to fall but the utility of the device won't.
That makes a continuously building profit potential for hardware makers that has nothing but avoidance to do with Microsoft. Microsoft won't be able to get licensing fees from those computers and will have to raise the price on others to keep their revenue flat, say nothing of growing. All of this leads to less control of users and vendors and that will be a very good thing.
Re:Speak for Microsoft. I see great improvment. (Score:3, Insightful)
The point being that the increase in hardware capability is not (very much) opening new areas of software capability, and the developments in software capability are not (as much) driving repeated short life-cycle sales of hardware.
Hopefully there will be some new breakthroughs in the next few years to prove me wrong...
Re:This shows Microsoft's priorities (Score:3, Insightful)
You reckon customers buying cheap mini laptops won't notice one option will require them to buy Office, antivirus, etc, and more memory to store it all in?
Especially since the other option includes a heap more free, is a lot easier on the hardware and doesn't break as often.
Re:It's really sad... (Score:2, Insightful)
Now, I'm not sure if they're still doing that, but it definitely had an effect on a great deal of OEMs, especially whenever another OS had a shot at the big time. (You know your OS is good and successful if OEMs have a shot at bundling it.)
The problem is that the cost of Windows to the OEM is passed on to the user. Oftentimes up to a full third of a PC's cost is Windows. Is it any mystery tham OEM'd Linux machines are selling for so much cheaper? The OEM didn't necessarily have any real cost in placing Linux on the machines. The savings pass on to the user.
The phenomena also passes on to home builders. Building a Linux machine is cheaper than a Windows machine simply because there's not payout for the license to use the operating system where Linux is concerned. I've never seen Microsoft freely give away licenses to Windows. Is anyone surprised?
Re:It's really sad... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:5 minutes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:OLPC? (Score:3, Insightful)
MS probablly knows they can't kill linux in this space but they really really don't want linux to be the only preinstalled option for such machines.
Re:Some Clarity in the Post (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"can support vista" (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows Vista is the best thing to happen to Linux.
Now by Microsoft's own admission!
Re:Speak for Microsoft. I see great improvment. (Score:3, Insightful)
But generally, you're right. With 2k, Windows was a "finished" product. It had everything. It was stable. Anything XP brought along could have been done in a service pack. And certainly everything Vista brought. Unless you really, really wanted to use one of the few features added in XP, you had no compelling reason to upgrade. This is even more true for Vista.
Now MS has a problem. Their main product is done. It's finished. The step to 64 bit is coming, but it's coming much, much slower than the step from 16 to 32 came, and with less noticable difference for the end user. Worse, from the typical computer user's point of view, the step onwards to 64 is a step backwards. He can't do "more" with a 64 bit system currently, it just costs more and it seems the additional ram is chewed away by additional overhead.
OTOH, MS has to produce. It has to move forwards. First of all, of course, MS wants to sell a new product. Unless they can finally make their dream of the "rented" OS, where you keep paying for every year you use a system, comes true, they have to sell you a new system every few years. Their nightmare scenario would be that people keep porting their old OS from one hardware generation to the next, infinitly. That would mean zero income, but considerable expense for updates and patches.
And there's also the threat of alternative OSs looming over their head. Until now, they could safely rest on having the "better looking" and "easier accessable" OS, which Windows arguably was, compared to Linux with KDE or Gnome. Now, KDE and Gnome are catching up. We're currently easily on par with the usability of Win2k. People who only want to "use" their computer are no longer considering Linux a geek system but can handle using it.
What is MS going to do? Well, for now it seems they will do whatever necessary to keep people from trying out Linux. A customer lost is a customer lost. He won't return. The main selling point for Windows in the past was compatibility with software and ease of use, both fields in which Linux is coming VERY close to them now. In less than 5 years, it will be easy even for computer illiterates to use their Windows software in an emulator in Linux. The progress in hardware will make the performance loss trivial. And anyone lost to Linux is lost for MS. Why go back to a system that limits you, that gives you everything only piece by piece (and in exchange for considerable amounts of money) when you can have everything at once, for free, without licensing headaches, registration calls and nagging whenever you change a piece of hardware?
Re:It's really sad... (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's see. Athlon Slot-A 700MHz. Voodoo3 graphics. 64MB RAM (later upgraded to 128MB). 17GB 5400rpm hard drive. 1.44 floppy! 24x CDROM reader. 250W Athlon-approved powersupply.
Minor upgrades my ass, you'd be replacing everything but the case.
Re:It's really sad... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Speak for Microsoft. I see great improvment. (Score:5, Insightful)
I would add one more release:
* Oct 2001 Windows XP - added the games compatability of the Win9X codebase with the stability of the Windows 2000 codebase. With SP2, XP added a number of much-needed security features.
I believe Windows XP is the last release of Windows that was written to directly answer the needs of end users. Windows Vista was about locking users in, and users are rejecting it en masse.
Re:No, it's market distortion (Score:4, Insightful)
You've got it backwards. The market exists, the devices already exist and are selling like hotcakes - Asus is seeling EeePCs as fast as it can make them, they're selling at above RRP everywhere and others are bringing similar devices to market in the coming weeks and months. Till this week they ran Linux out of the box. That scared Microsoft into extending the life of XP and offering Asus an extra-low price. Microsoft haven't created the market, they're reacting to it.