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."
Future Niche. (Score:4, Interesting)
What it's about (Score:3, Interesting)
Is keeping their product in front of the customer.
This is going to make a lot of people unhappy. Lots of OEMs are going to have a little chat with Microsoft about this whole death-of-XP thing I think.
If Vista runs well on a MID I will be shocked. If it ran well, the things would ship with Vista and we wouldn't be having this 8-year-old OS discussion at all since these devices weren't even announced until Vista had been out for a year.
Self Deprication? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It's really sad... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's really sad... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It's really sad... (Score:4, Interesting)
Did Microsoft really think people would just stop using older, but perfectly functional hardware and buy new gear? Were they totally nuts? They could have had so much more success if Vista was designed to scale well with various grades of hardware. But it doesn't without a lot of work, and you could just as easily save yourself the trouble by slapping on XP (or Linux). Let's hope for their sake Windows 7 will have a readjustment in their perspective.
Will they extend Mainstream support further? (Score:3, Interesting)
There goes my lab's purchases of Windows (Score:5, Interesting)
If they only do this for "low-cost" PCs, then we'll have to completely move away from the Office suite and go to OpenOffice instead. Be a shame, but if they don't want us to use Windows, that's their problem.
Too late for me (Score:5, Interesting)
The straw that broke the camel's back was the problems I had with formulas in Word for Mac on my brother-in-law's iBook. Nice machine but OO.o works much better for me - and since it runs on Linux, and I always wanted a LIGHT notebook... eee PC just won out as the logical option for my on-the-move needs. If I could run a Matlab equivalent on it (and I will definitely look into that) this little gem might replace one of my desktops as well.
By the way, this is my first experiment with Linux as a desktop OS. I have a router with CentOS at home, but as my WinXP-running desktops die out, I'll be replacing them with Linux. Sorry MS, no Vista for me.
rock and hard place for MS (Score:5, Interesting)
Eee Pc opened the floodgates - the future looks to be low power, SSD, minimal RAM long battery "laptop" style devices that will never run Vista in a million years.
This is about containment of Linux - as this is the OS of choice for this new breed.
I bet MS is shitting bricks over this, I have an Eee and the Linux flavor on it is very nice indeed. I still have not put Ubuntu on it.
I keep hearing that 70% of PCs in a year or so will be laptops, if 50% of them are low power devices then that 1/4 to 1/3 of PC in a few years that will not run Vista - you can kinda see why they are doing it.
However, when customers are told that they can only have Vista on their desktop or XP on their laptop they will be annoyed. Even more when XP is being phased out but new SPs are available for the "laptop" version of XP. I can understand what MS is doing, but I think it can (and will) go wrong for them in many ways. Interesting times ahead.
Re:Vista is a placeholder (Score:1, Interesting)
What? This makes no sense -- business hardware upgrade cycles are not 0 upgrades for several years, then all the machines the next year, and so on. If they use a 5-year cycle, they would replace roughly 1/5th of the machines each year. Businesses are not "upgrading" to Vista because it is expensive; Vista needs 2-4GB of RAM, a gaming video card, and a dual core to get decent performance? Forget about it. Businesses, espeically big ones, buy machines by the hundreds to thousands... XP (and any Linux distro, which is what's scaring Microsoft) runs fine with 512MB, integrated graphics, and a single-core system. That saves SERIOUS money.
Re:NEW SERVICE PACK NOW? (Score:2, Interesting)
"Slipstream" is a somewhat noxiously overblown word for "updated installer image", don't you think? And all the while you scoff at those who don't care to complete the mind-bogglingly long number of steps needed to "slipstream" basic updates into an installer [winsupersite.com], Linux users have cast off that albatross entirely and simply install the right versions the first time around [debian.org].
Windows still needs some really remedial rehabilitation of its package management "capabilities", and what you lot call "slipstreaming" just sounds like some long-abandoned ritual to us. I've even heard that Windows guys still primarily use the "executable installer" method of software distribution -- is that actually true? It sounded made-up to me when I heard it; probably just an exaggeration from some half-cocked Linux zealots!
what would Microsoft do if UMP's went ARM or PPC (Score:5, Interesting)
IMO, it would shut Microsoft out of this market and give the hardware vendors the profit margins they can build a business on. Bulking up the devices so Windows XP will fit on them and taking money from Microsoft to put Windows on them is not a sustainable business. Microsoft will pull the plug when they've limited choice to Windows and Windows only and then pull the plug on the payola for being a Microsoft supporter.
Microsoft is not a hardware vendors friend and they should know this and be doing something about keeping control of their own destiny. IMO.
LoB
Re:It's really sad... (Score:3, Interesting)
Still: the (AUD) $1000 price comparison was more intended to contrast a "full featured" Vista Premium capable notebook (why would you bother with Vista Basic?) against something like the Eee PC or bargain notebook which I suspect would not be blazing fast with Vista even today.
And yeah, I don't get the DRM hype either.
Re:It's really sad... (Score:2, Interesting)
I got vista when i smashed up my laptop (without a screen itll make a good PVR tho), i played with it for about an hour before trashing it while installing kubuntu. I found it ran like my 256mb system on 512MB, everything would get done but stuff tended to freeze up for abit when doing anything intensive (ironically other than using firefox, which performed fine). I think that it has moved towards being like gnome, run everything though 1 program and it figures out what your trying to do, or in the place of one program 1 interface.
The 'eye candy' was well completly lacking, its about level with kde3, but cant touch KDE4 or compiz.
The control pannel, i found actually suggests usefull wizards now, which is nice for newbies, but the price it paid for this is even making the navigation even harder, the adress bar would take me to seamingly random places while all i wanted to do was find the defragmenter. I suppose they're going after the newbie users thier loosing to the mac crowd, much more than the geeks their loosing to linux.
My short experience was not as bad as expected, even my non-geek friend(s) were abit too harsh about, but it was unimpressive enough to tell my dad one of the "I cant switch to linux, I NEED office" crowd, to stick with xp indefinatly. Theres no point him relearning how to manage his system when theres nothing to be gained (same reason im not switching him to ubuntu).
It's funny how free software changes perspectives. (Score:3, Interesting)
Those were significant improvements for a single company back in the 90s, but free software has completely blown them away. Most people also associate the porting of browsers and other programs to Windows with the general progress of the 90s. Since 2000, besides UI, free software hardware abstraction and device support has finally caught up to the non free world for practical purposes.
Free software portability and architecture support had already eclipsed Microsoft's ability by 2000 and totally dominates now. Slashdot started it's life on a 64 bit DEC Alpha while Microsoft was struggling with everything Intel had to offer. Today, you only have to look at BSD and Debian architecture support pages to see just how far you can port free software. There's hardly anything free software won't run on and that makes Microsoft's 32 bit accomplishments look petty.
Stability? My software is more reliable than my hardware. Now that I have a few good UPSs and drastically lower power requirements, my computers just about never go down unless I'm putting in a new part or kernel. Having used Microsoft from the DOS 3.2 days, I can say that Microsoft stability has remained about the same. It's better to just turn the old box off.
No, it's market distortion (Score:3, Interesting)
The way things are going, I'm hoping to leapfrog completely over Vista... If my employer makes it possible, I'll land in Linux Land and perhaps never have to use Microsoft products at all. (Dream on, Mr. Adequate.)
Re:"can support vista" (Score:5, Interesting)
And while yes, that's funny on the surface, it's no joke.
Re:5 minutes? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It's really sad... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not as secure as Debian, but Debian has never been a Prime Target of every virus writer in the world, either.
Re:It's really sad... (Score:3, Interesting)
Now of course that includes a lot of other software, to make it all usable, but still... I wouldn't call it small. Nor with any lack of bloat (three web browsers, five window managers, two windowing systems, three kernels, two desktop environments, a dozen text editors, etc).
Re:This shows Microsoft's priorities (Score:3, Interesting)
No one creates software because "Windows is such a great platform". The only reason why we can't afford to drop Windows support -- in most case, SOLE support, is that 100% of customers run Windows. It's a chicken and egg problem, with developers (the more technical people) wanting to get away from Windows the most.
get rid of linux (Score:2, Interesting)
The Way Dual Core Works (Score:2, Interesting)