XP Reprieve, Downgrade May Continue After Win7 392
CWmike writes "Gregg Keizer reports that Microsoft acknowledged today it has 'broadened the options' for PC makers to continue offering Windows XP as a downgrade from Vista — and potentially even Windows 7. However, the company would not confirm specific reports that HP has been given the green light to sell new PCs with Windows XP Pro pre-installed through the end of April 2010. 'Windows XP went into semi-retirement in June 2008, when Microsoft stopped selling it at retail and withdrew Windows XP Home from use on all but netbooks, though it allowed XP Professional to be installed as a Vista downgrade. Since then, Microsoft has extended the final date it will sell XP Professional install media to large computer makers and smaller systems builders to July 31, 2009, and May 30, 2009, respectively. Today, Microsoft denied that it had extended the life span of Windows XP, and intimated that those rights were built into the newer operating system — in this case, Vista — and did not expire at some arbitrary date.'"
Update: 04/07 14:36 GMT by T : nandemoari adds "Not only will users be able to keep Windows Vista, but they'll be able to step back in time two generations, all the way to XP. "We will offer downgrade rights from Windows 7 to Windows XP in the same way we did with Windows Vista," a Microsoft rep said.
Insiders speculate that the right to use this time machine might be reserved for those purchasing licenses for only two versions of Windows 7 — Ultimate and Professional. However, that's not yet been confirmed."
It's about compatibility (Score:5, Informative)
Same reasons many can't upgrade to Vista...
Spanners in the works:
-New driver model meaning much older hardware just doesn't work.
-UAC breaks lots of badly written apps. Causes huge annoyances at best in these instances.
-64bit. First serious 64 bit consumer Windows.
-No IE6. You wouldn't believe how many legacy apps require IE6 and/or ActiveX, it's quite sickening actually.
Any one of these can be a show-stopped for your app/system, and on older apps this can be a nightmare to have to work round that often isn't worth the investment until forced. I've seen many legacy business apps in particular that break because of Windows re-engineering (Vista). Same applies for Win7.
Pretty much any HP printer (Score:1, Informative)
Pretty much any HP printer
Fuckers
About 2 years ago, it took me a month to get duplex working.
Re:If Windows 7 is as fast as they claim (Score:2, Informative)
I see people spouting that kind of thing off all the time, but I never see any kind of information to back it up.
Plus, it hasn't just been Microsoft saying 7 is faster. A lot of the independent benchmarks coming out have 7 as faster than Vista and XP in just about everything.
A Catch 22 (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Industry holds adoption back (Score:3, Informative)
I work for a small ERP ISV in Switzerland.
We run 90% internally, and have several customers that run 100% Vista. And none of those customers hate Vista - in fact, they don't understand what all the fuss is about in the Media, since it's working very well for them. A rather big customer started in June 2007 with 100% Vista.
The reasons behind these things are simple: Their most important application is our ERP software - which works very well on their machines. If they are using other software and hardware, we ensured full vendor support for Windows Vista. We also ensured that all the hardware they use is supported by Vista, and replaced that hardware that wasn't supported (mostly 50$ desktop printers).
Also, Vista was deployed on appropriate hardware - 2.x Ghz Core 2 Duo with 3GB of RAM.
Vista was mostly Microsoft trying to do the right thing, forcing their ecosystem to get current, especially in dropping the requirements for local administrator rights.
I would imagine that for enterprises with lots of applications developed by the lowest indian bidder, the result will be that most of their software won't run on anything except the Windows XP SP1 with Patches KB123 and KB456 installed.
Vista offers a lot of features for businesses that would otherwise require complicated third party solutions. Bitlocker is great for small businesses, as it allows full disk encryption that is extremely easy to use and secure enough.
Re:If Windows 7 is as fast as they claim (Score:3, Informative)
While your point is technically correct, this is a very very different argument, this is version to version.
XP 64 will be quicker than Vista 64 as a core OS, due to the backend doing 'stuff'
XP 32 will be quicker than Vista 32 as a core OS, due to the backend doing 'stuff'
I appreciate you pointing it out but I think we both know what I meant and I stand by it.
Re:And still developing Win7? (Score:3, Informative)
I disagree that Windows 7 isn't getting a warm reception.
Pure marketing spin is going to get Windows 7 a tonne of sales, it will be heralded but a tonne of Vista haters purely because it's not Vista, that name is now a tarnished brand (it simply can't be repaired)
In 18 months you'll STILL see XP vs Windows 7 discussions (fewer I admit) but Vista will simply forgotten, much like Windows ME or the Xbox 1.
I am in the camp which feels 7 IS an improvement but I'm not in the "OMG IT'S NOT VISTA! IT MUST BE GOOD!" camp. ...... frustrating but improved.
I still follow the same rules I did with XP and Vista, I'm in classic mode, I'm primarily using it for day to day and I find the user interface
Explorer is 'cleaner' some small simple additions make explorer easier to use, there's even 1 single improvement over XP (that I've found)
There's still some absoloutely stupid rubbish (the status bar in explorer has had the drive free space removed, WHY?)
Overall, Windows 7 feedback is very very positive from what I hear, I don't believe I've blindly drunk the cool aid and I'll call it out when it's stupid but it is better than Vista.
It 'feels' partially faster on disk thrashing
Explorer is 'cleaner' in several ways.
The gadgets don't need to be tacked on to a sidebar.
etc.
You are ultimately right though, they need to look at why people love XP and expand upon it but sadly they aren't thinking in that direction
Re:Just use the latest Firefox, and you'll be fine (Score:5, Informative)
What MS lacks is a compelling reason for people to switch from XP and I don't think they're ready to dare cutting off all support to force a switch. They're victims of their own success.
I played with win7 for about a month, became irritated at the difficulties networking with existing XP machines and failed to find a "must have" feature compelling enough for me to switch.
I also smell a screw job coming - either DRM or some other anti-consumer scheme built in to the OS that's going to offer me zero benefit and make my life more difficult.
OS's are becoming less relevant as computing becomes more browser-centric. Who cares what's under the hood if Firefox runs? The only real reason I still run xp is for gaming.
Re:Just use the latest Firefox, and you'll be fine (Score:3, Informative)
If you are not running as administrator you have to enter the password of an administrator. It's people who run as an admin who get the click trough dialogs. Problem is that the Windows installer still doesn't try to suggest that users should run as a mormal user. By default it should create both an admin and normal user during install and tell you to use the normal user in everyday use. Maybe even hide the admin user in the login screen.
An "Administrator" in Vista _is_ a normal user, they just have the ability to elevate. Similar to an "admin" in OS X, or a user who can sudo in Linux.
XP 64 sucks vista 64 has more / better drivers and (Score:2, Informative)
XP 64 sucks vista 64 has more / better drivers and better backwards compatible system in it.
Re:If Windows 7 is as fast as they claim (Score:5, Informative)
Now, get yourself a quad core 12gb machine with a 15,000rpm hard disk.
Put on Windows XP
Now put on Windows Vista or Windows 7.
It WILL be slower, period.
Not under heavy - particularly multithreaded - loads it won't.
Advances and improvements in schedulers, locking, memory management, and other low-level aspects of the OS mean that newer hardware is better utilised by a more modern OS. For example, pre-SP2 releases of XP are not NUMA-aware, so on architectures like Opteron and Core i7, will be at a severe disadvantage in memory-intensive workloads.
Benchmarks have demonstrated this. You're wrong, deal with it.
Re:Just use the latest Firefox, and you'll be fine (Score:2, Informative)
It's not entirely the same, as the permission system of OS X and Linux are wildly different - while Linux and OS X effectively change the effective user the program is run under, Windows does not.
Upon login, the user receives just a restricted token - which can be elevated to a full token.
Yeah, sorry for the nitpicking.
Re:XP 64 sucks vista 64 has more / better drivers (Score:1, Informative)
Actually on my system, the only device that didn't work on XP x64 won't work on Vista x64 either: my TV tuner.
Re:If Windows 7 is as fast as they claim (Score:2, Informative)
Did you read the article?
Nah....
Same hardware.
Oh, and in case you haven't heard, Vista is running much better than it did upon release. So much so, in fact, that it does indeed outperform XP in some areas. Sure, it still sucks for the most part, but I have seen *several* (not just one) benchmarks indicating that Vista is slowly gaining a performance advantage over XP....and that Windows 7 is simply schooling both of them in terms of performance *and* usability.
"Vista and Win7 are KNOWN to thrash and pork about in your hard disk like a nosy schoolgirl"
uh, no? That'd be Vista. Win7...not so much. I am running it on 3 machines at home. Will not go back to XP. Ever. ...and Yes, I bought vista Ultimate...and hate it (and hate MSFT for screwing me on "Extras").
[]
Oh, and yes, extremetech also has benchmarks regarding the vista XP thing. Those are ancient though but they still show Vista edging ahead.
Quick Google search provided: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2302499,00.asp [extremetech.com]
Re:XP support (Score:3, Informative)
rect - if it runs in Wine, it'll run in FreeBSD (a supported platform).
And you can churn your own butter at home instead of going to that fancy supermarket. The original post should have read like this:
People don't care. They just want it to run their favorite game and accounting software simply and without having to undertake compatiblility testing or perform major settings changes. BSD doesn't do that.
Nope. Linux in its various flavours neither. But that's not even the major issue - driver suppport is. I don't mind fiddling around to get Win apps to work under wine, but if half the customer's devices don't work, well, then that's a major issue.
Yes, I know that 'enterprise' quality peripheral support is really very good, but a lot of devices that people want to use- in large organisations & small - just can't be installed and/or work correctly/as expected/to thir full potential.
Re:If Windows 7 is as fast as they claim (Score:2, Informative)
"I'll have to accept your link I suppose but I will continue to question anything "
There is *nothing* wrong with that. :)
Nothing wrong with being a performance junkie either. Been there, done that. Vista was a *huge* disappointment and even with the latest benchmarks and what-not I still cannot bring myself to use it again. I was crushed because I expected so much, and got burned for it.
I went into the Win7 betas with eyes-wide-open and was shocked. I was expecting Vista SP2. I was expecting what all the trolls are claiming (Vista re-skinned). I ended up with an OS that actually works and works *well*.
I have an old HP lappy (ze2000: 1GB RAM, single-core, ATi mobility 200 chipset) and threw it on there...not even expecting it to be able to install. lo and behold, not only did it install, but after running WHEI, it enabled Aero and blew my mind. This leads me to believe that Windows 7 tunes the system to your score a *lot* better than Vista ever did. XP ran like a dog on this laptop...I was about to throw it away. Win7 (the beta build) actually convinced me to hang on to it.
Haven't tried the latest builds on it yet, just on my desktop, but.... I hear rumor that 7068 (leaked?) works better on netbooks, which have lower specs than this thing, so.... maybe worth a shot.
*shrug*
I'll go home for lunch today and try to get that "free disk space status bar" for ya. It's there somewhere. I know I've seen it....
10 Cars That Sank Detroit (Score:3, Informative)
Re:XP versus Windows 7 from a useability standpoin (Score:2, Informative)
Intuitive design (This is huge to me and why linux still fails to be a great desktop OS)
Can you explain your reasoning behind this? I have been running Ubuntu for a couple of months and I found it was far more intuitive than windows.
Firstly you have three different menu's, Applications, Places and System. This makes it easier to find things than in Windows which bungs it all in one start menu.
Secondly the applications menu is well organised by category rather than by company. So instead of windows where to find my scanner I have to remember it is in the Epson folder I can look in graphics and pick the one with XSane Image Scanner as the name.
The places menu is pretty obvious, giving a list of possible places I want to go to. Bookmarks are useful here but I didn't find these intuitive, still you get sane defaults so not being able to work out how to change them easily isn't any worse then windows.
Add/Remove Applications is pretty good because you can actually add software (I know you can add a few windows components but this is not obvious) so this makes it very easy to find new software as long as it is fairly mainstream.