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."
I'm an XP lover but how about we make a deal,..... (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft, I'll give up my obsession with XP, skip Vista and widely support Windows 7, if you guys have the testicles to release Windows 7 as a 64bit only operating system.
I dare you, I double dare you - do the right thing for a change.
This can't continue indefinitely (Score:1, Interesting)
What an ironic two-edged sword the success of Windows XP has turned out to be. Wintel has been all about the upgrade cycle, keeping on the forefront of Moore's Law (and of course Gates' Corollary). Now, I'm almost a little scared.
Now, don't get me wrong, I go to great lengths to avoid supporting Microsoft. But it's time for XP to die---it's way past its expiration date. I can't think of any truly useful purpose for it: anything needing a stripped-down version of windows should do fine with Win2k, and anything else should use something more recent. Vista isn't that much of a dog, and Win7 promises to either make good on Microsoft's promises or doom the entire company to irrelevance.
XP is old, and insecure, and linux beats the pants off of it, especially on netbooks (like the one I'm typing on). I'm terribly worried that there is still such a demand for it. Enough is enough! XP was brilliant during its time, and I can understand being emotionally attached to it because of that, but it's not the solution to any problem any more. And if you're not part of the solution...
Re:I'm an XP lover but how about we make a deal,.. (Score:4, Interesting)
If 64-bit Windows 7 would be slow like the 64bit edition Ubuntu 8.10, then no thanks.
The thing uses 1 gig of RAM for mail and web browsing. Java apps use nearly twice the RAM compared to the 32-bit edition because there are too many pointers. The same with gcc, a simple build task consumes 500 megs of RAM compared to 350 in 32-bit. So one gigabyte in 64-bit Ubuntu is as slow as 512 megs in Vista.
Oh, and netbooks run on Celeron or Atom CPUs, meaning Microsoft would have to continue selling Windows XP.
XP forever (Score:2, Interesting)
They should change the support model for XP. Offer it for free and charge for support.
It's still a popular OS that will be in use for years to come - if people are still deploying it on new machines today.
No, it's not time for it to die - accounting (Score:5, Interesting)
So, much as I like Ubuntu 8.10 which runs on my servers, it is actually useless on most of our desktops and netbooks as it cannot run two out of our essential four programs.
Because accounting programs are very conservative and stable, I expect them to be running perfectly adequately on XP in ten years time. So why do I want Vista?
Re:I'm an XP lover but how about we make a deal,.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Just use the latest Firefox, and you'll be fine (Score:5, Interesting)
What MS needs is new hardware.
Let's ponder. WinNT to 2k. What was the reason? That NT was "too old" or that 2k was "slicker, faster, better, newer"? Nah. USB support and DirectX. Win2k to XP? Wifi. No, seriously. That's pretty much all that is so terribly different. Ok, the DirectX SDK for 9.0c doesn't want to run on 2k, but you can convince it. Oh, and I think you need XP for some of the later .NET goodies.
In a nutshell, it was always MS deciding to abandon support for "older" systems that should convince people they "want" the new system. They tried the same stunt with Vista, by not offering DirectX10 support for XP. It fizzled because neither people nor industry cared.
Re:XP forever (Score:2, Interesting)
That would be a disaster. Even with Auto Update being free, what would happen if people would have to pay for security fixes?
The situation would be even worse than it is today. Remember: Conficker happened because of idiots, not because Microsoft fucked up - a patch was released almost a month before conficker hit the net.
Re:Just use the latest Firefox, and you'll be fine (Score:5, Interesting)
First: Linux/Unix has done this since it was created
Second: and improvements of programs to do user-mode on vista will translate to user-mode capabilities for XP, although few people will use that.
XP versus Windows 7 from a useability standpoint (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm an IT guy, and application developer and a user who supports their "mother". Trust me... the last thing in the world I want to do is upgrade my mothers PC and start that whole "Where is..." process again.
What do I look for in an OS?
1) Innate Driver support (finding some of these drivers is a pain in the ass)
2) Speed (opening programs, loading by default)
3) Stability (how often does it experience problems, lag, programs crashing or stalling out)
4) Finding crap (how easy is it to find what you need?)
5) Security (How easy is it to lock down with virus protection etc)
6) Intuitive design (This is huge to me and why linux still fails to be a great desktop OS)
Fact is most people don't care what runs under the hood as long as it runs well. They don't WANT to know. Me, I'm a little more focused on performance since I'm a gamer and write software for a living.
I hated Vista... I still do. It just felt clunky and overly feature laiden. Still does and it's why most IT guys I know refuse to install it (not even including the security issues, driver support, software compability etc...).
Windows 7 on the other hand... surprised me. Lets go by my list above.
1) Innate Driver support (finding some of these drivers is a pain in the ass)
Well... I had some old hardware and new hardware in my box, separate sound card, you get the idea. Typically you have to install motherboard drivers, sound card drivers, ethernet drivers, blah blah blah. After installing Windows 7 FRESH... I only had to install my NVIDIA driver. Additionally, I was able to search (through find new driver in windows) for my sound card driver even though a default one was installed and let me tell you... the driver that was found (for lack of better words) PWNED the one that came with it. the XP install when searching windows databases never could find the sound card driver... not sure why. But... the fact is ALL of the drivers I had to have to do things were there.
2) Speed (opening programs, loading by default)
From default settings... Windows 7 loaded faster than my default of XP. I'm thinking this is because of how they order things when loading, or the fact that there was a lot less that starts. However, Windows 7 does take up a buttload more ram. Idle was using 500mb. I have 8gb so I don't care. With all my software installed (Winamp, CS3, Eclipse, blah blah blah) Windows 7 STILL loaded faster than XP. This caught me off guard and frankly didn't make much since until I looked at the startup. The adobe reader wasn't starting, acrobat was starting etc etc... by default a lot of those processes that add themselves to the startup... weren't. On average (yes im sad... I timed it), out of 5 start ups it took 20 seconds from pushing power to being at the login screen.
3) Stability (how often does it experience problems, lag, programs crashing or stalling out)
I have had NO blue screens of death. Not one. I haven't even had a program crash on me where XP used to die all the time. Every single game I've tried to play installed fine and works. Some had to be run in compatibility mode (Neverwinter nights, Quake 2) but they all run. Newer games haven't had a single issue for me. I was very pleased with this.
4) Finding crap (how easy is it to find what you need?)
Okay... windows 7 requires some adjustment... It's kind of difficult to find "My documents" folder... and if you download something good luck. Your downloads folder really isn't... it's your username THEN downloads. But other than that I REALLY liked the options for viewing contents of folders and how it automatically figures stuff out and saves your settings. It started to realize I wanted to see documents in a list view, pictures in small thumbs and html, php, cfm, js files as details. I never saved the folders it just remembered AND applied it to other folders.
The taskbar grouping and configuration was done EXTREMELY well. It allows you to set it up however you want it to. Not limiting you to two or three options. It
Re:XP (Score:5, Interesting)
Car Analogy!
Hi Mr. IT Guy. You'll come across them all in varying shades of disrepair from "normal" OS wear & tear. There was an article about "the 10 cars that sunk Detroit" and the Ford Taurus was one of them. That's where XP is now.
It was so midline good, and such a vacuum formed around it, that there was no successor plan properly formed. XP is kinda sloppy, but it's been patched by enough creative people to do *something*, and all these Alt Op Systems ... just have other conceptual themes in the way. (Linux Versioning vs. business software, Mac Hardware tie-ins, etc.)
Vista was a joke, Win7 is perhaps Burlesque. Someone in another post said XP needs to die ... then have someone get a grip, get hold of Tracy Kidder & do a "Soul of a New Windows". Code the successor to Win7 to be a beautifully optimized racecar that natively works for netbooks and screams on gaming rigs, add a year of nothing but tuning, and then yes XP will die & "Windows Nitro" (or such) will be the new 7 year standard.
No thanks, I'm good (Score:4, Interesting)
Not "like XP," they "hate Vista with a passion." (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm the "tech neighbor" in my rather large apartment building in New York. Word has gotten around that the guy in 12C "knows about computers," and I'm a reasonably nice guy so I do my share of silly stuff like helping with missing driver installs, helping people figure out how to shut down or reboot, helping people try to delete a file, helping people to get their flash plugin working again, or helping people to find programs that are "missing" while still installed, etc.
Note that all of the things that I just mentioned are recent problems (last couple of weeks) with Vista that I've helped people to solve.
In all cases, the problem was user confusion, user error, or simple lack of user knowledge about how to use the feature, enable the feature, find the feature, etc.
It's not that people were completely in love with XP. They bitched about "Windows" all the time, as they've done for years, sometimes seriously, sometimes half in jest. But Vista changed nearly every aspect of "how to get things done" for the average user.
I don't mean in the "flowchart by a UI designer way," in which the structures of many charts are the same. I mean in the "regular human way," which includes steps like:
- Look for icon I recognize
- Right click to find specific text
- Follow my nose intuitively through a process I've never really remembered well
Vista changed nearly all the icons, nearly all the text, replaced icons with text and text with icons, placed options in physically different locations relative to window edges, screen edges, or the shapes and levels of menus, and changed policies on some simple stuff like program installs, file renames and deletions, adding things to the start menu, what appears on the start menu, and whether prominent start menu options shut down/reboot or simply sleep/hibernate.
This stuff didn't just break software that made bad assumptions and finds itself no longer working when it was fine in XP, and it's not just a matter of drivers that are missing so that peoples hardware won't work.
It's a matter of changes silently having been made to the ways that users imagine basic things like context menus, the control panel, file behavior, and the start menu to work. I don't know how many times I've helped someone to shut down or reboot Vista after they've tried for days and only managed to sleep/hibernate repeatedly.
Basically, Microsoft made Vista a 100% learning curve for any non-technical person, and people are finding they can't get stuff done. All the cognitive maps they'd made about how "computers" operate, and all the little tricks that had evolved in their computing practices on an ad-hoc basis to get along with Windows over the previous decade were suddenly worthless, and they found themselves in many cases re-living their "first time I used a computer" experience, with all the bewilderment, time wasting, missteps, and unrealized desire to get task X or step Y done that that entailed.
They want XP rather than Vista because they are able to productively use XP in ways that they can't productively use Vista. It's not just a matter of slowness vs. fastness, it's a matter of people literally not being able to figure out how to do the things that they want to do in Vista, whether the thing that they want to do is simply shutting the computer down, visiting YouTube, or making their scanner or printer work again.
Dumbest revision by Microsoft ever; they basically negated the advantages that their massive installed userbase gave them in terms of product preferences.
ReactOS (Score:5, Interesting)
Excellent news! This additional extension should give the ReactOS [reactos.org] guys enough time to finish their open-source Windows XP.
What about downgrading Windows Vista? (Score:3, Interesting)
But now I'm stuck - I need to get a copy of XP Pro 32bit (I'll run a 64-bit linux on the machine as well). Google Products lists XP Pro for as low as $24 [google.com]. Is it safe to buy a copy of XP from any vendor? Or should I just buy from Dell?
Re:XP support (Score:3, Interesting)
Major corp program in vb6.
It works fine.
It could stop working with any patch.
There was supposed to be a vb7 but instead we got .net. No easy way to move the application.
Our Java and Mainframe programs have not had to be recoded for over a decade (Mainframe goes back about 18 years).
Business has a hard time allocating resources to rewrite applications that are working every 5 years.
These are significant apps- take about 6000 hours to redevelop and test.
Going forward, we are not going to use .net. Microsoft burned us so badly that the business finally gets it. The replacement apps will be written with an eye towards not having to rewrite them again.
Re:Just use the latest Firefox, and you'll be fine (Score:4, Interesting)