Microsoft Ending Mainstream Support For XP 580
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."
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: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.
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!"
Re:Wait.. (Score:2, Interesting)
The source for Windows XP and Vista is available for just $20 at your friendly Russian-speaking guys. Too bad, I don't know of any torrents for it which you can get for 2000.
Criminals do have the source for Windows, it's just you who doesn't have it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Re:Few companies work as hard to make bad decision (Score:1, 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.
If it wasn't for the delay I have set in GRUB, Vista would be loaded before my monitor comes on. It loads faster than my SuSE or Fedora installs do.
I've never had a problem with any startup programs.
I don't run automatic updates (except for Defender checking for definitions before it's 3:00 AM daily scan), but when I run updates myself it's generally fairly quick, depending on what's out there. It's much, much better than Windows Update on XP.
The only time I see anything about access is when I, out of habit, click on one of those "junctions" (or whatever Vista calls them) instead of a real folder. [Junctions = the old paths, like the Application Data directory. You get an "access denied" if you try to click on one.] Those are hidden files anyway, so I can't see that being a problem for everyday users.
Why all the Vista bashing in here? (Score:1, Interesting)
I run Vista on a powerful machine -- it's a Quad Core with 4GB of RAM and a decent video card. I knew when Vista came out that, if I wanted to run it, my 2001 P4 2GHz wasn't going to cut it. Was I upset about that? No. Try running Mac OS 10.5 on a 800 MHz PPC from that same era. Yeah, it'll work, but it won't be a fun experience. So I bought a new machine for less than $1000, the first major PC purchase I made since I purchased the previous machine in 2001. I expect to buy a new computer every 4 or 5 years.
While my experience with Vista hasn't been flawless, I fail to see any of these things that make Vista a "horrible mistake". In fact, it runs great for me. It's very fast, and I can multitask quite well. I have a Media Center PC that records HD video frequently, often when I'm using the machine, and aside from a Systray icon telling me it's recording, I never notice. I also run Linux via VMWare in the background all the time as a test bed for web development, and again this has never caused me problems or slowdowns. Nearly all of the applications that worked on my old XP box transferred over fine. I've never seen a Blue Screen of Death in Vista, and I've been running it now for over a year and a half.
I'd say I use my computer to do more than the average user, and I've had nothing but good experiences with Vista. I'm sorry to hear that others haven't had the same experience, but please, can we stop calling it a "horrible failure"?
Re:XP Sucks, Vista is Better (Score:3, Interesting)
Vista is the current Windows version whether you like it or not and since you don't like it retailers keep selling PCs with XP installed.
You are defining "current" along the lines of Microsoft's development. However, consumers define "current" along the lines of "what can I buy new in the store today"? If XP is installed, and the computer is not marked "used," then how is it not current?
Re:Wait.. (Score:2, Interesting)
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-
Re:Few companies work as hard to make bad decision (Score:3, Interesting)
Then you're lucky and I'm not. It takes much, much longer than debian on my VAIO. I'm not ruling out that Sony set it up badly, but quick it is not.
You've never tried installing an ext2 filesystem driver then. Every boot I'd get this nice helpful message telling me windows had prevented programs from running at startup, with no visible way to change things.
I never run them automatically. I only boot it about once a month and it never fails to take at least an hour to update. There's even an inexplicable delay of at least a couple of minutes between selecting the updates to apply and it even starting to download them.
As a UNIX weenie, that confuses and annoys me!
Well exactly, which is why I find it so surprising that it's my dad and various non-savvy friends that get most upset with the whole thing.
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.
Re:Wow I'm First (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wow I'm First (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:ok.. so where is it? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why not open it up (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft's support lifecycle policy was reasonable, when the company stopped selling a given operating system years before its mainstream support ended. But since they were allowing the sale of new computers with Windows XP installed pretty recently, and are still selling new computers with Windows XP install disks, perhaps they should extend the mainstream support a little more as well.
Just Sayin'
Re:Programming... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:ok.. so where is it? (Score:1, Interesting)
MS allowed you to "cheaply buy" a patch for a product that was legally out of support, which I don't see a problem with.
Or you could just download a script they provided free of charge as a good will measure and fix it yourself. The catch is that you need to know how to execute a VB script instead of just running an executable to implement it
So yeah... points for the successful software giant who happens to provide a lot a jobs and one of the largest "exports" for the USA, which is why we love to hate them.
Re:Why not open it up (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, many software vendors will not even officially support new OS's/IE versions for multiple years after their released.... and if their not supported by the vendor, the business will not willingly jump on board. So it's very likely a business wont even start to deploy the next new OS for 3 years after it's released.
And, then, when you do finally upgrade, it's suicide to try a partial or gradual deployment of a new OS, based on some of my testing.
I ran into an issue where I cannot get printer drivers that are the same name as the drivers installed with XP, even though they are for the same printer. Because of this, I can't serve the driver from the Win 2003 print server machine, unless I have two different printers defined.
This means I can't tell people to connect to "HP LaserJet in room 123", but must tell them "HP LaserJet in room 123 - OS version". It also means that any changes to the default config need to be done to both "printers", and if the config isn't exactly the same, it might not really result in the same output. Ugly.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg, as I haven't gotten every little app tested yet. Some, I find that when I go to a vendor site, I can no longer obtain the same version that we run on XP, even though it did exist for other Microsoft OS releases. I found some through BitTorrent, but others I'm SOL, since the vendor response is "upgrade to the new version"...which will require me to upgrade all the XP machines, too, and do a lot more testing. Double ugly.
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.
Re:ok.. so where is it? (Score:2, Interesting)
Good Linux Slogan:
Powered by Linux: because every time you boot Vista, a little bit of your soul dies
Re:Why not open it up (Score:3, Interesting)
> I don't think microsofts suppport lifecycle policy for windows is unreasonable.
I think it is totally bogus because it measures the time from the wrong start point. It isn't time of release it should be time when sales stopped. I don't give a rats ass when a product was introduced I care about when I bought it and so do you.
Since this is slashdot every argument should include a car analogy. So lets suppose Ford has decided the Mustang has had a good run and announces today they are ceasing all support (except government mandated recalls) on this date next year. When the howls of outrage start the CEO says "Hell guys, we have been selling those things forever suck it up and deal." Can you spot the problem in his argument? Wouldn't the biggest one be the crapload of shiny new Mustangs sitting on dealer lots?
Microsoft is accepting license revenue TODAY on new installs of Windows XP. That means they should not be able to discontinue support for those customers for several years. But in the software world (but nowhere else to the same extent) we don't do that. The last paying customer is abandoned the same day as the first because support is for the product not the customer.
Re:ok.. so where is it? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:XP Sucks, Vista is Better (Score:3, Interesting)
HP seem to be just plain weird in thier handling of this, they make the XP option the default option in the selector on thier small buisness site yet afaict they will only sell you machines with XP installed under the following conditions
"To qualify for this downgrade an end user must be a business (including governmental or educational institutions) and is expected to order annually at least 25 customer systems with the same custom image." unlike dell who make vista the default will happilly sell you XP on one off orders.
Cash cow (Score:3, Interesting)