One Year Later, "Dead" XP Still Going Strong 538
snydeq writes "Microsoft pulled the plug on Windows XP a year ago today, no longer selling new copies in most venues. Yet according to a report from InfoWorld, various downgrade paths to XP are keeping the operating system very much alive, particularly among businesses. In fact, despite Microsoft trumpeting Vista as the most successful version of Windows ever sold, more than half of business PCs have subsequently downgraded Vista-based machines to XP, according to data provided by community-based performance-monitoring network of PCs. Microsoft recently planned to further limit the ability to downgrade to XP now that Windows 7 is in the pipeline, but backlash against the licensing scheme prompted the company to change course, extending downgrade rights on new PCs from April 2010 to April 2011."
Re:Count me in (Score:2, Informative)
Unless you are absolutely certain you need it, stop running Zone Alarm. The inbound software firewall in XP(SP2+)/Vista works fine, and you probably don't need an outbound firewall.
(If you are using some integrated security package called Zone Alarm, just turn off the firewall part)
Re:Duh (Score:3, Informative)
Naturally businesses do not want to migrate to a more expensive OS. XP works.
They all said that about Windows 2000 as well. Most of them ended up switching to XP anyway. This isn't so much about what the customer wants or needs as what Microsoft needs. What they need is to refill their coffers by fleecing their captive market with a new OS... yet again.
Why would they? (Score:4, Informative)
In fact, despite Microsoft trumpeting Vista as the most successful version of Windows ever sold, more than half of business PCs have subsequently downgraded Vista-based machines to XP, according to data provided by community-based performance-monitoring network of PCs.
That's not necessarily mutually exclusive. There have always been a substantial number of businesses which don't see a compelling reason to upgrade when a new version of Windows comes out. 85% of those machines are used primarily for word processing, after all, something which has been "good enough" for a couple of decades. I worked for a company which was still happily using Windows for Workgroups in 2001. Add the people who always wait for Service Pack 2 and you're at a pretty big percentage of the market.
Re:Windows 7 (Score:2, Informative)
i sure hope so. because winxp with ie doesnt support sni. thus making it hard for some hosters...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Name_Indication [wikipedia.org]
Re:Count me in (Score:2, Informative)
Not only that, from my personal experience, troubleshooting Vista is hindered by the new 'security' features MS put in.
One of my personal favorites... Acrobat Reader won't install on Vista. Why? The temp setup files are, by default, going to C:\Users\(Username)\AppData\LocalLow
DESPITE the user having local admin (which I'm loathe to give out in the first place, but Vista's a pain in the ass in that regard too) the damn files won't execute there to begin with. So I have to copy them OUT of the locallow folder after the unpack is done but before setup runs to somewhere the user HAS rights. Cancel the setup (which deletes the files out of locallow), and run the temp setup file.
Love it. Seriously. /hork
Re:Count me in (Score:5, Informative)
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=759555&sid=3ece4d689adbaac6cb9dd8a75d47843f&start=30 [mozillazine.org]
Re:Count me in (Score:3, Informative)
Re:ARE YOU LISTENING, MICROSOFT? (Score:5, Informative)
I've been using 64-bit Linux since 2006, and it's exactly like running 32-bit Linux, except you can use more RAM.
You can use more than 4gb of RAM on 32-bit Linux, too. All you have to do [cyberciti.biz] is install a Physical Address Extension (PAE) aware kernel:
sudo sudo apt-get install linux-headers-server linux-image-server linux-server
sudo shutdown -r now
Re:Count me in (Score:3, Informative)
No, thats not what he is saying.
He's saying that if you create the folder, and then try to put stuff into said folder from a WinXP share, you get permissions denied.
Note, that he is still performing the operation as the Administrator that created the folder in the first place.
Re:Count me in (Score:5, Informative)
It's probably related to the fact that you could pick up Windows 95 for about 90 bucks. There was no 'home', or 'home premium', or whatever. There was just a full version for 90 bucks. To get the 'full' version of the newest flavor of Windows 7, we must shell out almost 4 times the cost. This in just a little over 10 years. It's a bit ridiculous when you look at the rate of inflation. The product offers new features, but so do many software products on the market, yet they tend to retain the same costs. If I'm paying so much more for an OS, I expect much more value.
The full version of Windows 95 was Windows NT and it wasn't cheap.
Re:Count me in (Score:2, Informative)
Re:ARE YOU LISTENING, MICROSOFT? (Score:3, Informative)
Relying on a wrap-around/overflow possibly.
How? 32-bit binary running on a 64-bit OS is still pure 32-bit code, including size of machine word and pointers, dealing with 32-bit registers, etc. As such, it behaves exactly the same.
Unfortunately I know next to nothing about the registry, so what you are telling me doesn't mean a whole lot to me...
Registry redirection explained [microsoft.com].
File system redirection explained [microsoft.com].
I suppose you can point a finger at Microsoft for not catching and handling that kind of thing
Not really - it's a problem that cannot be resolved in the most general case (how would OS know that data you pass between processes is a registry or file path in the first place?).
Basically this is the whole 16->32 situation again. 16-bit lost, and we moved on to 32 bit. Why everyone wants to fight the same (losing) battle again is beyond me.
It still took some time to move to 32-bit, and the incentive there was much clearer (16-bit was really not enough even for mundane things, necessitating complicated hacks such as overlays). Meanwhile, 32-bit is still "good enough" for most desktop applications.
Also, when talking about 16-bit, keep in mind that 32-bit Vista can still run 16-bit Windows 3.x applications (heck, it can run Windows 1.0 applications!). I'm not sure if Win7 can do that - don't have any such apps to check it - but I wouldn't be surprised if it still works (as 16-bit DOS stuff does work for sure).
Re:Windows 7 (Score:4, Informative)
Add/Remove programs was changed to: "Uninstall a program". It is even plainly displayed on the standard (non-classic) control panel view in Vista. Seriously dude, what is confusing about that? In fact it makes MORE sense, who on earth *installs* a program through the windows program manager? Further, in Win7 RC1, they *have not* returned to the XP naming conventions, the Win7 control panel features the same layout as Vista with good ole "Uninstall a program" listed under the "Programs" category.
What is it with this? Do you simply look at the new layout, fail to recognise anything because it has been renamed and categorised, then just throw your arms in the air and give up, declaring the new OS an utter failure? Microsoft is not reversing the changes made in Vista. As someone who has used Vista for nearly two years and has now used 7 a good deal, I find it belly achingly hilarious that people are falling over themselves to praise 7 for its sensible layout changes, speed, and better UI when all of these things are imperceptibly different from Vista. Win7 tends to not force you so deep into dialogue boxes as Vista does, but essentially they contain the same content, in the same places. The UI is exactly the same as Vista, barring the new taskbar. Everything is almost identical to Vista.
Its not that Win7 is bad, its more that Vista is actually pretty good.
Re:Windows 7 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Windows 7 (Score:2, Informative)
Alot of things moved out of the kernel (Operating system) and were moved into software emulation and user-space. In addition, DRM scrambles and re-arranges the data constantly and this slows it down as well.
This is why you can't adjust the bass and trebble with Vista but can with the same hardware in XP. Access to the hardware is limited.
Re:ARE YOU LISTENING, MICROSOFT? (Score:3, Informative)
32-bit Windows can support more than 4GB of RAM [microsoft.com] on processors that support PAE. This capability is not available to XP but can be had on some versions of Win2K, Server 2003, and 2008.
Re:Windows 7 (Score:4, Informative)
That's strange, on my machine you can adjust bass and treble.
It all depends on the abilities of your sound card - some cards don't support tone controls, some do.
This is the same as XP.
Re:ARE YOU LISTENING, MICROSOFT? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Windows 7 (Score:5, Informative)
Well, it depends on what you define crap - are service packs crap? What about device drivers, office suites, compression programs, media codecs, cd-burning software, development platforms? Shouldn’t i use my iPod because it requires iTunes and QuickTime?
Apart from these, I never install crap on my systems, yet all of my Windows systems measurably start up slower and slower as I use them. The time from the boot loader to the desktop changes from 30 s to 180 s. Other performances get worse, too: the time to launch a program, the responsiveness of Explorer, the time between right-clicking a file and seeing a popup menu, and so on.
(Yes, I defragged, scandisked, and I have no antivirus installed, so I think I have exhausted the range of my possibilities of intervention as a user.)