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Comments: 538 +- Technology: One Year Later, "Dead" XP Still Going Strong on Tuesday June 30, @06:32PM
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by
kdawson
on Tuesday June 30, @06:32PM
from the killed-the-wrong-one dept.
from the killed-the-wrong-one dept.
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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."
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Windows 7 (Score:5, Funny)
This trend will stop when Windows 7 is introduce.
Mark it on the wall.
Re:Windows 7 (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, the Windows 7 theme really makes Vista much better.
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Re:Windows 7 (Score:5, Interesting)
Where I work we just started taking pre-orders on Windows 7.
An elderly gentleman came in (today) and was ecstatic to place an order. His son installed it on his computer and he said he has never been happier. He stated he hated Vista and had kept his XP until the beta. I bombarded him with questions and the jist of his satisfaction came from the simplicity and speed Win7 had.
In my opinion this guy was a prime example that Microsoft might have a winner, both in the eyes of people who are technologically savvy as well as somebody who is anything but.
I personally still run 32-bit xp on my Core i7 (Except for games, damn DX10), and I have been bitterly against an upgrade for fear of hidden DRM treats down the line. Only time will tell.
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Re:Windows 7 (Score:4, Interesting)
Any perceived "speed" improvement in 7 is misguided. You will hear many people say that their PC has better performance after removing the included Vista installation, and installing XP/7/linux. This is actually because of the amount of additional software installed by the hardware vendor.
This software can be divided into two categories: applications from the vendor that manage updates, backups, connectivity, media handling, recovery, you name it (even though Vista has all of these things already), and applications from third-parties that are trials/demos/upgradable that gives the hardware vendor a kickback if purchased by the end user.
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Re:Windows 7 (Score:5, Interesting)
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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.)
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Re:Windows 7 (Score:4, Insightful)
Too bad a lot of the crap I have to install to use my computer to do stuff. I'm looking specifically at YOU ADOBE! I don't want increasingly annoying notifications to tell me to update Adobe Reader, nor do I want you to make me go through and delete a billion shortcuts again because your updater conveniently noticed that they were gone and decided to replace them without asking. Oh, and it also noticed that I don't have their software loading at bootup, so they make sure to reinstate that without telling me as well. Oh how I wish there was a decent replacement for Adobe Reader.
There are a ton of programs out there that are legit and you have to use most of the time. Those programs like to needlessly start at bootup, eating up resources while doing nothing, and spreading shortcuts and files all around your system like it's raining on your hard drive.
For some reason, this isn't a problem with Linux (specifically Ubuntu, but relevant to others as well) where one central repository controls the majority of software and installs, updates, and removes it simply and completely. Compare that to .exe and .msi packages that all are different and like to spread files wherever they please with or without user permission. I'll take Apt over downloading .exe packages all day long.
Sun, FYI, you're not off the hook for the hell that is Java.
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Re:Windows 7 (Score:5, Interesting)
Casual end user observations may be misguided, but there were a number of performance reviews that clearly showed Win7 as being faster than Vista, and generally much closer to XP, and even faster on occasion (weirdly enough, in some Direct3D games).
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Re:Windows 7 (Score:5, Interesting)
A closer look at 7 and you see how some of the speed was achieved, pretty much a backtrack on a shortlist of Vista mistakes. Part of tweaking Vista was to disable or delay the start of all the frivolous services Vista would start at boot. If you look at Windows 7's default services settings, you'll find many set to manual start or to delayed start by default. Infact it looks just like a tweaked vista installation.
It's almost as if microsoft scrutinist the how-to-guides on common speed-up-your-windoze sites to see what people were disabling. Indeed Microsoft actually pay attention to the modding commuity is a unprecedented thing.
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Re:Windows 7 (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would improved Direct3D performance under Windows 7 be considered 'weird'? it *is* a newer version of DirectX, performance improvements are to be expected.
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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.
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Re:Windows 7 (Score:4, Interesting)
I call bull.
I can't run vista on my eee pc... it chugs to a halt.
Windows 7 RC runs without a hitch.
Time to internet is significantly reduced (measureable in minutes), by timed tests w/ stop watch, and I can run many more instances of excel / word / chrome without alt-tabbing causing pagefaults (about 5 more tabs in chrome, and 4 instances of excell/word, before the page faults start to go up).
It may not sound significant, but it makes using the thing practical. I can take it out and use it without having to wait.
It is comparable to XP, but it vastly more usable out of the box.
This is coming from a highly optimized Debian install. I even wrote my own custom ram-drive loader for it... I still have it on there w/ dual boot, but Firefox sucked compared to chrome (i could barely keep 4 tabs open without it taking 30 seconds to switch, whereas in chrome 15 tabs and switching is instantaneous)
The only thing that's faster is the xandrox OS that came with the thing. But it feels so gimped compared to win7.
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Re:Windows 7 (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of the simplicity of W7 is that they returned to naming conventions and menu layout and some naming from XP. It's closer to XP than Vista and many people I tested it with mentioned that right off the bat.
Vista's renaming of things in control panel was flat out stupid and retarded. when I look for software install, I look for add-remove programs not "fluffy fun software thingy" I have seen more users flat out frustrated with Vista because of the complete morons at microsoft that think rearranging menus and renaming things is a good idea. It's not. stop it. In fact murder every employee there that even mentions it. Throw them off the roof then throw chairs down after them to make sure.
I'm just waiting to see how they throw in last minute DRM to completely screw up the OS. I know they will, they are too much whores for the media industry to not to.
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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.
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Re:Windows 7 (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, this throws me off too, but IMO it's more logical because everything else in the control panel is a Noun and not a Verb.
However, when technically adept users get tripped up by a Windows control panel being renamed, it's really no wonder that Linux isn't taking off on the desktop.
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ARE YOU LISTENING, MICROSOFT? (Score:4, Insightful)
After we took a look at Vista, Who Knew XP would look so good? Actually XP was never "bad", and it's pretty stable considering all the garbage people install on their PCs. Although people say (in surveys) that they don't like "renting" their OS software, I (and my corporate clients) wouldn't mind at all paying a yearly fee for ongoing maintenance of XP, or, perhaps for a new 3 or 5-year license with "support". And since the Web is so good for self-support for some time now, we would just be looking for maintenance releases and security updates. And we already "rent" many of our applications, from security suites to corporate apps with support. Microsoft would benefit because they would effectively get "us" to be purchasing OS licenses just the same as if we bought Windows 7 (or whatever). The resellers would be losers of course, coz we wouldn't be buying so much new hardware, but that's not especially "our" problem. For business use, anything over 1.6 GHz (sometimes even slower!)/512MB RAM or so is just icing on the cake for XP. It runs pretty well in that minimum configuration. It would be much cheaper than a change to a new version of Windows. And it does EVERYTHING we need, doesn't it? ARE YOU LISTENING, MICROSOFT?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Give me:
XP
Updated installer / boot loader (loading drivers from USB, etc.)
64 bits ONLY
DirectX 10 & 11
UAC + not defaulting people to administrator
The SATA and SSD support of Vista/7
Don't give me:
Shitty shiny baubles for the UI
Extra DRM that makes my audio card useless
Endless indexing
Pointless bullshit like ReadyBoost
Re:ARE YOU LISTENING, MICROSOFT? (Score:5, Insightful)
32bit is a dead end. How much RAM would you stuff into your computers if your OS and applications could use it. The price of RAM is through the floor and nobody buys the stuff because more than 3GB is completely useless in a typical Windows PC due to architecture limitations.
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Re:ARE YOU LISTENING, MICROSOFT? (Score:5, Interesting)
32bit is a dead end. How much RAM would you stuff into your computers if your OS and applications could use it. The price of RAM is through the floor and nobody buys the stuff because more than 3GB is completely useless in a typical Windows PC due to architecture limitations.
Someone mod this man UP.
What he speaks is 100% the truth. 32-bit is at an end and it's only lazy program and [especially] driver developers that are keeping us using it. Vista 64-bit functions almost transparently running 32-bit applications -- I've never had a problem -- it's only drivers that it gets stuck up on (not everyone is coding 64-bit drivers). Over the lifespan of Vista, however, I've seen that problem slowly decline (been using 64-bit Vista since the day it went gold), and now (with Windows 7) I think it's time that they went 64-bit ONLY.
I see Microsoft embracing 64-bit fully internally. Forefront TMG is 64-bit ONLY, and Server 2008 R2 is going to be 64-bit only also.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Why 64bit ONLY? Given the amount of compatibility problems I've read with 64bit OS's, and some games developers state in the system requirements 64bit is NOT supported.
I agree with the rest, but curious why you're essentially saying "And I want a whole bunch of software to NOT WORK".
You mean 64-bit Windows? Sure, it's a trainwreck at best, but so is 32-bit Windows, so it's really not saying much. But I've been using 64-bit Linux since 2006, and it's exactly like running 32-bit Linux, except you can use more RAM.
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
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Re:ARE YOU LISTENING, MICROSOFT? (Score:5, Insightful)
But you can't use more than 64G of RAM. I never said 4G was the limit.
Either way, PAE is ugly and kludgy at best.
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Zombie XP (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Zombie XP (Score:5, Funny)
And ketchup instead of bat blood...
Now they have to wait until the moon is in the Eighth House of Aquarius again to attempt the resurrection
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Count me in (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Count me in (Score:4, Interesting)
Wait until you create a new directory while logged in with admin rights and then try to transfer something from an XP box over the network to your vista box only to get an odd error message indicating you don't have permission to put the file in the directory you just created.
Bastards.
Vista has some issues. Overall I like the interface. Files moving is still slow,and weird rights issues keep popping up.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Count me in (Score:5, Funny)
I'm out of beer.
I'll be back.
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Re:Count me in (Score:5, Insightful)
If I'm paying so much more for an OS, I expect much more value.
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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.
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Re:Count me in (Score:5, Informative)
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=759555&sid=3ece4d689adbaac6cb9dd8a75d47843f&start=30 [mozillazine.org]
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Success (Score:5, Insightful)
"the most successful version of windows ever sold"
sold (or really licensed) != used
The user base is never the same size as sales or downloads.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Though if by "successful" they mean "successful at making their users' lives more difficult one bizarre error at a time", I'd say they're spot on.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I was going to comment on that as well, shouldn't every new OS by ___ developer be more successful than the last? Especially since most PC's are tied to an OS when purchased, there are far more people buying computers now than in 2001, and probably more in 2010 than in 2006. The same could be said for most software in general, Pidgin is more successful than Gaim, WinAmp 3 was probably more successful than WinAmp 2 (going by downloads), which is less successful than WinAmp 5, etc...
Their success is measured
Who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Can we do away with the "XP still alive" stories?
Why? I was kind of hoping "XP is dying" would replace the "BSD is dying" joke since the latter is pretty much worn out and needs a replacement.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
and a couple people will slurp up the Jobs flavored Kool-Aid
Where can I buy this Jobs flavoured kool-aid? I'm so glad all these big tech companies are investing in the flavoured beverage market. Why, I'm sitting here enjoying a cold glass of Google Gulp [google.com] as I type this. They really should make an MS-branded kool-aid beverage though, as long as its not Ballmer flavoured which would probably taste like armpit sweat [youtube.com].
It's dead, Jim (Score:5, Funny)
XP is going to die rather quickly once one or more of the following happen: 2.5TB or bigger hard disks drop below $100 (no GUID partition table support in XP), applications make good use of more than 4GB RAM (XP64 driver support "could be better"), USB3 devices become available in mass quantities (no USB3 support in XP), IPv4 addresses run out and major ISPs offer IPv6 access (IPv6 support in XP is incomplete and lacks a UI), Duke Nukem Forever is released for Windows 7 only.
Re:It's dead, Jim (Score:5, Insightful)
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XP is Good Enough. (Score:5, Interesting)
(everyone who Knows Better will know I'm talking about most users, IT shops, etc - not the technical "merits")
Microsoft is finally getting bit by cultivating and preying on the culture of Good Enough. XP supports current hardware, runs current apps, ISVs are still writing for it. Users are comfortable with it, it handles games well (hey, check out the number of Big Name Games that require DX10), and while it's a security nightmare, most competent shops know enough to be able to keep their machines STD-free.
Vista is a host of new problems, support issues, and sucks on the same hardware XP zips on. Windows 7 isn't officially out yet... and when it is, most IT shops are going to wait. They'll poke it with a stick, sniff it like a dog, and rather it's a genuine improvement or not, they're not going to hop on it until they have to.
XP is the new BSD. It'll be "dying" for the next five to ten years. It's going to take a massive paradigm shift* in computing to get rid of it.
* I don't mean quad cores or eight-way cores or 64 gigs of ram for a nickel. I mean something equivalent to a massive rendering farm running an OS with a pile of APIs that'll securely handle every windows (and mac, while we're fantasizing) application ever written, with a battery life measured in decades. Said hardware would be the size of an iPhone, even easier to use, and you'd be able to buy them in vending machines at bus stations for $1.25. I mean that kind of paradigm shift.
and from all the botnet owners out there (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Soon to be dead (Score:5, Funny)
This is another reason to switch to Linux (Score:3, Insightful)
With Linux, I know I can still go download updates for some ridiculously old distribution like Fedora Core 3 and that it will still work. It will never be sunset and I'll always be able to download it. Killing off an operating system when it's no longer profitable to keep it alive, despite the concerns of customers, is a reason why community-developed open source software is better.
Re:This is another reason to switch to Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
Generally speaking:
That's because as soon as you run the distribution update, it becomes FC10 or 11, or whatever it is now. Linux distributions are really only a snapshot of files of a particular version at any range in time. If you want to compare it to Windows, it would be like running Windows update in NT3.5 and getting Windows 7. You'd upgrade the Kernel, the HAL, the services, DLLS, and all the files on the computer individually making it the latest build of Windows.
But that's not how Windows works. It's not as robust as the Linux versioning and if Microsoft can keep it that way, they can keep you purchasing the latest snapshot build they create and burn on disc instead of letting you update your system with all the latest fixes. They'll make claims that they are starting from scratch, but that's just ludicrous. I'm willing to bet they have a version server that they patch on a regular basis and their "built from the ground up" only means that they checked out the whole tree and built all the files again.
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My Story with XP/Vista (Score:5, Interesting)
I've used Vista for a short while and also some users (bought new PCs preloaded).
I, as the support person, hated it because it took me longer to find my way around it. It is not intuitive for people used to where MS used to place things. I'd say it was similar to going from OS9 to OSX in Mac userland. After a handful to users buying into Vista and then coming to lots of problems in terms of figuring out how to use it, I started recommending downgrades for their and mine sanity's sake.
Then I landed a corporate job, and our policy (I set my own, with advice from HQ in the UK) is to stick with XP. My primary reason is that my users are mostly set in their ways, and Vista from UI perspective will be a disaster. The other reason in that some legacy apps will probably cause problems to run. They even cause problems in XP.
So, when I order a PC from Dell, I always specify XP as the OS. It comes pre-installed.
On a side note, I also downgrade Office 2007 to 2003 Pro, again for usability reasons. I have Select Licenses, so I am "legally" entitled to.
Long live XP.
Skewed stats. (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't help but believe that this is because Dell and Lenovo are the main suppliers of business laptops in the United States. It's a well-known fact that businesses are super slow at transitioning to new versions of anything significant, especially operating systems. If one is going to make this sensational claim, people in the server community might as well bicker about how adoption to Server 2008 is as slow as molasses right now.
This will naturally slow once Windows 7 comes to the forefront, but considering how the release dates between the two are so close (Vista came out in 2007, 7 is coming out late this year or next year) and how vastly improved 7 is to Vista, there's no net benefit for businesses to adopt to Vista on user machines.
It's not like this is new information; it's always been like this. The big difference is that Microsoft is now suffering from taking so goddamn long to release a "meh" operating system and then release the awesome so soon afterwards.
Re: (Score:3)
I'd be happy if people stop using IE6 or even IE7, I'd prefer if they switch to something better then IE in the process, but I guess that's asking for to much.
Re: (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.
Re:Duh (Score:5, Insightful)
Most, not all. Some still use 2000. And many large business only switched to XP within the past couple of years. This is no surprise. No pre SP1 version of Windows can be trusted in mission critical environments. It's unlikely that any large firm will fully switch to Windows 7 in the first 5 years of its lifetime.
There remains no compelling reason to upgrade to Windows 7. XP will be around for a good few years yet.
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