Internet Explorer 9 Will Not Support Windows XP 454
MojoKid writes "As it turns out, news this week is that the same features that made IE9's hardware-acceleration possible probably aren't compatible with Windows XP. Microsoft initially dodged giving a straight answer to the question of XP support but has since admitted that the new browser won't be XP-compatible when it launches. This has created a small tempest of protest from those users still using XP, but this is less of an arbitrary decision than some appear to think. It's literally impossible to port Windows Vista/Win 7-style hardware acceleration backwards to XP. Microsoft would have to either develop a workaround from scratch or create a CPU-driven 'software mode.'"
Not surprised (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Thats ok , as an XP user (Score:5, Interesting)
So, those wanting to or forced to use IE-only websites might also be forced to upgrade from XP. Welcome to the effects of proprietary lock-in.
Forced to upgrade? IE8 works just fine on XP and will continue to do so. It also doesn't have any of the exploits that IE6 has.
Also, how does it differ between proprietary and open source then? If you're using some 10 years old version of your Linux OS and it doesn't support some feature that the newer OS/kernel versions have, you're not going to be able to install programs that require said feature.
Re:Not surprised (Score:5, Interesting)
XP's graphics handling is really crappy compared to 7 and Vista, so this is no surprise. Flip an LCD to portrait mode in XP, then try to turn on vsync because horizontal tearing just became vertical tearing. Can't be done.
Whether or not XP can handle it doesn't really matter. Windows 7 is where Microsoft's focus is now and their money is better spent supporting the road forward. One other thing worth looking at is why people are still using XP? Chances are in a couple of years once Windows 7 has proved itself many companies will upgrade to the new OS, invalidating any effort Microsoft put into making IE9 work with the older platform.
Beyond companies, who are probably still using IE6 anyhow (ugh), people who really want to stick to XP and want to have the latest version of IE might end up being gifted by some hacker making it possible.
Re:Not surprised (Score:4, Interesting)
You forgot tablets, and XP/Vista/Win7 are used in those too. With those you might actually flip the screen quite often - I do with my mobile phone too.
XP + ie = unsafe? (Score:2, Interesting)
However XP + ie is basically an invitation to be hacked / malwared / infected / ripped off.
Although I'm inclined to agree with you, you're making an overly broad statement here.
XP != XP SP1 != XP SP2 != XP SP3.
2 year old, never updated install != fresh + patched install.
IE6 != IE7 != IE8.
Browsing random pornsites != browsing a small set of trusted sites != using apps on corporate intranet.
So with "XP + ie = unsafe" you're lumping things together that in reality are many, vastly different things, and how (un)safe their use is depends on many factors.
Artical FUD (Score:2, Interesting)
Has anyone actually RTFA?
It's quite funny, because they are saying that the reason IE9 can't be released on XP is becuase of hardware acceleration - meaning it's using the GPU for rendering - and hence is much faster, and then they show a pretty bargraph showing how much faster it is than ie8 at *javascript* benchmarks. Do they really think the javascript code is being run on the GPU? Of coarse not, it's faster because it's been re-written - the old ie8 javascript engine was basically a pile of poo.
munitions (Score:4, Interesting)
Unless something has changed recently, all South Korean bank sites for instance require activeX and as such have to be used with IE.
ActiveX banking applets in the Republic of Korea came into being because the United States once classified SSL browsers with more than 40-bit encryption [wikipedia.org] as munitions and banned their export outside the United States and Canada. (This policy ended sometime in the late 1990s.) So Korean banks used homemade crypto applets as an alternative to SSL. I'm sure at least some banks have switched to SSL by now.
Re:Not surprised (Score:3, Interesting)
So, not to be a zombie, you must constantly spend money on upgrades that you don't need?
If someone uses his/her PC at work to create/modify Office documents and browse the internet, odds are that his old PC, OS and Office is enough. Why would someone need a quad core CPU and 4GB RAM to edit 10 page Word document? You can do that on a 486 50MHz 16MB RAM and Win95 with Office 97. Now, browsing the internet is different, but browsers like Firefox and Opera are better than IE and still support XP.
Now, you can say that the employee could just use Linux and I agree, but if (s)he already has the old Windows OS and old Office, the money has been spent already and there is no point in making a problem where wasn't one.
Also, 17" monitor is perfectly OK for, you know, office work.
Re:People need to stop bitching (Score:4, Interesting)
Comparing XP's worthless out-of-box installation to any other OS which comes with (and MAINTAINS) hundreds of third-party apps is an extremely invalid comparison.
Unlike Canonical and Red Hat, Microsoft has market power [wikipedia.org] in operating systems for commodity desktop and laptop PCs. If Microsoft included basic versions of Office, Visual Studio, and the like with Windows, it might get in trouble with competition regulators, just as it did with Internet Explorer in the EU.
Bogon overload (Score:3, Interesting)
It is literally impossible... in the same sentence where they list two ways to do it.
My bogosity meter just blew up.
What they are saying is that they can't do it without spending more money on it than they want to. More accurately they are saying that they want to get people to move from XP to 7. They do not make a dime pushing out a patch for XP. In fact, doing that costs them money. OTOH, if they refuse to provide features on XP such as DIrectX 10 and 11, and now IE 9 a bunch of people run out and buy Windows 7 either in a box or in a new computer and that mean income for MS.
Do you remember when it was "impossible" to release DirectX 10 for XP? It was impossible for MS to do it, a bunch of "amateurs" did it almost no time at all. That is, by the time I had heard the news one of my students had already installed DirectX on XP and was running the demos that came with it.
Have you looked at a list of the games that only support DirectX 10 and/or 11 that will not run on any version of DirectX 9? The list is very short. Shorter than this post... So, what is really happening is that MS was abandoning its real customer base, the 72% of windows users who use Windows XP. They don't make money off of them so they have no interest in spending money on them. You know why their are so few DirectX 10 and 11 games? Because 72% of Windows user are running XP. The game companies have to write code for machines their customers have. In fact, a lot of smaller companies are moving to OpenGL because they can get all the new 3D features of DIrectX 10 and 11 on XP. sheesh...
It is unbelievable what a company is so certain of retaining its customers that it can abandon them and mistreat them and still assume they will be customers in the future. But, they can because they own the *minds* of their customers.
Well... I notice I'm starting to rant... so...
Stonewolf
OK, just one last rant... I've had to explain to a students that memorizing the DIrectX API would not help him write games for his favorite game box, the PS 3. He called me a liar. His world view did not include a computer that ran an OS other than Windows or a game that was written using any thing but DirectX. It is so sad...