Microsoft Pulling the Plug On Windows XP In Three Years 315
An anonymous reader wrote in with an article from myce. Microsoft will be discontinuing all support for Windows XP in Spring 2014. Coinciding with the announcement, Microsoft released a 1,000-day countdown gadget to help XP users pass the time until their IT departments get into gear. Maybe.
Re:Not a moment too soon! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not a moment too soon! (Score:5, Insightful)
How many other companies are expected to maintain 10+ year old software, even after TWO new releases (Vista, Win7) are available?
Hmm, perhaps companies that were still selling that 'ten year old software' on new systems last year?
Re:Not a moment too soon! (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not 10 years old if it was sold last year.
Yeah. XP has been shipping on new machines until very recently due to the fiasco that was Vista.
Your "age calculation" should start at when the product stopped shipping with new machines, not when it was first introduced.
Re:Not a moment too soon! (Score:5, Insightful)
Just like how my house is only 3 years old, because that's when I moved into it. I mean sure, it was built in the 60s, but that hardly counts.
Re:Nor does Canonical charge for upgrades (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know how true that is.
Windows 7 runs almost as well as Ubuntu with 1GB of RAM, I can't imagine using either with less.
I just installed Windows 7 on a Pentium D with 1GB RAM, and Integrated graphic, aside from the fact that I'm in the ugly interface mode, it works pretty well.
Both it, and my Ubuntu box with 1GB of RAM suffer freeze-ups as things swap.
Re:Not a moment too soon! (Score:3, Insightful)
Like Dell?
Even so, the system will be 3-5 years old by the time support is dropped. It will be worth $0 to the accountants.
Re:Not a moment too soon! (Score:4, Insightful)
Ubuntu does not maintains Long Term releases that long.
Update from one LTS support to the 4 year later LTS version is generally painless. Ie. the support is there, you just have to click a few buttons to install it, and it'll most likely even run, just like that, click click. Upgrading Ubuntu (or other comparable Linux distro) is more like installing new service pack to a Windows OS, there's continuous upgrade path.
Now try upgrading a basic WinXP computer from just 2008 (to compare to Ubuntu 8.04 LTS) to anything newer.
But I do think MS does not have any obligation to support XP any longer than they think it's smart business-wise, and I'm rather surprised about how long they've supported XP. Commercial OS costs money, and it's unreasonable to expect indefinitely long support for a one-time payment.
Re:Not a moment too soon! (Score:4, Insightful)
And Microsoft will continue to support Windows XP. It's just not going to be providing FREE support, you'll have to have a custom support agreement [microsoft.com].
Custom support agreements can go on a LONG time
Re:Not a moment too soon! (Score:4, Insightful)
An operating system is not like other software; it hosts other software. I shouldn't be forced to reinstall all my software every ten years, or five years, or two years. I shouldn't be forced to switch to a new version of the software that controls my access to all my other software if that new version has a different UI that forces me to relearn all sorts of new UI shortcuts, to abandon helpful utilities and add-ons that I've acquired or developed, etc. etc.
Of course it's not just Microsoft; Firefox has fucking up that last one with nearly ever major release.
I dunno, maybe I'm just an old fuddy-duddy or something, but after eighteen years of regular OS "must have" upgrades every couple years, yeah, I'm comfortable saying it's a huge fucking waste of my time, and it is stupid, and yes they should support the old versions.
If upgrading to new versions didn't involve changing the user experience and didn't require reinstalling everything, then it would be no different than a patch or service pack, except it would cost money and have a new version number... and that would be fine with me. (It's still lame to have to pay 50-200 dollars every couple years, but I could live with that at least. But that's not what's on the table.)