Maybe With Help From Google and Adobe, Microsoft Can Kill Windows XP 405
colinneagle sends this excerpt from Network World:
"Google announced last Friday that, in accordance to its policy of supporting a current browser and the immediate predecessor, its Google Apps productivity suite would drop support for Internet Explorer 8 once Windows 8 ships. Neither IE9 nor IE10 are available on XP. Adobe announced on the Photoshop Blog that the next version of Photoshop CS would support only Windows 7 and 8. The current version, CS6, is available for XP but, amusingly, not for Vista, which was its successor. This is a much-needed boost for Microsoft, which anxiously wants to put XP out to pasture after 11 years. Despite efforts to get rid of the old OS, XP still holds 43% of the market, according to the latest monthly data from Net Applications. Among Steam customers, Windows 7 has 70% market share, covering both 32-bit and 64-bit, while XP has 12%. That confirms what has been known for some time: consumers are adopting Windows 7 at a much faster rate than businesses. I know there is a whole economic argument to be had, and these numbers are not precise or scientific, but if XP really can be found in only 12% of households but 43% of businesses (or something close to that), then it really is time for the enterprise to stop dragging its tail."
Kill XP? (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd think so.... However, you'd be mistaken. The main reason for this is that XP is used by two types of "customers":
Those people will not switch until they get new computers and that simply is the way it works and should work. Finally! Stupid upgrade treadmill.
From an administrator point of view, Windows XP is well known and mature. Which means, you can anticipate problems and make sure everything works like expected. With 7 (let's ignore Vista) a whole slew of new problems got exposed (not necessarily for the users, but for the admins... Try partitioning a 7 machine in two parts: one drive OS/Apps, on drive Data... Results must be seamless for newly created users. Another example is to copy a user profile as a default template. 7 is a true bitch for these things)
What 7 brings to the table, and the only reason I recommend it, is 64-bit. If you need more than 4GB RAM, get 7. I think Microsoft should do a "Windows Classic" which is XP re-branded, and sell it as a subscription to finance future patches. Let's say 5€/month. I think it would sell like hotcakes. I think I'd take it for the few remaining XP machines, I haven't converted to Linux yet. (I'll probably convert one back to XP as the ATI drivers for that laptop suck donkeys balls)
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I would still use XP if it supported newer hardware with the original CD ... and if my copy did not decide it was pirated after changing the HDD and adding some RAM
Re:Kill XP? (Score:4, Informative)
Reactivation is automated, and takes less than a minute.
Wait, why am I defending using XP?
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takes at least 20 minutes wait on the phone
Funny - last time I had to activate Windows via phone (must have been nearly a decade ago), it took no more than a minute or two. Every other activation has been *click* *wait 30 seconds* *done*.
It sounds to me like your installation isn't all that healthy.
Re:Kill XP? (Score:5, Insightful)
The last time I had to activate Windows via phone, I entered the code, and it hung up on me. It did that repeatedly calling every few days over the course of a month. Finally said fsck it and installed Gentoo on the thing.
I won't pay for software I have to ask permission to use. I won't build my business on software that can arbitrarily stop working if some monkey pushes the wrong patch to the activation servers. If you're going to treat me like a pirate even if you have my money, then I'll just keep my money. Arrrr...
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I run into this regularly at work, where it makes no sense at all because we have a volume licensing agreement with Microsoft. I always used to say when it happened that Microsoft was reminding me to buy a mac, which I eventually did. Macs are more expensive, and Apple isn't perfect either, but at least they leave me to run the software I've paid for in peace.
Re:Kill XP? ...are criminals (Score:5, Informative)
I've never had to register anything with Apple.
Re:Kill XP? ...are criminals (Score:5, Funny)
I've never had to register anything with Apple.
You must not be interested in writing code, then.
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Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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Just do what gamers have learned to do with DRM software: buy it, stick it in your closet, pirate the hassle-free DRM free copy.
In your case, you have a legal copy already. Why go through the trouble of trying to make the "defective" copy work when you can install a "working" copy?
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Windows support is nonexistent, M$ directed me to the PC maker upon contact -- and the PC maker support won't talk about nothing but the original configuration, WITHOUT service packs... (this was a couple of years ago, whne XP was better "supported").
Yeah, that is the downside of using OEM windows, product support is handled by the manufacturer of the PC who tend to suck at it. Afaict MS do offer real support but you will have to pay for it (either as part of a retail copy of windows, on a pay per incident basis or as part of a support contract)
Re:Kill XP? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Kill XP? (Score:5, Insightful)
Business users, that are locked to a certain platform that only support IE6.
I hear this a lot, and in some (but very few) circumstances it's certainly true. However, mostly it's not. Most internal web apps run just fine on IE7, 8 and 9 too. My feeling is that these businesses don't want to upgrade because the current tool (usually a Dell Pentium 4 with XP) is working just fine. Why would any sane businesses want to spend money replacing something that works perfectly well? Well, you and I know a few good answers to that, but we're not the decision makers here.
BTW, I'm a developer, and I wrote a lot of those apps that originally ran on IE, so I've seen this all the way through. There aren't truly that many apps that are genuinely IE6 only. Most run just fine on newer versions of IE, and often times FF and Chrome too. As a developer, even though I was targeting IE only back in the early 2000s, I actually used Firebird (which then became Firefox) to do most of my testing -- and I don't think I was alone.
Re:Kill XP? (Score:5, Informative)
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at my current job I have both windows 7 and XP on my machine why?
Because the entire "system is a remote desktop session" to a secured server windows 7 came standard on my new computer however any RDP capable machine could make it work.(my previous machine was literally win 2k.
Windows XP isn't going anywhere in such environments.
Re:Kill XP? (Score:5, Informative)
Okay, how about Business users who don't want to have to type in the fricking domain name each time they log into a different machine.
For some utterly confounding reason, Microsoft decided to do away with the customizable msgina login system (username, password, drop-down box for Domain) and replace it with the brain-damaged domain\username, password pair. Oh, and forget about writing your own drop-in replacement, they "fixed" that too.
For more Windows 7 great ideas, how about the Shut Down button that now lacks any kind of confirmation dialog? Want to Suspend? Find the little arrow right beside the words Shut Down, but don't miss by a couple of pixels or you lose your workspace.
Re:Kill XP? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Kill XP? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would any sane businesses want to spend money replacing something that works perfectly well? Well, you and I know a few good answers to that
Out of interest what are those answers? I've been through a few Win7 business cases and none of them got accepted. The current place is upgrading purely because we are being forced to my MS as support reaches EOL. Planned obsolescence. Right now we still use XP and it does everything we need it to. Sure 7 might do more, but we don't need more, we just need a stable platform to run our business apps. XP does this and now costs us nothing. The same can't be said for Win7 (or any other OS alternative).
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Indeed, planned obsolescence. You payed for XP knowing this beforhand, and you're paying for Windows 7 knowing it'll happen again.
If they manage to fool the company you work for twice like that, then I'm guessing the on to blame isn't microsoft, but rather the person who keeps on taking these decisions.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
It's all about ROI (Score:4, Informative)
The hold back on XP probably is not ie6 compatibility for the majority of businesses. On the other hand, business tend to make decisions based on ROI. If upgrading to Windows 7 gives a favorable ROI, businesses will upgrade. If not, they won't. For most business users, word processing and spreadsheets are the major applications. Does switching to Windows 7 make one type faster? No, of course not. Therefore there is a low ROI.
Another move has been to hosting apps on a terminal server and then just using an RDP client. Again, the ROI on moving users from XP to Win 7 in that scenario is also poor.
Businesses make business decisions based on the bottom line. If they can get a better return doing X than Y, then they will do X. It's not that businesses can't benefit from switching to Win 7. It's just that they don't benefit as much as using those resources elsewhere in the company.
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I am finding less and less shiny new Win7 laptops with serial ports
And that's why god invented FTDI USB devices...
As far as my milage goes: Not had to use IE in over 10 years for anything other than occasional testing. All the hardware we've got is happy with firefox, banking and government web apps are all fine too.
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There's a third class: "Power Users". I'm sorry, but properly-configured XP on the same hardware IS faster than Windows 7. Better machines than what you describe still perform better on XP than Windows 7. To me, it's a waste of money to upgrade to Windows 7 when I'm going to take a performance hit in the process. I also waste a lot more time reconfiguring Windows 7 to the way I like it than XP.
You're right that the only compelling reason for upgrading is 64-bit, >4GB (technically >2GB) application
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RAM is cheap. You'll get a bigger performance boost by going Win7 plus 4GB or heaven forbid 8GB of RAM.
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What are you using, a single-core Pentium? There's so many internal kernel changes to thread/core scheduling in Windows 7 from XP that accommodates multi-core systems that anything with 2 cores or more will greatly benefit compared to XP's shoddy outdated makeshift scheduler. Don't forget filesystem driver changes, memory manager updates, and object handling alterations that removed ugly bottlenecks, all of these designed to streamline processing on modern configurations. If you have a much older system, in
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Re:Kill XP? (Score:4, Insightful)
I bought Win XP, why should I upgrade as long it runs all programs I want to run?
What is the reason for me to give Microsoft more money, when my copy of XP runs fine on my home computer?
I will never buy a upgraded windows version, unless I get one with new hardware or my XP gets to outdated that the programs I want to run simply does not support XP.
Please point out, what is so great with the newer versions of windows?
Re:Kill XP? (Score:5, Insightful)
As a home user,
1. Security.
2. Security.
3. A saner driver model.
4. Support for newer hardware. Vanilla XP needs drivers slipstreamed into the installer to deal with SATA drives.
5. Support for more standards-compliant versions of IE. Only Microsoft thinks that tying improvements like that to major OS releases is a good idea.
More minor things include an updated sound system (per-app volume levels), better graphics composition, improved boot times (varies), more efficient use of hardware (e.g. SuperFetch/Readyboost), and probably half a dozen other things I've forgotten.
I don't like buying things from Microsoft either. I switched from XP to linux and haven't looked back. However, I don't ignore that they have made a number of improvements since the days of XP. People seem to really like Win7, for what it's worth. Personally, the only way that I would use XP at this point would be from read-only media; Windows before the introduction of UAC was basically without a security model.
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3. A saner driver model.
How does this affect the user? Especially, considering his hardware works fine.
4. Support for newer hardware. Vanilla XP needs drivers slipstreamed into the installer to deal with SATA drives.
GP did actually say he would upgrade if he had issues with newer hardware, but currently he does not.
5. Support for more standards-compliant versions of IE. Only Microsoft thinks that tying improvements like that to major OS releases is a good idea.
Ever heard of Firefox? Or Chromium?
There plenty of reasons to hate XP. These are not valid ones.
Re:Kill XP? (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's why I continue to use XP. I am a public high school teacher. I take systems that are donated by local businesses, refurb them, and donate them to students who don't have computers at home. Virtually every single computer that gets donated has an XP COA sticker on the case. I have tried sending the donated PC's out with Ubuntu installed, but the majority of recipients don't like it because it's "different", i.e. not what they are used to and comfortable with. So I install XP.
I like the "Windows Classic" idea; I think MS should (and could) put out a basic OS (with some built in limitations, i.e. limited in RAM, storage, or something like that) for $50...as that's all most users would need. Even better if they have some sort of "trade up" program that allowed you to "deregister" an XP key in exchange for a "Windows Classic" key.
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Microsoft should do a "Windows Classic" which is XP re-branded, and sell it as a subscription to finance future patches.
The only thing more evil than forced upgrades in the world of OS developers would be subscription-based OS. That right there is the biggest "fuck you, I'm using linux"-causing proposition I have ever heard. It is quite literally charging me over and over again for something I already purchased, for no added value whatsoever.
How about instead of charging a monthly fee for something I bought and paid for a decade ago, they just leave it alone? I don't require MS to support my XP install. I use XP because I li
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The only thing more evil than forced upgrades in the world of OS developers would be subscription-based OS.
No one is *forcing* you to upgrade. But supporting multiple OSes costs money so everyone will drop support for old versions eventually because continuing to support it isn't profitable any more. This applies to *all* OSes, not just Windows.
I don't require MS to support my XP install. I use XP because I like it, and I don't WANT to switch to 7 (don't need any of the features, and it has a much higher overhead on my older hardware).
So don't switch. You're free to continue using Windows XP (under the terms of the licence you originally _agreed to_). But don't expect third parties like Google to bother supporting it for you either.
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Re:Kill XP? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Kill XP? (Score:4, Informative)
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XP64 does not receive security updates anymore. If you are using such a machine to connect to the Internet, you are a fool. If you are using it connected to the Internet at a business, you are a moron.
Enjoy your malware.
Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Another difference between XP and Vista (Score:2, Insightful)
XP has a "corporate" install disk that didn't need product activation in both 32 and 64-bit, and passed genuine advantage. Vista and 7 do not. If Microsoft *really* wants Windows 8 to take off, don't be surprised if a Windows 8 corporate install version doesn't get released for *cough* corporations.
Really, because of the 'ol corporate install version of XP, it is going to running in virtual machines for an eternity.
Part of it is just a coincidence, but notice the decline of Microsoft right about the same t
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Let me get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are a company that has a working system that runs fine, why would you force an upgrade just because XP is n't used by consumers any more? Even if you put the economic costs at zero which it certainly is n't and the summary brushes aside way to casually; you always have a risk factor of unforseen issues getting passed testing.
No business should upgrade for the sake of technology fashion, weather it be OS or applications. Hell you see companies running custom DOS programs all the time.
Re:Let me get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
How many companies use *just* custom DOS programs tho?
A company I worked for for many years used a green screen suite of apps which they had been developing since about 1985 - they started out with dumb terminals, and gradually moved on to Windows with a terminal emulator and then stayed with the terminal emulator while tracking Windows releases. If they had stayed on dumb terminals, their business would have suffered.
The problem here has nothing to do with DOS applications or custom green screen stuff - that can always be accommodated. The real issue is that your suppliers are moving on, and it becomes harder and harder to find new versions of applications which run on your platform - how many new apps are released today which run on Windows 98? Is Windows 98 still a viable OS to run? No.
Re:Let me get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of "business" computers only need email and an office suite. There was quite a big difference between Windows 98 and Windows 2000/XP. There's less difference between XP and Windows 7.w
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I'd wager that a large percentage of the 47% are businesses with a large number of seats and pretty much a standard application set, introducing a new application into these kind of environments are normally a big descision anyway with the likelyhood of a role out of new hardware/OS.
If the support contract for your software has come to an end and the supplier is no longer willing to support older software then you obviously have a business case for an upgrade. However as Microsoft will provide security upd
Ooops (Score:2)
I meant 43% not 47%.
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I don't think there are any left that use "only" custom DOS programs. But there may be the occasional old program that is still considered important for business. Especially if it is closed source and the vendor does not exist anymore.
Personally, I'm working for a medical technology company that still has a lot of devices with DOS in the field.
Right now, the successor to that particular system is under development, using Windows 7 with a realtime extension for the time critical stuff. But until recently, th
Compare 2 extreme to make one of them look bad... (Score:2)
Steam users are games that want the latest and best of what their money can buy, and on the shelves only windows 7 computers are available.
Companies want to keep their knowledge/trainning as long as possible, and/or one of their core application doesn't work on windows 7, and/or the investment in new softwares adapted to windows 7 is too high. Companies have a bunch of "good" reasons to keep XP.
Re:Compare 2 extreme to make one of them look bad. (Score:5, Insightful)
Companies have a bunch of "good" reasons to keep XP.
Rather they have no good reasons NOT to stick with XP.
Except ofcourse artificial limits created by Microsoft.
If MS would keep supporting XP, it could easily go on for another ten years.
duh? (Score:2)
But Google is still supporting XP with their Windows version of Chrome... No need for IE...
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In fact at my company we basically switched our corporate browser to Chrome because it is platform agnostic as opposed to IE which is.
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...is not.
Risky (Score:5, Insightful)
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If MS forces almost half of its customers (that's more or less what the 43% of the desktop/laptop market is) to upgrade they are going to lose some of them in the process.
Yeah but even if they lose 10%, they make money out of the remaining 90% which is 90% more than they are earning right now.
Why Update (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would business from XP to Windovs 7 (or Windows 8)? For that matter, why would non-gamer browsing and office only user do that? As long as they do not need some new Photoshop or other Windows 7 software, they have no need to update.
Businesses are not supposed to buy new stuff just because it is shiny, they are supposed to spend money only when it is effective. Home users can spend the same money on tons of other fun or useful things. Why new computer when the old one is just fine for what you do?
Carrot or stick... (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe it is well past time that companies (i.e. Microsoft) learnt to support customers rather than drive them. If 43% of businesses are really happy with XP then they should continue to support it. Many companies are fed up with constant updates (although constant is not an apt word with this time frame) and would prefer to stick with something that works. Most companies are not interested in bleeding edge and just want Doris to be able to type up that invoice for the roof that Gary has fixed or the sink that Fred unblocked or whatever and updating the computer to do the same job is of zero importance.
It is one thing that a company does not want to continue to develop an old product but when they pull the plug on updates etc. rather than just leaving the server running, I feel that they are not complying with their agreement. If Doris needs to run a new scanner or something that does not work with XP then it is time for her to talk to her boss but while she is happy with her laserjet churning out reams of invoices and heating up the office at the same time, let her.
Written using XP :-)
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Lets not forget the dot matrix printer. That thing refuses to die,
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What money does it cost them? I still use a 7-year-old install disc, and download manual updates for offline machines. It's a little slower, but the only cost on MS's end is keeping that server turned on. Given that MS has one of the biggest web data presences, I hardly think keeping the XP updates on their update server(instead of just deleting a few entries on their end and saying 'not supported') is so terribly costly for them. I don't even think the automatic update server(if it's not the same server) c
Businesses are concerned with applications. (Score:5, Insightful)
When you have thousands of dollars in CAD software (for example) on a system which works fine for your needs, you lose time and money changing out your PC. If some of that software doesn't work well with later Windows versions, you lose even more.
The cost of the PC and OS may be trivial, but replacing it may "cost" much more than buying a new machine.
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It is nearly impossible to purchase AutoCAD, SolidWorks, or Pro/E these days without a "maintenance contract" that includes "free" upgrades. I.e. the big three (imho) of engineering CAD software are already on the subscription model. This removes the software cost barrier to OS upgrades.
I'm not going to say there aren't a few holdouts clutching their copy of AutoCAD 12 on floppy disc*. Or a few grey bearded autolisp hackers that don't want to have to update/debug their .lsp files /again/**. I'm saying t
Steam users != typical consumers (Score:3)
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Exactly this. Steam users are a terrible metric of "consumers". Probably a decent way to analyse OS adoption among gamers, but certainly not consumers. Grandma is a consumer, and she might still be using 98. Hell, I'd be willing to bet 1% of Steam users are running Windows 8, which isn't even out yet. Does this prove that consumer adoption of Windows 8 is already at 1%? Definitely not.
To many new versions (Score:2)
One word. (Score:3)
Virtualisation.
I don't really care what I "use" on the desktop so long as I have something that supports the hardware I need, and a desktop that I can work on without needing to retrain.
Thus virtualisation is being taken up by companies. Why? Slap ANYTHING on the machine itself. Virtualise an old version of XP that you KNOW how it works, all its quirks, all the software you use is compatible with, all your users know how to use, and you already have disk images and licenses for.
So you're not selling XP licenses (businesses already have them), but you might sell a Windows license or not depending on how well Windows works for them. Hell, with modern machines you notice precisely zero overhead from virtualisation and it absolutely DOES NOT MATTER what's running the VM.
I imagine VM companies are raking it in at the moment. If they're not, they're not pushing their product's features well enough.
The argument to upgrade "because everyone has it at home" is so ludicrous as to be beyond mention and shows absolutely zero knowledge of what a business is and how to run an efficient one. Nobody serious in business is still using IE6 (or if they are, it's locked down by virtualisation or proxies that don't let it stray to the Internet), but lots of people in business are seriously using XP. Because it works, predictably.
The only reason to change is hardware support, which virtualisation pretty much solves. Hell, hardly anybody dual-boots any more when they want to try Linux - just run it in a free VMWare player or equivalent at full speed and isolated from the rest of the machine.
That said, I got a new laptop recently. It came with Windows 7 (and a Windows 8 upgrade offer). I kept it on there but, hell, it took me a few days to get it how I like it and turn all the crap off and install some freeware to make it useable. And it will take me FOREVER to get used to the explorer windows (which are horrendous). So I slapped my old hard drive into the second drive bay and virtualised XP on it until I feel I can transition smoothly.
I got Windows 7. Made it as close to XP as possible. Then run XP on it to get work done. Sure, my Steam games are running in a 64-bit Windows 7 install, but that's not anywhere indicative of the OS being a choice itself (only that it's "passable"). I also have an Ubuntu VM to test my code against for multi-platform and 32/64 bit issues. And my browser has never been IE, even on Windows 95.
The fact remains: If you offered those businesses a paid-for Windows XP update, they would probably pay it rather than the massive HIT that they will take moving things to newer Windows. Hell, if they're going to have to have Windows 7, it's cheaper to virtualise their old machines and they get a lot more functionality back for doing so (e.g. rollbacks, snapshots, always clean images, etc.)
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seems like a whole waste of new hardware to virtualize like that. you're better off just running xp. A sane network policy will protect you better than any ms update will. It is still possible to get xp running on most newer hardware, but it does take a custom install disk and possibly some bios tweaking.
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The last five batches of laptops I've bought for my employer, XP is not supported, the BIOS sometimes can't boot XP even (which is only going to get worse with UEFI), BIOS options to boot XP provide detrimental performance degradation and/or limit disk size. I have at least one laptop running around with a SYSLINUX "chain" loader to get into the operating system we want without BIOS problems.
That's not to mention trying to find XP drivers for the hardware - I've found more than a few drivers that just DID
Not this again (Score:5, Informative)
First, it was already posted: http://it.slashdot.org/story/12/09/15/0130219/google-kills-apps-support-for-internet-explorer-8 [slashdot.org]
Second, IE8 is being dropped, not Windows XP.
IE8 does not equal Windows XP.
IE8 is a web browser.
XP is an operating system that supports many web browsers and applications, and more than one at the same time.
There are plenty of other SUPPORTED ways to access Google Apps on Windows XP:
- Google Chrome
- Mozilla Firefox
- Apple Safari
- Google Chrome Frame
- Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook
With all of the above solutions, Internet Explorer 8 will still work on the computer for other websites that are required (whether that is a technical requirement or user preference). These solutions work in ADDITION to Internet Explorer, they do NOT replace Internet Explorer.
If the organisations IT policy is so rigid that they can't allow any of these solutions onto their network but still use Windows XP, then I doubt that this kind of organisation would be using such progressive and relatively new (compared to on-premise) solutions such as Google Apps in the first place.
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You are right about IE8 but in the summary I read "Adobe announced on the Photoshop Blog that the next version of Photoshop CS would support only Windows 7 and 8."
Right after we replace Netware... (Score:5, Informative)
We'll be replacing those shop-floor Win XP machines - right after we get rid of the Novell Netware servers. Yeah - we still use Netware.
I guess you'll have to mod me 'funny' because you can't mod me "sad".
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The Cost (Score:3)
Re:The Cost (Score:5, Insightful)
I love these kinds of articles, usually from someone who's never had a proper IT job, who assume that businesses are just being lazy or cheap just because they don't feel spending a fortune to replace something that still works fine with something that probably won't work any better and may actually be worse.
Re:The Cost (Score:4, Interesting)
"Adobe Audition1 is a great product!"
That's because it's still Cool Edit Pro. Then Adobe started fucking around with the codebase and turned the entire thing into a horrible, steaming pile of shit in a few short months.
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This is a good time to rethink business software. (Score:2)
The practice of replacing software and equipment every few years for thousands of dollars a seat doesn't make sense anymore. Business computing is really starting to become a mature market, and there are no benefits to upgrading in many situations. It may be time to start looking at software as a service and not a product. And it's definitely time to sit down and draft some firm standards regarding business computers, so that software can be compliant with those standards. It's time to move away from propri
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software as service is a big mistake.. it's too dependent on reliable internet connectivity and free flow of data.. It's NOT wise to push company data over public networks. It may save money short term, or even long term, but they're one network slowdown away from losing money, and one data breach away from lawsuits.
No matter how high level the logic is designed, if the hardware around it is changed enough, it'll break. The real answer is licensing that allows porting/recompiles so that the company never
XP is "good enough" (Score:3)
Where I work, I use Windows XP to run an Exchange client, deal with some intranet sites that only work with IE, and run a Cygwin X server.
Most of my work is in Linux; whatever docs I need to read from the Microsoft "productivity" suite, I can read with OpenOffice or one of its variants, and I never need to create or edit one, so that doesn't matter.
I don't use Adobe ANYTHING, cause I'm a bit too security conscious (or, paranoid, if you prefer); evince, again, is close enough (actually, better, most of the time) for PDFs.
Why should the company piss away the license cost and three days to a week of my time (~USD$2000/week) to get back to a usable work environment, for absolutely no benefit from a Windows 7 "upgrade"?
I say good riddance to XP (Score:2)
I'm glad to see big companies pushing XP's viability out the window. It needs to die, swiftly. As someone who manages several large Windows-based software projects, keeping XP around and supported is a headache and costs a lot of money and time. You see, Vista, 7 and now 8 are very much alike from a support and development standpoint. XP has fallen so far behind and is now the edge case, it's the exception. Some of our software seriously pushes (and exceeds) the limits of memory on a 32-bit OS when working
Time (Score:3)
I still have Vista installed on my machine with Ubuntu. I use iTunes. I sync to an iPod. I do not care. But it is not time for businesses to drop XP. It is time for us to smash the computers that rule us. It is time for the humans to rise up. It is time to climb to the top of the highest towers and launch our laptops off to the waiting cement below. It is time to smash the computer overlords with baseball bats, to storm into the server rooms of the universities, of the schools, of the businesses, of the research facilities. We must destroy the computers that our attempting to take over our lives. Take up a hoe, or a shovel, or a hammer and begin to destroy all the electronic devices around you. Take off your wristwatch. Is it digital? Destroy it immediately. Destroy everything that contains silicon microchips. If your car was made after 1984 set it on fire with gasoline. Then, and only then, can we form the perect agrarian society. Thank you.
This is not a troll and I am not a spy. You went to the crazy house and said you were going as a student to school. You are abnormal because we have schools here, in all the suburban urban areas.
In his mind, James Taylor is going to Carolina in his mind.
If it is not broke, don't fix it (Score:4, Insightful)
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And the end result for the business? 0% increased productivity/business value (-X% for the first days of troubleshooti
Reap what you sew Microsoft (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft created a vendor lock-in strategy. Expensive and proprietary, they encouraged everyone to develop develop develop for it.
Microsoft has pushed the limits of what companies will spend for OSes and applications. That everything is so very integrated, while it encourages business to work within its proprietary framework, prevents them from easily leaving it.
The short description of the problem? It's deeply complex and rooted within business systems and Microsoft created things this way intentionally.
What did they expect would happen?
Car Analogy Time (Score:2)
A guy down the street has a Model T Ford. The Ford Motor Company is tired of supporting it, and is considering ways of getting him to upgrade to a Focus.
Car anology (Score:2)
XP is like that car from the 80's. It gets crappy gas mileage, and pollutes like crazy, but it has been paid for and it just works. You can get parts and the local mechanic can fix it for cheep. The seats are frayed and the paint is peeling, but so what. You only drive it around town anyway.
Windows 8 is the brand new fancy high tech super cool car. It has every conceivable gadget: GPS, satellite radio, power heated seats, and so many buttons and digital displays that even the people who
Micrsoft should sell a subscription to the OS (Score:2)
It is obvious the corporations don't want to buy new versions as fast as MS would like, and that is how Microsoft has always made its money. Sell a subscription to the OS and just keep the damn thing the same. Obviously, people don't like change. Why not have a Microsoft Business Edition, based off of XP, that only got bug fixes and security fixes, but otherwise JUST STAYED THE SAME FOREVER. Right now, I can guarantee that there are businesses that would fork over money for that OS...every year. Especially
I read all through these comments (Score:2)
And never saw the problem of third-party driver support mentioned. I do some audio work, and have a high-end digital audio PCI card installed. The company that made it was "acquired" a couple of times and this product is no longer even remembered by the current owners.
The last OS that they had working drivers for was XP - and it took a while for those to come out.
To upgrade would require that I replace this audio card - it cost over $1200 when it was new and there are NO new replacements. Without a drive
Good luck with that (Score:2)
Until Chrome and firefox are no longer supported on XP, XP will still have modern browsers.
XP users will just stop using IE(which is a blessing for the internet in of itself)
Steam an accurate reflection? (Score:2)
So /.now advocates pushing unwanted OS versions. (Score:2)
I'm stuck with XP on a lot of machines because of the apps that need to run. I have it tuned a hell of a lot faster than WINE or any other emulator could ever hope to accomplish. But your sorry know-it
Re: (Score:3)
They won't revoke your ability to use XP. They just won't update it any more. Although I guess if they turn the registration servers off that would break any XP machine that needed a new motherboard. They should at least issue a patch in 2014 to remove the registration requirement.
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The hippie evangelist kind do, and yes, many shops are run by these people. However, they choose mac for ideological reasons because there's no technical reason why the same work cant' be done on windows...at least as far as adobe goes.
Re:Do professionals use Photoshop on Windows? (Score:4, Interesting)
Speaking as a programmer (Python web apps mostly) I find that I am much more productive on Mac than Windows. This is partly due to the much better command shell, but also due to the fact that I host my apps on UNIX and Mac OS X is a form of UNIX. The bottom line is that I can spend hours and days trying to get some python module working properly on Windows, chasing down compilers, etc., and on Mac it's a matter of "pip install module". It also helps that Macs tend to be much more reliable.
Choose the best platform for the task.
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The professional photographer is running a business. When given the option to purchase a $1000 item and a $5000 item that will do the same job equally well, they will choose the $1000 item.
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most of the win2k/xp checks were easy to bypass, but back then it was easier to get xp trimmed down to win2k levels where it performed identically.. Today, win7 only games typically use dx10/11 so they will not run on xp unless they have a d3d9 fallback.
The killer was the security center service which (I think) intercepted a bunch of IO and possibly other calls, slowing perf. considerably. Disabling that service brought it back to win2k~ and reduced memory footprint.. there were some other tweaks, but I g