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)
Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
How dare corps still use something that works? (Score:1, Insightful)
Pay your Microsoft tax now! Balmer needs new chairs.
Risky (Score:5, 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.
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?
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.
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 :-)
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.
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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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.
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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?
If it is not broke, don't fix it (Score:4, 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 time they came up with product activation that works fairly well and didn't release a corporate install disk. Apple, Linux, etc., all doing pretty good now.
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?
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).
Re:Kill XP? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Kill XP? (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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...
Re:Kill XP? (Score:4, Insightful)