XP's End Will Do More For PC Sales Than Win 8, Says HP Exec 438
dcblogs writes "Hewlett-Packard executives say that the coming demise of Windows XP next year may do what Windows 8 could not, and that's boost PC sales significantly. 'We think this will bring a big opportunity for HP,' said Enrique Lore, senior vice president and general manager of HP's business PCs. Lore was asked, in a later interview, whether the demand for XP replacement systems could help sales more than Windows 8. His response was unequivocal: 'Yes, significantly more, especially on the commercial side,' he said. Lore said 40% to 50% of business users remain on XP systems."
Re:You can pry XP from my cold, dead hands (Score:5, Informative)
For the business users still running XP, I don't see them flocking to buy new Windows 8 hardware. They are still on XP because either the software they run won't run on anything else, or they are small businesses that don't have an IT budget. As long as the hardware and software works, they aren't going to go out and buy new systems.
Until the first big virus hits that exploits a security hole that won't be fixed. When you realize you machines that can't be patched and will continuously be infected you may think differently about corporate security.
Re:It'll do a lot for pre-installed Linux too... (Score:4, Informative)
MS "relents" on the corporate side (Score:5, Informative)
So unless MS relents and lets people get some boxes with Win7
"Pro" versions of Windows 8 come with downgrade rights. Many businesses have been "buying" Windows 8 Pro but installing Windows 7.
Re:You can pry XP from my cold, dead hands (Score:4, Informative)
For the business users still running XP, I don't see them flocking to buy new Windows 8 hardware. They are still on XP because either the software they run won't run on anything else, or they are small businesses that don't have an IT budget. As long as the hardware and software works, they aren't going to go out and buy new systems.
Exactly. Even large companies cut their IT budget over the last few years. We were doing 3 year leases where we got a new computer every 3 years. They extended the current leases to save money so I am stuck on XP until the replacement program starts up again this summer. My X200 laptop only supports 3GB of RAM, so simply upgrading is not an option.
Re:You can pry XP from my cold, dead hands (Score:4, Informative)
Re:You can pry XP from my cold, dead hands (Score:5, Informative)
It depends. A/V software can hook large parts of the OS.
Most commercial A/Vs these days hook into the network stack at the packet-driver level (below the TCP stack), into the keyboard driver (anti keylogger, the hardware driver is hooked, and an encryption routine hooked. When a browser extension, or supported tool detects confidential data such as access to online banking, the encryption hook is enabled, and the key presses are encrypted at hardware driver level, and then decrypted by the browser extension; any keylogger running at anything higher than hardware driver will see only encrypted data).
For kernel bugs, it would likely be possible to hook the calls into the kernel at the appropriate point, and block "suspicious" activity. Similarly, for remote network attacks, an A/V system could simply drop packets known to contain an attack, before they get very far into the networking stack.
This probably won't fix all vulnerabilities, but pro-active A/V companies could certainly reduce the attack surface significantly.
Then, don't forget modern firewalls with deep packet inspection - many are capable of sophisticated protocol or application specific filtering.
Re:It'll do a lot for pre-installed Linux too... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:It'll do a lot for pre-installed Linux too... (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately for you that is not true. There are very few features that are better in MS suits, and the vast majority of people does not use them.
Footnotes. Endnotes. Pagination. Cell merge. Conditional formatting. Macros. Anything at all related to powerpoint. Mail merge.
I could go on, but these arent niche features.
Re:It'll do a lot for pre-installed Linux too... (Score:5, Informative)
I use both Libreoffice and MSoffice. To say that libre office is any way a competitor to MSoffice is foolish. It's like saying the gimp is a real competitor to photoshop. Libreoffice, like the gimp, gets the job done when professional tools are not available but they lack the support and integration that the professional tools have.
The biggest issues of using libreoffice in a real office is compatibility of the documents. While it is true that both office and libreoffice can read and write each others native formats, these formats are not 100% perfect. I have written simple documents in libreoffice, saved them in docx format, and then loaded them in office 2010. The result was readable and even usable, but look completely alien to what I had on typed up under librewrite. The reverse was also true. If I had submitted the document I wrote in librewrite it would have been rejected for poor formating.
I'm not saying this because I love Ms office. I actually prefer to work in librewrite because of its simpler interface. I'm saying this because its true.
Re:It'll do a lot for pre-installed Linux too... (Score:5, Informative)
As a programmer I rarely have to deal with the types of document scenarios you paint.
However, my wife (who is NOT a technocrat) is an honors grad student at a California State University and has been using OpenOffice for the entirety of her educational journey. She has had to give many presentations and turn in a ridiculous amount of homework papers and in all that time, has never, not once, ran into a compatibility problem.
She gives her OO Impress presentations on a shared computer running some flavor of MS Office/Power Point and has no chance to "preview" to make sure it "looked right" and has still never been disappointed. No, not even one time. I offered numerous times to buy MS Office and she declined, saying that "it works fine" and didn't want to "change anything", especially if it cost $$.
I'd happily grant that she's not getting a degree in the Graphic Arts (actually, Psych) but to say that OO gives "completely alien" results is simply absurd.
Re:It'll do a lot for pre-installed Linux too... (Score:4, Informative)
Pure nonsense. Working with PS is an order of magnitude easier than working with The GIMP. It's quite simply a better program in every sense.
I slogged along with The GIMP for a couple of years after switching to Linux, figuring it was good enough for my needs. When Adobe offered the "free" downloads of Photoshop CS last year I installed that under WINE and was pleasantly or unpleasantly surprised with how much easier it was to do almost everything.
Now, whether it's better enough to be worth a thousand bucks is another question entirely.