Microsoft Denies Call-in 'Save XP' Petition

CWmike writes "Gregg Keizer digs deeper on a report that said Microsoft was logging calls from customers who requested that the company extend the retail availability of Windows XP to find that some users claimed that they couldn't get through to the support lines. Microsoft denies that it organized any kind of call-in petition and pleaded with users not to dial its technical support numbers to ask for an XP extension. 'As a courtesy to customers in need of technical assistance, we ask callers not to call Microsoft Customer Support Services to request an extension for Windows XP,' a company representative said. Microsoft declined to comment on whether its support lines had experienced a call-volume spike starting last Friday, when the Neowin notice first appeared."

Phone Fury.

I like it. Hammer their switchboards until they extend WinXP. That'll larm 'em!

Re:Phone Fury.

Program an Asterisk system to do it for you and show them the power of Open Source.

/ducks

Re:Phone Fury.

I'm getting the urge to graffiti a bathroom wall, "For a good time call ... and ask for XP."

Re:Phone Fury.

Why would you write on your bathroom wall? Won't your mother be upset?

Support Lines

As a courtesy to customers in need of technical assistance, we ask callers not to call Microsoft Customer Support Services to request an extension for Windows XP

If they gave the extension to XP, they probably wouldn't need the support line as much.

Re:Support Lines

What I find really weird about this whole situation is that most companies would be happy if their customers were this fanatic about a product!

Re:Support Lines

This doesn't mean that people like XP, it just means that they prefer it to Vista. I'm a Mac guy and I have no beef with Vista (I somewhat prefer it to XP, not that I really care for either) and honestly think a lot of the hate just comes from the people doing the sheep thing, though HP and the like feeding it the crappiest hardware money can buy certainly doesn't help.

Especially in the context of software, the negative feedback towards the newer product puts MS in a very awkward position. Aside from security patches and trying to edge out a bit more performance, there's not a whole lot that can be done with XP. And given its lifespan, three major service packs, and hundreds of hotfixes and patches, the codebase is probably a nightmare to maintain as far as operating systems go. Furthermore, it gets them labeled with a lack of innovation right when their competition is really starting to gain on them (baby steps certainly, but look at monthly numbers rather than total market share and it's much more significant) - and the longer that XP lives on, the more trouble you'll cause when you try to get people to move to the latest and greatest. Vista could be lighting-fast and have a perfect UI and you'd still get people freaking out because they've learned and grown accustomed to the stupid quirks of XP over the past seven or so years. Despite what they say to the contrary, most people hate dealing with change so the longer you give them to get used to something, the more aggressively they'll reject the "latest and greatest".

Re:Support Lines

Not necessarily quirks. I've used XP, 2000, 98, 95, 3.1, and Vista, and I dislike Vista from a non-performance stance (as well as performance). And I've used Linux and Mac OS (and dislike Mac from a non-performance stance as well).

But it IS true that people jump on the bandwagon of hate (tm), and true that the hardware thing is ... annoying. Install KDE 4 on bad hardware and then complain about the performance of KDE... heh.

Re:Support Lines

Here-freakin'-here. I use Vista on my laptop and desktop. I honestly can't stand XP anymore because it's stupid. Especially with the laptop. Sometimes it just wouldn't register the lid closing and it'd run the battery down while baking in my backpack.

Vista's only faults are abysmal 3rd party support and its nagging "designed by committee" aspects. But it is vastly superior to XP in many ways. Mostly they are:

1) Installation is no longer a pain in the ass. With all the new hardware coming out XP is increasingly in need of extra drivers before install. On a floppy disk... and only a floppy disk.

2) Plug and play is actually plug and play. Very rarely do I have to search online for drivers. I just plug it in and bam. Installed.

3) Connecting to a network and file sharing also no longer a pain in the ass.

4) Hibernate actually works.

5) I run 64-bit and I don't feel like an outcast of society. I run Adobe Premire and After Effects so 8GB of memory is not unreasonable. XP can't see more than 3.25GB of system memory and the 64-bit version of XP is... no. Just no.

Re:Support Lines

The difference being, of course, that if Vista were lightning fast and had a perfect UI, us geeks would be proselytizing it rather than damning it.

The fact is, we're tired of the bloat. We look at other OS's (not necessarily XP, mind you) that do more with less, and we ask "really, what is this actually doing for me?".

The truth is, not much. It has gotten to the point where Vista is only really good for web browsing, and the like. Thanks to Vista's poor backwards compatibility, with both hardware and software, in a lot of business cases it just isn't an option.

And if you think the windows empire was built on the backs of home users, you are mistaken. Home users are a pleasant result of businesses requiring business machines, and the users of those business machines brought the PC into the home. It's a side market that has become nearly as large as the main market, but it's still not the main market.

I'm all for the latest and greatest, but lets try making it actually better than what was there before, yeah?

They are just testing your love

Show MS the validation it craves, tell them you love XP. call now, your love operator is standing by. Tell them how you really feel.

DDOS attack via customer service, great idea!

Only problem will be finding zombies with phone skills.

The very definition of irony

Imagine that! The purveyors of DOS have been DOS'd due to the bad quality of their latest revision of DOS.

Phone slashdotting...

I'm sure the problem will go away now that this has been posted on slashdot...

UAC in vista may be poorly implemented...

but at least is there. The sooner XP and always-administrator users who use it disappear the better for the net at large.

What kind of work do you do?

I take it your company doesn't have many software developers or accountants (using obscure/internal accounting packages). Seriously, I gave a half hearted attempt at not running as an admin, but it makes my life impossible when I'm constantly writing code and testing things.

This morning I got to work and had to update VMWare (I work at a small shop as an intern, if I'm not using VMWare server to test stuff, then I'm playing Russian Roulette with my desktop being a testing grounds). Before I could install the new version, I had to uninstall the old version(requires escalation). After installing the update (requires escalation), it screwed up all my network settings and I had to manually set my network adapters (requires escalation). Moving on to testing my Latest And Greatest idea, I had to uninstall an app or two (requires escalation) to have enough room to create one more VM (requires escalation) to model a three computer network. I fell back to working and controlling all three VM from the VMWare web GUI (requires escalation) and tabbed terminals inside of one of the VMs. To test what effect my idea would have on files from the backup archives (requires escalation, but that is by design). Finally, I had to create a subversion repo (requires escalation, but that is by design) to commit to.

Unfortunately, I have to do things that normal users just don't do that often. And, "run as..." isn't much of an option for several reasons. As a side note, it is fun to watch automated "run as" jobs clobber each other's roaming profile on the hour as ntuser.dat gets locked and you end up with AdminUser.network.1 - AdminUser.network.12 on each desktop during contention. Furthermore, my choices are to leave a weakly hashed NTLM2 (what are they, unsalted MD5?) admin password on my harddrive or type in a mixed case, alphanumerical, finger contorting password once or twice an hour. I'll pass.

I run Firefox, keep my patches up to date, run spybotSD every morning, spyware blaster about every other week, moonsecure (clamav with real time protection for windows) and I try to be very careful when browing and opening emails. For what its worth, I'd rather waste an eight hour block of time reimaging a hosed machine than have Windows and Clippy breaking my flow and concentration every few minutes. I'd almost suspect that the aggregate time I would waste would be about equal. But, as it stands my XP install is over three years old now (although, it has 'character' after how much its been messed with). My boss is on his fourth or fifth install in that same time period, however, and he also runs as an admin...

Re:UAC in vista may be poorly implemented...

Yes, because XP is even more poorly designed than Vista when it comes to managing admin rights.

No user should ever run as a local admin, even in XP. They should use RunAs to escalate privilege when needed. I would never trust my CEO with local admin rights. They're just install some variation of a britney spears virus.

The sooner XP disappears, the better.

So obviously the solution is to teach users to click on Accept every time a box comes up. Because that's all that the Vista UAC has done, is train hundreds of thousands of users that when a box pops up, you hit accept to do what you were trying to do.

WinXP rules

I have been using Windows XP for years, and I have never had a need to use any other operating system. I've had problems with faulty computers, but not with the Windows XP system. On the other hand, Vista is really slow and buggy, it really needs some reworking. Hopefully Windows's next version might be something more like XP.

Re:WinXP rules

I have been using Windows XP for years, and I have never had a need to use any other operating system. I've had problems with faulty computers, but not with the Windows XP system. On the other hand, Vista is really slow and buggy, it really needs some reworking. Hopefully Windows's next version might be something more like XP.

The only reason XP is pretty good by MS standards is because Vista was delayed so often. When XP first came out, the only good thing about it was that it wasn't ME; it was uber slow, crashed apps constantly and tons of HW and SW just wouldn't run on it. After SP1, the intial bugs were largely worked out, and SP2 added some huge oversights. In the meantime hardware caught up, making XP's once huge demand's miniscule.

I honestly think that people who think Vista is the biggest pile of crap to come out of MS, have short memories. Every home OS that MS has released since win 95 has been aweful when it was first released. Then gradually updates come out, HW gets better, and devolopers learn all the tricks.

I think the one thing all of those who are trying to "save" XP or otherwise hinder Vista are doing is sending a very strong message to MS to never again let us get used to an OS. Expect them to keep the life cycle short and sweet from now on.

Re:WinXP rules

Exactly! I prefer emacs...

If there were a petition to save Win Xp

If there were a petition to save Win Xp, with Vista as the alternative, I bet it would eclipse the petition to get Uwe Boll to stop directing.

Why Comment on the Obvious?

As a courtesy to customers in need of technical assistance, we ask callers not to call Microsoft Customer Support Services to request an extension for Windows XP,' a company representative said. Microsoft declined to comment on whether its support lines had experienced a call-volume spike starting last Friday, when the Neowin notice first appeared.

Umm, if you ask people not to call, doesn't that strongly imply that people are calling?

doc

The Opposite of Business

Customers: Hey company, we want to buy a product from you.

Company: No!

Customers: Um...please?

Stupid people

People who seemingly cannot get off Windows no matter what, not even move to OS X. I use Linux 90% of the time; I support Windows as a technician (one of my jobs). I can barely stand Windows any more, especially now with Vista. I recommend people things like OpenOffice, LaTeX (MikTeX on Windows), Firefox, Thunderbird, aMule (rather than eMule), FrostWire (rather than LimeWire), and why? Because these apps run on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. I try to explain the benefits of not being stuck on Windows. They may still be using Windows, but at least the day Windows loses dominance and/or the person simply wants to try something new (i.e Linux), their files will be readable on those OS's.

People need to stop thinking XP is going to last forever for one thing and they need to either completely switch to another OS or at least use applications that use open formats on Windows. Even preferences can be transferred from one OS to another for Thunderbird, Firefox, OpenOffice, aMule, and so many more (just have to be placed in the right folder). I am glad on Windows for my 'real work' I use applications that run on Linux and Windows.

Let's start with open formats. The two reasons people want XP to last forever: 1) They use applications that only run on Windows (and also think Wine cannot possibly match) and closed source formats (that includes .docx!) and 2) Vista really is not a huge improvement over XP.

Need a little help here.....

Me: "Hiyas! Yeah. Having a little trouble setting the clock on my XP machine."

TS: "Is that all? Right-click the clock display then drag the hands around to the desired time."

Me: "Got it. Thanks!"

TS: "Is there anything else I can do for you today?"

Me: "Well, now that you mention it, can you extend Windows XP for me?"