What's Keeping You On XP? 879
Hugh Pickens writes "PC World reports that Windows XP lost more than 11 percent of its share from September to December 2011, to post a December average of 46.5 percent, a new low for the aged OS as users have gotten Microsoft's message that the operating system should be retired. Figures indicate that Windows 7 will become the most widely used version in April, several months earlier than previous estimates. Two months ago, as Microsoft quietly celebrated the 10th anniversary of XP's retail launch, the company touted the motto 'Standing still is falling behind' to promote Windows 7 and demote XP. In July, Microsoft told customers it was 'time to move on' from XP, reminding everyone that the OS would exit all support in April 2014. Before that, the Internet Explorer team had dismissed XP as the 'lowest common denominator' when they explained why it wouldn't run IE9. The deadline for ditching Windows XP is in April 2014, when Microsoft stops patching the operating system. 'Enterprises don't want to run an OS when there's no security fixes,' says Michael Silver, an analyst with Gartner Research rejecting the idea that Microsoft would extend the end-of-life date for Windows XP to please the 10% who have no plans to leave the OS. 'The longer they let them run XP, the more enterprises will slow down their migration.'"
Money (Score:5, Insightful)
Cheap PCs run XP.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Money (Score:5, Informative)
For me it isn't about money. Since I have built my own machines for the past 20 years OS updates are optional for me. I pretty much have to use Microsoft on my main machine for the occasional games and nothing in Vista or 7 have really struck me as necessary.
I suspect this will be the last time I can reuse my XP install though. It is very possible that the next video card update I do wont support XP.
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I build my own machines, so it's entirely about the money.
Even buying the 'OEM' version, you still end up paying a huge amount for Windows. Windows 7 Professional will set you back £110 - that's an upgrade from an i5 to an i7 AND 6GB of RAM.
However, I won't be putting XP on any new machine I build, so I suppose my next upgrade (with begruding purchase of a new version of Windows) will just have to wait until this one really can't cope.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Money (Score:4, Interesting)
Cheap PCs also run Linux, but that's not always a reson to run it.
I, personally, don't run XP except under a VM on my server at home for the rare occasions that I do need to run insanely legacy apps. I've been using 7 since RC2 & haven't looked back.
At work we have to run XP due to them refusing to upgrade legacy apps that refuse to play nice with 7.
The cheap PC excuse doesn't hold up when you look at the scalability of 7. It can run on cheap, even old PCs with no problems. Sure, your PIII from the 90's won't run it well, but it also won't run XP well.
If it's really that much of a problem, run Linux with wine or the like. Nothing worse than running an EOL OS with massive security problems.
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In my experience Win7 doesn't need more resources than XP, maybe a bit more HDD space.
Re:Money (Score:5, Informative)
How cheap are we talking? I just built my parents a computer for about $160.
Works just fine running Windows 7 Ultimate. You can bump those specs generously by bringing the price up to $200, which is still pretty cheap for a brand new computer that doesn't have to run a decade old operating system.
Re:Money (Score:5, Insightful)
and two weeks later the psu blows killing the pc.. never skimp on a power supply.
Re:Money (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
that's only for a small bit of these cheap psu's. some of them are so horribly made that even low loads can stress the psu.
Re:Money (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering Windows 7 Ultimate costs more than the PC you built, my guess is you installed Windows 7 Pirate Bay Edition.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You forgot the $250 cost of Win 7 Ultimate.
Old PCs, not cheap PCs (Score:3)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
I don't think that there would be any pirated^W accessible multimedia software that would not work under Windows 7 too. The claims of DRM for Vista and later Windows were nonsense. The only problem that I heard of was with some Bluray software on projection systems because the drivers did not implement the trusted video system.
MS (Score:5, Interesting)
MS isn't giving away free upgrades and I'm not interested in paying for a really expensive copy or Windows just to play games.
When the security patches cease, I'll just uninstall XP and replace it with whatever the best version of Linux is at that point.
Re:MS (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a 5 year old Mac Book Pro, and I don't have any needs to upgrade that as well. I think we are seeing the end of the desktop, because people are no longer feeling the need to upgrade. Go back 10-15 years ago. Every 2-4 years we felt that we needed to upgrade our PC, and when we upgraded we felt the difference.
Floppy to CD to CDR to DVD to DVDR. 512k to 1 meg to 4 meg to 32 meg to 128 meg to 1 gig to 3 gigs of ram.
CGA (4 colors 320x200) VGA (256 colors 320x200), SVGA, 3d cards...
When we upgraded every 2-4 years we got something new and cool. Today an upgrade doesn't give us the same bang anymore. So we hold off and wait longer between upgrades with perfectly usable Computers that are getting much older however still function well and runs modern software.
We are now looking at Tables and our Phones and using them more and more compared to our PCs or Laptops. Every new version adds a bit more of a wow factor and entices people go upgrade and get the new one.
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You are absolutely right. I used to wait to upgrade my components until they were double the speed of my existing hardware. Now I wait until it is at least 10 times faster (and even then there needs to be another incentive like having cards or CPUs run at lower power to reduce heat and noise).
Since most computers from this century are still fast enough to run the standard office applications, there isn't a lot of reason for people to upgrade their hardware, and since most people get their new OS preinstalle
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Not acceptable for any business environment, how'd you feel if I was processing your SSN off that xp sp1 box?
Re:MS (Score:5, Insightful)
Since you'll just paste them, along with a variety of other personally identifying information, into an unencrypted spreadsheet which you then email to your various regional offices, I don't really care what OS you run on your desktop PC. Attackers will take advantage of the easiest way to get what they want - And I don't care if you still run Windows ME for all it matters, because "YOU are the weakest link" (or rather, humans in general, not you in particular).
To answer the original question, though, I still run XP (SP3, at least) on some of my machines for the same reason I run any OS - It works well and runs everything I want it to. Tell me what Win7 does for me* that XP can't, and we can have a more meaningful discussion; but as phrased, the FP amounts to a trolling question. He may as well have asked what keeps us all from using Beos.
And that 11% drop? We call that "Christmas" here in the US, and you just can't buy a new machine with XP anymore.
* And for the record, I DO have two machines running Win7, for precisely the one thing it does that XP doesn't (at least, not well) - 64 bit support. Not all that impressed, otherwise, and outright annoyed by most of the "improvements" to Windows Explorer.
ASLR (Score:5, Informative)
Windows XP does not support ASLR, which is a powerful exploit mitigation feature. That is, given a vulnerability (which are pretty abundant in the software that we use), ASLR does a good job of preventing a large class of them from being able to be leveraged to run code (like install malware, keylogger, etc.).
Windows 7 does ASLR, which makes you less likely to get exploited by vulnerabilities.
Re:ASLR (Score:4, Interesting)
And Windows XP has DEP, they are both vulnerable
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Execution_Prevention [wikipedia.org]
ASLR and DEP bypass & attack:
http://www.whitephosphorus.org/sayonara.txt [whitephosphorus.org]
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When you load a folder in XP, it lists the subdirectories (which are just directory entries like files). I got annoyed that it would insist on showing the folder view on the right side, which meant it had to list the files in each subdirectory to see if it had subdirectories for itself, to show or hide the plus sign to expand it. And of course it has to load the icons for each file, and especially opening executables to get the icon resour
It still works. (Score:5, Insightful)
If it ain't broke, why fix it? It's not like I'm running a nuclear reactor at home on my XP box.
Re:It still works. (Score:5, Insightful)
As Steve Jobs once said, "It just works."
Re:It still works. (Score:5, Interesting)
And it doesn't cost any more money to keep it working. XP is tightly locked down for the few applications and few websites needed by those applications. The primary argument against staying on WinXP appear to be security issues. But if I only visit Symantec, Microsoft, Adobe and US Government sites, I suspect my risks are acceptable.
For everything else, I use MacOS, but that's of course just my opinion.
Re:It still works. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It still works. (Score:4, Insightful)
Which does not reassure me on nuclear safety!
Re:It still works. (Score:5, Insightful)
If It's Not Broken... (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't fix it. XP is a perfectly reliable platform. I can understand Microsoft wanting to shift more units, but no need for change-for-the-sake-of-it really. Or maybe I'm just an old codger :)
Re:If It's Not Broken... (Score:5, Funny)
.. but no need for change-for-the-sake-of-it really ..
My impression was that change-for-the-sake-of-it was Microsoft's primary business model.
Re: (Score:3)
Nobody said there's anything wrong with it, nor does anybody have to quit using it, but MS isn't making $ off it anymore, patches cost money, its a business decision, nothing to do w xp or win 7 users at all. Linux is the same way in that it doesn't support its old kernel builds after a while (it might have at some point for some distros), the difference of course is cost.
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Re:If It's Not Broken... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:If It's Not Broken... (Score:4, Insightful)
I still use WinXP and I expect to continue using it for quite some time to come. It's the operating system that the TabletPC slate I use for drawing runs on, and it does everything I need it to do: load my graphics application, provide storage and TCP/IP services to that app, and support drivers for the stylus and other input devices on it. I could upgrade it to Windows 7... but would gain absolutely nothing from doing so. The OS serves quite nicely as an operating system for the device, and that's all I ask of it. By the time the security updates from Redmond stop, WXP should be such a niche OS that the minimal exposure that this device has, should be a tiny risk.
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I could upgrade it to Windows 7... but would gain absolutely nothing from doing so.
Tablet PCs are probably the devices that gained most from Windows 7. XP Tablet is really quite awful by comparison. Windows 7 includes personalized handwriting recognition, built in gestures for pen, built in support for touch (if you hardware supports it), multi touch gestures, automatic resizing of graphical elements based on input type, improved onscreen keyboard, jump menus (which aren't only meant for tablet PC but work great with them), checkboxes in explorer for selecting multiple items with a pen, V
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XP Tablets are great for digital illustration. Since all the idiots who bought the sales pitch saying they'd be good for business use are now ditching them, they're cheap too.
Isn't it obvious? (Score:4, Interesting)
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I just don't care.
Yeah, it's a whole "meh" for me. I finally am running Windows 7, after buying a new computer in November which came with it installed. My old box still has Windows XP (and Ubuntu) on it, and it still works fine. My new box has Windows 7 on it, and it works fine too. I don't hate Win7, so I'm not going to downgrade the new box, and I don't hate WinXP, so I'm not going to upgrade the old box. Eventually, I'll just make it Ubuntu-only I suppose. In any case, I'm "meh" either way... they both do what they
It works "Good enough" (Score:3)
It was being shipped with netbooks till sometime in 2010 IIRC
For something like an OS, the bigger question is "Why change"
The generic consumer doesnt care about security updates
Re:It works "Good enough" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
All programs and drivers will continue to come with 32 bit versions for a long time. If your computer has XP on it, then it is presumably so old that it doesn't have more than 4GB RAM, so most normal people don't need 64bit.
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For most programs 64 bits is just not needed.
What 64 bits gets you is more than 2GB for any one task.
There are a huge number of tasks where the dataset is well under one GB.
There are very few Office users that are using spreadsheets or documents that are in the GB range.
That is the issue with many people Windows XP is getting security updates and it runs everything they need to run. Why pay for a new OS when you get no real world benefit from it.
Re: (Score:3)
Depends on what your daily uses are...
Re:It works "Good enough" (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, the driver support is pretty terrible for 64-bit XP.
Aside from that, 64-bit Vista/7 support the Kernel Mode Code Signing Policy. This means that it is practically impossible to get a rootkit, because kernel-mode binaries must have strong signatures embedded directly inside them to prevent tampering.
You should see the hoops that malware authors must jump through in order to circumvent KMCSP. It's insane, there's only two rootkits that I know of which get around it, neither of which directly attack KMCSP but instead try to work around it by e.g. infecting the MBR with malware that hooks the boot process and loads the infected driver before KMCSP is in effect.
Even if you don't need >4GB memory...even if you don't need 64-bit application support...the KMCSP is a Good Thing that makes infecting your system much more difficult.
FTFY (Score:4, Funny)
'The longer they let them run XP, the more enterprises will slow down their migration.'"
'The longer they let them run XP, the more enterprises will eat into our profit margin and not let us impliment our more restrictive and convoluted licensing...'", a Microsoft spokesperson said. "Businesses are sick of products that meet their needs and are amply tested and well-understood," he continued. "They want a product that has a restrictive licensing agreement, is much more resource-intensive, and offers little or no benefit to the business segment beyond being pretty." He went on to add, "Plus, Apple is kicking the crap out of us in the consumer market and we need extra cash to burn, and let's face it... the only successful big products we've launched are Windows and Office. We have to force business users to adopt it, or our shareholders will tar and feather us before setting our homes on fire for not creating a single smash hit in the consumer market since Halo.
Ya what dicks! (Score:3, Insightful)
They are only willing to support their product for 13 years! How dare they demand that users move to new technology once a decade to maintain support!
Please, come off it. MS has a plenty lengthy support cycle. They support all their OSes for 10 years from release minimum. XP has been extended 3 years past that. That is quite reasonable.
Re:Ya what dicks! (Score:4, Informative)
... the only successful big products we've launched are Windows and Office. We have to force business users to adopt it ...
They support all their OSes for 10 years from release minimum. XP has been extended 3 years past that. That is quite reasonable
Actually, you are both right. Support for XP has been more than generous and acceptable. However, MS is indeed in the business of developing a new OS and wanting to get everyone on their previous versions onto it. Now, given the utter debarcle that was Vista, I think they have at least learned that it must be an acceptable standard and will continue to try to get it decent. Having said that, their business model will always remain on getting customers who continue to buy new OS, rather than making an OS and making enough profit from the sales without needing to get extra sales.
Re:Ya what dicks! (Score:5, Insightful)
You do realize that MS was selling new licenses for most of that time, right? Additionally, MS doesn't give support for free, most of the time you have to either go through the OEM or pay MS to provide it. The cost of them providing patches to all the XP users isn't significantly higher than providing them only to people that have bought in the last X months. Developing the patches is the cost there.
Re:Ya what dicks! (Score:4, Insightful)
Please, come off it. MS has a plenty lengthy support cycle. They support all their OSes for 10 years from release minimum. XP has been extended 3 years past that. That is quite reasonable.
No thanks. It still works. Linux has been the same for that long. Something about a continuous upgrade cycle... rather than only releasing an upgrade every, uhh... ten years. And there's any number of products that are still supported decades after their release because they still work. See also: Most mainframes.
So no, time since release is not a determinant.
Re: (Score:3)
I bought my netbook with XP in 2009. Where's my decade of support? OK, I long ago wiped XP and replaced it with Linux, but the point stands: XP is not an 'ancient OS', it was still being sold new only a year or two back.
It's being supported until 2014. That's pretty generous compared to most Linux distros unless you installed some sort of long term support version (and even Ubuntu LTS is only 3 years). I can't imagine CentOS 5 Workstation being very fun on a netbook.
Why bother upgrading? (Score:5, Funny)
The world will end in less than a year so why bother upgrading?
HP Universal Print Driver- thats why! (Score:3)
I can't stand the damn thing. I have a nice 6040f printer that I paid about 11k for- and under windows 7 I can't use the booklet functions via the stupid universal print driver
I make my booklets on pc #1 (windows 7, 64 bit screamer workstation) and then shuffle them to my old xp PC so I can still use the discrete driver.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So it's Microsoft's fault that HP hasn't released a Win7 driver for your old discontinued printer? Yes, I know it's an expensive multi-function copier, but MS radically changed how drivers work in Vista/Win7, which has made the systems far more secure and better for the future.
Blaming MS in this case is like the people who blame Apple because the newest version of OSX won't run their 6-year-old version of Quickbooks anymore.
Re:HP Universal Print Driver- thats why! (Score:5, Interesting)
He/She isn't blaming MS, I don't think. Merely pointing out that a significant feature set is not present on Win7, so upgrading completely isn't an option.
btw, I agree. The HP thing is a total scam. They've stopped supporting printers that are even just several years old. I've vowed never to buy another HP product again because of this (we got caught pretty badly in this as a small business).
Corporate Politcy (Score:5, Informative)
When you have a large organization Thousand+ employees it takes time to make sure the upgrade goes smooth.
Cost (Score:3, Insightful)
I bought this software, its mine, and I'll use it, thank you very much.
If only more of the software industry would target linux and mac, we could get away from having to pay an arm and a leg to Redmond every few years.
Dunno about you guys, but I don't exactly have a ton of free cash to spend.
Re: (Score:3)
I've got to buy it again every 2 years.
You realize we're talking about upgrade from a product relaesed 10 years ago... so it's more like paying $100 every 10 years.
If only more of the software industry would target ... mac
Apples upgrades cost less but also come more frequently and are subsidized by hardware. Further, Apple isn't very concerned about your "I bought this software, it's mine, and I'll use it" mentality, as they restrict what type of device you can run their OS on very heavily. Want to install your 10 year old Windows XP OS on a brand new state of the art computer? Nothing stopping you. No
Re: (Score:3)
There was this thing called Vista. It was pretty bad, so most of us don't talk about it. They sold it to us, it had problems, they fixed them, and sold it to us again (rather than fixing what we bought).
This discussion, the one we're having right now, the one this thread is based on, is about moving from Windows XP to Windows 7. The mere fact we're having this discussions means that NO ONE is forcing you to upgrade. You can literally have paid Microsoft $100 an entire decade ago and never have pay them another cent. Again, what exactly do you have to buy every 2 years?
Apple's upgrades are subsidized by hardware... this is a flaw? Sounds like a good business strategy to me.
Hardware which you've presumably already bought at a premium price. Don't you see? You're worried that MS software costs "an arm and a leg"
Nothing is keeping me on XP (Score:3)
My XP partition finally had to be nuked to clear out an infection after 8 years of stable service, so I shifted to Ubuntu 10.04.1 (can't use a newer version due to hardware incompatabilities.)
I had been planning to upgrade to Win7, but when I realized I could get a whole laptop with Win7 Pro and more memory and CPU horsepower than my old box for under $600, I scrapped the idea of an upgrade. Why pay close to $200 for a copy of Win7 when $400 more will get me a whole machine?
Hazard (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm sure there will be plenty of posts here about how XP still works, how it fits the needs of some people, etc.
Even if you had a working Ford Model T, you couldn't safely use it on today's highways. Running Windows XP on today's Internet is far more dangerous, both for the operator and for everyone else, than running a more recent operating system. It will become far more hazardous after the patches stop flowing. There is a shrinking window for people to make the transition before the patches stop, and everyone still using XP would do well to take advantage of that window before it disappears.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I have a form of OCD that requires me to scan every /. thread until I find a post that uses a stupid car analogy to make its point. Thank you for releasing me from this boring thread.
Re: (Score:3)
That's interesting. My OCD requires that I locate the phrase "orders of magnitude" in each thread.
A car analogy is orders of magnitude better than any other kind of analogy. By and large, I don't think the phrase means what people think it means (there's another one).
Re: (Score:3)
If your router is blocking incoming connections -- acting as a firewall, and you're not using IE6 or some other crappy browser, how is XP any less secure than win7? Assuming you're not running questionable executables or opening strange email attachments, what's the problem?
I ran XP up until early 2010 without any antivirus and never had any problem. As
Re:Hazard (Score:4, Informative)
That very much depends upon how you define "safe enough". There are known, unpatched vulnerabilities in Windows XP. See Secunia's advisory database [secunia.com] for examples. Furthermore, XP's defensive capabilities are outdated. I'm certainly not arguing that newer platforms are invulnerable, but they benefit from technologies and practices that have been created or honed over the last decade. At an even lower level than DEP, ASLR and the like, Windows 7 does a far better job of handling privilege separation, which goes a long way in mitigating risk from vulnerabilities. I personally prefer Linux, but I know better than to advocate switching to everyone. Windows Vista and Windows 7 still represent marked improvements over Windows XP, even now while the patches for XP are still coming.
Compatibility dontcha know? (Score:5, Insightful)
Games, cost and familiarity (Score:3, Interesting)
1) All my games work (for the most part) and I don't have to beg for a port to Linux of said game or driver.
2) I don't necessarily want to pay the Apple premium for their rendition of problems.
3) I don't necessarily want to pay Microsoft more money for their rendition of Upgrade problems.
4) I'm familar with XP and all of it's quirks. Yeah I gotta reinstall every 6 months to keep it sane again, but imaging takes care of the worst of it.
What's keeping me om XP? (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft Visual Studio 6 (C++), which doesn't run on Vista and Win7. We also still have quite a bit VB6 code, God have mercy on our souls.
Re: (Score:3)
That would require admin privileges under the new security model. Have you installed the VB6 runtime files and tried running as administrator?
TweakUI, no Breadcrumbs, usable control panel (Score:5, Insightful)
At least with focus-follows-mouse, there's a X-mouse [sevenforums.com] workaround involving a couple of registry edits, but I'm dreading Win8.
Every time Windows "evolves", I'm forced to add another 10-15 minutes to undo the latest round of dumbing-down.
Re:TweakUI, no Breadcrumbs, usable control panel (Score:5, Informative)
I hated 7 too until I found http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
Now, I'm more or less happy as a clam. There are still some annoyances that I needed to work around through heavy modifications, but at least now it looks 90%+ like XP was.
Because I like to use my RAM and CPU myself (Score:5, Interesting)
To be honest, the only reason I eventually chopped in 2K for XP was that MS started shipping tools and SDKs that (arbitrarily) refused to install on 2K.
Windows is a operating system for hosting applications, generally ones written by someone else. Everything else that it insists on doing is completely extraneous to my requirements - that it just shuts up and gets into the background. MS has failed to make a compelling argument in favour of 7. I don't find "or else" particularly persuasive.
Two things: hardware and upgrade path (Score:5, Interesting)
Two things for me on my last XP machines.
1) The laptops I acquired that run XP can't run Vista or Windows 7. They are at their last Windows OS even per Microsoft specs.
2) You would have to be insane to try to upgrade an old XP box to 7 in place. I've seen enough toasted and flaky OS installations in my time that I've switched entirely to "lift and shift".
License cost? Meh - I haven't paid for Windows 7 yet or any of the other Server OS's around my house. Somehow Microsoft thinks I need lot of free samples (development editions, Windows 7 party packs, etc.) and who am I to dissuade them?
Upgrade XP to 7 "in place"? (Score:3)
Well, Microsoft doesn't even allow you to do an upgrade install from XP to 7. You can only do that from Vista to 7. The "upgrade" procedure consists of it doing a full, clean install of 7 into a new folder on the drive while placing all the XP stuff into a WINDOWS.OLD folder. You have to manually move your documents and data over to the appropriate places after it's done, and reinstall all the apps from scratch.
I've done this MANY times for people already, and it works just fine but it's time consuming.
Captain Obvious (Score:3)
December average of 46.5 percent, a new low for the aged OS
Um, every day since XP peaked in 2006 has been "a new low". Why would market share of XP do anything but decrease? And if you want to get pedantic, there would have been a time period immediately after XP hit the market that it would have been under 46.5 percent until it reached dominance. Sorry, that statement just struck me as silly.
windows xp (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok, here's the rundown as I have managed to wring out of friends and family that cling to XP.
1) it came on the computer they currently have, and works fine on that hardware.
2) they are familiar with it, and it does what they expect it to.
3) they don't want to buy new hardware when the hardware they have suits their needs already, (when running xp)
4) microsoft has switched around how the user interface works, so that now it treats you like you don't own the box. This causes issues for users who just want to make the printer they got for christmas work. Clicking OK on 3 or more scary "let this program make administrative changes?" Dialogs and other "scary" popups are not enjoyable to users, who really don't understand the significance of what the windows really mean, and who don't have an alternative to the "untrusted" 3rd party driver CD that came with the printer anyway. Windows 7 does this "less" than windows vista, which complained when you wanted to run solitare, but this is simply users chosing the lesser of two evils. They prefer the simplicity and nonverbose output of xp.
5) fewer and fewer people buy computers to play video games these days, given the rise of modern console games with online multiplayer, and the reduced hassles of competing against people with better rigs. There is much less incentive to continue driving the forced upgrade cycle, so users try to get more equity out of already owned assets, like older hardware. Let's face it, unless you turn on 3d return of clippy or some other horseshit, you don't need an i7 to print resumes or make greeting cards. You don't need gobs of resources to play mp3s while you clean your house, facebook and farmville don't need epic leetness, etc. An old windows xp era rig can do all those things just fine, and users know this. Thus, windows xp satisfies most of their needs for a general purpose computing environment.
The few issues that crop up appear to be (and are) totally contrived to continue monetizing the computing market. Driver support for devices, for instance. Unless it is some radical new slot architecture or something, there is little to make xp insufficient for a driver, especially when you are pushing a crapware consumer peripheral device like a printer or scanner, which usually use unidrv.dll for 99% of the functionality anyway. Other than drivers, you have security fixes, updates, and browsers. Browser makers don't like to support "legacy" OSes because they usually represent the dreaded "low end hardware", which forces them to make efficient code instead of quickly produced code; the impetus of which is purely due to makerting forces in the vast majority of cases. Feature creep causes a software product to require more and more resources to satisfy more and more edge case uses, which would be better satisfied with optional plugins run in sandboxed processes. Remember: "newer isn't always better." when users feel financially pinched, they stop chasing the shiny.
Re: (Score:3)
Interesting... I bought a cheap $8.53 USB audio adapter from Amazon and it works great in Linux...
http://www.amazon.com/Syba-SD-CM-UAUD-Adapter-C-Media-Chipset/dp/B001MSS6CS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325624971&sr=8-1 [amazon.com]
The C-Media chipset works well.
Re:Because it's fast (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
Many business I know of are still using XP on their desktops. I guess often due to specially written apps, or just that the mandate to change has not yet come from upon high.
Heck..on on project I know personally about...federal one....everyone is on XP. Until they upgrade the workstations/laptops, no one on that team is going to be moving from XP to Win7....I'm not 100% sure that the move has been sanction for the whole system in this rather large Federal department.
And you don't go updating these computers yourself....
Re:Nothing (Score:5, Informative)
At work...well, I can't see us getting off XP until 2013 at the earliest. Nobody, but nobody wants the hassles of upgrading ten years of software applications written for a 20,000 seat enterprise and targeted to XP. It has to happen, but we don't want it.
Re:Nothing (Score:4, Interesting)
What's really amazing is that the morons who designed these software applications and systems apparently never thought ahead and realized that at some point all the computers running this software would need to be upgraded to a newer OS, and that they should have taken this into account from the onset. No, you can't totally future-proof everything, but with this stuff it looks like they didn't even try.
Sloppy Programming. (Score:5, Informative)
In my limited experience with these things it's not future-proofing that's the issue. It LAZY, SLOPPY PROGRAMMING that's the #1 issue. Developers who learned how to do something bad in the Win9x days, and kept doing it well into the WinXP days... and beyond.
A couple of years ago I had to deal with booking software at an agency. The entire function of this software was hooking into an SQL database. However, it REQUIRED local admin rights simply to RUN. It wouldn't run AT ALL on Vista or 7.
Why? Because it wanted to write files to a program directory. What files? I'm not really that certain. However, this was the way things were done in the Win3.1 day, devs continued lazily doing it in the Win9x days, and WinXP merely tolerated it. Vista slammed that practice to the floor. So, rather than clean up their code an adopt proper coding practices, they just said to us "You have to use it on XP on an account with local admin rights. We're not fixing that issue."
As an addendum, given local admin rights, let's just say it's hard to tell interns "Don't install things."
Re:Nothing (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Nothing (Score:4, Insightful)
This attitude is what's keeping people on XP. $DIETY forbid that you test your application on an slightly recent OS; that would be work, after all.
Re:Nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
If it weren't for the looming end of life I don't think a lot of people would upgrade at all.
Re:Nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
If it weren't for the looming end of life I don't think a lot of people would upgrade at all.
Microsoft could probably make more money selling yearly extended support contracts for XP than it could selling Win7 upgrades.
Upgrading an OS costs a company much more than just the license fees the OS vendor would get.
For every $1 MS would ask as one-time upgrade fee, they could charge $2 for a single year of XP support per license.
Re:Nothing (Score:4, Informative)
But Microsoft doesn't want to deal with this. With the release of Windows 8, they will have four (semi-)separate code bases (XP, Vista, 7, 8) to keep secure. That's a coding nightmare that nobody wants. If Microsoft can get everyone on the same OS, then their costs of producing patches drops to a quarter of what it once was.
Re:Nothing (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually..not really a troll.
Many business I know of are still using XP on their desktops. I guess often due to specially written apps, or just that the mandate to change has not yet come from upon high
We're one, dental office, 9 employees and struggling not to lay anyone off, if we upgrade to new computers, (we are due, 3 Mobo's had capacitor catastrophe this last year) with Win7, we would have to go with Win2008 and an extra 5 or 10 CALs, then upgrade the database on the server. I'm not sure if the client for the upgraded DB that will run on Vista or win7, will run on XP; so that'll probably be an all or nothing upgrade on the client computers. We're in a can't afford to upgrade and can't afford not to situation.
Re: (Score:3)
I still run Win2K at home. Lightweight, simple, without the clutter of XP. I can probably get XP to work that way, but it'd be more effort than I want to put into a fairly-customized home machine used for surfing the internet.
For security, it's hidden behind a NAT, and there's Tiny Personal Firewall 2 installed on it that's set to pop up on every unrecognized connection type by a new program. At this point in time, I don't even get the pop-ups anymore unless I install something and it phones home (at which
Re:Nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nothing (Score:5, Informative)
Many corporations and government organizations have stringent security requirements. Everything must be tested and approved. Security plans must be written the spell out everything on the network. This work is very time consuming and expensive to upgrade all computers. Thus I'd expect slow adoption and inertia. One could argue that updating to the latest will result in better security, but not always and bureaucracy is rarely logical.
Re:Nothing (Score:4, Insightful)
So you're offering to pay for the upgrade for all the Win7 licenses? Sweet!
There are ONLY _three_ reasons to ever upgrade an OS:
- Security / Bug-fixes
- Drivers
- Features
WinXP is "good enough" for the average Joe. Things "just work" -- with Win7 there is no guarantee that everything will _still_ work and won't find something broken.
If Microsoft didn't charge and arm and a leg, and another leg, say $20 for Win7, they would encourage people to upgrade. For $100 (minimum OEM Win7) there is just not enough incentive to upgrade.
If MS was smart they would sell the dam XP cd-key for $20, but gouging customers for essentially what amounts to bug-fixes is there any wonder the majority of business (and home users) go Fuck You MS ?!?!
Valid question (Score:3)
It is a pretty valid question. I know one person who has a good scanner that does not offer drivers that work with post-XP Windows, so she keeps it. Also, I know many people who have low end laptops (and of course netbooks) that don't have the disk space, graphics, memory that would make a newer OS work adequately. And then, I am seriously struggling to watch my HD-DVDs (yes, I got a few dozen in clearance - they are great!) on Windows 7, so I am considering putting the hd-dvd/BD drive on an XP box at the n
Bah humbug! (Score:5, Informative)
The reasons for using XP are obviously:
(1) Additional hardware requirements
(2) Software incompatibility, including, but not limited to:
(a) Existing vertical market apps glued together with Visual BASIC
(b) Inability to run already purchased copies of Office on the new OS
(c) Inability to run already purchased other programs
(d) Lack of driver support for older hardware
(i) what sane printer maker is going to port a driver for their 4 year old model with broken toner/ink DRM to a new OS?
(ii) many hardware companies are out of business yet/because the hardware they made is still working fine
(3) Buying into putting all your machines online so they can phone the mothership and download god knows what
(a) Worked like a charm for the automated checkout registers at Lucky's, didn't it? Get your new Visa/BofA ATM card yet?
(b) Once it's working, leave it the hell alone; I don't need an auto-update of IE on my server/POS/home system with firefox/Chrome on it
(c) an offline machine gathers no worms
(4) There's simply no significant value proposition, unless you consider "Ooooh! Shiiiiny!" a value proposition
Get over it: Good enough is the enemy of better, particulary if (better - good enough) == nothing useful to me.
-- Terry
Re:Virtual Machine (Score:5, Interesting)
Bingo. I'm running XP in a VM as well. Why?
1: No fussing with activation. I can radically change the hardware in a VM without having to deal with the "genuine-ness" of my OS each time.
2: XP has a small disk/RAM/CPU footprint.
3: I have some old 16 bit stuff I like running once in a while, and XP can run that.
4: I have a few special purpose applications that only run under XP. Especially some "antique" MP3 players such as the Nomad Jukebox. 32 bit Windows 7 might be able to run them, but likely not most due to the different driver model.
For a main OS, Windows 7 is light years ahead. However, for a VM guest, XP is still a good candidate because it still runs virtually everything.
Would MOD you up if I had points (Score:3)
Win2k was the best desktop OS MS ever developed. All just fluff after that.
Re: (Score:3)