Windows Vista Enters Extended Support 330
yuhong writes "On April 10, the second Tuesday of April, Windows Vista will exit Mainstream Support and enter Extended Support. This means that no-charge (free) support will end, no further service packs will be created, nor will future IE versions (such as IE10) be available for Vista. Also, no new non-security hotfixes will be created or be available without an Extended Hotfix Support Agreement (EHSA). This will last for 5 years before support for Vista completely ends in 2017."
Crap! (Score:5, Funny)
I'm apparently way behind the times -- being perfectly happy with Windows XP!!!!
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Same here. Since all I need it for is to run Outlook 2003 for our corporate crap, all I need is XP in a VM. Just some 40GB I can copy to whatever machine I want and run it with a single kvm command.
Now if only calendaring and tasks would work in Thunderbird with Exchange...
Re:Crap! (Score:4, Interesting)
You're missing out, Windows 7 is actually a lot better than XP was, Vista you have an argument on, but 7 has a lot of nice stuff, not least of which is 64 bit support which doesn't suck.
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Nevertheless, the next time I upgrade my home machine I'll go win7 for the 64 bit support. If you don't need more than
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You're not the only one still on XP .... (Score:5, Informative)
At my workplace, our systems still predominantly run XP Professional, with maybe 3 or 4 running Windows 7 Pro.
Due to a budget crunch in 2009 through last year, we couldn't afford the planned upgrades, so we decided to make do with what we had. (EG. If a power supply died, we spent the $35 for another one and got the PC going again, vs. using it as a reason to upgrade to a whole new PC with a new OS on it.)
Now, we're slowly rolling out some upgraded hardware and software (just finished upgrading all of our Microsoft Office 2003 installations to Office 2010 -- which we were basically forced against a wall to do, so we could retire our old Exchange Server 2003 and utilize a cloud hosted Exchange Server 2010). But Windows 7 deployment has, quite frankly, created more negatives for us than the positives it brings.
Lack of driver support is a big issue. For example, the classic Adaptec 2940 series SCSI controller cards are no longer supported at all in 64-bit Windows 7. That's a problem for us, since we use a document management system with a group of dedicated "scan stations" people go to to scan in their documents each day. The scanners are old Ricoh SCSI based models that cost us many thousands of dollars each when we first bought them. They're still good workhorse scanners for our purposes and I can't really cost justify replacing them, at least until they fail on us. The only way I've found to make these work in Win 7 is to install the whole XP mode thing and run them in a virtualized XP session. That's ridiculous if you can just keep XP Pro on the computer instead!
Our old HP plotters aren't supported in Windows 7 either, but again -- why replace an "ancient" but still good, working plotter with a new one that costs $14,000 or more, just because you'd like to have the latest $200 or so operating system on the PC it's attached to?
From the systems administration side of things? Windows 7 annoys me because I can no longer browse the network and see the comments entered for each workstation. Under XP, I can double click the "Network Neighborhood" and look at all the PCs in the domain, and if they had description fields entered such as the name of the employee using the PC, they'd show up in the list. With 7, they decided that info was irrelevant, apparently, and no longer display it?!
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And SCSI is a standard interface. You can replace the controller card and still use your old SCSI scanners with it.
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[quote]
Lack of driver support is a big issue.
[/quote]
Which gets me free printers and scanners now and then...
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I have an old Win98 box with some historical files in poorly-supported legacy file formats (WordPerfect/Paradox/Quattro) that I fire up from time to time. A mere half-gigahertz processor, quarter-gigabyte of RAM, and it's still so responsive it feels like it's anticipating my commands.
Re:I still have an Win 2000 Pro (Score:5, Interesting)
>old software and old OSes.
This is why you run a virtual machine and load up whatever software and OS you want from the old days.
It can be tricky, though. Because some of the really old stuff doesn't even expect a hard disk. I unpacked a .zip install of PFS Pro Write on to the "c:" drive in a DOS VM and it /demanded/ that I install to a drive location other than the install drive. Because the developers assumed the destination was a floppy, even with a c: drive letter.
Old software, all the games you missed playing over the years, etc. Load up a VM in a current computer. Install the legacy OS, boot it when you get all nostalgic or need to read really old files, and put it away when you're done. No need for separate hardware. DOS, Windows of all flavors, Linux, BSD, Solaris, OSX if you have an Intel processor, etc., can all be loaded in virtual machines. No need for a separate computer.
And when you're done, just close the VM and go on with your other business.
My favorite Windows for virtual machines is Windows FLP. It's like a pre-stripped XP. I tried 2k, but I wound up ripping DLLs from XP to put into 2k anyway. The same with NT4, which I needed to get DLLs from 2k and XP to just install Opera.
DRDOS 7.03 is out there for free download too. Unfortunately Windows 3.11 says that FreeDOS is "incompatible" and will refuse to run (wrong version). Hrmph. It also helps to have a serial mouse and serial port available for things like DesqView/X which demands an actual serial mouse.
My virtual machine software of choice is VirtualBox. There are others out there, like Xen, KVM, VMWare, Parallels (macintosh). Try them.
As for Win98, giving it any more RAM will be futile anyway. It maxes out at 512MB of addressable RAM. Windows 95 maxes out at 64.
A snapshot I took once to demonstrate the power of virtual machines: http://ompldr.org/vYXgzcA [ompldr.org]
--
BMO
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I believe this is because Windows 3.11 relies on the implementation details of Microsoft's own DOS (certain things will always be in this exact memory location) and FreeDOS' implementation is not identical down to that level.
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"Old software, all the games you missed playing over the years, etc. Load up a VM in a current computer. Install the legacy OS, boot it when you get all nostalgic or need to read really old files, and put it away when you're done. No need for separate hardware. DOS, Windows of all flavors, Linux, BSD, Solaris, OSX if you have an Intel processor, etc., can all be loaded in virtual machines. No need for a separate computer."
Doesn't work for all the old games, especially older Win32 games because most VM softw
Re:I still have an Win 2000 Pro (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. I have several games here that require Voodoo graphics support (glide or minigl). Good luck getting that in a VM.
There are also copy protections that require the floppy.
What would be useful is if Microsoft and other vendors did a "final release patch set", and offered it to the public for all foreseeable future. So even if you can't get support anymore, you can at least install the latest official patches, no matter how old those patches are.
As it is, you can't - Windows update won't work, and the patch download pages either have been removed, or made inaccessible. If you have to reinstall, your only options are to either go unpatched or to pirate the patches.
I don't expect Microsoft to support OSes forever. But I do expect them to not remove patches that have already been released. The hosting costs are negligible - an entire Win98 patch set probably takes less space than a single typical Tuesday patch, and will be downloaded by far fewer people, so the bandwidth costs are pretty low too. And, face it, it's not like customers are going to run Windows 98 instead of Windows 7/8 either, so there won't be any lost sales. Just some goodwill, which they are short on.
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Why not wine, or a VM?
Re:I still have an Win 2000 Pro (Score:5, Informative)
I believe slashdot.org was around back when this was pretty much a bunch of nerds in their basement. I.E before the corporate acquisition :)
And to be slightly on topic, I still have a windows 2k disk set, I have both pro and advanced server, windows 98, and windows 95 (including 95b) as well as XP and a Vista beta disk. I don't know why I still keep them (nostalgia??) and I have them installed in VM's, which I've not turned on for years, but I guess it is good to keep them there just in case I need them in future.
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I have an Me installation, because of some old games that won't play with DOSBox or similar. "Why sucky Me instead of glorious 98SE?", I hear from the peanut gallery. Because its networking stack works a lot better against Linux dhcp servers and Samba.
Another spike in the coffin for 98/Me is that next month, the last usable AV software to work under DOS based Windows (Eset Nod32 v 2.7) will cease getting updates. Of course, behind a NAT in a VM, it's not so critical, but it would still be nice to have t
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I'm pretty sure you can run clamscan on anything that's mountable, so if you are really hurting, boot up the VM in a liveCD or something and give the filesystem a scan that way.
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Slashdot was founded in 1997 and only in 1999 got sold to Andover.net. Geeknet, Inc. is the reincarnation of the merger of Andover.net and VA Linux.
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Until IE5.5 crashes trying to render www.slashdot.org, that is.
You can run the latest versions of Firefox or Opera at least on Win2k. I'm doing it now. There is very little software for XP or Vista that won't run on Win2k.
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disk and installed in on a spare latop not too long ago. Shit that thing flies even compared to lxde distros.
There are a couple of anti-virus vendors that support Win2K with current versions, but no browsers that I know of (again, with current versions). Otherwise, I'd be perfectly happy using Win2K on some boxes.
Oh no! (Score:4, Funny)
I've been dreading the day I'd have to leave Vista behind!
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Waiting for XP to go... (Score:3)
I'm a developer at an ISV. Personally, I am waiting for XP to go. Microsoft has some great technology (WWSAPI, SQL Server 2012 LocalDB) that looks like it will solve some of the problems we need to solve with our application, but it's not available on XP. (Technically WWSAPI is, if you're willing to pay for the support contract.)
As it stands, while XP is still supported (mainstream, extended or otherwise) and we have customers on it we are unable to use these new technologies.
In the context of my job I don't think Vista is any different from 7 in terms of the technology available and the support effort.
At home I find 7 to be superior to XP and Vista. I don't think Vista fills any niche, XP has the 5-year-old-low-powered-device market, but anywhere else really should be using 7.
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I'm a developer at an ISV. Personally, I am waiting for XP to go. Microsoft has some great technology (WWSAPI, SQL Server 2012 LocalDB) that looks like it will solve some of the problems we need to solve with our application, but it's not available on XP.
I'm really intrigued by why you couldn't use SQLite3 [sqlite.org] instead of SQL Server 2012 LocalDB [msdn.com] or any API other than WWSAPI [microsoft.com] for web services.
Weird timing (Score:2)
I say what I'm about to say after using Windows 7 x64 for a while, and liking it.
But...
I got a used Core2 Duo laptop off ebay that came with XP. Went to upgrade it to something that would take advantage of the 64bit cores, but I realized I was out of MSDN licenses for Windows 7 x64. But I had all my Vista x64 license keys remaining for some reason. ;) Dreaded the thought, but went ahead and put Vista 64 on it, and put on all the services packs, etc.
I am very surprised at myself saying this, but I am
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They ripped out the sidebar but left the widgets in. Now they just reside directly on the desktop, which is a better solution.
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Not when you want to still see your gadgets when running maximized. Sure, you can set your gadgets to "Always on top", but then they are always in the wrong place it seems.
My company has got another year at least (Score:2)
...On XPSP3. We'll skip Vista and will probably wind up running Win7 or something like it, virtualized. Around 2015 or so.
Re:My message to you, Laura: (Score:5, Funny)
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I thought at first this was some kind of weird troll, but I checked your posting history and apparently I was wrong.
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Her name is Vista not Laura. You got that wrong.
Even more off-topic (Score:2)
but I am a blac belt in all five major martial arts so I can protect you from him and from all the rightwing racist vijilantes that creep all over the horrible racist capitalistic hellhole that is the U.S.A.
Can your blac[k] belt stop a 9mm?
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Yep, and it wouldn't surprise me to see someone from Microsoft go home and write the critical exploit for the flaw that'll never be fixed. If your OS no longer has patches available, you're running too old an OS.
Re:Does this mean even more pown'd windows boxes? (Score:5, Informative)
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I'm pretty sure that the average user stopped seeing new features added sometime around win98 or 2000. Other than UAC in vista, I can't really point to a feature that my mom uses in win7 that wasn't there in 98.
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Fancy 3D effects and transparency?
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Many of the new features are invisible to the user and therein lies their usefulness, since the user doesn't need to do anything (or even be aware of them) for them to work.
Re:Does this mean even more pown'd windows boxes? (Score:5, Funny)
sorry, that feature was removed before vista
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in two years and your company will either be running botnets or migrating to a newer version.
all xp updates end april 8th, 2014
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That'll be interesting to whatch. What comes first? Massive migration from XP or April 2014?
Will the currently old computers that run XP be replaced by them?
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Wonder how many enterprises will end up buying the expensive Custom Support Agreements.
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Answer: the world will end before April 2014, and mass migration from XP is a harbinger for the end of the world, so it's all irrelevant.
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Re:Long live XP (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure there are a lot of Fortune 500 companies still running XP. The biggest reason to upgrade by far, as has always been true for Windows, is for newer hardware support, or when security patches stop. Actually, I'm sure almost no one actually upgraded even to Windows 7, they just bought a new computer with it.
Re:Euthanize XP (Score:5, Insightful)
When are they going to put a mercy bullet in XP
You're implying that you're doing it a favour killing it? There's a reason it's still widely used. It works. I have yet to find something I can't do on the system. Every application runs on it save for the few that Microsoft's marketing department have deemed unsuitable like DirectX 11.
You shoot the race horse AFTER it breaks a leg and becomes useless, not while it's still in good racing condition.
Re:Euthanize XP (Score:5, Insightful)
This is assuming you are in the racing business, and not in the business of selling equestrians.
Re:Euthanize XP (Score:5, Funny)
You can of course switch to the free Llamas, but they're so unfamiliar.
Don't euthanize the able-bodied (Score:2)
I am writing this on a laptop (TabletPC) running Windows XP. It's a 5-year-old machine, but aside from the battery life getting low (a $40 fix I'm considering, for convenience) it does everything I need a laptop to do. It runs *office. It runs Chrome. It runs Manga Studio (my main drawing program) with full support for the built-in stylus/digitizer. I have no reason whatsoever to replace it. I'm familiar with Windows 7; I work with it at the office. If I had a desktop PC instead of an iMac, I'd probab
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Let's see... Windows 7 is many times more secure than XP, has a better UI with better usability, better handling of wireless networks, better handling of external projectors, can be upgraded to IE9 (vastly more secure than IE6/7/8, even if you don't use it)...
XP needs to die. It really, really does. Win7 is better in almost every single way. Even if you only consider security issues, XP needs to die, and XP users should update to Win7.
I use Win7 at work and at home. Every time I have to go back to using
Re:Don't euthanize the able-bodied (Score:4, Interesting)
>Every time I have to go back to using Windows, it's like trying to work with mittens on ...
There, fixed that for you.
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oh thank god it handles projectors better, here I am sitting on a pile of projectors but it was just too fucking difficult to plug into a XP box. 7's better handling of wireless? eh maybe better UI with better useability ... eh not really its pretty much the same UI with dumb crap, transparency and a search box in the start menu, and the only thing keeping IE9 (and better directX) off of XP is (wait for it) mircosoft!
directX is the only reason I upgraded from XP to 7, otherwise its pretty much a waste of mo
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Let's see... Windows 7 is many times more secure than XP...
This.
Off the top of my head, Windows 7 has ASLR, better DEP, UAC and the associated integrity levels (IE Protected Mode), and 64-bit vastly improves the security of the address space protections. A fully patched WinXP is still much easier to get malicious code to execute than a fully patched Windows 7, especially 64-bit.
Roundabout car analogy (hang with me on this): In the 1950s automotive engineers thought the safest way to build a car was to be as stiff as possible. People were getting impaled by their
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oh one of these "any change is the best change ever" types ... bet you love that windows 3.x era program manager like setup in KDE as well
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I've got a 7yr old laptop that came with XP/SP1 on it and I'm getting ready to move it to Win7 permanently. During testing, the improvements that Win7 brought to it were impresive since XP/SP1 has accumulated lots of cruft/bloat from all the security patches/updates that have been applied over the years. Yes battery life isn't getting better due to age but usability does and from my standpoint, that's all that matters.
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I have yet to find something I can't do on the system.
Drop admin privileges without breaking every program in existence?
Run a version of IE that isnt dog slow?
Also, not enough shiney [not sure if joking]
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Well, that was one thing MS got right... about 10 years too late... but right nonetheless.
Of course, Vista shipped with such moronic security features such having to ask permission multiple times to rename an icon on the desktop, but they managed to get it right with Windows 7.
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IE9 vs Firefox vs Chrome seems such a wash security wise at this point that the wisecracks are a bit worn. Chrome's auto-update and sandboxing may make it more secure, but gone (IMO) are the days where you can really be on solid ground mocking someone for using IE-- IE9 is a decent (though limited) browser, with a number of performance and security features that I do not believe firefox matches.
Re:Euthanize XP (Score:5, Informative)
Lots of things don't work on Windows XP. Just off the top of my head I can think of:
* Windows 2008 R2 RSAT Tools -- you can RDP to a server instead, but that's not always possible or recommended.
* PowerShell Active Directory module -- very handy, but doesn't work on XP at all.
* You mentioned DX11
* Internet Explorer 9 or later
* Location APIs for HTML5 apps
* Proper IPv6 support (XP has some experimental support, but in practice it's not very usable)
* Any 64-bit only software like the SharePoint 2010 design tools -- I know there's a 64-bit XP edition, I used to use it myself, but few others did, and support for it by hardware vendors was never good and even less these days.
Sure, these are all small things, but they add up. To get an XP machine to "work" you need about a bazillion hotfixes, add-ons, extras, drivers, and even some scripts. On top of that, these days it's getting hard to buy a machine with "only" 4GB of memory, but that's the most XP supports, unless you're a masochist and want to run an unsupported decade-old 64-bit OS instead of just going straight to Windows 7 64-bit like a normal person.
Sure, its leg might not be broken, but it's limping pretty badly.
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...and yet it's still perfectly fine for 95% of users.
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I would bet you lunch it's because 99% of those old XP machines have been replaced, not upgraded.
Of course XP is dying very fast. You haven't been able to buy a new XP machine in about 4 years, except for netbooks, and that's been over 2 years. XP is only disappearing because you can't get it any more. I would bet very few machines have been upgraded from XP.
I would also bet that 95% of users would still be perfectly served by XP. I think Windows 7 is fine, but there's definitely nothing significant ab
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On the other hand, MS Services for Unix is free on XP.... so I guess it depends on what you need to do.
In my case, I have no need for RSAT tools, the PowerShell Active Directory module, DX11, IE, HTML5 apps, IPv6, or 64-bit applications (though it would be nice sometimes to have 64-bit MATLAB). But I do use MS Services for Unix. I'm sure I'll figure something out whenever I get a new PC with Windows 7 on it, but there's certainly nothing compelling me to actually upgrade.
The biggest thing going for Windows
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Services for Unix is prepackaged in Win 7, but under a different name. I can't remember what it is...but i know it's there (check the Win 7 equivalent of add / remove windows components)
Re:Euthanize XP (Score:4, Informative)
It's now Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications and it appears to be deprecated as of Windows 8 [brianreiter.org].
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I wouldn't put it on a new machine, but if you have XP-generation hardware there's no need to upgrade. If it was a free upgrade I'd probably suggest everyone go Win7 but I wouldn't spend money on it. And for a lot of people what it does and the hardware they have is enough.
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Also I would like to mention support for
* greater than 4 gigs of ram
* SSD and trim command support
* better SMP support
* Supperior security for all browsers due to better DEP and other security enchancements
* Touchscreen
* multi que async with Sata and PATA drives
* Much better security
XP is running on bandaids with newer hardware. For shit and kicks I installed XP on my Phenom II 2.6 ghz 6 core, 8 gigs of ram system with a Sata drive last summer. It was sllooow. Boot time doubled, the kernel would freeze up w
Re:Euthanize XP (Score:4, Insightful)
Corporate IT runs XP because it runs a set of time-tested apps, that are either custom or extremely vertical. Updating to Windows 7 would mean:
1 - Upgrading licenses for the OS and probably office suites
2 - Possibly upgrading hardware
3 - Upgrading licenses for all your third party software
4 - Upgrading licenses for your web-based software to run in a newer browser (this is why so many companies still use IE6)
5 - Possibly upgrading server licenses to work with Windows 7
6 - Validating and testing to make sure all the new software works together (no small feat for large companies - think VPN clients competing with new active directory configurations, new authentication mechanisms, new IE mechanisms talking to new web app stacks that are probably custom, etc...)
7 - Re-train your support staff so they know the new software inside and out
8 - Finally you can re-train your users to use the new stuff
All that, for what? You're replacing a system that's known to work with an unknown quantity. The new functionality you get had better be WELL worth it, 'cause it's going to cost you.
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It's been "spend half your time coding against
Google Chrome Frame (Score:2)
Well, every web developer on Earth woud love it if Microsoft kicked every version of Windows that won't receive IE10 off the web.
What version of Windows still in mainstream or extended support won't receive Google Chrome Frame, a browser helper object for IE pre-10 that uses WebKit from Chrome to render HTML pages using modern standards?
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If you are a developer of applications (including web developers that have to test how their application looks in IE7), you'll see better where I'm coming from. Also, it isn't very secure. Its not very convenient for users either, because if they have upgraded from XP they are likely still on Office 2003 or something.
Microsoft needs more distinctive abbreviations (Score:3)
For those of us in a domain, win7/vista allows SMB2
I've run SMB2 on MS-DOS 6.22. Heck, I've run SMB2 on a Nintendo for cricket's sake.
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XP will end support in exactly two years (April 2014).
Re:Who gives a flying fuck? (Score:4, Insightful)
The two of them?
I know you're joking but there is a boatload of people out there running Vista... just about everyone I know who bought a laptop before W7 was released (excluding the people who are adept enough to install Linux, XP or W7 themselves) are running Vista. These people don't even know they're running Vista; to them it's just a computer and as long as they can write their emails, look up stuff on the internet, play FreeCell and occasionally write a document they are happy and oblivious to the fact that they're using Vista.
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just about everyone I know who bought a laptop before W7 was released (excluding the people who are adept enough to install Linux, XP or W7 themselves) are running Vista
I dont want to sound repetitive, but: the two of them?
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One of them is my mother.
She only uses the web browser (Firefox and Yahoo for email) and occasional type up a list for one of her clubs.
She always is "losing the Internet" usually by minimizing Firefox.
Next week I'll be visiting her to upgrade to Ubuntu. I think the Unity interface is perfect for her. She only needs one or two buttons.
Re:Who gives a flying fuck? (Score:4, Insightful)
The two of them?
There are more Vista desktops than Linux desktops out there.
Re:current os vista - next os will not be M$ (Score:4, Insightful)
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Look at Windows 7 right now. Now look at Windows 8. Are you trying to suggest that Windows 7 won't have longevity?
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Oh, I suspect 7 will be around for a long time. Big companies are likely to switch from XP to 7 one of these years, and then they'll begin fossilizing on that OS just as they did with XP. Unless the next Windows version offers some feature that actually saves companies money that they can't save in any other way, they're going to stay put.
Switching OS versions can cost a company millions of dollars by the time everything is done. Most of the time there is no upside, other that avoiding even larger costs
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The longevity of XP was an accident. It was a good time to live in, but they won't make that mistake ever again. Don't expect support to last as long as the XP support for 7 either.
Windows 7 has mainstream support until Jan. 12, 2015 (when new feature development stops) and extended support until Jan. 14, 2020. So you can keep using it for nearly another eight years if you are satisfied with just security patches and no new OS features. Windows 8 is shaping up to be a real dog on the desktop, so I expect
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There's no valid excuse for not upgrading Vista to Win7. The upgrade is fast and easy, and you get more than enough improvements to justify the minor cost.
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Try Xubuntu for excrements and giggles (Score:2)
It also assumes your old peripherals will work, where printers and scanners are the worst players.
Printers and scanners that work with Windows XP but don't work with Windows Vista or Windows 7 are likely to work with CUPS and SANE. Set up a Xubuntu box for excrements and giggles and see if they work.
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100+ bucks is a fucking good reason
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Minor cost? An upgrade to Win 7 would be half of the original cost of my netbook. And for what? A new browser that I don't use. Or maybe the a nice UI which is irrelevent when the only icons I use are the ones for Chrome and occasionally Word. I'd have a much better experience if I spent that money on more RAM or an external monitor.
Believe it or not people are sick of the upgrade treadmill. The consumer operating system of the future is one that boots straight into a web browser from which all applications
The future, not the present (Score:2)
The consumer operating system of the future is one that boots straight into a web browser from which all applications will be accessed.
You're right that the practicality of something like Chrome OS is in the future, not the present. Between now and then, either A. programmers will have to learn how to make web applications use CACHE MANIFEST and localStorage, B. cellular ISPs will have to substantially lower their monthly rates, or preferably C. both.
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What they should do is sell a cheap upgrade from Vista to 7 for some really low price like $10, make it available to anyone with a Vista license, then say "sorry, we're washing our hands of this".
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Windows support is only ever free if your time has no value.
And assuming there's an actual answer to your question. I would imagine the only support issues MS can actually solve are those that can be easily answered with a Google search or two... at least based on my experience.
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I wish I could take credit for that, but there's simply nothing about Microsoft search that makes me remember it exists. Google is not the be-all end-all of everything but Microsoft is always years behind them.
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What are these? Other than Tinker, a couple card games, and DreamScene? Are there others that were promised? Cause I was able to get the previously mentioned ones from Windows Update.
Re:What Really Needs Support (Score:5, Insightful)
There needs to be a new Godwin's law for when people use the term "sheeple", like when a person uses the term "sheeple" it automatically ends the argument because that person is too stupid to acknowledge they themselves are sheeple in some respect.
I mean in all honesty who thinks they can hold down a full-time job that requires a college degree and write an entire OS then support that OS for almost every instance that requires it and push those updates as fast as you can. Microsoft is in business because their specific OS is widely adopted and hasn't been supplanted because they have commercial partners and they are more than just hobbyists. Open source is /.'s mantra and all but really, open source can't solve everything and brings its own set of problems to the table (i.e. security...etc). I know you're an AC trying to get a rise but what is deemed "support" here is literally updates sent to the OS through the update tool besides the over-the-phone support as the article seems to imply. The fact it is going into the shut-down cycle this soon proves how successful Win 7 was well as how big a failure Vista ended up being.
Re:What Really Needs Support (Score:4, Insightful)
While you are correct with regards to supporting OSes in perpetuity, Microsoft has actually created an atmosphere of "perpetuity" to their OSes since cutting the cord with the command line all those many years ago. They wanted in the embedded device market... so they made XP work on o-scopes, etc. Well, those OSes need to last much longer than your grandma's computer OS, and Microsoft is increasingly aware that if they're not going to support their OS, someone will have an OS ready that will... and large, monolithic customers (the DoD for one) do not simply update their OS when Microsoft tells them to.
(Open Source has created much more secure and wonderful OSes than Microsoft could dream of creating, but that's for another post... and many folks did it while holding down a full time job.) They did it without forcing or requiring things to exist so they could invent a market, and in spite of Windows' sales numbers, there are many more Linux OSes run by the masses than ever before.... it's not your father's geek OS... :) Windows could cement their dominance by not dropping their OSes off the radar so quickly, but their hubris with regards to "the desktop" has shown many imperfections in the last few years... imperfections that are filled by other companies and their products.
Microsoft's OSes are manufactured to be compatible with each other. Windows 7 is just a better handled bug-fixed Windows Vista. For the most part, like Apple, Microsoft "obsoletes" their OSes artificially. The move to the NT-based kernel has solidified Microsoft's position with a real OS (anything before NT was a toy OS...), however with that comes the inevitable support dilemma that either helps Microsoft sell more OSes and keeps the package "fresh" so everyone will want the new OS with feature X, or it helps Microsoft maintain its existing base by supporting the OS so it won't be ditched in favor of the more plausible alternatives (more plausible and useable alternatives than we've seen in the history of computing I might add.)
While I agree that manpower is something Microsoft must contend with in their OS roadmap, I do not believe they are "hurting" by supporting two or three versions of their OS for at least bug fixes and the odd security patch. I'd be more inclined to believe that it is a substantial burden if Windows were a substantial rewrite each release... with the XP to Vista transition, far less of the OS was rewritten after many features promised were pulled (and still haven't seen the light of day... like WinFS, etc.)... but that is indeed a bigger difference than Vista to 7. But if they support Vista, they won't make any money peddling 7 (and soon to be 8...) That's not to say XP and Vista are twins... that's just to say that the underlying codebase (stuff that would benefit from bugfixes and security patches) is not as different as the boys at Redmond would have us believe.
My personal feeling is security and bugfixes shouldn't be something that gets dropped because of manpower shortages... after all bugfixes and security patches are repairs to something you already sold an unsuspecting public. Saying "well, buy 7 and that'll be fixed" is purely marketing... there is no technical reason to abandon an OS after a short time... Apple's just as guilty... requiring Lion for features that would work find for Snow Leopard. Apple's got the same problem Microsoft had with XP... it's good enough for most people. There's a realistic limit to support for an OS version, as we even see that in Linux, but Microsoft and Apple seem to be falling into the revenue grab trap... and the "sheeple" are not happy about it as they once were... even with smaller investments (with the OS costing more than most PCs that run it), people aren't keen on shelling out yet another $200 for an OS upgrade that just changes the second digit when you do "Ver" at the command line.
I don't believe the failure of Vista has caused Microsoft to "speed up" their shutdown cycle... I believe their increasing irrelevance in a changing market is pushing them to devote more and more resources to things they traditionally would've had "sewn up" in the bad old days of pre-convicted Microsoft.
Re: (Score:3)
Support is for people who want their computer to show the correct time when their government changes the daylight savings times rules yet again.
Here you go (Score:3)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa374177(v=vs.85).aspx [microsoft.com]
Group Policies is what sets IE apart from other browsers in the enterprise. But the Group Policy API is open and available to anyone.
You are not suggesting that Microsoft should write GPO plugins for *other* browsers, are you?