Majority of Enterprise Customers Finally 'Migrating Away From Windows XP' 246
New submitter TinTops writes "Speaking in a keynote at Intel's Developer Forum, Microsoft's vice president of marketing, Tami Reller, said the firm has 'now seen about three quarters of Windows enterprises moving to modern desktops' from Windows XP, with the last leg of Windows XP migrations being spurred by the imminent availability of Windows 8.1. However, Reller did not offer a breakdown of the enterprise uptake of Windows 8 compared to Windows 7, both of which are counted by Microsoft as modern desktops."
Migration (Score:4, Funny)
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Maybe they are migrating to Canada. I hear that it is a nice country.
Well, two from the Enterprise came to the US from Canada (Kirk & Scotty) The Ambassador Bridge goes two ways, eh!
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Kirk is from Iowa!
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ur thinking of welshy.
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I did the same, only a few months after they released iTunes for Windows. Yes it's not the fastest or most efficient program on Windows but after letting the computer manage the files and using metadata to make smart playlists, it finally convinced me it was time to switch.
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Is it bad that I am still using MS BOB?
On a different note: Does anybody know why Slashdot doesn't render correctly anymore?
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Then I'll make an image of my current XP laptop, install VirtualBox on the Linux laptop, and install the image of my XP machine on there. Problem solved, apps I need will still run and the beauty of Linux running the whole show.
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I recently installed XP x64 SP2 on a new machine for compatibility testing. But the update process is embarrasing compared to Debian. I wonder how it can take so much time to apply each update.
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Re:Migration (Score:4, Interesting)
There was a time I was probably what you'd call a Windows lapdog. Now I'd much prefer Unix/Linux. Try doing pattern matching on your windows box it's weak at best. And the file system on Windows, egad! I also recall a few years back how the Win FS was supposed to solve the issues with NTFS etc. But Microsoft could never get it to work.
How close to 100% is the Windows 7 percentage? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How close to 100% is the Windows 7 percentage? (Score:5, Informative)
My office is slowly migrating to 7. We have no plans to go with Windows 8 on the desktop.
Re:How close to 100% is the Windows 7 percentage? (Score:5, Informative)
My office is slowly migrating to 7. We have no plans to go with Windows 8 on the desktop.
For home I took one look at 8 and promptly bought 7.
Our office is not in the habit of supporting 8, so we are actively discouraging adoption of it.
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Re:How close to 100% is the Windows 7 percentage? (Score:5, Funny)
A real number? On Slashdot?
Let me guess: You actually read the article, too.
But I've not run into a single Windows 8 desktop at any business site I've ever worked for or visited, so I suspect your number is lowballing it.
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I've seen a few, mostly in the testing sense, or for anyone who makes consumer software as a business, and they need to know how to work with 8.
But ya, I'm scrambling to get a bunch of windows 7 PC's in the next week or two for a LOT of small business customers in case 8.1 makes windows 7 unavailable. Unfortunately windows 8.1 is not actually a meaningful improvement on windows 8.
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Notice how the lies continue to this day about Vista and now Windows 8. Balmer basically spending M$'s money to make himself not quite look like the Uncle Fester of software that he is. No mention that the substantive XP upgrade represents a jump over Vista and to windows 7, just to get it in before they are forced to use windows 8 by windows 7 being made unavailable. Now add to this no mention of servers, just talk about desktops. I wonder how many XP equivalent servers are becoming Linux servers and all
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A real number? On Slashdot?
Let me guess: You actually read the article, too.
But I've not run into a single Windows 8 desktop at any business site I've ever worked for or visited, so I suspect your number is lowballing it.
We buy Windows 8 machines, then image Windows 7 over top.
Re: How close to 100% is the Windows 7 percentage (Score:4, Funny)
Re:How close to 100% is the Windows 7 percentage? (Score:5, Insightful)
As an IT manager who oversees deployment and maintenance of about 60 desktops and laptops, some of which are shared among multiple employees, consistency in OS availability for the end user is key. We upgrade one or two machines per month, and we started using Windows 7 three years ago, so about 15 systems still run XP. We're not touching 8.1 until there are no more XP systems on our network, AND people show interest in actually using 8.1, AND at least one service pack has been released to address outstanding issues since its public release, AND we discover a way to disable the "Tiles" start screen. Supporting systems with two different desktop interfaces is a serious pain in the ass, especially for non-technical users. So far, only two people have shown interest in using Windows 8 (techie geek types), and the vast majority of our employees are averse to changing their OS at all.
I've had to customize Windows 7 a bit to make it "comfortable" for the lowest common denominator: Long-time XP/2000 users.
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As an IT manager who oversees deployment and maintenance of about 60 desktops and laptops, some of which are shared among multiple employees, consistency in OS availability for the end user is key. We upgrade one or two machines per month, and we started using Windows 7 three years ago, so about 15 systems still run XP. We're not touching 8.1 until there are no more XP systems on our network, AND people show interest in actually using 8.1, AND at least one service pack has been released to address outstanding issues since its public release, AND we discover a way to disable the "Tiles" start screen.
You will be waiting a very long time then, considering 8.1 is essentially the service pack for 8. The concept of a "service pack" is dead, Microsoft has long planned moving to rolling releases a la MacOS X.
Re:How close to 100% is the Windows 7 percentage? (Score:5, Funny)
*rolls eyes* Why, yes, Office is an Operating System.
Just like Emacs is. :P
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Just like Emacs is.
Lacking only a decent text editor!
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Re:How close to 100% is the Windows 7 percentage? (Score:4, Interesting)
AND at least one service pack has been released to address outstanding issues since its public release,
Wouldn't you consider 8.1 as a service pack to 8.0 ?
AND we discover a way to disable the "Tiles" start screen
The 3rd party add-ons do that well enough today. If you haven't "discovered" them yet, you haven't been looking. But honestly, by the time your company is likely to move to consider moving past 7, maybe you'll want to reconsider that.
2-3 years from now, I figure the new start screen will have largely been adopted as mainstream (at least if Microsoft doesn't abandon it in favor of a whole new UI next year...) and by then using it at work might be acceptable for the vast majority of employees, with minimal training.
Sure you'll have a few luddites who still get angry if the desktop doesn't look like what they used in 1998 but they can either adapt or be replaced.
Not that I'm suggesting rolling out the start screen now... I'm just saying make that decision a few years out. When XP launched everybody in business always set the classic theme to make it look more like Windows 2000. by 2005 that practice was long dead... people all had XP at home, and had acclimatized to the new start menu.
I think we'll see that repeat again with the start screen, although it may take a bit longer. since its a lot more different and computers last longer now.
And again... it all depends on what microsoft does... sitcks with it and further improves it... or if they throw it under the bus with Zune and Silverlight... :)
Re:How close to 100% is the Windows 7 percentage? (Score:5, Insightful)
The 3rd party add-ons do that well enough today. If you haven't "discovered" them yet, you haven't been looking.
Those 3rd party add-ons are not a good option for a business. Microsoft can break the functionality at any time - and they did it once already, with 8.1.
If they do it again, what will you do when on some fine Wednesday 100 workers come to their computers, wiggle the mouse, and they see ... what will they see? They never saw it before. Would be probably a thousand tiles. They will call the IT. The telephones at IT melt down, and the IT director commits seppuku with a dull byte. There is no option to "wait a couple weeks until the Start8 people figure out what is broken *this time*." The option to roll back the updates is also not very easy (if you need it, you aren't set up for approved deployment of patches.)
2-3 years from now, I figure the new start screen will have largely been adopted as mainstream
It won't be because it is not an improvement, it's a regress to Windows 3.0. Full-screen, single window Program Manager.
Re:How close to 100% is the Windows 7 percentage? (Score:5, Informative)
Where Win8's crappy Metro tile desktop program loading thingy falls apart is when you have multiple shortcuts that have the same name. How does that happen? Simple: "Uninstall". Not "Uninstall (program"), but "Uninstall". With the Start Menu, "Uninstall" is under the folder of the program (or even in the Win3.x Program Manager Group). No such info on Win8's StartClusterfuck...
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Those 3rd party add-ons are not a good option for a business. Microsoft can break the functionality at any time - and they did it once already, with 8.1.
True of all 3rd party software. All the time.
Or can you really not think of a single microsoft patch or service pack that broke some line-of-business application, that needed a vendor supplied fix? Because its a pretty regular occurence.
It won't be because it is not an improvement, it's a regress to Windows 3.0. Full-screen, single window Program Manager.
N
Re:How close to 100% is the Windows 7 percentage? (Score:5, Insightful)
True of all 3rd party software. All the time.
Breakage of a random application that dared to use a deprecated API call that suddenly suffered a regression (and wasn't tested, since it's deprecated) does occur. But it's unintentional, and MS may eventually fix the problem. They have no particular reason to protect a problem.
However Metro was a problem that was intentionally created and maintained and protected. Working around that problem is "unwelcome." I don't know how open is the API that the software is using, but as I suspect it is neither very open nor very much designed for 3rd parties. If it's undocumented, here be dragons.
In essence, software like Start8 is actively fighting Microsoft. And Microsoft fights back. What business would want to stand on that battlefield and risk being obliterated by one side or the other?
No, its becoming a tiling window manager, something several linux users run on their own systems by choice and swear by it.
Tiling window managers fit the workflow of precious few users. I don't use it myself (actively hate!) and I don't know anyone who would use one or want one. Many years ago I knew one geek; he was only using console I/O and vi. Perhaps it would work for him. But it's sheer insanity to throw a highly specialized piece of software at unsuspecting people who - for their whole life of computing - have never even seen a tiling WM. The nature of "general computing" suggests that we run different applications, and they have different needs. Tiling WM is OK if you and your software are very logical and very systematic. Most people are nothing of the sort. They just drag their windows around until they get what they want. They do not "program" their WM, they wing it.
And I think most of microsofts defaults for the start screen are stupid on a desktop... but that's all stuff that easily fixable with group policy.
Indeed, plenty of SO/HO users are ready to whip up a few GPOs and deploy them through their AD. That's what those poor souls live for - to fix Windows. Not to repair cars, and not to sell products, and not to bake pizza - but to code GPOs. Sure, this is not a problem at a large company. But it is a huge problem at a smaller company. Now you have to buy a new computer and call the support contractor right away because the computer is not usable "out of the box."
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Breakage of a random application
Is called patch Tuesday? :)
Meanwhile Click-to-run Outlook (which short of a VLA is the only way to get outlook) won't run Outlook Add ons without some serious arm twisting -- breaking a great many apps... from Google apps sync to CRM stuff.
In essence, software like Start8 is actively fighting Microsoft.
Microsoft has never been particularly safe for heavy shell modifications.
If I were looking to deploy win8, and I wanted a start menu clone, I'd pick one that was merely a task
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People will adapt. Nothing stays forever in technology. It doesn't matter if it's an improvement or not - it's important to be able to change your workflow when necessary, otherwise you hang onto outdated methodologies.
Being able to adapt to change is the most important thing in this industry. Standing still is not maintainable.
Re:How close to 100% is the Windows 7 percentage? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Luddite" means someone opposed to progress because of lost jobs.
People opposing the new tiles menu oppose regressions that impede work.
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I see both sides to this.
I laugh at XP holdouts when I ask them what is just soo horrible about Windows 7. They talk about settings. Never about the platform and how they are familiar with the old explorer, fonts, colors, things were in the right spot etc. They never heard of Aero peak, Aero snap, instant search, or any of the improvements in the past 5 years.
Most slashdotters still do not know you can hit the windows key and type whatever you want. I never use the start button anymore after Vista.
But, Wind
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So in your world we should have stuck with the abacus and quill pens
And in your world, you'd be mocking people for complaining about the new abacus interface. Don't confuse UI thrashing with actual progress.
As to your comments on MS usability features, that just hasn't been my experience. And it appears I'm far from alone.
But clinging to the start menu just because you are used to it is absurd.
No, it's a very good reason. It's obvious that you don't get why. Not everyone wants to waste the time to learn a new interface every time MS decides to obsolete an old interface.
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I suspect well north of 90%. Anyone know a real number for this?
As the age of XP approaches infinity the percentage ever decreases, usually through attrition of old hardware replaced with new. That's simply going to happen no matter how closely bound some users are to their old XP machines. But as we are now well along with VMs and such, there's no real reason anyone who isn't absolutely determined can't continue to run it in an emulator or VM instance. The limiting factor, however, will be inability to run software, such as browsers, which become more resource hungr
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I installed XP on new hardware last year. Some legacy software won't run on win7 and in some cases a VM is not a good option (eg. evil parallel port dongles - even USB dongle behaviour is flaky). As plotter drivers etc get updated there is less need for it but it's a very slow change.
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We're Skipping Windows 8 and 8.1 (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know why any sane company would be "spurred by the imminent availability of Windows 8.1" to drop XP. It's much more about XP's end of support on April 8, 2014. We can't have soon-to-be-unpatched boxes and laptops on our network, although I'm sure some will be in hiding past that date (VMs, second systems, etc).
Re:We're Skipping Windows 8 and 8.1 (Score:5, Insightful)
It's only about XP's end of support on April 8, 2014.
FTFY.
There are zero positive valid business benefits to upgrading to Windows 8+, some non-issues that are used for sales pitches by OS vendors, and several negatives.
In the non-issue column, there are:
In the negative column, we have the following:
Microsoft thrives on confusing people into to forgetting that an OS is nothing more than the kernel, and the rest of the crap is GUI and application stuff that should not belong in the hands of the OS vendor. Apple has mastered fostering that misunderstanding as well. It's obviously profitable for them, which means it costs us plenty.
The worst part is that I've had our infrastructure people tell us the cost of deploying Linux is too high, for several of those same negative reasons above. Well, we would have had to do it exactly ONE time, and then we'd have been done. But no, here we are, staring down another Windows end-of-life deadline, getting ready to write them another check. Too bad we can't sue those people for malfeasance.
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Please, tell me what Linux distro did require that since the last decade you:
1 - Buy newer versions. The problem here is money spending, so free updates won't do it.
2 - Change your GUI to something completely unrecognizable. Yeah, one of the 2 most used options from the last decade changed, and several people started using a third one, one of them is pretty like it was at 2001. And there are several GUIs intentionaly like the onld ones if you really need it.
3 - Change your computer more than once on the dec
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I recommend the satellite technology industry. It's got to be THE most stagnant industry in tech these days. Satellite modems have finally heard of this wonderful thing called "Ethernet" and "Internet Protocol". Why, by 2100, they might have support for ipv6.
To be fair, there's only so much you can do with satellite. It's hugely bandwidth limited and the latency kills a lot of applications. The only real innovations that I can think of is Carrier-in-Carrier aka Doubletalk and Vipersat. You can't count the i
Yeah, that's what XP holdouts were waiting for (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows 8.1. *eyeroll* They're going to 7 you morons, and they're going to stay there for another 15 years. Doesn't matter what you do to the Start Menu.
Re:Yeah, that's what XP holdouts were waiting for (Score:5, Insightful)
XP being end of life next April was the spur where I work and I expect many other places too. And yeah we're going to 7, not even thinking about 8 except for some tablets.
Re:Yeah, that's what XP holdouts were waiting for (Score:4, Funny)
So you're completely leapfrogging over Vista. How reckless :-)
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Re:Yeah, that's what XP holdouts were waiting for (Score:5, Interesting)
Windows 8.1. *eyeroll* They're going to 7 you morons, and they're going to stay there for another 15 years. Doesn't matter what you do to the Start Menu.
Yeah, I read that, and thought BS as well. They're looking the wrong direction I think. Looking backwards at the curmudgeon that was Vista, that was (at least in my enterprise environment) completely skipped over. It was really a matter of earning back some trust.
I understand that 8.1 is to 8 what SP2 was to XP (in theory) but I just can't see any advantage to using 8 in an enterprise environment.
Not to mention, enterprise adoption is a SLOW process in a lot of cases. It's the same reason certain cars sell better on the used market than others. PROVEN reliability.
(oh shit, did I just make a car anology... I really need to get off this site)
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The end of Windows 7 extended support is January 14, 2020. Microsoft is not going to make the same mistake of indefinitely extending this date by continuing sales indefinitely.
Re:Yeah, that's what XP holdouts were waiting for (Score:5, Interesting)
The end of Windows 7 extended support is January 14, 2020. Microsoft is not going to make the same mistake of indefinitely extending this date by continuing sales indefinitely.
They tried to kill XP. Repeatedly. They extended the deadline many times. They're going to do it again with Windows 7, because 8 is a steaming three coiled turd. Nobody asks when corporations are upgrading to Vista... because nobody is. How many corporations are looking at Windows 8? Next to none. Go ahead... find a job for a "Windows 7 to Windows 8 migration expert" on a job site for a Fortune 500 company. We'd all love to see the three positions in the entire world that are available for that job. -_-
Please. Microsoft can try shoving stuff down their customer's throats... but all they'll do is get another XBone out of the deal. How's that working out for you, by the way, Ballmer? Polishing up the old resume I hear.
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Fact: MS guarantees at least two years of mainstream support for the previous version after a new version of release.
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They tried to kill XP. Repeatedly. They extended the deadline many times. They're going to do it again with Windows 7, because 8 is a steaming three coiled turd. Nobody asks when corporations are upgrading to Vista... because nobody is. How many corporations are looking at Windows 8? Next to none.
Some day, the anthropologists will look back at Microsoft's OS release strategy and at least credit them with their cunning. They've been using the "Facebook Model" of making changes for longer than Facebook's been around: Make a bunch of changes that you know everyone will hate, then apologize and back off a bit to something more acceptable, at least you get to keep a lot of the changes you made.
Politicians have been doing this for hundreds of years too. Windows 8 is the current pinnacle of this two
Re: Yeah, that's what XP holdouts were waiting for (Score:5, Informative)
I work for a fortune 50, yes 50, company.
You are spot on with XP, Vista, and Win 7. There are quite a few legacy systems stuck on IE6 because of stupid SAP crap. We only recently upgraded those to IE7 !!! (Classic short-sightedness of selling your soul to MS and we are literally paying the devil his due for not having the wisdom to use open standard but I digress.)
I'll be visiting HQ next week. I'll ask some of the admins what our Win8.1 plans (if any) are.
On the back end some flavor of *nix is obviously used. Allways kind of surprised (and glad) to hear OpenBD pop-up when I least expect it. Rest of *nix boxes are usually Solaris with some sort of Blades.
OSX is become more visible. We even have a few satellite offices running OSX exclusively. I've been converting a few developers to *augment* their Win 7 & 8 boxes over to OSX. With the clusterfuck of Win8 it has been an easy "sell". Most people don't realize just how inconsistent and schizophrensic MS's UI is until they try something different. Everyone agrees OSX isn't perfect but compared to the garbage MS is going OSX looks like a saint. Apple couldn't "pay" for better marketing -- all they have to do is let MS suicide itself: Microsoft has never understood good UI. It took them how many years until they had the start of something decent in 95?! LOL
Win8 is an interesting ball of wax. We already in the progress of migration to it -- mostly new Dell laptops. It is universally hated by everyone I talk to. People hate it for two reasons:
a) sake of change for the sake of change when there was nothing "wrong" with the old UI
b) Eveyone agrees Metro makes perfect sense on a tablet but screwing over the desktop users pisses off a lot of people because you are forcing them to waste their time and IT's time to relearn how to do the same thing as before. It is a hindrance from us doing our job and we are already overloaded as it is.
I know that we're definitely going to be staying on Win 7 as long as possible. Hell, we're already running XP in VMs such as VMWare, Parallels and VirtualBox. A few of the OSX users are using Bootcamp - both Win7 and Win8.
I haven't heard of one soul asking to use Win 8 (or 8.1) but when you have 100,000 people it probably takes a little but if time for THAT news to travel. :)
"Modern desktops" LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
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I bet "modern desktops" includes Linux & OSX but MS wont talk about that.
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Not really. I know this won't go over well here but both Linux and OSX have been failures in the marketplace. Microsoft's biggest OS competition comes from something it release more than a decade ago and desperately wants to kill. I'm sure there are version of Linux and OSX which would be considered "modern" but very few people care. Heck, Win 8 hasn't even been out a year. It's been hated on up and down and it is already ahead of OSX and Linux.
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Correlation does not imply causality (Score:5, Interesting)
Reller said the firm has "now seen about three quarters of Windows enterprises moving to modern desktops" from Windows XP, with the last leg of Windows XP migrations being spurred by the imminent availability of Windows 8.1.
Um, no. Even though firms are buying Win 8, it doesn't mean that they are installing Win 8. Many of them are using a Win 8 license to install Win 7. If MS believes enterprises and consumers want Win 8 by choice, they are deluded.
Re:Correlation does not imply causality (Score:5, Insightful)
If MS believes enterprises and consumers want Win 8 by choice, they are deluded.
I am almost certain that MS does not care whether people buy Win 8 "by choice" or not. As long as they buy it.
It is good to be a monopoly.
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Not so much when your empire is crumbling around you and you don't know why.
Windows 7... (Score:5, Informative)
...is actually nice desktop OS for functional productivity. It's like having XP but upgraded under the hood for modern hardware. Mine is tastefully retrograded to the XP UI theme, plus some deeper settings to get rid of some of the annoying defaults regarding the task bar.
Had no issues with it for a number of years now and plan to continue using it for the time being.
Re:Windows 7... (Score:5, Funny)
Mine is tastefully retrograded to the XP UI theme,
"Tasteful" and "XP UI" have, heretofore, never been seen as linked concepts. Typically, the comments are more along the line of 'my eyes bleed' and 'Turn it off!!!".
I do not want to see what your room looks like.
Re:Windows 7... (Score:5, Informative)
He probably means the "classic" theme, which is really the Win2k theme.
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the Silver and Green themes are pretty non-eye-bleeding.
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Correct, the Win2k theme. Should have clarified. The default XP theme is hideous.
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You must be in your 40s or 50s. It's like music tastes, people always prefer the music they listened to in high school and college, anything newer is crap to them and anything older is their parents music.
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Which turns off the compositing window manager and is actually slower on a modern PC, not to mention uglier :p
Someone should make a modern take on the Win2k interface which still uses DWM.
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you should try the win7 task bar.. I thought pinning things would be inferior to quick launch, but after upgrading I find I much prefer the pinning option, because they also added hotkeys for the items in the task bar.
windows + number will switch to the first ten items (or cycle through its group, if several instances are running and grouped), and it will open a new one if there isn't already one running. shift + windows + number will start a new one if there IS one already running.
I haven't been using 7
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Most corporations have pretty much migrated to Windows 7, not only because of the end of life support issue but also Windows 7 can handle large amounts of RAM, which makes it very useful running multiple corporate custom apps.
In my opinion, Windows 7 is probably the best version of Windows ever released: stable, fast, and most importantly, the user interface is familiar enough that anyone who's used Windows 95 or later can master Windows 7 fairly quickly.
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So you disabled instant search, aero snap, and aero peak?
Then why leave XP? Without these win 7 is XP but with 300% more bloat?!
NT versions (Score:3)
Win XP (Score:3, Informative)
Windows XP is a great OS. I'm still using it here and boy, my system is very stable and fast.
Our experience with XP to Win8 (Score:4, Interesting)
We're finally getting around to having a bunch of XP boxes replaced with new ones, simply because they're old and a hardware failure in one of them triggered the decision to do pretty much all.
We looked at getting Win7 machines - or at least getting Win7 installed onto the machines as part of an agreement - but in the end, it just wasn't worth it. More than half our staff already has Win8 at home and are perfectly comfortable with it, and once you get past the start screen, Win8 is, for our purposes, practically the same as Win7.
I do say 'once you get past the start screen', but we're actually seeing uptake in using it. We tried a few 3rd party start menu offerings (most of them are crap, from not letting you modify it through not even listing all of the installed software that you would see listed if it were a proper start menu), eventually settling on one.. only to realize that most of the staff felt perfectly comfortable with either A. going to the pinned items on the task bar, or B. typing the name of the program from the start screen (we haven't bothered with tiles for most things, and removed almost all of the defaults... if they want to know the weather, they can listen to the forecast every half an hour on the radio, or hunt down the app in 'all apps').
While the future direction of Win8 may be something to worry about (more and more store-centric, marginalizing the desktop, etc.), the future of Win7 isn't all roses either. Given that Win8 at least will enjoy support far past Win7, well, the choice was a lot easier than we anticipated.
Our biggest struggle has actually been with outdated software. 16bit software just won't run on Win8 (64bit - can be enabled on 32bit, but that's just another wall waiting to be hit), and while our admin would be comfortable with installing a VM to keep these going, we're just biting the bullet and converting legacy files to formats used by more modern software, finding alternatives for those applications that we do still actively use, and keeping two machines around for everything else; one running with a VNC, and the other in storage 'just in case'.
Re:Our experience with XP to Win8 (Score:5, Informative)
> We looked at getting Win7 machines - or at least getting Win7 installed onto the machines as part of an agreement - but in the end, it just wasn't worth it. More than half our staff already has Win8 at home and are perfectly comfortable with it, and once you get past the start screen, Win8 is, for our purposes, practically the same as Win7.
Um, no, it really isn't. It must be a relatively small company. We have well over 10,000 users, the great majority of whom are not computer geeks, and there's no way in hell a large company would make a jump like that, unless they were in the business of developing for Windows 8.
What OS incoming hardware has pre-installed makes absolutely no difference. It is always re-imaged with the company's copy of the OS the company has standardized upon, with the company's blessed settings and applications. No company in their right mind buys PCs and runs whatever is already on them. Among other issues, that's a serious security vector.
And so, for years we bought PCs loaded with Vista and reimaged them with our copy of XP. Now we're taking PCs and laptops loaded with whatever (Win8, say) and reloading them with our blessed copy of Win7. That's the way any large company does it who doesn't want to experience a widespread IT nightmare.
So no, unless you're a relatively small company populated with mostly computer geeks, I'm not buying it.
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... One of our customers has over 50k desktops, a business in the hospitality industry ... going straight to Windows 8 next year, in both corp offices and individual locations around the globe.
Contrary to what you think, the world doesn't revolve around you or your narrow view of the world.
Jumping to 7 rather than 8 just shows you're afraid of change. When 99% of your employees spend all day in a 1 or 2 apps that are full screen, and you treat a machine like a utility rather than your lover, the change do
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> ... One of our customers has over 50k desktops, a business in the hospitality industry ... going straight to Windows 8 next year, in both corp offices and individual locations around the globe.
That's corporate suicide, and you know it.
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> I can well understand a company of 10,000 having more reservations. On the other hand, if you have a blessed copy of Win7, why don't you have a blessed copy of Win8 (yet)? What is actually holding things back?
Because nobody wants it. Because there is no overriding reason to do so. Because a smart company doesn't create churn in the organization just for the hell of it. Because regular non-geek users like stability in their work environment. Because nobody in their right mind adopts the first releas
big enterprise sites are loaded with in house tool (Score:2)
big enterprise sites are loaded with in house tools and all kinds of other stuff that makes changing OS hard
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How do you manage to install Metro apps? The store requires a Microsoft ID even for free apps. Does the company assign Microsoft IDs to everyone?
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Our biggest struggle has actually been with outdated software. 16bit software just won't run on Win8 (64bit - can be enabled on 32bit, but that's just another wall waiting to be hit), and while our admin would be comfortable with installing a VM to keep these going, we're just biting the bullet and converting legacy files to formats used by more modern software, finding alternatives for those applications that we do still actively use, and keeping two machines around for everything else; one running with a VNC, and the other in storage 'just in case'.
Run VirtualBox on a machine and setup the appropriate guest OS to run your software. Enable remote display in VirtualBox for your newly created guest OS. Now anyone can connect using RDP or VPN - whichever you decide to host. I recommend RDP because the Windows clients will already have client software installed.
This is easier than setting up VM software on every computer. It also removes any restrictions governing which computer you can use to host the VM. And finally, it makes creating backups of
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Seriously, that's not how corporations do things. Which is why Cobol written in the seventies is still in use.
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"That's not how corporations do things" was proven wrong when loads of people started doing a good bit of their daily work on iPads. Even where that is still true it is only true in a particular subset of that organization.
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How could this software have been moved "to 64-bit 10 years ago"??? This scenario happens more often than you'd like to think in the business world...
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You know how I know you're lying?...
More than half our staff already has Win8 at home
Yeah, what are the chances that the entire Win8 user base works for one company?
Um, on second thought, that's likely to be true...
---- waves hand ---- (Score:3)
Yeah. The company I worked for started migrating to Windows 7 earlier this year. We're maybe 30% there. We're going to skip 8.whatever and see what's available when 7 nears end of life.
Corporations that are not themselves in the computer business tend to be a bit conservative about OS upgrades.
Will that make NSA Happy ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Migrated my company from XP in 2008 (Score:3, Interesting)
To Linux. We have been 100% Linux since then - not a single Microsoft machine in the entire operation. And yes, we do get threatening letters from the BSA every year...
pfft... nothing to do with windows 8 (Score:2)
Contrary to what some believe, the enterprise is not stupid. If XP performs the functions required (and for many, it does) and is supported for security fixes (it currently is) and there is no compelling financial reason to encourage migration to another platform, guess what? The platform stays.
Nobody wants W8 (Score:2)
XP on VMs (Score:2)
Why is nearly everyone defending an insecure OS? (Score:2)
I find it very interesting to read so many people here defending XP in light of its security weaknesses. We're talking about an OS that has a horrible security model out of the box and encourages applications to be designed to run with full admin privileges. If you are a developer stuck on XP and you haven't updated your software to work properly with the newer security model introduced in Vista, well shame on you. You've had way more than enough time... 7 years to be exact.
XP is the "odd one out" now, with
Both of the users who migrate to 8.1... (Score:3)
are going to be very disappointed.
Windows 8.1 (a.k.a. Windows Me two) (Score:3)
I've had the distinct lack of pleasure working with the Windows 8.1 RTM for the past two days. Virtually none of our apps installed correctly the first time, including Visual studio 2010. At one point, a large "help" dialog appeared telling me to swipe in from the left hand side. I couldn't get rid of this thing for love or money. Did I mention it covers about 1/4 of the screen and that you basically have to reboot to get rid of it?
To state the blindingly obvious, interface changes without any significant feature changes are not a value add, they're a value subtract. It doesn't matter if it's the Windows GUI, ASP.net or Powershell.
Got Microsoft stock? Sell.
Re:Windows XP?? (Score:5, Informative)
people still use Windows XP? It is 2013! Don't tell me they are still running Pentium 3 computers at 900 MHz. My university uses Windows 8 and Dual Core processers at 2.6 GHz. Just saying.
You should try running XP on a recent system sometime; it's very zippy, and with all the patches applied, quite stable.
Plus, it virtualizes well with a low memory footprint.
Re:Windows XP?? (Score:5, Informative)
And?
The attitude you are showing is that of a toy fan, not a professional.
There are still large numbers of XP boxes out there doing tasks every day.
They might not be what you'd want for your own workstation, but for running the mass spectrometer or x ray diffraction machines that would take 200K+ each to replace with the modern ones, they work just fine.
I'll guarantee that a lot of the workhorse computers in the laboratories at your university run XP (or maybe even Win 2K, or NT 4).
I maintain those systems for the chemistry department at a major university. Most researchers aren't flush with so much cash they can replace machines that are only a few years old. And, the manufacturers tend not to update their systems without good reason (if it ain't broke, don't break it by trying to fix it).
Just yesterday, I was working on a system with a VESA local bus 486 DX2 running it. Yeah, it's old, but it does certain specialized x-ray diffraction work just fine. We'll be happy to update it as soon as our broke state (or the NSF that's under sequester) coughs up a quarter to a half a million for something that can replace it. i.e. no time soon.
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We have the same issues in my company. An IT guy called the people in the lab "to talk about their lab computers" and upgrading to Win7. He was promptly told to forget about it and crawl back under his stone!
I suspect the old machines will be air-gapped, which is something that will impede productivity somewhat, especially when it comes to apparatuses that produce large volumes of data.
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I meant updating the entire x ray diffraction machine to a new one, not just the computer.
That particular machine is old enough that it needs more operator intervention and maintenance than a new one would. The more modern x ray sources and detectors on a newer one would allow the particular tests this does to be done more quickly. A more capable control system would require less operator time for alignment and setup. (For those who do x ray diff work, it's a rotating anode machine that does our small angle
Re:Windows XP?? (Score:4, Interesting)
I meant updating the entire x ray diffraction machine to a new one, not just the computer.
I always find this alarming about lab equipment. You have something costing $500,000 but is entirely dependent on a $2000 computer. Not only that the "cheap" computer is both likely to break before anything else and be very difficult to replace.
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> It is never easy changing OS versions. But if you are reluctant to the point of fear, nothing would ever change.
It's not a matter of fear. I have one machine running Windows 8 for testing purposes. After a reasonable amount of testing, I don't intend to ever have another machine running Windows 8. This is not fear. This is practicality.
There's no reason to switch. Win7 will be around for a long time, and the longer I use it the longer Microsoft has to fix the next version of their OS.
At work, the