Windows XP to be phased out by year's end despite customer demand

APC Magazine ^ | 12 April 2007 | Angus Kidman

[D Rider]

Thats a Java program, right?. OSX could use a little work in the Java functionality area, I agree. Have you tried the latest build on OSX 10.4?

[GingisK]

both XP and Vista

My point really is that we don't need Vista. Microsoft really aught to quit gold-digging and make what they have work.

[antiRepublicrat]

I’m posting this from a laptop running Vista Ultimate with Aero turned on with only 512Mb RAM and shared video. My other laptop has 2Gb RAM and a newer processor and I really can’t tell much difference.

You can say it all you want, it's still not believable. You're not even up to the minimum RAM, having at most 448 MB (512 - minimum graphics memory for Aero). You have to be swapping like crazy on that slow laptop hard drive. 2 GB RAM means relatively little swapping, BIG difference.

This is no different than all the bellyaching we saw when XP came out about how horrible it was that Windows 98 and 2000 were being replaced since XP was only “eye candy”.

I never understood that about XP either, as there are major under the hood improvements, although pre-SP1 stability wasn't as good as 2K. Some people just resist change (I saw resistance to going to Win95 from 3.1), and I bet a good portion of Vista criticism is by such people. But other criticism is perfectly valid.

Another thing I didn't understand about XP was Microsoft's decision to consult Crayola on the color scheme. I ran XP without themes (looks like 2K) until skinning software got good. At least this time Microsoft just tried to copy Apple (although not too well).

[MarkL]

Where I work, the "corporate desktop" is still Windows 2000 Professional. Although in many cases, laptops have been forced to run WinXP, due to driver issues. And about 150 out of 180 or so servers are still Windows 2000 (the rest are Windows 2003, and 1 NetWare 6 box!)

Mark

[MarkL]

Yes but 6 months to a year is too short... Two years is the minimum acceptable lapse..

MS isn't going to stop supporting XP at that point. MS will continue to support XP for years... They're only going to stop licensing new copies of the OEM version to manufacturers. Meaning that manufacturers won't be able to sell new computers with XP any more, although I would imagine that you could still get a downgrade license and activation key from MS, although you probably won't be able to get the media from them.

Mark

[MarkL]

Want to borrow my old Windows 98 installation disk?

Just as a goof, about 9 years ago, I installed MS DOS 6.0 and Windows 3.1 on a Compaq DeskPro P3 800MHz system that I had laying around. Boy was it fast!

Mark

[nutmeg]

Check out #70

[Southack]

"As far as Vista goes, two words, encrypted bus. NEVER will I use vista."

Encrypted bus...a completely useless CPU resource hog.

...but that's OK because Vista won't run your proprietary software, won't run your ACT accounting shelfware, and won't do your FedEx shipping (tough luck on your printer drivers, video drivers, etc., too).

[djf]

I’m running W2K SP4 and have been fairly happy with it.

[papasmurf]

Vista is a botched abortion.

Even MS Office 2007 has been dummed down to the point of looking, and feeling, like a toy game interface for children.

:O)

P

[papasmurf]

If I had the bucks, I'd put it into a commercial distro of Ubuntu. Hire some world class programmers, write the drivers, and market a Window breaker.

Ubuntu is already very close.

:O)

P

[papasmurf]

I have an old HP quad proc. running win 3.12 for workgoups. You talk about blazing! LOL

:O)

P

[antiRepublicrat]

My point really is that we don't need Vista. Microsoft really aught to quit gold-digging and make what they have work.

The opposite is one of my criticisms of Vista. Microsoft didn't need Vista, they needed something better. The NT architecture is very outdated and in need of replacement, not overhaul or attempts to make it "work." Can you imagine what OS X would be like today if Apple had just tried to improve OS 9 instead of replacing it?

[antiRepublicrat]

And about 150 out of 180 or so servers are still Windows 2000

Unless you have one of the known upgrade quirks, like heavy use of server side include on your Web sites, I'd really suggest going to 2003. I have to use a Win2K server sometimes and it's annoying and frustrating in comparison. Sometimes the following Microsoft product is actually much better than the previous.

[N3WBI3]

Mark, Thanks for the well worded post. My point is ‘how robust is the support going to be’. Once a product enters ‘extended support’ lan it means no more bug fixes or enhancements jut security patches as microsoft deems needed. It means the next IE, Media Players, .... Wont be ported to XP.

Now I have been corrected and told MS plans to maintain Full support for the next couple of years (though I am not really sure) this is fine and I think, that being the case, MS is treating its customers fine.

Still I think cutting OEM out of the picture out as early as they are is not ideal.

[rwfromkansas]

Does this mean they will stop SELLING XP completely.....not even offer it in the stores......or that it will only no longer be offered preloaded when you purchase a new computer?

This story was very poorly-written.

[TChris]

I’m posting this from a laptop running Vista Ultimate with Aero turned on with only 512Mb RAM and shared video. My other laptop has 2Gb RAM and a newer processor and I really can’t tell much difference.

From PC Magazine:

Windows Vista: Look Before You Leap
Vista Upgrade Tests

• On the whole, my experience has been positive—on a screamer system. Others have had worse luck, particularly those who skimped on RAM.
• The Intel-integrated GMA 900 graphics and 512MB of system memory just aren't enough for the Aero interface.

PC World:

Our main findings:

• Vista is generally slower than XP, but it's better at multitasking on dual-core PCs.
• Your PC should have 1GB of RAM at the bare minimum.
• Aero won't slow you down if you use a discrete graphics processor and enough memory.
• Apps run slower on the 64-bit version of Vista, but adding RAM closes the gap.

So, GE, my guess is that you don't push your machines very hard, or that 512MB would be pretty noticeable. PC Magazine and PC World are hardly Linux lackeys.

This is no different than all the bellyaching we saw when XP came out about how horrible it was that Windows 98 and 2000 were being replaced since XP was only “eye candy”. History will repeat itself when everyone realizes most of the chicken littles don’t even use Microsoft products themselves and have some other agenda they’re pushing.

Well, compared to 2000, XP is just eye candy. I still run 2000 myself, and I'm quite happy with it. 2000 was a huge improvement in reliability and stability. Everything since has been incremental improvement, polishing and pervasive Microsoft feature-creep.

Windows XP vs Vista test on TomsHardware:

• Windows Vista clearly is not a great new performer when it comes to executing single applications at maximum speed.
• ...professional graphics benchmarking suite SPECviewperf 9.03 suffered heavily from the lack of support for the OpenGL graphics library under Windows Vista. (Simply amazing!)
• We are disappointed that CPU-intensive applications such as video transcoding with XviD (DVD to XviD MPEG4) or the MainConcept H.264 Encoder performed 18% to nearly 24% slower in our standard benchmark scenarios. Both benchmarks finished much quicker under Windows XP. There aren't newer versions available, and we don't see immediate solutions to this issue.
• Vista runs considerably more services and thus has to spend somewhat more resources on itself. Indexing, connectivity and usability don't come for free. (Yup. More and more overhead.)
• There is a lot of CPU performance available today! We've got really fast dual core processors, and even faster quad cores will hit the market by the middle of the year. Even though you will lose application performance by upgrading to Vista, today's hardware is much faster than yesterday's, and tomorrow's processors will clearly leap even further ahead. (Counting on hardware improvements to fix its problems, just as every previous Windows version has.)
• No new Windows release has been able to offer more application performance than its predecessor. (True, and I've hated that every single time.)

When an O/S requires as much RAM to run well as the previous version required in hard disk space to be installed... that's just ridiculous, IMO. MS continues to expand their definition of what "operating system" even means. In doing so, users are forced to pay a steep price in hardware capability and software upgrades to have the privilege of using the latest version of Windows.

I am a Microsoft user, nearly exclusively, and have been since MS DOS 3.3. But I deplore their business practices. I'm a firm believer in capitalism based on honest competition, not dirty dealing and arm-twisting. MS has proven repeatedly that they are not above doing absolutely anything to maintain dominance.

As time goes on, I'm really starting to take longer and longer looks at Linux.

[antiRepublicrat]

Does this mean they will stop SELLING XP completely.....not even offer it in the stores......or that it will only no longer be offered preloaded when you purchase a new computer?

Microsoft will stop licensing XP to OEMs after January 31, 2008.

Microsoft will no longer sell XP through any channel after January 31, 2009.

Microsoft will continue full support for XP until April 14, 2009. After that, Microsoft will only issue security updates, nothing else, unless you're a corporation who has paid for an extended support contract.

Microsoft will discontinue all support for XP after April 8, 2014.

Of course this is all subject to change.

[Teacher317]

This is my 400th thread on FR. WooHoo!!

Congrats!

Dang... while this is my 16,500th post, I've only posted 119 threads. =^(

I'm such an underachiever!

[js1138]

This is horrible. I’m sure you can still buy a Mac with OS 8.1 preloaded.