Posted on 04/07/2015 10:54:12 AM PDT by dennisw
Intel's recent results suggest a slowdown in firms leaving the ancient OS behind and upgrading to new systems. Why won't they update?
Most interesting detail that emerged from Intel's lackluster first quarter financial results had nothing to do with mobile, the company's white whale. Instead, it concerned something so old that it almost seems laughable in the same week that the very 21st-century Apple Watch dominated headlines. Per ZDNet's own Larry Dignan:
In a statement, Intel said it cut its first quarter outlook because of "weaker than expected demand for business desktop PCs and lower than expected inventory levels across the PC supply chain."
Intel cited for that weaker demand: a slowdown in companies upgrading from Windows XP systems. What's particularly interesting about this is that the move away from the ancient OS helped drive some of Intel's better results in 2014. Read this
What that suggests is a potentially intractable problem for both Intel and Microsoft: businesses that still manage to operate fine, thank you very much, with an operating system that's nearly 15 years old. It's the desktop equivalent of the guy who still uses a flip phone and doesn't care if you have an app that can identify a song on the radio in three seconds or can stream the Super Bowl live on your smartphone.
But it's even worse, actually, because that inertia isn't one guy: It's firms with potentially dozens or hundred of employees that have their productivity disrupted while new systems are installed and training is implemented. Then there's the issue of the need for an updated OS. What does Windows 7 or 8 (or 10) do that compels these stragglersto upgrade?
Microsoft's decision to emphasize its new Start screen over the old desktop when it launched Windows 8 did it no favors,
(Excerpt) Read more at zdnet.com ...
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It’s like a broken record with the “I’m proud to never upgrade people.
No, Microsoft is not obligated to support an 14 year old OS because a group of people have skirted by for years on old software.
No, you aren’t saving money by running old software for you business on them. At some point you will have to buy a new machine, or lack workers that will be able to work efficiently on a machine that still has a floppy drive. Unless you are some hole in the wall shop or are too broke to ever upgrade, you are setting yourself up for major pain.
And no, XP doesn’t represent the pinnacle of OS development just because you like the way it finds files on your PC. At some point XP was new and was the replacement for OSs that people swore were perfect too.
Do people seriously think that the big companies should do nothing with their product just to spare a dwindling number of people the horror of having to upgrade an OS that is itself an upgrade?
But now that Windows 10--coming likely on August 24, 2015 to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the release of Windows 95--goes back to the more familiar Desktop user interface, and that will make it VASTLY easier for Windows 7, Vista and XP users to transition over to.
And on the external hard drive is a reference/clean copy of the XP VM, ready to copy over to the main hard drive if for any reason the main VM gets corrupted, or I want to revert to an earlier time (e.g. before a test install of an application).
Parallels does approximately the same stuff, a little cheaper than VMware.
I don't see any reason why Apple would do anything like that, given that they already have BootCamp. BTW, VMware can also treat the BootCamp partition as a VM during OS-X operation. I don't know if Parallels will do that.
> No, Microsoft is not obligated to support an 14 year old OS because a group of people have skirted by for years on old software
Hell, I think they had every right to pull support after 8 years, if they had come out with a viable replacement OS in time. Vista was not that OS, and Microsoft stepped on their own dong by bringing it out too late and too broken. Mistakes happen.
Had they released something like Win7 in 2004 or 2005, people would have accepted the newer UI and so forth, and today nobody would still be using XP.
So MS screwed up and as a result people kept using XP for many additional years, to the point where they started thinking of it as "The last operating system you'll ever need to buy." Wrong, Bucko.
I keep my cars on the road for at least 10, sometimes 15 years. But roads and traffic patterns don't change nearly as rapidly as computers, software, and networks. A 15 year old car in good shape will work just fine on today's roads. And tomorrow's roads.
Users have to realize that computers and operating systems ain't like cars. Or Maytag washing machines.
They're getting to the point where the hardware is useless after 5 years. Is it any surprise that the operating system becomes obsolete after 5 years too?
Windows 7 is just fine. I have one computer running with 64 bit and an older one with 32 bit. Windows 8 is trash. I think Windows 7 is superior to Windows XP but if it works, then perhaps it is just as well. But I would be leery of the internet.
I think it will be a long time before Windows 7 goes away, if ever. What’s the point?
> They're getting to the point where the hardware is useless after 5 years.
That's contemporary Wintel consumer-grade hardware. It generally starts having hardware issues after about 4 years and gets truly scrogged not long after that.
My experience is that better-grade Wintel machines and Apple hardware last 7-8 years before they start getting weird, in some cases up to 10 years and no failures. Even hard drives, as long as you don't mistreat them.
Understood. My point is that the best thing for an XP captive can be to run an instance of XP under a multitasking arrangement. If XP gets corrupted, you have a clean XP image which can be quickly replicated to replace the corrupted original working copy.But you’d need a Mac - at least a Mac mini - which would run you at least $500 (for $700 you get over twice as much machine as for $500: 2.6 GHz dual core I5, 8 GB RAM, 1T disk). Any Mac can run Windows XP directly under “Boot Camp.” Swordmaker would tell you how it’s done, and the pros and cons. He would recommend “Fusion” I think it’s called, to allow the use of OS X simultaneously with XP on a multitasking basis.
I’ve never done it and I’m not 100% on the details. But if you are left hanging out in the breeze because of lack of support for XP, and fear corruption of your OS, it could be worth considering. Even if Tim Cook is an [expletive deleted]. (other vendors are little if any better in that regard).
I switched my computers to Linux
Um, money shortage? If something is working don’t spend money you don’t have to upgrade?
Later versions of Windows have gotten more bulletproof than XP. But AFAIK nothing is more robust than the multiuser, multitasking OS which is Unix - which is what is under the hood of OS X. So there is an increment of safety involved in interfacing with your modem mostly thru OS X, and minimizing XP's contact with the outside world.
I will update when my internet overlords want me to.
Good question, and I haven't the foggiest idea -- I've never gone for maximum tabification in my browsers.
The last few years' releases of Firefox have gotten kinda porky on memory usage, I bet the max isn't what it used to be, all other thing equal.
I use Firefox 35 on Windows 7 and it has issues just scrolling thru webpages. I blame the add on bits of code that spy on you at the websites and all the ads and video popups that slow the page down. Chrome uses much memory too. IE is near useless on websites with many ads.
I use adblock and flashblock just so I can read a webpage. Without it I would go elsewhere.
The same thing can be done with a Win7 computer and a copy of VMware Player, which is free for personal use and nominal cost for commercial/business use. If the transition to a Mac is daunting, moving up from XP to 7 is a very viable option.
Moreover, if you get Win7 Pro, Enterprise, or Ultimate edition, you can have a copy of XP for free as part of the deal. No extra XP license, no cost for the virtual host software either. It runs on Microsoft Virtual PC, which runs on Win7.
It's nearly as flexible as running a separate copy of XP under VMware or similar, so it's worth considering. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Virtual_PC#Windows_XP_Mode and http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/features/windows-xp-mode
It strips the ads and junk from a complex display page, leaving the article text. Wonderful stuff.
Has she actually tested her apps on Win7 or higher?
There's a good chance they would work. One thing MSFT is famous for is maintaining binary compatibility across upgrades. Many .exe's built for Windows 95 still work on Windows 7 or 8.
Ghostery is good too, it blocks all the nasty little trackers that websites deliver along with what you want to see.
It's not unusual to see anywhere from 10-20 trackers on some websites (e.g. theblaze.com has 17).
I will try Ghostery again but I am worried about blocking sites.
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