Fans protest Microsoft's plan to dump XP

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | February 8, 2008 | Ellen Lee

[my_pointy_head_is_sharp]

Goodbye, Windows XP.

Microsoft, which released its latest operating system, Vista, last year, plans to stop selling Windows XP in stores and through its PC partners on June 30.

[Resolute Conservative]

I am happy for me too :)

[EDINVA]

I hear Vista’s nearly as good as ME

[PugetSoundSoldier]

Yes. No one wants Vista. Everyone hates Microsoft. That's why they made over $2 BILLION in profits EVERY MONTH last quarter. Setting new revenue and profits records... Darn them they just can't sell a thing. Terrible to see them only make $24 BILLION dollars in profit this year, what with the absolute paucity of Vista sales...

[RandallFlagg]

Someone oughta make a gif animation of the scene in Transformers when Sam jams the Allspark into Megatron.

But replace the Allspark with a Vista disc.

[cinives]

I don’t think many are so-called FANS of XP - we use it because it’s head and shoulders better than Vista.

I know a lot of companies that will go all Linux if Microsoft gets rid of XP.

[cinives]

What is the RPM for the Cisco client ? That and Quickbooks (used by my accountant) are the only things still keeping me on Microsoft.

[dr_who_2]

www.winehq.org

www.reactos.com

The beauty of adopting the above for support of legacy Windoze apps is that it further encourages Microsoft to abandon "embrace and extend" in favor of being the world's biggest patent troll.

[BurbankKarl]

You and 110 million other users

>>>Been running Vista since March ‘07 - not one problem!

[Pit1]

My next machine is an Apple. Done with the pc crap and os fixes every day.

[D-fendr]

It’s hard to guage VIsta sales accurately.

[TADSLOS]

Well, this strategy works so well with the Republican Party and McCain, I guess they thought "Why not?"

LOL! True. Go with a proven model.

[dan1123]

The problem is, can anybody at MS write code anymore?

I'm beginning to wonder, and I personally know a few programmers at Microsoft. I think the real problem is business decisions rather than programming decisions though. Legacy code, backward compatibility, Microsoft's own lax nature about standing by its own API's. I remember when Office used to patch the kernel upon install. There was an article a while back about Microsoft having hundreds of different implementations of the same string class internally.

When I worked at Apple I remember one thing that impressed me more than anything else was how clean the API was in comparison to Windows, and how respected it was internally. I really think that Microsoft needs to go back to the drawing board and create an elegant API and kernel. If they don't have someone up to the task there now, they surely can afford to hire one.

[RBranha]

Have you ever used Ubuntu? I was a die-hard Fedora guy until about 8 months ago when I switched to Ubuntu after an all-nighter trying to get some piece of software installed on Fedora. I haven’t looked back.

Do you run MythTV?

[y6162]

XP is the last Microsoft product I buy. Hello Red Hat.

[PugetSoundSoldier]

It’s not hard to gauge $2 billion a month in profit, though...

Complain as we might, Microsoft DOES do some things right - it’s hard to keep setting records in profit quarter-after-quarter for a few decades unless you’re doing something that people want to buy...

DISCLOSURE: I do some part-time (5-10 hours/week) consulting at the Redmond campus, in a technical field. The engineers there are top notch. I often disagree (and verbally so) with management and business direction, but then again they manage to make over $46,000 in profit per minute, so maybe they do know a thing or two about their business and market space.

[The Cajun]

Silly question...... What are the problems with IE7? Was thinking about downloading it.

[PugetSoundSoldier]

That API mess they have is the curse AND blessing of the company. Consider that nearly all applications written for Windows 3.1 - 15 YEARS OLD - still pretty much run on the OS. Can’t do that with any other OS out there...

The nature of the beast is that backwards compatibility means business application compatibility and developer compatibility. Breaking that eliminates the strongest thing they have going - a stable platform and stable supply of developers.

You can be a developer who stopped learning the Windows API in 1995 and still program effectively for the platform!

[stylin19a]

Vista can run non-certified apps in XP Sp2 mode.
It saved me from having to buy a new version of QuickBooks Pro

[LibertyRocks]

Just got a new computer this week — Windows Vista... So far so good. *Crossing fingers* Of course, it’s got upgraded processor, graphics, memory, etc... etc... I wouldn’t even try to run Vista with integrated graphics and hope to get any performance at all.

[zeugma]

(Newt^H^H^H^HTancredo^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HFred^H^H^H^HRomney^H^H^H^H^H^HRon Paul '08)

You know, this would be more effective...

Newt^wTancredo^wFred^wRomney^wRon Paul '08

Of course, that assumes you're using a real editor like 'vi'.

;-)