Posted on 06/04/2008 8:01:01 AM PDT by Mike Fieschko
Microsoft has given another lease of life to Windows XP only days before PC makers have to stop selling it.
Windows XP reaches its end of life on 30 June but Microsoft has now said it can continue being sold until June 2010 but only on cheap desktops.
The decision follows one made in April to extend the life of XP on low cost laptops until the same date.
It comes as Dell, HP and Lenovo exploit loopholes in Microsoft's licensing terms to keep putting XP on machines.
Growing market
In an announcement at the Computex trade show in Taiwan, Microsoft said the decision was prompted by customers asking for the software to be put on low cost desktops.
Industry experts believe the decision is also motivated by the fact that low cost machines cannot run Windows Vista - the newest version of the operating system.
They also say that many of the low cost laptops run Linux - an open source rival to Microsoft's operating system.
Low cost laptops, such as the Asus Eee PC, have proved hugely popular. Research firm IDC predicts that sales of ultra low-cost notebooks, will reach nine million units in 2012.
The extension Microsoft granted to XP for these low cost laptops, or netbooks, covered machines that have no more than 1GB of RAM; a hard drive up to 80GB in size; a processor running no faster than 1GHz; a screen no larger than 10.2in (25cm) and no touch screen.
So far Microsoft has laid down no specifications for the low cost desktops, called nettops, but it said it was working with 20 PC makers on these machines.
The terms of Microsoft's licensing arrangements with PC makers dictate that they must stop offering XP as an option on new machines after 30 June.
Many PC makers have flouted this cut off by shipping machines running certain versions of Vista with a "downgrade license" that lets customers revert to the older operating system.
LOL.
The next service pack will contain a self-destruct sequence for all XP Operating Systems that will cause them to cease functioning after 2010.
Oh, the disloyalty of Microsoft customers, not upgrading to Vista the way they were told to. Lousy ingrates, after MS gave them flying children and forests sprouting in their living rooms.
Tech PING!
For whom .. users or MS or Dell?
Apple Breaks 20 per cent barrier in the US and ten per cent barrier worldwide
Apple's market share in the US has broken the 20 per cent market for the first time in its history........
http://www.pcretailmag.com/news/29628/Mac-market-share-on-the-rise-globally
Be happy to get a fancy, flying new laptop, if MS would be happy to fund it. Just put Ubuntu on my Dell Inspiron B130. Does everything I need to do.
That’s one way to make cheap desktops expensive. You know, cause these will be the only Windows machines anyone wants.
I bought a Toshiba Laptop last October with Vista installed. I absolutely hate it. I am waiting for my warranty to expire, and then am taking it in and getting XP put on it.
The damn thing will not run my camera software, or much else for that matter. It is outta here.
LilyBean
Got tired of dragging my old laptop in and out of my office, so last week I bought a new Vista laptop that I leave at home or take on the road. The old laptop runs great and has XP, Office 97, etc. I got the new Office suite on my new laptop.
Let me tell you........... I’ve had every problem from printer drivers to file problems between the older and newer Office programs. I’m not a happy camper.
Vista is like Windows ME. Avoid it and wait for it to be replaced.
Just switch to Linux and avoid all the MS angst. Problems solved.
I am in no hurry to switch to Vista. Even though I had my custom computer built with a 64 bit processor and higher end video card, I figure I would need to triple the amount of RAM and probably upgrade to an even better video card if I were to seriously look at running Vista. The rest of the family has gone to Mac.
I have an HP Pavilion Media Center with an AMD processor. FYI, when HP computers with AMD processors download XP SP3, there are reboot issues and/or your system crashes. When you go to the HP website to download,the HP utility patch to correct this problem (before installing SP3), you get an error message when you click the download button. I’ve sent almost a week exchanging emails with HP Tech Support. (1) HP finally acknowledged that their patch isn’t working; (2) they don’t know when they will have one that works; (3) they know their customers are angry (4) they advised me to set a system restore point; (5) they advised me to turn off automatic updates so that SP3 doesn’t automatically download; (6) I’ve now been through 6 or more people at HP before I found one that didn’t want to charge me for Tech Support and before they understood that I was major pissed!!! BTW, I recommend calling Palo Alto Corporate so they get the message.
A very wise decision for future operating systems would be to have them set up with a complex ala carte system.
That is, for Microsoft to *give away* disks that only connect the user with the Microsoft website with an interface and a complex system diagnosis.
Users can then select just what they want, when they want, direct from Microsoft, paying as they go. Users are provided a complex listing of features, with clear dependencies, and experts “out there” can easily publish popular configurations for things like home or business use and gaming.
Importantly, every bit of non-MS software then installed would have to automatically check with Microsoft to insure that it had all the OS support software it needed.
This could also mean that junk software that Windows installed that most consumers *don’t* want, like checking content for copyright licenses, would be right out. If users wanted that, fine. Microsoft could even include it for free, if they really want to kiss up to their corporate buddies. But don’t force it on people.
Otherwise, a user’s purchase would look something like a price list, so they could tell to a penny how much their OS would cost. Every time they changed their system, it would mean another connection to Microsoft, and possibly a small fee.
The advantages to both Microsoft and Users would be enormous. To start with, there would be frequent user verification, that would make pirating of MS products much more difficult. Microsoft could radically reduce the cost of its provision of OS disks, except to specialized users.
Every part of the OS could be kept up to date with both free and retail system upgrades. Microsoft could have a desktop icon that would include the price list. By being ala carte, even a new OS kernel could be as cheap as $75., because you would be getting just that.
Optimum users could have a continual Windows upgrade happening once each week, for just a few dollars. A system mirror could even be maintained by Microsoft for a fee. So if you had a crash, or needed to upgrade your hard drive, your executable and data files would be recoverable by download.
Finally, Apple computers have long had the advantage of an OS chip on their motherboard. If PC hardware was modified to have an OS chip as well, heavy encryption could be used so that only Microsoft could write to the chip via download, with accessory data only on the hard drive.
Not so much for the general computer user. I have been playing with the idea of switching to Linux on my home system, but so far, I am not pleased with the ease-of-use. I have been a computer support professional for 10 years, and I am currently an information security manager for a large school district. It still took me 3 days to troubleshoot why my Ubuntu 8.04 install would not recognize my monitor or my nVidia 8600GT video card. If I had that much trouble, how is a casual user going to handle it?
I am also looking at other distros, but Fedora 9 wouldn't even install due to the video driver problem, and I wasn't impressed with OpenSUSE 10.3 from my testing using the live CD. I have also discovered that none of the distros will allow me to run 4 GB of RAM if I am using an nVidia or ATI card, even though I am running the 64-bit versions.
I haven't completely given up yet, but it would be a strong overstatement to say that all problems are solved by switching to Linux...
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