Windows XP Has Arrived

ruszka writes "CNN has a good article on the release of Windows XP in London and NYC.. The BBC has their own article." I find it amusing that I didn't really even notice until I saw this submission. I know this affects a fair number of users but for the life of me I just don't know why ;)

More cash for useless features

[haplo21112]

Well here we go, Microsoft, says give us more money, to upgrade your OS, cause we have 10,000 new features(that are really enhancements to old ones, aka fixes)...and of course if you don't we are gonna drop support for the old OS anyway so your gonna have to eventually...even now the manuals for supporting 98,ME,2000 are being destroyed at our support centers, why would anyone need those when we have this spiffy new thing.

the XP release date

[nachoworld]

If people were really excited about getting Windows XP (there are quite a few of them), then they would have got their hands on it earlier. eBay had some up for sale. My brother got a copy of XP a little less than a month ago and offered it to me, but I told him to just get the money he could make from an eBay sell (it was about $350 back then).

I think release dates are getting less and less important now in the days of advanced comunication and distribution. Remember those days when people would line up for hundreds of feet Tuesday at midnight for the release of a CD? Those days have been dwindling, and the lines are getting smaller. If one really wants that CD he'll download it before the release date and then take his time getting the CD after it's released. Tower record parties on Newbury Street in Boston are nonexistent anymore. Just 3-4 years ago they were incredible with radio staion vans parked everywhere and hundreds of people croweded around.

Surprisingly, a lot of negative press

[Masem]

Sure, I'm going out tonight to buy XP, but only because my gaming machine is 98, and I'd like a bit more stability in it.

But I've been listening to reports and reading articles, and while the industry seems hyped up about it, most pundents (that are not typical MS fanboys) appear to be believe that for most businesses, already in the Win2000 migration, XP is not a good choice, and for those on home machines, you have to have some oomph in your box to be able to take advantage of it.

Most of these critics think that the stability is a great point, but other aspects, including look, integration of WMP and other programs, and the *amount* of blatent advertizing for MS on the default install is put-offs for them. They definitely feel that the engine behind XP is worthwhile being built on 2000, but they could do without all the glitz.

And many people expect very slow sales of XP. There's no lines-around-the-corner as with 95, but they do expect a modest amount of sales today. But they don't believe that XP is going to be a big economic burst into the market as Microsoft tried to make it out as; again, since most seats of the OS are sold to business, and most appear to be sticking to 2000 until necessary, there's going to be very few sales from that market.

The short story from what I've read: it's great that MS finally has a NT-based, stable OS for the home user, as it's been 5 years that it's been needed, but it appears to carry a lot of extra weight that is unnecessary and possible questionable in light of several legal cases.

Re:A serious question

[reflective recursion]

Better integration with .NET possibly? I read an article yesterday which says something to the effect of Microsoft is their own competition because their old OSes are still selling (and working fine) while they are trying to get new OSes off the shelves.

There is very little incentive, IMO. I don't believe there has been a true incentive to purchase an OS since Win3.1 to Win95. Win98/2k were mostly bug fixes to the product Win95 should have been. Microsoft is making WinXP out to be the generational leap Win3.1 to Win95 was. I don't think it will be the same or their marketting will work the same this time. .NET has no "killer app" right now, and XP brings only flashy graphics to the table really.

The next incentive to purchase a new OS will be applications or hardware. Neither has advanced at all (aside from nVidia vs. ATI). The last "killer app" I know of was Napster, which didn't help the computing industry at all. Will 64-bit hardware provide an incentive in the future? Doubt it. I believe the bottlenecks for advancement are internet bandwidth and software development methods. And the dot-bomb era certainly didn't help by flooding the market with nonsense buzzwords that made even the professionals wonder which end is up on the technology scale (many of whom still believe XML is their magic bullet).

Re:Critical update/patch already out.

[Anonymous Coward]

What happened to 'release early, release often' ??

Or is that just for Red Hat, who has exploits in most CD releases before they're a week old?