The End is Nigh for XP 893
SlinkySausage writes "Computer makers have been told they'll no longer be able to get Windows XP OEM by the end of this year, despite strong ongoing demand for the OS. Analysts and computer makers are wondering if the move is premature given Vista's ongoing performance and compatibility issues. Dell recently said it would reintroduce XP on a range of machines due to customer demand but Microsoft will only allow this until the end of the year."
Downfall (Score:4, Informative)
Is it just me, or is Microsoft shooting themselves in the foot by pushing this new, and somewhat unpopular product into the marketplace?
Re:Will anyone gain anything from this? Not Linux (Score:4, Informative)
Who modded this drivel "Insightful"?
Just about any Linux distro released in the past couple of years has an update tool which will not only patch the OS, but all of the applications as well. All of the additional tools you need to buy to make Windows useful have to be updated separately.
Linux is MUCH simpler than that.
I don't have to go to ANY website to update my current desktop (SLED 10), an icon glows orange in my toolbar, clicking it gives me the option to update.
I work in I.T. as an MS sysadmin.
That explains a lot.
Re:Will anyone gain anything from this? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Will anyone gain anything from this? Not Linux (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Will anyone gain anything from this? (Score:3, Informative)
Then they can choose another distro. There are good "click-n-go" Linux distros that the newcomers can use, every distro shouldn't be forced to cater to the point-and-click people if the don't want to.
Re:Will anyone gain anything from this? Not Linux (Score:3, Informative)
When it brings up the dialog to have you reboot, you can hold Option and right click on the software update icon in the dock and choose Force Quit to postpone the reboot to a later time.
Re:Will anyone gain anything from this? (Score:1, Informative)
Windows 2000 vs Windows XP was a similar move. Many people don't want to upgrade or change OS, so Microsoft stopped officially updating the old version. As I well remember, that was the main reason why they did this.
Note that my grammer usage is from south east England - your results may vary : )
Re:Will anyone gain anything from this? Not Linux (Score:4, Informative)
To resolve this auto-reboot behavior which is a very strange default, given it can cause dataloss, simply (in XP and Vista alike) set the Windows Update client to only auto-download updates, not install them. The problem with forced reboots after a while only happens if the updates have already been installed.
Re:Cram this (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Will anyone gain anything from this? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:This is why my company is starting a move to Li (Score:3, Informative)
Dr. Death strikes again. (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft's business model is to do what hardware manufacturers want. Hardware manufacturers want operating systems that can't run on old computers, so customers will be forced to buy new computers. Sometimes it has seemed to me that Microsoft is not really primarily a software company, but primarily an abuse company that accomplishes abuse through software.
Windows XP was not really stable until Service Pack 2 was released. Before that, Windows XP was full of grief for administrators. Service Pack 2 contained something like 330 documented fixes, if I remember correctly, and I verified that there were fixes that were not documented. Now Microsoft wants people to go through that again??? With a Service Pack 0 release?
Someone said that Microsoft's motto is "The whole world is our beta test site." The entire reason people wanted to migrate away from Windows 98 is that it has an unstable file system, and artificial limits to system resources. Otherwise, many companies would have wanted to stay with their old systems, because employees often run a very limited set of software packages.
Managers in a company that has a virtual monopoly, like Microsoft, may think that the way to make more money is never to release a good product, so that customers will always want more.
Eventually, I think, more and more companies and universities and governments will decide they don't like expensive, stupid, forced upgrade cycles, and will migrate to a managed distribution of Linux like Ubuntu.
The problem with Linux and BSD has always been that developers don't like to document what they have developed. Sometimes user-friendly GUIs and documentation can be 80% of the work, and that work isn't done very well by people who "just want to program".
Linux distributions need a manager like Mark Shuttleworth [markshuttleworth.com] of Ubuntu. Developers don't like to manage their own work, as Mark said he has discovered. The Linux kernel has a manager, Linus Torvalds, and the rest of Linux needs a manager, also.
I have several times offered to help document open source software, but my offer has always been refused. Apparently there is a strong attachment to doing things the old way. Apparently there is a feeling that someone who writes the documentation will get too much credit, even though I did not expect to have my name on what I wrote.
Changing to any new operating system tends to be expensive because of the re-training required. Good top management could help design methods of easing that transition by coordinating the details that tend to be forgotten when no one is really in charge.
Re:Will anyone gain anything from this? Not Linux (Score:3, Informative)
Re:This is why my company is starting a move to Li (Score:1, Informative)
When Microsoft migrated from DOS to Windows, every program and hardware still worked. You could buy newer machines and still work with your business tools and applications.
When Apple migrated from Apple II to MacOs, every program and hardware stopped working.
You had to dump and rebuy everything. The newer machines wouldn't run any of your business tools and applications.
Re:Will anyone gain anything from this? (Score:3, Informative)
Vista went gold and was available in November of 2006. By the end of 2007 it will have been out over a year. I can't recall a time when Microsoft continued to produce the previous version of their operating system for over a year after the new version was released.
But more to the point, Vista has been in development for years. There were betas and technical previews available for almost a year before it was released. If there are companies out there who, by the end of 2007, still do not have compatible software or device drivers then it is simply because of laziness. Either that, or they have no intention of supporting Vista. Either way, the problem is with the third parties, not Microsoft.
I've had Vista up and running on one of my boxes since November, and I just recently bought a new laptop that came with Vista pre-loaded. Honestly, I haven't seen that many compatibility issues. Most applications that I had problems with have been fixed by either a patch or a new release already. There's a few pieces of legacy hardware that don't have driver support yet, but in those cases the manufacturers have stated that they aren't going to release Vista drivers for the hardware. I suppose they prefer that I buy new hardware to replace it, which I probably will...from someone else. But that's more about the manufacturer's greed/laziness than anything else.
As far as the performance issues go, I haven't the slightest idea what they're talking about. Vista runs just fine on all of the systems that I have tried it on. Those systems run the gamut from 2.0 GHz Athlon 64 and Turion 64 systems up to the latest Core 2 Duo systems, with memory ranging from 1 to 3 GB and video cards ranging from integrated ATI and Intel chipsets through nVidia 7000 series add-in boards. Is it slower than XP? Well, in some things it is. I've lost a few FPS on my 3D games. Overall though I can't see a performance difference, and in some areas I think that Vista actually feels faster. The only cases where I have truly seen a performance issue with Vista is on machines that barely meet the minimum specs, i.e., only have 512 MB of RAM. There's nothing new about that, and since most PCs these days (especially with Vista pre-loaded) come with 1GB or more of RAM, that shouldn't be an issue.
I think this will definitely be a good thing for those who wish more people would use Linux on the desktop and possible also laptop market. People like Mark Shuttleworth and his fanboys can start cheering already.
This may be the case, but I doubt it. Most new machines are going to be capable of running Vista just fine. Most new machines will be shipped with Vista pre-loaded. While certain flavors of Linux would be ideal for people looking to upgrade from XP on their older hardware, we're talking about a very small subset of users. Most people buy a PC and run whatever comes installed on it until they get a new PC. The days of widespread consumer adoption of OS upgrades pretty much died after Windows 95. PCs are just too cheap these days. Buying a copy of Vista will cost you almost half of what a new PC would that comes with Vista preloaded.
Re:Will anyone gain anything from this? Not Linux (Score:5, Informative)
I found out when it rebooted near the end of a week long calculation I was making.
Overall, my impression of Vista has been positive -- on the scale for MS Windows releases. It continues MS's unbroken track record of mediocrity. I've encountered some of the problems people have reported on Vista, although in most cases they aren't really a bad as people say. Other problems that people have feared are just figments of their imagination. You can rip CDs to MP3s and copy the files around. At least for now.
But the lesson they haven't learned is illustrated by the automatic reboot: they haven't learned how to stay out of the user's way. They may have copied some of the MacOS eye candy but they haven't copied is the philosophy of leaving the user in charge. Unix based desktops vary greatly in their usability. Some of them can be cluttered, or cryptic. But they always stay out of the user's way. The irony of Windows was all those years where MS supporters sneered at MacOS as being a childish toy, but Windows is the only desktop environment that patronizes its users.
I'd grade Vista as a solid C, where XP got a C, 2000 got a B, NT 4 a D. MS was aiming for a B, improving XPs security the way 2000 improved NT 4's stability, but early signs are not promising in that regard. It is also a bit buggier still than a released operating system should be, but not intolerably so. But unless you have a specific documented concern, for instance if you have an extensive DRM'd video collection you want to play out of your video card, I don't think there is a reason for Windows users to panic because they have to use XP.
The only people who clearly ought to be irritated by this are IT people, for whom it makes a lot of work and expense. If Vista delivers on promises of greater security (questionable yet), then it will have been worth their while.
Re:Will anyone gain anything from this? Not Linux (Score:3, Informative)
That's why the other guy said not to answer it - if you just push it to the side of your screen it can't pop up again since it's already there.. annoying as hell.
Re:Will anyone gain anything from this? Not Linux (Score:3, Informative)
click "Add/remove programs"
select "Macromedia Flash player"
click "OK"
no need for a tutorial even
They're already making it hard to buy... (Score:5, Informative)
What really pisses me off about them dropping the COL program on XP is that the non-profits are generally the ones that can least afford the hardware upgrades to make their existing clients play nice on Vista. On the other hand, it's still cheaper to buy XP even at full price.
Re:Will anyone gain anything from this? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Will anyone gain anything from this? (Score:2, Informative)
Ah well, rabbited on too long
Jeb
http://mathmo.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
Re:Will anyone gain anything from this? (Score:4, Informative)
turn off the automatic updates service (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Will anyone gain anything from this? (Score:2, Informative)
I've spent the past few weekends trying to get it right. The only difference is that my grub errors switched from error 21 and 17, which I eventually fixed by changing some RAID/SATA settings in my BIOS. Even when I eventually got dual boot working, ubuntu loaded up fine, but my original Windows would not boot up at all because it complained about hard drive and main board settings (most likely due to fudging around in my BIOS).
I finally figured out the only configuration that worked for me was to install Windows and Ubuntu on the same drive. This setup worked perfectly and both booted up. Initially, I had them on separate drives. Unfortunately, ubuntu now keeps freezing after a few minutes of use (where only a hard reset will bring my PC back) and I'm at wit's end trying to figure out why (since XP has no issue with lock up).
Ultimately, I've wasted days with no workable solution for dual boot. I decided that I was left with no choice but to reinstall windows and to keep it as a single OS system for now.
On the flip side, the odd thing about XP and Ubuntu is that on my 4-year old laptop (Dell Inspiron 600m), Edgy has been working perfectly for months without any issue, whereas XP would constantly blue screen for years. Funny that.
Re:Will anyone gain anything from this? (Score:3, Informative)
For future reference, might want to try the forums:
http://ubuntuforums.org/ [ubuntuforums.org]
Be sure to include as much information as you possibly can, about hardware, version of Ubuntu, and obviously, the nature of the problem. It also doesn't hurt to point out that you've sought help before and didn't get answered/understand the answer, but do it politely because sometimes people on the internet totally read more bitching than is actually in a post.
Ubuntu video problems? (Score:3, Informative)
If you've already got a box, simply download the LiveCD for your video, plug it in, if it runs, the hardware is compatible. If it doesn't run... you're probably better off trying a different distro liveCD and install whatever distro works best with your box.