Barefootsies

The mere fact that Microsoft will stop widespread sale of Windows XP at the end of the day has been a topic here and elsewhere for months.

So, rather than rehash things (though you can click here for a recap), I thought I would take a look at the Windows landscape.

The most immediate question is, with Windows XP moving off the stage, just where is Windows Vista?

On the plus side, the newer operating system has sold 140 million copies, according to Microsoft. But, as I've been saying for some time, that is largely a factor of how many people have wanted a new PC in the past 18 months, as opposed to an indicator of pure demand.

However, businesses, which get to choose which operating system they run, have overwhelmingly stuck with XP. Just a tiny fraction of corporate machines are running Vista, with some companies not planning any companywide Vista deployment at all.

Windows XP remains popular with consumers as well. So, if businesses and consumers all like XP, why on earth would Microsoft stop selling it?

There are a couple of reasons. For one, XP is now seven years old. Even with a major security enhancement (XP Service Pack 2), the company benefits from shifting things to the more secure Windows Vista.

It is also critical for Microsoft to build the install base of Vista as quickly as it can. That's because developers won't really start building applications that are Vista-dependent until it occupies a large percentage of machines in active use. Even with 140 million Vista copies sold, there are still extremely few programs that really harness the features of Vista.

After waiting as long as it could, Microsoft has also started talking about what comes after Vista. In an exclusive interview with CNET News.com last month, development head Steven Sinofsky said Windows 7 will use the same drivers as Vista and largely aim to preserve compatibility rather than introduce major changes, as Vista did.

At the "D: All Things Digital" conference, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer showed off one aspect of Windows 7: its ability to use multitouch input to enable the same kinds of gestures found in Apple's iPhone or Microsoft's Surface computer.

Some argue, though, that it is time to stop slapping new paint on top of Windows, instead rebuilding it from the ground up. Although there is an enormous and unmatched number of programs written for the operating system, preserving all those decades of compatibility is a crutch that has made it harder and harder to innovate, or even update the software.

The New York Times posted an interesting piece on this subject over the weekend. It points to a number of projects inside Microsoft suggesting that it, too, is thinking about other operating-system approaches.

They are things that News.com has covered in the past, ranging from Microsoft Research's Singularity project to the slimmed-down MinWin kernel that the Windows team developed but apparently is not using in Windows 7.

The point raised in the Times piece is an important one, though. With Linux-based computers starting to make inroads at the low end, and Apple continuing to gain share at the high end, can Microsoft really afford to do business as usual?

Steve Ballmer has vowed that it will never again be five years between Windows releases. I think it is important to note, though, that even assuming no delays in Windows 7, it will be three years between its release and that of Vista--and that's for a release that doesn't make significant changes under the hood.

It appears to me, anyway, that making major changes to Windows has become an increasingly difficult proposition. Perhaps, at some point, Microsoft will have to consider what Apple has done three times with the Macintosh--make major changes under the hood, and use some sort of compatibility layer to maintain its ties to the past.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-9980550-56.html

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"Would you rather live like a king for a year or like a prince forever?"

tony286

If they fuck up windows 7, I can see this as the start of their downfall.

Evil E

I moved to OS X. Solved the problem.

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A girl once told me "Give me 8 inches and make it HURT".

So, I fucked her twice and hit her with a brick.

crockett

Fuck Vista, I'd download XP from some damn torret before I'd ever put Vista back on my machines.

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Helix

Bingo...any platform other than MS

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stickyfingerz

See ya XP. Prefer Vista very much.

Babaganoosh

No you didn't. You traded one set of problems for another. I tried and I switched back OS X sucks balls.

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Evil E

Talk for yourself, I don't have any problems with OS X and run XP in a VM if I ever need it.

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A girl once told me "Give me 8 inches and make it HURT".

So, I fucked her twice and hit her with a brick.

Babaganoosh

Vista sucks balls too. Frankly I would rather use OS X.

Honestly I would rather choke on my own vomit than use either.

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Babaganoosh

Ahh, so you haven't actually switched to OS X then. You have XP for when you want to get shit done.

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stickyfingerz

I have had next to 0 issues with Vista. There is a Color profile issue with adobe premiere though which causes a few problems, but I got around it fine. Believe me I would be bitching if Vista didn't work as well as it did.

Spunky

Vista has been stable for me,just a matter of a couple years before there isn't any more support for xp

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GatorB

They are still selling it in stores. Seriously how many people still buy XP? The local wal-mart has had the some half dozen copies or so for YEARS.

Barefootsies

That part I believe...

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Enough Said.

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qxm

Vista has been stable here as well......... I had XP installed on this pc and after installing the plethora of apps that I use on a daily basis I got the much hatted BSOD non-stop .... now don't get me wrong, XP worked fine until the BSOD started to fuck my game (btw....I checked the drivers, devices and software that could have fucked things up in XP but couldn't find anything ... ) .......long story short... I moved to vista and problem solved..


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GatorB

Oh they sell that for PCs now. Where at?

See it may the best thing since slice bread but Steve Jobs is going to have to get it through his thick fucking skull some of us will NEVER get an Apple, so does he want some of our money or NONE of it? 25 years later and the motherfucker hasn't learned a god damn thing.

tony286

If they did that they could crush microsoft, especially with the shit they have been coming out with lately. My aunt needed me to set up her printer and wireless for her new dell vista laptop. It had 2 gig of ram and it was sluggish and I didnt like it at all.
Just a FYI, I have been a huge microsoft fan for a long time.I was a beta tester for win98se. Lately they have been fucking up. If the cost for me to switch wasn't so high I would be using a mac.

SomeCreep

Windows Vista = Windows ME.

Same way, those that bought XP were glad that XP came out in time so that they didn't get stuck with ME, so will be those that buy the next Microsoft O/S. They will be glad they didn't get stuck with Vista.

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d-null

agree with you completely

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tony286

I read they are in a rush to get windows 7 out so they are cutting corners on it.

Rochard

People give way too much stock to the operating system.

I must admit when I went to buy my laptop last year, I wanted to stick with XP. However, I decided that I needed to get on board with the times and roll with it. Vista on my laptop was fine.

Vista on my new computer here is slick. Let's face it, most of us are doing some graphic design, some HTML, email, icq, and web browsing. Maybe some video work. I can do all of this on Vista and it runs fine. To date it's never crashed on me, not once.

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kane

The reality is that most people use a computer to email their friends stupid jokes and pictures, to surf for porn and download music. They just buy it. They buy it, often, because it is cheap and they don't care if it has XP, Vista or whatever on it. People that are into computers and work heavily with them have their preferences, but most people don't care. I have a lot of friends that use computers, some of them all day at work and most of them don't know the difference between Vista and XP and they don't care what is on it as long as it works.

eroticsexxx

The Vista haters are either:

1. Techs who are too lazy to read the HCL and/or SCL that Microsoft has freely available on its site or...

2. People who fed into the hype propagated by those in #1

Fact of the matter is that Vista is the most stable and secure end user version of Windows to date. The only difference is that you have to ensure that the hardware that you're using has proper drivers that were written to meet the higher standards that Microsoft implemented (and that any software you use also rises to the occasion).

Techs over the years have gotten lazy and many just loaded Vista onto their boxes without doing their research. Then when they ran into issues because vendors didn't want to invest more time in programming proper Vista drivers, these "techs" screamed bloody murder that Vista was a "piece of crap".

Microsoft can take some of the blame for the overall perception of Vista as well because they should have revealed exactly what they were really doing when they released it...they designed Vista to be a more secure and equivalently stable competitor to Apple's proprietary masterpiece, MAC OS X.

What happened next was a marketing nightmare though, because the companies like Dell, who pushed $399 boxes that couldn't handle Vista's requirements suddenly started trying to force MS' hand in terms of licensing fees (so that they could upgrade their hardware but keep their overall prices low). MS held strong, but Dell did a power play and told consumers that they could "downgrade" to XP, which was basically an open snub of Vista. From there everyone jumped onto the bandwagon blindly. Some techs that I know who had never touched Vista were declaring it useless.

When I did a TV interview on the various flavors of Vista about a month after they came out and gave the OS a B- overall, some techs thought I was mad. I had to defend myself and thus put out the challenge to any tech who followed the HCL and the SCL to let me know if they had any problems. I had quite a few converts, other than my hardcore Linux buddies.

Anyway...I digress. I'm not a Microsoft evangelist or anything but really...don't hate the player...hate the game.

Now excuse me...I have some compiling to do.

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