Microsoft gives XP another four months to live Microsoft just can't quit you, Windows XP. The final shipment date of Microsoft's aged, yet distinctively non-Vista operating system has been extended yet again. System builders can now obtain Windows XP until May 30, 2009. Windows XP was originally scheduled for OEM extinction on January 31, 2009. That deadline was given …
> .. that XP had nearly excatly the same sort of comments when it was released.
And then in 2006 MS showed that they can do better and released WinFLP
(but only for those who weren't as clueless as an average consumer):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Fundamentals
[min: 233 MHz/64 MB/610 MB; rec: 300 MHz/128 MB/1 GB]
Weeeeeelll.... not strictly speaking true. There isnt a chance in hell that I'll ever get Vista working on my old pc (Athlon1800, 512mb ram, onboard graphics with no 3d)... I'd even been avoiding upgrading my linux distro as I dont like to bother learning new OS's.
So from SuSe 9.1 (and yes, back in the heady days of SuSe!) I tried Ubuntu 8.10. Didnt like it. It did however, enable me to burn a CD for the latest OpenSuSe build, dated October 2008. I booted the live CD, clicked install, and was immediately presented with a box saying 'You have less than 1GB of Ram, This install might not work correctly. Blind faith, and knowledge that I had Ubuntu 8.10 as a fallback, I clicked ok.
This distro is bang up to date, looking pretty swish, and will install on a 5 year old machine. I'm not as fond of it was I was of SuSe, but I'll live. Especially now that some of the old bugs have gone :)
Vista is for fools - who would pay money for an OS?! an OS is part of the computer - not really software, as you cant run any software without an OS... computers have always come bundled with OS's, but the free ones have only become simple enough for home users recently... your time is coming MS!
Stuff i use at home: Adobe Premiere in conjunction with a Matrox RTx2 for video editing .
Various microcontroller devtools that use USB based JTAG probes. None of those work right (under wine). Altera Quartus.
Stuff i use professionally: Various high end cad software. Some variants are flavor x of linux only, others are flavor y only. Others are windows only. I would need at least 3 different Os's to keep everything running. Same software is all available for, and runs happily on win XP. And the really high end stuff i use is solaris-only anyway. Simply run an xterm on win Xp.
There is a wildgrow of linux distros these days. It's almost monty pythons twit race... They all take off in different directions. It is too much hassle to keep everything running and in working order. The computer is a tool for me , just like a screwdriver and a soldering iron is. some people like making their own screwdrivers and soldering irons, or making adapters to fit a tip from manufacturer x on an iron from y. That's all fine. I am not interested. I just buy the tool i need. Right now , linux and MacOs have nothing to offer that i can use. ( Yes, i have 2 linux boxes. One is a lamp server to run a documentation wiki. Fine. works flawless. The other one is the 'toy' machine. But for everyday productive usage ? sorry its XP.. ( And maybe in the future win7. Vista i am not interested in. I have a lpatop with Vista and a media centre running vista. and that is fine. But there is too much annoyances in vista like dimming screens every time some stupid program wants to poll for an update.
I wish they would make a univeral updating mechanism that every program has to adhere to. A program would simply enter the URL where the ehceck has to be done. A central updater can then go and grab self deploying updaters from those URL's. There would be 1 little icon in the system tray 'there are updates available'. When you click it opens a box that show the list of avaialble updates. Like the updater in ubuntu. That is actually a useful tool.
I have said this again and again, XP on my gaming system was unstable as all hell. Now I work in tech and see the short comings with Vista but I will agree with the poster who said it seems like alot of peoples S key gets remapped to the $ (myself included sometimes) but Vista on my gaming rig is rock solid stable. For the one with the "vid card frying itself" post wtf were you trying to do with it? I run a GTX 280 that never climbs over 65 cel. On the driver issues, those who mentioned it, do you really expect MS to be responsible for other companies products? Drivers are the problem of the hardware manufactures (ie: Creative and so on). So why do you blame MS for these problems? Get a life for that comment. I am not trying to defend MS here but please people, take a moment to look at the arguements and then look back in time to XP, 2000, 98 launch and realize this has happened ALOT. Old arguements, new reason.
/sighs flames cause I know im going to get them
Can't copy network files fast because the network stack is throttled so not to break up audio playback. Sounds like driver and kernel bloat to me. XP can do audio quite well and is not throttled, thank you.
What MS needs to do for Win 7 is release an XP level for business without all the disk indexing and other services that cause slow operation. They had to disable all this junk for Server 2008 because MS must not let the new server run slow like Vista.
And I'm still waiting for Matrox MIL 9 with Vista drivers. Many large companies are just now releasing official Vista drivers. The driver SDK model changed from XP to add to the delays. Whole new TCP stack.
Good news is Linux will soon run standard GigE machine vision cameras (see http://www.baslerweb.com/beitraege/news_en_85526.html).
I was part of the Vista rollout team for one of the world's largest corporations - the small team whose job it was to evaluate and implement the thing. We had some of Redmond's finest in our midst, and there are features in Vista that are appealing to large corporates.
However, at home I thought I'd give it a bash - as a genuine bog standard user.
After 1 month (of a trial Ultimate version), I decided to move almost all my home desktop operations to my neglected Mac Mini. For the cost of one Ultimate license - I had the hardware *and* OS. That was 2 years ago, not looked back since! I do use XP on a laptop for some things - but my main desktop is an almost silent 4 yr old itty bitty white box with PowerPC technology, 512MB RAM and does a great job.
So, well done Redmond - Vista"switched" me to Mac!
I am self empoyed and my job is to fix the publics screwed up computers which isnt too bad on computers running XP, Everything is nice and quick and things go as I expect them to 99% of the time. With Vista I find myself taking 20 minutes to do simple tasks that would take only 3 minutes with XP and with Vista the chances of unexlained failures/events are quite high. And how many times has this though gone through my head "Has it locked up or is it just going slow again". I find it hard to hide my frustration from customers when working with Vista.
As for new build computers I only sell about 20 a year to customers that I know and trust from doing previous work. If the option of buying and installing XP is removed I will simply stop selling computers as unlike the big retail stores I have provide proper support to the customers I sell to. I cant just say "Yeh, Vista does that sometimes, Just run your full system recovery. No it wont erase all your photos, Trust me."
Fortunately I should be making an exit from working with computers late next year :)
It took me years to switch from 98SE to XP...
In the end my SE install just died and I upgraded..
I have grown accustom to XP and cant see any logic in "upgrading" to vista, I think untill such a time that XP stops running the software i want I wont be changing...
In truth i really cant see a point in reinventing the OS I mean it XP does everything you need and seeing as 90% of ppl either play games or surf the web how is vista going to make that experience any different...
Someone should just write a vista looking shell for XP, I bet it would be faster than running vista itsself and I bet 90% of people could not tell that it was XP.
All this time and money for some bells and whistles seams a big waste to me.
I used to post every few months about running a dual-core, 2gig of RAM laptop, and being unable to play video on VISTA without it cutting up.
This xmas, daddy got a new laptop (£400 DELL, 3gig RAM, dual core, 250Gig HD); and yes, video still does NOT play reliably.
XP discs out you come ... why has nobody been executed at M$?
" .... I just want to do what I could do 5 years ago "
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