back to article Microsoft leads from behind on Windows 8

While attending Microsoft's TechEd Australia this week, I've been reminded of the fact that in 2001 I worked for a PR company that did Microsoft's work in Australia. I therefore worked on the periphery of the team that launched Windows XP. One of my most vivid memories from that time is of Microsoft folk telling me Windows XP …

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  1. Spender
    FAIL

    Metro?

    Isn't it TIFKAM now?

  2. Combat Wombat
    Facepalm

    Microsoft will continue to suck...

    for as long as the hairless, brain damaged, sweaty, stupid, gorilla is in charge

    sack Ballmer !

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Microsoft will continue to suck...

      A new level of Internet discussion!

      Did your mother not tell you that it's rude to call people names?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Microsoft will continue to suck...

      Not sack Ballmer, sack Ballmer, Sinofsky and Julie Larson Green. The three idiots.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hmm

    "One of my most vivid memories from that time is of Microsoft folk telling me Windows XP was expected to re-invigorate the PC industry, a statement made without the tiniest quantity of doubt or sense it was in any way preposterous to suggest the software tail could wag the hardware dog."

    XP was just as crashy as it's predecessors so will their new one be any different?

    1. RICHTO
      Mushroom

      Re: Hmm

      XP is rock solid stable and you hardly ever see crashes even in estates of tens of thousands of systems. And when you do, 99% of the time the problem is either faulty RAM, faulty Disk, or a vendor driver.

      I can't quite get where the writer thinks that 90%+ market share is coming from behind?! Surely maintaining a massive lead....

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: rock solid stable

        not here it aint. Hardware used as dual boot with Linux (Mageia2). In a 4 yr time frame, Linux has never crashed, whereas Windows crashes every day or so.

        1. keithpeter Silver badge
          Happy

          Re: rock solid stable

          I dragged a 15 inch RM badged laptop with XP on it around for a couple of years, plugging it into all kinds of projectors &c and popping in my USB mobile internet dongle in all kinds of venues. Can't remember any crashes. It was locked down and we had a restricted range of Proper Software. Updates back at base on a wired connection.

          No crashes with CentOS on the PC or Ubuntu on the (smallish light) Thinkpad either, similar use cases.

          Aren't most OSes reasonable these days?

      2. Don Mitchell

        Re: Hmm

        I hear nothing but horror stories about the fragility of Linux from my friends at Amazon. On my workstation PC with ECC memory, neither XP nor Win7 has ever blue screened. I reboot my system a couple times a month, usually just when an update requires it (and yes I know Linux likes to hot-slide DLLs into a running system without rebooting, but don't assume that is a safe practice). There was a study done about ten years ago that showed that 50% of windows crashes were caused by parity errors in memory hardware. Does Linux just ignore or not detect memory errors?

        XP was a version of NT, not a version of Windows 9x like ME. It was meant to merge all the functionality of NT and 9x into one system, and the technical challenge was that 9x was very permissive with apps and games. XP had to be "apps compatable", while maintaining the safer, more formal system interface of NT.

    2. ArmanX
      Pirate

      Re: Hmm

      To be fair, compared to the previous generation (Windows ME) XP was rock-stable. And compared to the nightmare of compatibility that was Windows 2000, XP was incredibly open and inviting.

      Of course, if you were one of those who pirated it, installed a hundred toolbars, and only used IE... there was a reason your OS was crashing, and it wasn't the OS's fault. Yarrr, me hearties!

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

      2. h4rm0ny

        Re: Hmm

        If you bought after SP1 was released, I think you were alright with XP. I think a lot of people had pain if they bought in before then. I personally had recently bought a laptop with WIndows ME on it, and thus began my over a decade of using Linux as my primary OS.

    3. robin thakur 1
      FAIL

      Re: Hmm

      Windows 8 so far crashes more than 7 for me but at least you get a :( on your bluescreen now!

  4. Spoonsinger
    Facepalm

    Just how many Windows 8 articles there going to be over the next month?

    Just curious, because:-

    A) Your demographic probably has already formed their own ideas.

    &

    B) I really can't be bothered forming a B.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Just how many Windows 8 articles there going to be over the next month?

      So the reg should just let their demographic ill-inform their own opinions, or maybe as an IT news publication they should report on new things in IT and try to show the truth behind the rhetoric on both sides?

      Then again, it looks like lots of people don't come here to have their opinions challenged in any way.

      1. Spoonsinger
        Alert

        Re: Just how many Windows 8 articles there going to be over the next month?

        Good point, well made. I just love reading press releases re-engineered.

        (Never used the icon before - but there is always a first time).

    2. Charles Manning

      The demographic are easy to spot

      They have rings through their noses and are being lead around the barnyard.

      Does that sound harsh? Not really.

      Most people are resigned to Win 8 as being an inevitable part of their future. Few are getting excited and scrambling for it.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Just how many Windows 8 articles there going to be over the next month?

      Here, here.

      BTW why is the new MS logo the flag of Shetland?

  5. Gordon Fecyk
    FAIL

    XP was as secure as you wanted it to be

    Windows XP's poor security also caused Microsoft its first significant stumble.

    This drives me bananas. 2K was the first to have an actual security model that worked, provided users bothered to use it. Way too many applications for the day were written with 95/98's lack-of-security model in mind. I had 2K desktops that were malware-proof before the fact and I took a lot of vendors to task for shoddy design in the process. XP was really a pretty face on 2K.

    Vista? That was the wake-up call for these shoddy vendors to fix their [censored]. Helicopter-parenting was apparently badly needed for these ignorant (after seven years of 2K I call them ignorant!) developers and many of them finally got it right in time for Windows 7's release. Many more still don't have it right.

    The security model was there twelve years ago. Stop blaming Microsoft for no one using it.

    And downvotes don't make this wrong; they just make it unpopular. Tough. Deal with it.

    1. Arctic fox

      Re: "XP was as secure as you wanted it to be" I agree, with the reservation that we are........

      ............talking about XP after SP1, and particularly after SP2. IMHO XP before those service packs was as buggy, unstable and insecure as all get out. After those SPs it became (for its time) a very fine os - it served me well at any rate for many years thereafter (Pro version).

    2. This post has been deleted by its author

    3. bean520
      Facepalm

      Re: XP was as secure as you wanted it to be

      " 2K was the first to have an actual security model that worked"

      ...which was NOT brought into XP, for compatibility reasons. They knew that people wanted to run their old apps, so they had to compromise security to do so.

      "XP was really a pretty face on 2K"

      No, it really wasn't. XP was designed as a replacement for Win 95/98/ME, and had the task of running Win9x apps, despite being NT architecture. The way many 9x programs were written assuming they had what many today would consider root access. This was simply incompatible with the traditional NT security defaults...so MS turned them off. What really turned the security efforts around was that programmers were starting to recognise and work reliably around the security architecture, thus achieving the same effect and letting the security setup do it's job. This was more or less forced in SP2 (when new defaults came into play).

      2K was an enterprise OS designed to replace NT4, already of the NT lineage. It was a kick-ass system that solidified the NT line's reputation as a reliable OS, not that NT4 was doing a bad job anyway (compared to Win98). While there were improvements, they weren't of the kind that could break applications (or at least not as seriously as with WinXP). Win NT apps were already coded around a decent security model that was later inherited in XP, so they didn't have issues with compatibility

      1. dogged
        WTF?

        Re: XP was as secure as you wanted it to be

        No, it really wasn't

        Yes, it really was. The 9x layer was dealt with by Windows on Windows in XP, just as it was in 2K. WoW applications don't run with elevated privileges, except inside the WoW sandbox.

        I dunno where you got that little rant from, but it's wrong

        1. Tom 35

          Re: XP was as secure as you wanted it to be

          So blaster never existed. And the pile of visit a website with IE get hosed flaws never happened.

          You could make XP secure... with an air gap.

          By the time it reached SP2 it was a lot better with a lot of the attacks were against applications (some were MS applications like Office) and not the OS.

          1. RICHTO
            Mushroom

            Re: XP was as secure as you wanted it to be

            Utter tripe. The Morris worm - which was the worst internet worm ever - existed on platforms claimed at the time as 'secure'. OS-X gets hacked by its browser every year before IE falls, and Android and IOS can both be rooted by visiting websites.

            Windows had a secure base design since Windows NT and has improved ever since as bugs were removed, and more secure coding and attack surface approaches were adopted.

  6. This post has been deleted by its author

  7. Wibble
    Childcatcher

    > I worked for a PR company that did Microsoft's work in Australia

    == wrote shit for a living.

    Has anyone sent you the ticket to the space ship yet? I think you're on the middle one with the marketeers, hairdressers and telephone sanitisers.

    1. RICHTO
      Mushroom

      Re: > I worked for a PR company that did Microsoft's work in Australia

      I guess the one that already left had the Linux PR guys on it....

      1. hplasm
        WTF?

        Re: I guess the one that already left had the Linux PR guys on it....

        Yes.

        Not the B ark- the one you are in orbit around...

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