back to article Microsoft ends mainstream XP, Office 2003 support

Microsoft retired mainstream support for Windows XP and Office 2003 today - but that doesn’t necessarily mean anyone should be in a hurry to upgrade to Vista yet. The firm will continue to offer extended support packages on both products through to 8 April 2014, allowing businesses and individuals plenty of time to consider …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Jay Jaffa
    Go

    My feelings on this ...

    They should be xpanked.

  2. Dave
    Paris Hilton

    Exchange - again?

    Exchange 2003 support has also ended today. Surely business users will be far more affected by that than XP RTM support ending?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Windows 7 vs Vista

    How is Windows 7 going to be any better than Vista? Have they removed the DRM or does it happily run as fast as XP on 512MB of RAM? Just how is it going to be any better?

    I'mleft thinking it's just going to be the same as Vista but with the UI tarted up a bit, but the fact that the hardware is a few years more modern means that it will feel it's better than Vista simply because the machines we first see it running on will have faster CPUs (with multi-cores) and FSBs, more RAM etc.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Confused

    What if I buy a new netbook with XP on it ? Not supported ? (The vendor can support the hardware but I doubt has the source code to change the OS if there is a bug) ?

    I guess I'll have to learn how to drive Linux.

  5. Daniel Hall

    I want..

    to go back to XP, but cant afford a licence... if I could even get one,,, can I not still substitute my VistaHomePrem licence for XP.. im sure by 2014 ill upgrade, by I dont want to now...

    I make music and my ASIO drivers really dont like vista at all, which is a bit of a pain considering every one of my music production programs rely on ASIO :-(

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Whinge whinge whinge....

    At the end of the day it's 8 bloody years old. I've never had to use MS for support, try something like Tek-Tips, way more useful.

    No I don't run Visat, I still run XP, but never having to contact MS I don't expect them to supoprt USB3, BluRay etc on old technolgy.

    They will keep security fixes coming.

    At A/C saying 7 won't be any faster than Vista, have you read anything lately?

    And as for running on 512mb ram. For god sake, if your going to fork out for a new W7 license, I'm sure an extra £20 for a shed load of memory isn't going to kill you.

    Hell I'm pissed of that my 5 year old Car Stereo doesn't have an iPod docking station, despite sounding as good as any new systems.

    I think it's callled technolgy, if your to thick to realise that things become obsolete, then go into dry stone walling or something.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Gates Horns

    cost reduction?

    I'm a linux and mac user, but i am about to start a course studying some software that is windows only (3d studio max).

    For the duration of the course i am going to install and run XP. Later i may run it in a virtual machine, but initially i need to get XP again for my dell laptop..... is it going to be substantially cheaper now that there is no support as standard.... nope didn't think so.

  8. Thought About IT

    Shooting yourself in the foot

    @Stu Reeves

    While I agree with the thrust of your remarks, it ill behooves you to criticise someone's intelligence with the phrase "if your to thick"! (Hint: your spelling checker won't help.)

  9. TimNevins

    @Stu Reeves

    Stu,

    I think you are missing the point. Although some things do become genuinly obsolete ,most of the time it is planned to be obsolete to generate a revenue stream.

    See

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence

    for plenty of examples esp lithium batteries.

    Bear in mind houses built over a hundred years ago are still habitable.

    Cars built in the 20's and 30's can still be driven around.

    Planes built around the same time can still be functional.

    There is no reason in the world why much software should be classified as obsolete.

    Unless you are a manufacturer and want to shift more units.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Customer is always right

    -or wrong if you are a Microsoft customer. Vista has been howled down and Win 7 isn't ready yet. XP availability was extended because people don't want Vista and so all those people who've bought, and are still buying, XP in the last 12 months will not have an easy support route. Great.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    @Stu Reeves

    "I don't expect them to supoprt USB3, BluRay etc on old technolgy"

    But that's exactly what they're doing with W7. Dig around in there, I'm sure you'll find 95% or more of Windows 7 is Windows XP. Don't get me wrong, I don't think that's a bad thing in itself (it would be foolish to bulid an OS from scratch every couple of years). I just think it's important to realise that XP is being castrated for commercial reasons, not technical ones.

    Ultimately whether my startup screen says XP, Vista or Windows 7, it's still the same grotty old VMS / CP/M hybrid in there, and the rebrand is just Microsoft's way of getting me to pay for it again every few years. Paying over and over again for proprietary software is the only way to pay for its maintenance and ongoing development, which is where Microsoft's costs really lie anyway. If only they'd admit that, ditch their albatross of a legacy code base, buy Canonical (or some other Linux distributor) and start working on FOSS, I could start liking them and using their products again. They just need to get over their paranoid secrecy and the dishonesty it encourages, then this massively talent-heavy organisation could be pushing the industry forward by contributing to a worthwhile operating system instead of wasting developer effort reinventing other peoples' wheels and attaching them to their rusty old carriages.

    Ballmer hugging a penguin icon? No need yet, but hopefully one for the future. I'm not going to touch Vista or Windows 7, but I'd definitely try MS Linux.

  12. Gis Bun
    Black Helicopters

    And so on...

    If you buy a netbook with Win XP, the netbook manufacturer still has to support XP for the warranty of the netbook.

    Advantage of windows over Linux? Try and get any support for [let's say] Federa Core 6 which is just a few years old.

    Windows 7 will be faster than Vista according to reports and will also fix some of the major issues in Vista.

    Windows 7 will not directly support BlueRay [from what I read]. Manufacturers will supply drivers.

    Exchange Server 2003? Why? Still has another 5 yeas of life. Way, way, way more people have Win XP than Exchange 2003.

    Of note: New systems purchased sometime after June 2009 until January 2010 will be able to get a free upgrade to Windows 7. But business users will have the option [when buying a system with Windows 7] to downgrade to Vista or Win XP.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    MS Onecare Live and Vista

    MS Onecare LIve - the all singing saviour of mankind.

    http://onecare.live.com/site/en-gb/default.htm

    Except, this only runs on........ yep, products for which mainstream support just ended.

    Vista - nope, only beta version of scanner.... when did Vista go gold?

    Windows 7 - THE OS of the future, honest, it is... MS said so..... nah, not that either.

    Why are we all rushing to upgrade to Vista..... remind me someone please...

  14. Marty McFly Silver badge
    Jobs Horns

    Innovation

    I believe the core problem is Microsoft has stagnant innovation. 95% of what users do, they can do with Win98 & Office 97. There is no compelling reason to upgrade. Sure, the enterprise can brag about running the 'latest and greatest'. However at the end of the day that doesn't pay the bills - productivity does.

    Find a way to make the enterprise more productive, and I guarantee the next OS/Office launch will be a smashing success.

  15. DutchOven

    Missing the main point entirely

    "Non-security critical fixes will be available to those punters who signed up to Microsoft’s Extended Hotfix Support program 90 days before mainstream support was killed off."

    Non-security.

    Notice that they're effectively saying "8 years wasn't enough to close all the security holes".

    Whatever makes them think that I'll be upgrading to any of their new OSs when after many long years of development and 8 years of actual use they still can't close them?

    Windows 7 isn't going to be any better. You can tell yourself whatever you like.

    ...and the poster who asked if Win7 is likely to run in 512Mb of memory. I've seen unix systems that came on floppy disks and used less than 512Kb (not Mb, Kb) of memory, by the time I had WIMP going, it was still less than 512Mb BY A LONG WAY! What does an operating system need more than 512Mb of memory for? Can anyone answer that? The Amiga had a reasonable OS going in about 100k of memory (usually much less) same with the Archimedes etc

    If I was MS, I would concentrate on taking XP and

    a) making the damn thing a lot more secure

    b) removing bloat.

    Strangely, I suspect that merely doing b) would help towards a)...

    I suspect that once XP support and security updates have gone the way of the dinosaur then many people will be switching to a friendly flavour of Linux...

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @DutchOven

    "What does an operating system need more than 512Mb of memory for? Can anyone answer that?"

    Exactly, that's why I asked. The operating system isn't a browser with 10 tabs open loading spangly Web 2.0 pages, or Quark and Photoshop puting together the next edition of the Radio Times, it's just the operating system.

    I asked an honest question and all I got was mild abuse or a 'serious' answer of "£20 on loads of RAM isn't going to kill you" from people with more money than sense, neither of which are answers.

    Some people just can't grasp the question, and if they can't do that then here's no chance of them pausing to consider how "£20 on loads of RAM" would have an even greater effect on XP than it does Vista. The same goes for having a faster processor just because they're cheap - Good, but I'd rather the extra speed was used to make XP go even faster still than to get Vista and Windows 7 running as fast as XP used to.

    Now some idiot will say if that's my argument, I might as well go back and run Windows 3.11 or 95 or something. Those are dead systems, XP is very much current, even on new machines otherwise you wouldn't be able to (as so many customers do) 'downgrade' to it.

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like