Great News about Windows XP...

[Bobinovich]

Microsoft have announced (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/letter.html) that they will continue to support Windows XP until 2014 - at least with security and critical updates!

This is great news for those of us disillusioned with it's successor Windows Vista. It's also good news for XP's vast user-base, most of whom appear to be happy with the product - especially with the recent availability of Service Pack 3 (SP3 - although it's caused a few problems of it's own).

Personally I'm hoping that Microsoft learn lessons from the Vista launch and ensure that the next incarnation (named Windows 7 at present and due out in 2010) is better thought out. If that is the case then it may prove to be a better bet to wait for it, rather than going through the Vista format in the meantime. Only time will tell.

[blueivy]

Microsoft have announced (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/letter.html) that they will continue to support Windows XP until 2014 - at least with security and critical updates!

This is great news for those of us disillusioned with it's successor Windows Vista. It's also good news for XP's vast user-base, most of whom appear to be happy with the product - especially with the recent availability of Service Pack 3 (SP3 - although it's caused a few problems of it's own).

Personally I'm hoping that Microsoft learn lessons from the Vista launch and ensure that the next incarnation (named Windows 7 at present and due out in 2010) is better thought out. If that is the case then it may prove to be a better bet to wait for it, rather than going through the Vista format in the meantime. Only time will tell.

Hi Bob,

This is really poor news from Microsoft. We already knew they were going to continue support through Service Packs and updates, although the new deadline of 2014 is a change.

The questions people keep asking me is will they still be able to get Windows XP after the deadline. The answer is still No, unless they buy a "NetTop" machine.

After June 30th you'll start to have difficulty in getting Windows XP in the shops. As time goes on, buying it will become impossible as Microsoft is not licensing any more FPP (Full Packaged Product) versions of it so stocks will disappear. So if you don't have XP now and you might need it soon, it's time to buy it.

What has changed slightly is that OEM's will be able to supply it with new machines in 'low budget machines'. Previously OEM licences were going to stop on the 30th as well. Now they have a 6 month reprieve. After 31 January 2009 though, you'll not be able to get Windows XP with a new machine and the licences you will get will be XP Home or XP Starter.

The situation with businesses using XP downgrade rights from Vista is the same now as it was when Vista first appeared so that hasn't changed. If you want a machine that runs XP after the deadline, buy one with Windows Vista Business and take advantage of the downgrade rights to Windows XP option. The problem with that is that PC manufacturers tend to target the more expensive machines at businesses so you may well end up with having to buy a more expensive machine to get the bundled version of Vista. That isn't something new though - you can do that now and you could do it when Vista appeared.

All in all nothing has really changed at all. A long support lifecycle for XP (which is great) but no reprieve for it unless you buy a new machine (and you have 6 months to do so).

[badger]

Windows Vista SP1 was certainly a milestone for a lot of customers
http://forums.microsoft.com/technet/showpost.aspx?postid=2871270&siteid=17&sb=0&d=1&at=7&ft=11&tf=0&pageid=0

funny that there's no mention of any of this in their letter [disgust]

[router]

we havn't had this type of trouble though since dowloading sp1 our pc has slowed down some.the pc we have was preloaded with vista and 512mb of ram what it doesn't tell you is that it needs about double that as this system was running at 75% capacity.bad enough but since sp1 was loaded it now runs at 80 odd % just with internet explorer running!


also read somewhere recently that something like 2/10 developers are writing software for vista the rest are involved with xp and linux.
maybe MS should stick with xp.

[TBH]

Isn't Vista just a rip-off of Apple Macintosh?

[blueivy]

Isn't Vista just a rip-off of Apple Macintosh?

From my experience no.

OSX and every other GUI was a rip-off progression of the early WIMP (Windows Icons Mice and Pointers) systems (Genius was one that sprang to mind that I used MANY many many years ago before Windows was around), OS/2 and probably a few others from the dim and distant past.

Windows was the first OS (although originally it was just another application that sat on top of Dos - Windows 3) to take it mainstream. OS/2 tried to make it mainstream and failed mainly because the rumour goes that Microsoft took what it needed from the partnership with IBM, left, and created it's own - Windows 3.

So you could say that OSX, Gnome, KDE etc. all take their ideas from those early days. Whether you see that as a progression or a rip-off is all relative!

So I wouldn't say Vista is a rip off of OSX, it's just another progression in the GUI market. OSX is 'pretty' to Vista could have taken that idea from there, however it was probably more of a case that they could now make Vista pretty due to hardware specs etc. whereas before that wasn't a consideration.

In response to Router, I haven't seen any stats on who is developing for what (could you post where you got those from?) but Microsoft would make you believe that the majority are writing for Vista and not XP.

Just my two pence.