Is Windows XP too good for Microsoft’s own good?
section: windows, for your questions: KezNews forum, 29.9.2007
On September 27, Microsoft has extended the cut-off as to when PC makers will be allowed to continue to sell Windows XP with new machines.
Until now, January 30, 2008, was the Microsoft-imposed deadline for system vendors to cease offering Windows XP on all new OEM machines. (System builders, a k a white-box vendors, had a longer deadline: January 30, 2009.) But as a result of feedback from customers and partners, Microsoft has extended the OEM and retailer cut-off date for XP to June 30, 2008. That gives consumers five more months to buy XP with new Windows PCs before being required to provide Vista.
The system-builder cut-off date for XP stays at 2009. Vendors selling XP Starter Edition on “ultra-low-cost” machines get a longer reprieve and can sell XP through 2010. And, in spite of the later cutover date for OEMs, nothing changes, in terms of how long Microsoft will support Windows Vista: Microsoft will provide mainstream support through 2012 and extended support through 2017.
Microsoft began paving the way for a longer Vista ramp-up in July, when it began simplifying the process by which its top-tier PC partners could downgrade Vista users to XP.
Microsoft officials insist Vista is selling well and the push back of the cutover deadline shouldn’t be interpreted as Microsoft lessening its commitment to Vista. The company will continue to spend its Windows marketing and support dollars on Vista, not XP.
“The one-year XP transition just turned out to be a little too ambitious,” acknowledged Kevin Kutz, a director in the Windows client unit. Traditionally, Microsoft has given OEMs two years to transition to a new operating system release, Kutz said.
Some industry watchers see the move as evidence of Microsoft is being responsive to customers and partners. Others see it as Microsoft going with the lesser of two evils by giving users not ready to move to Vista a choice other than defecting to Mac OSX or Linux. Even though Microsoft is likely making a few less dollars per copy of XP sold to OEMs than it makes on a copy of Vista, a Windows sale is still a Windows sale.
For my part, I can’t help but wonder if Vista finally and irrevocably pushed Windows into the same category as Microsoft Office, meaning that the cost and potential risks of upgrading have come to outweigh the benefit of new features in the eyes of many customers.
What’s your take? Did Microsoft make XP Service Pack (SP) 2 too good for its own good? Or is Vista just an off release that Microsoft should hurry up and replace — and definitely sooner than 2010, when it is slated to roll out Windows 7?
source:
blogs.zdnet.com
Send link 2 friend | Permalink
MORE RELATED ARTICLES:
Windows XP Departs: Good Riddance or Sad Farewell? || There Is a Good Reason to Get Vista SP1 || Very Good Results in Updating Vista Against Hacks and Cracks || Microsoft Makes Its Own Vista SP1 vs. XP SP2, Leaves XP SP3 Out || XP SP3 Does Not Support Windows XP
Comments(12)
i have completely moved to vista but still love xp for it's simplicity and ease of use
with regard to speed so when vista screws up i use acronis to image xp on to my partition
and use it untill i feel like testing new sp1 updates or features like newly released
dreamscene.
you would require a windows 7 era pc to full utilize and love vista
enough to not go to windows 7 then.
so maybe the update and patch strategy for
a big base os is better for us end users. but from ms point of view for them to make big
bucks to show in their final accounts they need to dish out sub-standard crippled os every
now and then to consumers.
microsoft can release a turkey like vista from time to time but at least they're nice
enough to let me try it out before purchasing it. that gives me the opportunity not to
buy it, ignore it, and to continue using an operating system that works. i see no problem
here. it hasn't rocked my boat at all. maybe microsoft will do better next time?
after testing vista for about 6 months i found that for most people it is not a good idea
to upgrade. to really get the full potential out of it you somewhat need a new machine.
my pc was built in 2005 and handles vista just fine. systems older than that and
especially ones that are weaker will not run vista very well. you'll have to turn off
some of the aesthetic features to increase the speed.
also the issues it's
had with sound and gaming take it out of huge part of the market. the cost alone keeps it
professionals from using it. it's definitely not worth the price. not for the few
features you get. the ultimate package is a joke! don't look for many "extras" from
microsoft. so far it's been a huge scam and people should be refunded the extra money
they had to shell out for that.
if your machine can run it and you do the
everyday things like internet, email, office then it's a decent thing to have. if you
game or record music just stick with xp till the next windows.
when vista
first surfaced into beta some people were saying it was going to be the new windowsme.
for awhile i didn't think that it would happen. now i think that statement will hold
true and it's going to cost microsoft big time for a dud product.
xp may look
like crap compared to vista or mac osx but it's fast, stable, and compatible with
everything. i might load vista on another hard drive just to have something different to
fool with but it won't be my main choice.
come out with a turkey every other release & sell more os's! pretty smart if you sell
os's! m$ = smart
dan, you say, that "if you game or record music just stick with xp till the next
windows."
but what about directx 10?
i followed the lamb and like many aquired vista asap. having used it and found that it
supported very little of my hard and software, coupled with virus attacks i quickly
removed it and returned to xp. this was months ago and vista is still sat on a shelf
collecting dust to this day........we need to make a stand one day and stop lining bill
gates's and a few others pockets........who cares that vista have prety pics and this and
that really?
nuff said
muggins
even if sp1 is the fix for all the 1000s of problems for vista, it is still 10x slower
than xp. i run a amd x2 6000+ with 2 gig ram and 500gig sata3 hd with 16meg cache. not a
slow unit but xp is still faster and i use my unit to make a living. vista simply cost me
money due to issues and speed. make it work and make it as fast as xp and maybe!
no!, it's not that windows xp is too good for microsoft’s own good.
it's the
"damned bad vista" with the horrible performances, buggies, annoyances, unfriendly,
unnecessary steps and hiden features that drive new and experienced users mads. microsoft
is more concern with the drm protection features than making vista more userfriendly with
simple features that just work and work really fast. who wouldn't be mad when your
perfect working video/audio files in xp become suttering and frozen in vista? who want to
digup vista hiden operations and take more unncessary steps when you can easily find and
do same operations with xp? who's care to wait in minute(s) for vista to report the
time it will take to do when the actual required time doing the operations are in
second(s)? who have the patience to watch the stupid-blue-spinning-circles and the frozen
windows?
i don't understand most of you guys but i have been using vista for more than 6
monthsand never had a problem.
it doesn't make sensible to still compare a system with two sps (xp sp2) with another
one in development (vista without sp).
i originally put vista on a hdd which i used periodically to familarize myself with the
os. winxp is still my choice but i do have vista functioning well now that most of my used
software titles support vista. in a pinch, i could make the switch but i won't be
changing for some time though.
too bad that many expensive scanners and printer will
not be supported if they are several years old. we really can't blame ms for that part of
the problem.
i have been using vista ultimate at my second os for some time now, and it really hoses
cpu and memory. first when i installed vista on a friends laptop, a dual core 2 with 2 gb
ram, then! finally vista started working well. and the shadowcopy feature of vista..did a
check on a friends laptop, and it had store 15gb of shadowcopy (havent look into what it
really is), so i turned it down to 300mb, which is the minimum. when it comes to backups,
i only go for symantec ghost and similar. but vista is very sxy and compared to xp which
in my opinium only started performing well with sp2, then vista is maybe the most
promising os from m$ so far.
No new comments are allowed for this article.
For your questions use our KezNews Forum
XP Goodnes vs Vista vs Windows 7
By Nik on 29.09.2007 - 18:09