It's Time to Face the Ugly Truth, SP3 or No SP3, the Clock Is Ticking for Windows XP
section: windows, for your questions: KezNews forum, 5.1.2008
As 2008 has kicked in, it's now time to face the ugly truth. The clock is ticking for Windows XP. And while Microsoft may view this as a natural stage in the evolution of a product introduced all the way in 2001, a healthy proportion of end-users and businesses will fail to see eye to eye with the company on this one.
In this context, Windows Vista, the latest Windows client dropped to businesses in November 2006, and to the general consumers in January 2007, generated an unexpected result, managing to wind up XP's clock.
Vista in 2007
Even with Vista generally available on the market, XP did not give the feeling that it was struggling to survive. In fact, it was the other way around, as Microsoft focused its efforts and resources into catalyzing the erosion of XP's market share. But, what should have been an all out market share feast ended up as nothing more than Windows Vista scraping for crumbs of audience. Microsoft's official position throughout 2007 was that Vista was the fastest selling Windows platform ever to come out of Redmond.
This perspective was reinstated by Mike Nash, corporate vice president, Windows Product Management, on September 27th: "with more than 60 million licenses sold as of this summer, Windows Vista is on track to be the fastest-selling operating system in Microsoft’s history." The Redmond company claimed that Vista had sold over 20 million licenses in its first month on the market, passing the 40 million mark by the first 100 days, and the 60 million milestone by mid 2007. The last statistics made available to the public, dating back to the end of October, pointed to over 88 million Vista copies sold worldwide.
On top of these, Microsoft also touted having in excess of 42 million Vista licenses going to Software Assurance customers via volume licensing. But in the end, the company counts all the Vista copies it ships to its channel partners worldwide, from original equipment manufacturers to retail suppliers, and not necessarily
the licenses sold to end users. Even before Vista had hit the shelves at the end of January 2007, Microsoft pointed at twice the sale rate of Windows XP, as a forecast for Vista's performance in the operating system's first year on the market, but ended up felling short.
At the end of 2007, according to statistics provided by Net Applications, Vista enjoyed a market share of 10.48% - a percentage roughly synonymous with 100+ million sold copies. And while in just a single year Vista's install base has passed the combined audience of Mac OS X and all the Linux distributions, its performance is still perceived with nuances of failure. And at fault is Windows XP with its roots firmly dug in for the past six years.
eXPired?
Microsoft did invite the comparison between Vista and XP, but it failed to come up with an 'eXPired' operating system and with its latest Windows platform as the Wow answers for all users, be them home or corporate. Starting in January 2007, the Redmond company was forced to make a series of moves designed to keep Windows XP alive and to prolong its life as much as possible.
On January 24th, 2007, six days before Vista's commercial release, Microsoft informed of "the addition of an Extended Support phase for the Windows XP Home Edition and Windows XP Media Center Edition operating systems, providing consumers with an additional phase of support. With the addition of Extended Support, the support life cycle for Windows XP Home Edition and Windows XP Media Center Edition will include a total of five years of Mainstream Support (until April 2009) and five years of Extended Support, matching the support policy provided for Windows XP Professional."
And then, at the end of September 2007, Nash explained the company's decision to push back the direct OEM and Retail License Availability end date for XP to mid 2008. "We’re responding to feedback we have gotten from our OEM partners that some customers will benefit by extending availability of Windows XP to June 30, 2008 instead of the planned date of Jan. 30, 2008. Also, since some of the systems that ship in emerging markets don’t meet the requirements for Windows Vista, we will be extending availability of Windows XP Starter Edition to June 30, 2010. This will allow our OEM partners who sell PCs in emerging markets more opportunity to offer genuine Windows licenses. Windows XP Starter Edition is tailored to local markets, in local languages, and is compatible with a wide range of Windows-based applications and devices", he stated.
Well, the Clock Is Ticking, but It Will Tick for Quite a Long Time
The time is running on Windows XP. Even as Microsoft is gearing up to make available the third service pack for XP, it has emphasized the fact that the refresh will be the last major update served to the operating system. "While Windows Vista and 2007 Office Servers are getting their first service pack updates, Windows XP is getting its last. Windows XP SP3 will be a rollup that includes all previously released updates for Windows XP, including security updates, out-of-band releases and hotfixes. It contains a small number of new updates, but should not significantly change the Windows XP experience", the company revealed in an email sent to TechNet subscribers.
As of June 30th, 2008, Windows XP will no longer be available pre-loaded on machines from original equipment manufactures or from retail outlets. Starting with the summer of this year, and ending sometime in 2010, when Windows 7 is planned, end-users will have access only to Windows Vista. Sure, XP will survive with System Builders until early 2009, and until mid 2010 with the Starter edition, but sales of the Windows operating system connected with white-box PCs are only a fraction of the Windows client business.
According to Microsoft, the Windows client business is a "segment [which] includes sales and marketing expenses for the Windows client operating system and product development efforts for the Windows platform. Client revenue growth is correlated with the growth of purchases of personal computers from OEMs that pre-install versions of Windows operating systems as the OEM channel accounts for over 80% of total Client revenue."
With PC sales worldwide estimated between 260 and 300 million in 2008, and with the vast majority of those machines shipping with Vista, even in the context's of XP's prolonged availability, Microsoft is looking at a market explosion for its latest Windows client in the coming year. The release of Vista SP1 in the first quarter of 2008 will only catalyze growth for the operating system.
While available side by side with XP throughout 2007, Vista has still managed to climb to 10.48% of the operating system market, while its predecessor has dropped in a single year from 85.30% to just 76.91%. The trajectory in the past year is illustrative of the tendency for Windows users to either switch to Vista or stick with XP, but not to convert in mass to alternative operating systems such as Mac OS X or Linux.source:
news.softpedia.com
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Comments(22)
no please, please, please, please, please, don't take away my xp. no, no, no, no!!!!!
ah, take it if you want, i don't really care! if you seen one os, you've seen them
all!-
what sort of dumb arse can't differentiate between operating systems ?
i have been
running xpsp2 for about 2 years without a single update and i never have a prob . i have
tried my hardest to get on with vista but i cant be bothered stuffing around with that
crap anymore .xp works better without microsofts useless updates .
i probably will install sp3 in 6 months when the contents of the update are a bit better
known, with a new installation slipstreamed then, but a original sp2 is more then
sufficient to me, as for now.
why do we consumers have to take any crab from the software giant. if it works and we are
happy then what the hell to bother listening to ms telling us we 'need vista'. maybe big
and mighty corporations but for simple users like most of us to hell with vista.
before the vista lovers freak out, vista is ok. yes it is slow, but you get some stuff
you can not get in xp, as long as you can put up with 1.8x slower unit over xp. but the
facts are, xp works. it works with in the real world with all the new and old stuff.
printers, software, dos stuff, windows stuff, anything at all. i have never had anyone
ever show me, ever, what i would have to have vista for? what program or anything will
only work on vista. nothing. to force vista on the world ms should have make stuff only
work on vista. they did this with xp and that worked. i am one of those small builders (
have for 13 years now ) and build 100's of systems a year, i have sold in the past year,
2 vista, one went back and the other is not as happy as they thought they would be. all
the rest love xp pro and are sooooo happy they have it. real world facts!
clock is ticking ? if it aint broke don't fix it. c'mon guys, the real reason why
microsoft is pushing vista is just to make more money !
let's see a show of hands...how many of you will be the last remaining xp users whenever
it is that microsoft stops providing support for xp a few years from now?
the
release of xp sp3 does not indicate that microsoft wants to keep xp alive. for those of
you who pay attention to new os releases, microsoft has released multiple service packs
for older windows versions while xp was the flagship os, it's just part of the lifecycle.
there's a lot of futile hope being expressed here and almost as much
rationalization that xp is as good as windows can be, which is the least informed
conclusion one can reach.
granted, computer use at home and in the workplace
exploded while xp was at the top of the microsoft heap. secondly, xp has been around
longer than all other windows. but do any of you see the big picture? history is repeating
itself. when xp came out, people hated it for the first couple years, and obviously not
any more. this is precisely why microsoft is not worried that vista sales have thus far
been dismal.
oh well, to each his/her own. i give vista until the start of
summer 2009 to get up and rolling.
i only switched from 2000 pro to xp 6 months ago, so as far as i can see, i will probably
skip vista and go to the next os after that. see, i missed me, so i will miss vista....lol
it's time to think of other choices, don't you think so? give linux a try.
it will be interesting to see what the release of vista sp1 will do, will it increase
consumer confidence? or will the release of sp3 require ms to extend their support for a
few more years?
ps i've used vista (and are now using the awesome rc of sp1)
since it's release on a 2003 computer and never had a problem :)
when vista sp1 disables various os hacks, unhappy campers such as myself will begin a
chorus against vista (on legitimate grounds no less). the sales lost to piracy will be
considered minuscule in comparison that those sales lost to word of mouth against vista.
remember, all those first adopters that cannot afford the excessive fees for vista will
redouble to negative campaign against vista like never before. join the chorus - vista
blows - long live xp!
i hate vista but if it was about say £20, i wouldnt mind buying one but for £344.99, no
way.
ms can shov it up his aaassss
i alpha and beta tested longhorn builds, even early vista. up until a week ago i used
vista. i grew tired of the sluggishness of the os and lack of driver support. i switched
back to windows xp. i am very happy. xp is simply faster, everything now works, and my
start menu is not buried under 16 levels designed to protect the 'poor dumb user'. my
pc is not a slow one either, 4 gigs of ddr2, dual 3.4 ghz single core xeons, 512 mb video.
from what i know it is the drm which slows xp's little brother down. microsoft has
spread its legs for hollywood. they should've kept the copyrights on the dvd, not my os!
vista is a failure, like windows me, plain and simple folks! don't support it. vista
was not designed to please the home consumer, but hollywood to protect their socalled
'intellectual property'. xp for me. vista has not one single advantage over xp other
than eye candy designed to lure and trick people into this farce. you will not get the
high performance with xp you're used to, not even with a quad core cpu, i guarantee it.
basically, you're paying for copyright software with your new hardware upgrade to
compensate for the lackluster performance of vista.
i agree with everything you said. couldn't say it better ;)
dumbadork: you;re craaazy: i've ran xp and vista on high end pcs and xp is twice as
fast...vista is riddled with extra services, drm, eye candy, s l o w i n g it down
drastically. i'll bet your playing on your parents pc while you wrote that, right?
cause you obviously know very little about computers...
tumbledore,
old wizard fool! you got yourself confused again because your magic wand
must have been stuck in the wrong holes too many times. it’s the windows vista that has
more than “inefficient kernel and codes which will always slow it down, even on new
hardware” not the windows xp. the windows xp runs very efficiently on any machines that
vista failed to run. the windows xp efficiently runs 5-10 times faster than vista on any
old or new hardware configurations. vista has the psychedelic eye-candies for but most of
the new vista features are convoluted designed and badly implemented by the stoned-mind
programming wizards. all the useful working xp functions are either deleted or broken in
vista by the orders of the dark lord whose name must not be said out loud.
sincerely
hairy potter
even with service pack one installed on identical hardware (google it) side by side
comparison benchmark tests, xp professional out performed vista in every single test.
microsoft screwed up royally releasing an operating system that cannot match the
performance of their previous one. i have personally ran both on identical, and i mean
identical systems (i build pcs for a living) and vista crawls compared to xp pro. however
if you like flashy graphics and staring at the little hourglass while waiting for your
programs to respond then by my guest. i heartily encourage everyone to format their
harddrives and install xp in protest of microsoft releasing another windows me. all of my
collegies in the it world shun vista, we know better. its pure dollars and cents to
microsoft. xp setup properly can and does provide security, performance. for you gamers,
direct x 10 actually lags when compared to xp pro, see tom's hardware guide to learn
more.......
hairy potter,
wasn't my intention to make analogies to the world of hogwarts.
i'm just saying i've had more problems with xp than vista. i know that it's the
opposite for most people.
lucky for me i use ubuntu for work-related things
because my boss has seen the light. now if only linux could run "games for windows"
without my having to download drivers from some shady developers. i'm not holding my
breath for dx10 getting released for xp.
old timer,
little hourglass lol
especially since vista uses that spinning blue ring.
i ask you again, why are
some people completely satisfied with vista for their specific computing needs? especially
given the other choices of linux and mac osx.
and no i don't particularly care
for the flashy graphics, flip 3d is useless and i never use it. but you can't say that
any theme on xp looks better than the aero-less vista "basic" theme.
it is not about the looks anyway. it is about the response time. if you use pc for looks,
then add the uv light in it and a transparent window to the side of pc, and place it on
you desk to that all your mates would be amazed by it. and i would instead buy and intel
server case... install xp of freebsd, and live happily ever after.
hi all, i tested xp and vista from their inception. i had to upgrade 40 pcs on a large
network and decided to try vista as the client wanted it (dumb-ass). needless to say that
when placed on the network and joined to the windows 2003 domain, it took 15 minutes for
vista to connect the the exchange server and then it said that it wasn't available. took
30 minutes to copy a 10mb file from a mapped network drive.
linux did it in
4sec.(gigabit network). well...what do you think the decision was?
if our
friends at nasa use "unix based" operating systems for the space (mars, etc.) missions,
there must be a reason...
the only real options for a computer right now are linux and xp.
maybe when
windows 7.0 comes out it wil be good. who knows? everyone knows one thing for sure though;
vista is a piece of sh!t.
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Windows XP
By PackedFunk on 06.01.2008 - 03:01