How long will Microsoft support XP and Vista?
In the Talkback section to another post, a reader asks a question about when Microsoft plans to drop support for Windows Vista. I hear variations on this one all the time, so I figured it’s worth covering here.
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22.9.2008 After 5 long years Vista RTM's Now what?
After 5 long years Vista RTM's Now what?
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9.11.2006 Microsoft-Novell: What a long, strange year it’s been
In what’s been a controversial (to say the least) partnership, the Microsoft-Novell technology partnership and patent-protection arrangement has reached its one-year anniversary.
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8.11.2007 Forget Vista. Long live Longhorn client!
Should old, abandonned operating systems just fade away? Or is there some way to breathe new life into them – without running afoul of the copyright police?
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27.10.2006 DreamScene RTM dated July 19, Microsoft: what took so long?
As reported by a bunch of shops, Duke Nukem Forever Dreamscene was finally delivered to consumers who shelled out mega bucks for the ultimate operating system offered by Microsoft.
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26.9.2007 Gates still has a long to-do list
For years, the Microsoft chairman has been a fiery advocate, inside the company and out, for the notion that computers should be controlled, not just by mouse and keyboard, but also by more natural means, such as voice, touch and digital ink.
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19.10.2007 Microsoft can't afford to support OEM Vista?
Microsoft might have $7.6 billion in spare cash in the bank, but when it comes to supporting users who purchase Vista on a new machine, the software giant is all too ready to cry poor.
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15.5.2007 Microsoft shelves RSA SecurID support in Vista
Microsoft has shelved plans to include native support for RSA's SecurID tokens in Windows Vista, even though the company has been trialling the technology for almost two years.
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2.5.2006 Microsoft Raises Consumer Vista Tech Support Costs
More money, less help is the bottom line on Microsoft's Vista and Office tech support.
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8.2.2007 Microsoft's MSN Search restored after hours-long outage
Microsoft Corp.'s MSN search engine stopped working for about four hours Thursday.
Microsoft spokesman Justin Osmer said in an e-mail that the company was still trying to determine what went wrong.
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7.4.2006 Vista not to support EFI
On Thursday, at the Intel Developer Forum in San Fransisco, Microsoft development manager Andrew Ritz revealed that Windows Vista, the successor to the aging Windows XP expected to be released later this year, will not support EFI booting. Ritz admitted that EFI support will not be seen until Longhorn Server is released in early 2007, and on top of that it will never support a 32-bit processor.
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10.3.2006 Microsoft to support 1394b standard
Microsoft Corp. will provide support for the IEEE1394b standard "within a reasonable time" after the launch of Windows Vista, according to a Microsoft Corp. representative who attended the IEEE1394 Trade Association meeting held here last week.
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1.5.2006 Vista Loader 2.1.3 - Windows Vista Activator 2008 Support SP1 with No Boot String
Vista Loader is one of the most successful Vista activation crack available to date, second only to physical modify (hardmod) the BIOS to include SLIC table to make BIOS Vista activation-compliant.
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15.5.2008 Google Talk 1.0.0.104 gets Vista support
The new version of Google Talk doesn't appear to have any new features, but it does now have support for Windows Vista according to the download and "What's New" pages.
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7.1.2007 Security Vendors Lagging on Vista Support
Windows Vista's revamped security features are posing difficulties for some IT security vendors looking to make their software work on the new operating system.
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2.3.2007 Microsoft and Intel to Support HD-DVD
Microsoft and Intel on Tuesday pledged their support for HD-DVD, the next-generation DVD format created by Toshiba. Microsoft had previously remained neutral in the standards war between HD-DVD and Sony-backed Blu-ray, as the company's VC-1 Windows Media Video codec will be included with both formats.
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Redesigned Microsoft.com doesn't support Firefox, Opera?
Take a trip to the preview site for Microsoft's new homepage and you'll notice a nice shiny new layout with a fresher look and feel to it, provided you're using Internet Explorer.
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30.7.2006 Microsoft to support Chinese document standard
Microsoft is expanding its repertoire of document formats. The company on Monday is expected to announce that it is sponsoring an open-source project to create a converter between Ecma Open XML--a set of file formats closely tied to Microsoft Office--and a Chinese national standard called Unified Office Format (UOF).
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21.5.2007 Native PDF support in Office Vista (12)
Today's another exciting day as we move closer to Beta 1. We are just wrapping up the MVP summit here in Redmond and we've finally announced another piece of functionality I've wanted to talk about for a long time now. This afternoon Steven Sinofsky announced to our MVPs that we will build in native support for the PDF format in Office "12".
I constantly get asked by customers if we can build in this support for publishing documents as PDF files, and now I can thankfully say "yes!" It's something we've been hearing about for years, and earlier in this project we decided that while there were already existing third party tools for doing this, we should do the work to build the functionality natively into the product.
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Partners and retailers rally apps, support for Vista
With the consumer launch of Windows Vista on the horizon, Microsoft's software and retail partners are preparing for the launch with applications and support for the new OS.
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25.1.2007 Apple Releases Boot Camp 1.2 with Vista Support
Apple has posted a new version of Boot Camp today. Boot Camp 1.2 brings several updates, including Windows Vista support.
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29.3.2007 Microsoft adCenter Upgrades Include Firefox Support
Microsoft adCenter has a new release launching Saturday, August 5th, and one of the upgrades includes the long awaited Firefox browser support.
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1.8.2006 Microsoft: Sony's 1080p Support on PS3 is all Hype
It's not uncommon for companies to downplay features that its products don't have in comparison to its competitors. Companies will usually talk about how customers won't likely use the feature or how it's not cost-effective to implement such features at a certain price point.
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19.8.2006 Microsoft to end Windows XP SP1 support
It has been well-known that Microsoft has ended extended support for Windows 98, 98 SE, and Windows ME. This support ended on July 11 of this year.
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30.8.2006 Microsoft bumps support prices for Windows, Office
Microsoft's per-incident customer support prices were quietly bumped last week as the company rolled out the newest version of its operating system, Windows Vista.
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6.2.2007 Microsoft boosts support for rival formats in Office
On Wednesday, the company said it plans to add new formats to Office 2007, including the Open Document Format (ODF), Portable Document Format (PDF), and XML Paper Specification (XPS).
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21.5.2008 Microsoft Pledges Windows XP Support Through 2014
In an unprecedented move, Microsoft has committed to providing support services for its soon to be retired Windows XP through 2014 -- a full 13 years after the operating system was originally released.
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29.6.2008 Microsoft to Expand Bing Translator Language Support
Moving forward with its machine translation technology, Microsoft has indicated that it plans to expand the service in order to cover additional languages.
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7.7.2009 Microsoft Denies Preparations To Support OpenDoc in Office 12
Redmond (Washington) - In a statement to TG Daily, a Microsoft spokesperson has officially denied that the company is making plans to support OpenDocument Format (ODF), the XML-based file structure developed for Microsoft Office's open-source competitor, OpenOffice.org.
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TeamDirection Pledges Support for Microsoft Office Groove 2007
TeamDirection, creator of the
project management and dashboard tools for Groove Virtual Office Project
Edition, today announced support for Microsoft Office Groove 2007, as well as
continued support for TeamDirection Project and Dashboard for Groove Virtual
Office version 3.1 customers. Together the TeamDirection tools and Groove
Virtual Office allow distributed teams to coordinate their activities in a
digital project workspace.
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22.2.2006SP2 for Vista, WS2K8 to enter beta Wednesday, will support Blu-ray
With Microsoft picking up the pace in both the development and marketing of Windows 7, it's also finding itself moving ahead with the next amendment
package for Vista not too long after the release of SP1...
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25.10.2008Beautiful Windows Vista icons a double-edged sword
I admit it. I'm an iconphile. Back in the Windows 3.0 days, I used to go and change all my Windows icons by hand. I thought this was pretty
impressive. Admittedly, it didn't help me pick up women for some reason.
Since then, icons have come a very long way. A VERY long way.
With Windows Vista, the end-user icon experience out of the box is beautiful. But from an icon creator's point of view, the lack of backward
compatibility and effort to support has gone up tremendously. As a result, we've seen a lot fewer custom icons made for Windows Vista than one might
have expected.
Microsoft made three decisions with Windows Vista that will forever affect the way we look at icon making on Windows.
Read full story.....
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24.08.2007XP Home Edition Support
Extended to 2008
For the past 2 weeks, the
Windows community has been
buzzing with news that
Microsoft was scheduled to
halt support for XP Home at
the end of this year.
(Apparently, Microsoft never
expected that its next Windows
release would take so long to
ship.) Well, the crisis is
over.
Microsoft
this week revealed that it has
extended support for XP Home
(and a few other XP editions
whose support was also
scheduled to be terminated
this year) to "2 years after
the next version of
is released,"
according to the company. If
Vista ships on schedule at the
end of the year, that means
that Microsoft will continue
supporting XP Home through
late 2008. That's not too
shabby.
Note
that Microsoft's
business-oriented Windows
products have much lengthier
support life cycles. Microsoft
is supporting XP Professional,
for example, through
2011.
jcxp.net - 16.01.2006
Microsoft: No Vista on Intel
Macs
Microsoft confirmed reports
that at least the initial
Intel Macs from Apple would
not support Windows Vista,
telling BetaNews Friday that
its next generation operating
system would not support the
EFI boot process being used by
the new systems...
betanews.com - 11.03.2006
Microsoft to shove XP toward retirement with upcoming support shift
In 10 weeks, Microsoft Corp. will begin to retire Windows XP by shifting the seven-year-old operating system into a more limited support plan.
Windows XP, Microsoft's most successful operating system ever, will leave what the company calls "mainstream support" on April
14, and enter "extended support." Typically, Microsoft keeps a product in the former for five years, then moves it into the latter for another five,
for a total of 10 years. However, the long span between the releases of XP and its successor, Windows Vista, forced the company to push out the
support deadline to 13 years altogether.
winbeta.org - 04.02.2009
Microsoft offers free support for Vista SP1 installs
Microsoft Corp. is offering free support to any Windows Vista user experiencing
problems with installing Service Pack 1 (SP1), according to a company spokesman.
" needing technical support regarding
your installation of Windows Vista SP1, please go to the following URL and choose the bottom option that says, 'Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (All
Languages),'" said Brandon LeBlanc, a Microsoft employee who posted several comments to the company's Vista blog. The link LeBlanc pointed users to led to a Vista
SP1-specific support site.
"You have a variety of options you can choose for support, all of which will not cost you any support fee," said LeBlanc. "I repeat:
Support for SP1 will not cost you anything."
winbeta.org - 24.03.2008
Microsoft comes clean on Vista SP1 driver and vLite issues
As you may have been aware having certain drivers installed on Vista will prevent SP1 from installing. Microsoft had not exactly been forthcoming on
which drivers but has now made the list available to the public.
The company listed the affected drivers in a support article. It consists of mostly audio and display drivers but there are
warnings for fingerprint readers as well.
Additionally, users are warned against using vLite to strip features out of a Vista
installation and install using it. Microsoft says that could also prevent the installation of Vista SP1. The previous support article lists
possible causes and solutions.
winbeta.org - 19.03.2008
Adobe Reader 8.1 Brings Vista Support
Adobe on Tuesday released the
first major update to both
Acrobat and Reader 8.0, adding
support for Windows Vista and
remote printing capabilities
through a partnership with
FedEx Kinko's. Version 8.1
also brings integration with
Microsoft Office 2007...
betanews.com - 07.06.2007
DirectX 11 coming to Vista
As with Windows Vista, the newest version of Windows brings with it a newer version of Microsoft's DirectX. Windows 7 was released with Direct X
11 support, and it was initially thought that Direct X 11 support would remain a 7-only technology. Reports indicate that a platform update is being
pushed via Windows Update that will enable DirectX 11 support on Vista PC's. With an impressive lineup of Direct X 11 games announced which
includes Crysis 2 and The Lord of the Rings Online, Vista users will be happy to know that they can go out and purchase a Radeon 5870 and use it to
its full potential.
Read full story.....
neowin.net - 03.11.2009
Microsoft Answers Forum Launched.
Microsoft has launched Microsoft Answers. Till now the only avenue for the average Vista user for support from Microsoft, was to go over to Technet
or MSDN Forums for help. All that will now change with the launch of the Microsoft Answers forum! Microsoft Answers will be a no nonsense, non
technical forum for real users to get real answers. The site is intended to dramatically improve the self-help experience for Home PC users by
enabling the same kind of rich online communities – for support, learning, sharing and engaging with Microsoft – that have long been
available for Developers and IT Pros, via MSDN & TechNet.
Read full story.....
neowin.net - 16.12.2008
Vista not playing well with IPv6
Early adopters of Microsofts
new Vista operating system are
reporting problems with its
implementation of IPv6, a
long-anticipated upgrade to
the Internets primary
protocol.
IPv6
supports a 128-bit addressing
scheme, which lets it support
an order-of-magnitude more
devices that are directly
connected to the Internet than
its predecessor, IPv4. IPv6
also has autoconfiguration,
end-to-end security and other
enhancements.
Vista
supports IPv6 by default.
Vista runs a single-stack,
dual-IP-layer architecture,
which means it is IPv4- and
IPv6-capable out of the box.
It supports tunneling of IPv6
traffic over an IPv4 backbone
and includes IPSec that works
for both IPv4 and IPv6. ..
winbeta.org - 07.06.2007
Windows Vista SP1 Application Non-Compatibility List
Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista is an important update for Windows Vista. Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) contains many security, reliability, and
feature updates for Windows Vista. A program may experience a loss of functionality after you install Windows Vista SP1. However, most programs will
continue to work as expected after you install Windows Vista SP1.
This article lists programs that have been reported to
experience a loss of functionality when they are installed on a Windows Vista SP1-based computer.
winbeta.org - 19.02.2008
Microsoft Issues Free Virtual PC 2007
The long-awaited update to
Microsoft's virtualization
software was released Monday.
Virtual PC 2007 brings support
for Windows Vista -- as both a
guest and host operating
system -- and takes advantage
of new hardware virtualization
technology from both Intel and
AMD...
betanews.com - 20.02.2007
Microsoft Vista SP2 beta: Nothing new has been added (yet)
If you install the beta of Windows Vista Service Pack 2 (SP2) expecting to see visible changes to your version of Vista, you'll be sorely
disappointed. At least in this initial beta, all the changes are under the hood, and even they are far from earth-shaking. Microsoft says that it has
fixed compatibility problems with the third-party Spy Sweeper and ZoneAlarm security applications, enhanced hardware support for Direct X, improved
Wi-Fi connections after a system resumes from sleep, improved Windows Search, added support for the newest Bluetooth specification (2.1) and rolled up
all previous Vista updates.
Read full story.....
neowin.net - 09.12.2008
ZoneAlarm Security Suite 7.1 Adds Vista Support
Check Point Software today
released ZoneAlarm Internet
Security Suite 7.1, a
Vista-compatible version of
its flagship security suite.
Vista-compatible versions of
ZoneAlarm Antivirus and the
popular free ZoneAlarm
Firewall are also available.
Past versions of
ZoneAlarm's products have
relied on Microsoft's TDI
(Transport Device Interface)
to track network behavior.
Windows Vista retains support
for TDI, but introduces the
new Windows Filtering Platform
(WFP). While porting to Vista
using TDI would have been
easier, Check Point chose to
support WFP for this
Vista-compatible version. When
installed on Windows 2000 and
XP, however, version 7.1 will
still use TDI.
Check
Point is the first major
security vendor to make use of
the Vista-specific Windows
Filtering Platform. Company
representatives explained that
Microsoft will stop fixing
problems with TDI in the
future, so by utilizing WFP,
users can be prepared for
Vista threats...
winbeta.org - 14.06.2007
Five years support for Vista Home, Ultimate
Microsoft Corp. yesterday said
it would limit support for
three versions of the Windows
Vista operating system,
including its most expensive,
to five years rather than the
usual 10 years.
The company defended
the difference by noting that
the clock just started
ticking. "End of life-cycle
support for Windows Vista is
still five years out," a
spokesperson said in an e-mail
response.
However, the software maker
left the door ajar. "As
we've done in the past,
Microsoft will continue to
evaluate the support life
cycle for Windows Vista and
make decisions about extending
support if and when it is
necessary," the spokesperson
added.
jcxp.net - 03.03.2007
History of the Microsoft Support Lifecycle policy
Jared Proudfoot: I wanted to start off the blog with a posting about the history of the Microsoft Support Lifecycle policy. We often get questions
about the history of the policy, how it came about and how long its actually been in place.
Prior to 2002, Microsoft did not have
a centralized team or set of policies to govern the length of support provided for each product or the level of service provided throughout a products
supported life. Instead, each of the product groups (PGs) was independently responsible for defining the length and terms of support for their
individual products. The PGs managed their own support groups, published information regarding their support policies and communicated directly with
the customers regarding the supportability of their products.
winbeta.org - 05.03.2008
Yahoo Messenger for Vista finally launches
Long Zheng: Better late than never is overstated, what took so long?
A preview version of exclusive Yahoo Messenger for Windows Vista is finally available today after almost 12 months of radio
silence. This application was announced all the way back in January at CES 2007.
During the same amount of time, Microsoft has delivered five versions (3 beta, 2 final) of Windows Live Messenger.
However above
all, the new Yahoo Messenger is possibly the first real mainstream application to take advantage of Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and a number
of Vista APIs for which I salute them for adopting new technology.
winbeta.org - 06.12.2007
Microsoft: Just five years support for Vista Home, Ultimate
Microsoft Corp. yesterday said
it would limit support for
three versions of the Windows
Vista operating system,
including its most expensive,
to five years rather than the
usual 10 years.
The
company defended the
difference by noting that the
clock just started ticking.
"End of life-cycle support
for Windows Vista is still
five years out," a
spokesperson said in an e-mail
response.
However,
the software maker left the
door ajar. "As we've done in
the past, Microsoft will
continue to evaluate the
support life cycle for Windows
Vista and make decisions about
extending support if and when
it is necessary," the
spokesperson added.
neowin.net - 01.03.2007
Windows Vista Interface Causes Problems For Consumers, Support Firm Says
Navigating Windows Vista's
Aero user interface is a big
problem for many consumers
learning Microsoft's
6-month-old operating system,
a technical support company
said Thursday.
Support.com<
/a>, which offers technical
support to consumers, said the
top three reasons people
called for Vista help were to
solve navigation problems,
device incompatibility, and
home networking issues.
While Vista is "a leap
forward in terms of usability
and functionality," it
requires consumers used to
working with older versions of
Windows to learn something
new, Anthony Rodio, chief
marketing officer for
Support.com, said in a
statement. "We know very well
that any major switch in
operating systems can
initially cause confusion and
problems for end-users," he
said. "Consumers often suffer
from frustrating issues that
prevent them from using their
computer for its intended use,
whether it's simply accessing
their e-mail system or
printing a document."..
winbeta.org - 13.07.2007
