Quote from Joe Willcox:

"But vestiges of XP distribution will continue, since system builders can continue shipping the operating system through Jan. 31, 2009. They acquire the software from distributors. Now this is interesting: "All OEMs, including major OEMs, have this option."
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So does this mean that all major OEMs can sell XP Pro preinstalled till Jan. 31, 2009? Without doing the downgrade dance? I think you mean downgrade rights, but not sure the way you worded that.

If so, what happened to the June cutoff???? And is this not another case of MS doubletalk? However you want to paint it, continuing XP in several forms now, is not stopping it at the end of June. This furthermore shows what a complete train wreck is Vista.

Does anybody else sense the rebellion that must b e going on by the OEMs against being made to sell only Vista?

Wasn't Jan. 31 2009, was the date that was first suggested, a very long time ago, for the release of Windows Seven.

Right thing by who, certainly not the microsoft customers who have invested thousands of dollars in XP and may not want to change yet.

As I have commented on this blog before the costs of training and support are considerable and at this time of economic down turn imposes a tax on small businesses.

Just today I had to do a to do a call out to a small business who had purchsed a new notebook with business vista, they could not work out how to add a wireless network, which they had done many times under xp. Opps the accounting app did not work with vista after 3 hours mucking around with drivers and security settings it worked.

The result a bill for $400 on top of the new notebook, with xp they could plug it in enter the wireless network key and everything worked.

I have used Vista and just don't care for it to use myself. But I come to love Vista in another way. Effortlessly, I make nice side income updating peoples laptops from Vista to XP. Most people I found that are willing to try to put XP from Vista on a new laptop themselves run into new AHCI problem and XP can't see the drive. They quickly throw in the towel and my mobile starts making that cha ching sound.

Windows Vista is such an amazing operating system and I would hope that the many developers and businesses in addition to the consumers would realize this and stop looking at the negativity that comes from the Open Source soap box. The built in security, the graphical richness, the built in applications. I know the reality will arrive one day though that Vista is just the appropriate choice we all must move to and I am sure the same situation with compatibility will arise with Windows 7 and Vista will become everyone's pride and joy. Oh well, the cycle must continue.

This is complete and utter friggin B.S. Not that I am any fan of XP, it IS just that it is unquestionably superior OS to Vistuck. The only reason Joe says it is the right thing to do (pull the plug), is that it is supposedly the right thing to do for MS profits. I don't even think that is true. To maximize profits their best strategy would be to continue to sell XP at full price, and Vistuck at half price. That would encourage many to take a chance on Vistuck and the smart users to still be able to get XP. I have no use for any version of Windows, but when I absolutely MUST boot into Windows, please God let it be XP. with SP3 it is almost tolerable.

comments:
"the graphical richness"
so i can make a desktop icon as large as 2 inches square, i have transparent title bars, i can have video displayed on the desktop, the ugly green/blue theme throughout, who cares? these are all productivity enhancers.

"the built in applications", like windows mail that has bugs that make the newsgroup reader useless, that autocomplete only stores the last 29 addresses.

explorer:
incomplete file statistics on the status bar, the entire row has focus instead of just the file name when selected, can't search a folder without opening it, can't right click on the network icon to get status.

yes, i know these can be worked around, but they are all things that don't work in vista that have worked since windows 95. i don't have problems running vista, i have problems with vista.

Andre Da Costa :I am sure the same situation with compatibility will arise with Windows 7 and Vista will become everyone's pride and joy. Oh well, the cycle must continue.

Do you work for Microshaft? I think you need to pull your head out of Monkey boys butt and smell the roses open source is here to stay.

Andre says:
"the graphical richness"............

The only richness I see is the money that Microsoft pays you to lie to people about how great Vista/Seven is. You Andre,just need a bigger shovel for your BS, cause you are just full of it.

Its like one person asked here, what does Vista do that XP cannot with a free program installed, that anyone would want to upgrade XP for?

Andre Da Costa (wrote)

"Windows Vista is such an amazing operating system and I would hope that the many developers and businesses in addition to the consumers would realize this and stop looking at the negativity that comes from the Open Source soap box."
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Andre, you might want to talk to the "Vista fans" who have been asking how to install Ubuntu and other Linux distros on their shiny pretty new Vista laptop. Both the Ubuntu forums and the Vista forums the hot topic is installing Ubuntu on a Vista machine. So much for "loyalty"....lol

One great "feature" (probably the only great feature in Vista)...is that Vista comes with a partition shrink program. This means you can free up 15 or 20 GB of the Vista hard drive. And install Ubuntu or any kind of Linux on the freed space. It takes only a few minutes to shrink the partition and its real easy. Yes! Vista beats XP in partition shrinking.

(Um I wonder if some of the engineers at Castle Redmond knew what a dog Vista was going to be and purposely put in the partition shrink program in Vista..just in case someone wanted to dual boot with another OS....nah ...just a coincidence..lol)

If some of you bought that $399 laptop with Vista at Best Buy this week...Compaq FT762NR. It has the Atheros 5007 wireless and it works great in Ubuntu 8.04 with a simple script from the mad wifi site. After installing Ubuntu on the laptop. Just cut and paste the script and you now have wireless and you are good to go with less RAM usage and much faster performance than Vista.

Since 8.04 LTS Hardy is only two months old, it is much newer than Vista.

I disagree. In general this is probably a good move for MS but not necessarily good for customers. Still, XP is not going away completely and from what I understand it will still be shipped for micro laptops like the Asus Eee PC. The fact that downgrade rights will still be offered for XP shows the power that large businesses have over MS. No one is forced to buy from MS. It is a choice and I am content to skip Vista entirely. This is a good lesson for MS not to ship a product that is half baked. Will they learn their lesson for Windows 7? Only time will tell.

Joe says:
Today, Microsoft formally informed customers that it will pull the plug on Windows XP...........

Anything that makes it that much harder for users to get a real computer with XP on it, and forces them to buy Vista, and maybe even Seven, when it comes it, if it is just Vista2, will, cause more users to defect to Linux and Mac. Watch the desktop numbers increase for Mac and Linux. This is now an ongoing trend for people to move to alternative operating systems.

So I would say that Microsoft is shooting itself in the foot here, and way to go.

I don't get all the Vista hate either. I installed Vista Ultimate on a three year old Dell Precision M70. It runs great on all the default hardware the computer originally shipped with.

Everyone who despises Microsoft has declared the OS, which has well over 100 million users, to be a disaster. Wishful thinking on their part.

There are many examples in life where "people are just trying to survive". The bigshots & wealthy decision makers can do whatever they want, no matter how much BS it is. And the consumers have no choice but to eat what their fed.
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Insert Windows Vista...

Microsoft gives me pretty graphics to look at. They're so pretty that I don't need to look at my wallet anymore !
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Windows uses loads of electricity ? I'll blame the electric company.
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Windows chokes my bandwidth, and funnels my personal data to Microsoft Servers? I'll blame my Internet provider.
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Microsoft uses lock-in formats, so I must buy Microsoft software just to access my own data? I'll blame Terrorists.
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Microsoft drives up my cost of living? I'll blame Bush.
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! I love Microsoft ! They make pretty graphics. If their executives ever need a raise, they can come to me !

The day we can't load XP anymore is the day we give MS a salute! 2.7 mil is a tad too much to convert existing programs and upgrade pc's to run on Vista. Bye Bye Microsoft

"Today, Microsoft formally informed customers that it will pull the plug on Windows XP..........."

SHOULD read: Today, Microsoft formally informed customers that 'it doesn't matter how many times you tell us what you WANT, we will only give you what WE want. We don't care how many thousand dollars you've spent supporting XP while it was still flawed because now that we finally have it a half inch away from right, we're forcing some newer garbage on you and charging more and you know what? YOU WILL ASSIMILATE. Resistance is futile because we think WE own your computer, not you.'

All of you idiot commenters must not know jack about software development.

So if they don't sunset XP, what are they going to do? They have a Vista code base they develop on and need to support. XP is now a legacy branch for patching. Microsoft themselves aren't going to deploy XP except to some QA people. So if they want to keep selling XP, do you suggest they instead stop selling Vista and migrate everyone at Microsoft back to XP?

Software is a virtual representation of people's time. Therefore is a shark, it has to move forward or die. You cannot go back without massive expense and burnout for all who spent time on it.

They had to make a decision, either stick with the Vista codebase or revert everything they did and start over from XP, thus throwing away billions. It's much, much easier to correct Vista than it is to take the nuclear option at this point, so they chose wisely.

We certanily do hear a lot of excuses for MS in this thread.

Timmah Wrote:...

"All of you idiot commenters must not know jack about software development.

So if they don't sunset XP, what are they going to do? They have a Vista code base they develop on and need to support. XP is now a legacy branch for patching. Microsoft themselves aren't going to deploy XP except to some QA people. So if they want to keep selling XP, do you suggest they instead stop selling Vista and migrate everyone at Microsoft back to XP?

Software is a virtual representation of people's time. Therefore is a shark, it has to move forward or die. You cannot go back without massive expense and burnout for all who spent time on it.

They had to make a decision, either stick with the Vista codebase or revert everything they did and start over from XP, thus throwing away billions. It's much, much easier to correct Vista than it is to take the nuclear option at this point, so they chose wisely."
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MSFT dumped Windows Me like a hot potato. They made a mistake with releasing it and corrected it and should be commended for it. And they should do the same with Vista, Vista is a dog and ask any IT Pro in large corporate environment and they will keep XP over Vista. Read the latest reports on Vista migration.

What Microsoft should have done was to still allow XP sales along with Vista. Thats what the consumers want. MSFT never seems to learn "business basics 101". "The customer is always right". Except in their case, its "the public be damned". Maybe they will learn. After they continue to lose more customers to Mac and Linux.

I think I read that Mac sales are up 60% since Vista was released. Must be those Mac Windows commercials doing it...yes thats the ticket.

I guess no one saw that news article where Intel refuses to use Vista in their corporate environment, same for General Motors and other major companies.

OK, since you support Vista so much and want XP to disappear. Then how come Microsoft cannot sell Vista to the tiny laptop market? Oh, thats right...Vista can't run on those machines. Ooops....

OK, lets make it fair to all then. Lets retire XP entirely and give back the tiny laptop/PC market back to Linux where it belongs. Unless of course ..... Microsoft is really THAT scared of Linux.

Mr. Ballmer will have to explain to stockholders and investors why he sold XP Home to the tiny laptop market for $20 per computer. But yet discontinued strong retail sales of XP and XP Pro for $99 to $299. And cut off customers from buying XP computers while leaving a unpopular OS as its replacement.

Oh, Lordy! The zealots are out.

The only sensible approach to OSs, if you make your living using PCs, is to use whatever works for you. XP was a mistake because MS should never have combined the home and business OSs but SP2 made it quite usable. I'm still using the so-called 'Classic' interface, though.

If Vista works for you, use it; likewise if your choice is Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, or whatever.

One thing I would say is that no OS producer who wants to sell to business should ever make the new OS largely incompatible with the old (whatever happened to virtualization?) because it costs businesses time and money (retraining, fixing, etc).

I have read numerous reviews that Microsoft finally got it right with XP, which runs faster than Vista after SP3 and does not crash older software. Microsoft appears to have a problem with truthfulness, as I attempt to do basic things with my Acer running Vista Home Premium. I have learned that freezes (which are frequent) can be undone by hitting the Control-Alt-Delete keys, and then clicking Cancel, allowing me to go back to work. This after installing all Vista updates and SP1.
So much for the superiority of Vista. Microsoft continues, by its actions, to promote Apple and Linux over any product it can offer. It's time for more than Bill Gates to retire.

I find it hilarious that MS continues to roll out a new OS every few years.

This results in OS clutter.

So a majority of all PCs on Earth right now probably run XP. They came out with Vista, what, 2 years ago? And they are STILL pushing it.

They are forcing the OEMs to install Vista on their PCs. With yet ANOTHER OS coming out within a year or 2.

What in the hell does Microsoft think they can gain by forcing their OS on people who do not want it?

XP already does EVERYTHING anyone could want from an OS.

So why in the hell should I shell out a couple of hundred bucks to MicroShaft for something TOTALLY UNNECESSARY?????

Because they want me to give them some more money?

Give me a break!

They always claim they want to provide 'value' for the customer.

There is no value whatsoever in upgrading to a new OS that is inferior to the one you have, or which will provide the end user with no benefits above and beyond what XP does, but will most likely be a bug-ridden piece of crapware that will cause much more cursing of the name of MicroShaft and all the stupidity it stands for.

You would think with all the 'geniuses' that work there, at least ONE of them could understand this.

But no.

How many more operating systems will they release by 2020?

Windows 7 will come out in a couple of years or so, and it will be just as buggy as any of the other ones when they first were released. Which will cause even more people to NOT want to upgrade, because as I have said, they will already have an OS that does everything they need.

Seems to be some kind of law of diminishing returns at work here.

XP is NOT! Out-selling Vista !
These rumors are definitely not true! It is pretty easy to prove that this is a big fat lie!
In the 2001 lst month launch of XP there were 17,000,000 boxes sold, but in Vista's 1st month we shipped 20,000,000 units! That's 3 million more units shipped than boxes sold! I quote a reputable website:
"In January 2002, Microsoft announced that sales of Windows XP had reached 17 million within the first two months of that operating system's launch. In comparison, Vista sales from January 30 to February 28 of this year amounted to more than 20 million copies shipped."
The demand for Vista is sooo great that we are phasing out the production of XP disc so we can keep up with the demand! People can then go into Best Buy and not get confused about which to buy.(Marketing tells me that confusion is responsible for 44% of all XP sales).
I guess all of this started when the Apple iTards claimed that we have sold tens of dozens of copies of Vista, Tens of Billions is more like it!

@Ralph: "MSFT dumped Windows Me like a hot potato. They made a mistake with releasing it and corrected it and should be commended for it. And they should do the same with Vista, "

Windows Me was a PLANNED obsolescence. It was a legacy release at a time when all of Microsoft was going full steam to NT. Your Windows Me argument basically shows that Microsoft should _stay_ with the Vista code line, not dump it.

As I said, Microsoft cannot undo billions of dollars of effort spent on Vista because corporate customers aren't happy. Instead they should and will plow forward making Vista viable in the corporate environment by fixing it, not throwing it out.

Besides, corporate IT dipwads complain about every new release of Windows and there are always many holdouts for the old versions. I didn't get to use XP in my work environment until 2004 -- fully 3 years after it was released. By the way, claiming that XP is the holy grail of Windows releases would also p.o. those who still run Windows 2K.

@ Goober: "I find it hilarious that MS continues to roll out a new OS every few years"

Well, you've got Apple that ships a new one for $130 every year, and Linux that ships a new distro every week. So in that regard you should be happy to run Windows because it changes so rarely.

SteveBallmer Said :
"Vista sales from January 30 to February 28 of this year amounted to more than 20 million copies shipped."

@_ : _ http://tinyurl.com/6569r7 _
"The 20 Million License Test"
"I wonder why Microsoft is not reporting how many copies of Vista it has validated? That would be a very good measure of actual usage. If a company purchases 20 computers with Vista and downgrades to XP should that count as a Vista sale? ..."

Andre Da Costa Said :
"Oh well, the 'cycle' must continue."

@Andre Da Costa :
You of anybody knows about re'cycle'.
@_ http://tinyurl.com/6llkny _
14-Oct-07 07:33:25
missing recycle bin - Andre Da Costa [ActiveWin]

Timmah wrote
"Well, you've got Apple that ships a new one for $130 every year, and Linux that ships a new distro every week. So in that regard you should be happy to run Windows because it changes so rarely."

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So then Linux would have the most up to date Operating System. And with Linux, there no fees, no activations, no mandates or requirements to upgrade. Five years from now you can still get the same specific version that you are running now.

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Timmah wrote"

"As I said, Microsoft cannot undo billions of dollars of effort spent on Vista because corporate customers aren't happy. Instead they should and will plow forward making Vista viable in the corporate environment by fixing it, not throwing it out.

Besides, corporate IT dipwads complain about every new release of Windows and there are always many holdouts for the old versions."

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So Corporate customers should "just" upgrade to Vista, even if the machines cannot run Vista. Or some of the specialized software that cannot or will never run on Vista, should Corporate just ditch it and just use "something else"?

Yes that makes a lot of sense. I am sure MSFT will be happy to buy the corporate world new machines and new software to run MSFT's overbloated and incompatible Operating System.

If the corporate world wants or needs XP for another five or ten more years. Then that is what they will use, regardless what Ballmer or some MSFT rep says.

MSFT should not have painted themselves in the corner with Vista, and now its come back to bite them.

most of the people I build for and maintain for cannot afford to upgrade all thier peripherials and softward for Vista- which after using it is a pig imho.

and in my company - a large pharma- they decided not to move to vista at all - so who benefits to the "lets move xp out of the channel" not the consumer or business. and all eyes including MS seem to be focused on windows 7 now anyway.

@Ralph: "So then Linux would have the most up to date Operating System. And with Linux, there no fees, no activations, no mandates or requirements to upgrade. Five years from now you can still get the same specific version that you are running now."

5 years from now, your linux box will be completely useless unless you either leave it doing whatever it's doing forever, or port software to it yourself. I run an old Redhat server and anytime I try to install something new, I either have to try to build it myself or find it's API incompatible with my old version of Linux. Commerical software on old versions of Linux is a complete loss unless you plan to never upgrade.

Vista isn't a holy grail and more people are pushing out upgrading than before, but the idea switching to Linux instead is just laughable.

"but the idea switching to Linux instead is just laughable""
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Recent news within the last year.

20,000 school laptop in the Philippines move from Microsoft to Linux, 9,000 Swiss school laptops move to Linux, 72% of Wall Street servers will run Linux, 85 % of the top 500 super site computers run Linux as of June 2008. The City of Munich is running all Linux, Russia moving to open source. European Union is recommending Open Source.

More examples...
South Africa moving to Linux (Would save them $352 millions in license fees),San Fransisco Bay Area schools move to Linux, ,The U.S. Army is moving to Linux, The French Police is moving to Linux.

More Examples...
300,000 Linux Ubuntu PCs to be sold in Russia,20% of middle and high-end mobile handsets will be running some form of the Linux operating system by 2013, 1,000 (Maybe 15,000) school computers with Linux in Birmingham Alabama, 12,500 Indian high schools move to Linux, Calif. school district aims 5,000 desktops at Linux, San Diego Unified School District selects SUSE Linux Enterprise.

@Timmah

"Windows Me was a PLANNED obsolescence."

WOW! Selling software as a planned obsolescence! Isn't MS planning to make Vista obsolete with Windows 7? Isn't that true for a majority of software?

LOL!

SteveBallmer said "Vista sales from January 30 to February 28 of this year amounted to more than 20 million copies shipped."
More misleading MS propaganda! That wasn't 20 million SOLD, that was 20 million SHIPPED--TO RETAILERS, not to users and customers. XP IS outselling Vista because the numbers you just gave represent CUSTOMERS for XP and RETAILERS for Vista!! All you've done Stevie is confirm that we can't trust anything said by Redmond.

@Ralph :
I think you made Timmah's last post @ June 26, 2008 12:57 "just laughable".

Kill'em with facts, they'll die instantly.
Good job Ralph ;)

@Timmah :
You will NOT get those "More Examples..." from reading Microsoft-watch, but you did get it from "Ralph" tho.

What you're all missing is that we now have a definitive month (if not specific date) for the release of Windows 7: April, 2014.

Fortunately, that's, what, sixteen months after the world is supposed to end?

Anything that makes it harder for the user to get XP. will act as a catalyst to encourage the change and spread to of free linux desktop operating systems. XP will be the last Microsoft decent operating system, as Vista and Seven (Vista2) are DRM invested, spyware, regressions in productivity. Even XP, or 2000, is not that good compared to Linux, when you take into account that its so easy as a malware target.

I couldn't agree more. MS can't pull XP fast enough. I can't wait for the whole world to be forced into using Vista. So far, Vista has proved to be the best way yet conceived to increase Mac and Linux market share and break the monopoly. I've personally watched whole departments (that previously didn't know Linux existed) switch over to Ubuntu after 2 days of working with new computers preloaded with Vista. Keep up the great work, Vista! I thank you for your dedication to the promotion of open source software!

@Timmah:

Why, in this day and age, are you even running an old Red Hat server? Why not upgrade? Move it over to Fedora or RHEL, and your problem goes away. Or, if you had installed Debian, then one install would have done you for the life of the hardware. That's how I have run my Debian server. Just one install. Whenever a new version releases, I just update my sources file, upgrade all packages, and I'm good to go after at most one reboot. And I only reboot for major version changes, if necessary at all. Never need to for minor updates.

Wouldn't it be nice if all this didn't matter so much, and if apps were either virtualized or downloaded to whatever desktop we're running?

That's my guess for what will be most important in the future.