Got WindowsXP?

[mapsedge]

Not for long.

Time is Running Out for Windows XP

Matthew Broersma, Techworld

Microsoft will force PC makers to stop selling machines running XP by the end of this year, despite ongoing compatibility problems and demand for XP from users.

Demand for XP is particularly strong among small and medium-sized businesses, according to Dell, which announced it will continue offering some machines with XP pre-installed.

However, the clock is ticking, and Dell and other PC makers will be obliged to stop selling machines running XP by the end of the year, despite ongoing compatibility and performance issues with Windows Vista.

Dell has decided to continue offering XP on business systems through the summer through a feature called "Customize with Windows XP," the company said in a recent blog post.

Dell said the move reflects strong demand for XP machines, especially for smaller businesses, which often buy systems in small numbers from OEMs.

"Dell recognizes the needs of small business customers and understands that more time is needed to transition to a new operating system," said Tom West, director of small business marketing at Dell, on the company's blog. "The plan is to continue offering Windows XP on select Dimension and Inspiron systems until later this summer."

Dell isn't planning to offer XP on consumer systems, saying they prefer the "latest and greatest," a situation that displeased some customers. "Thumbs down for not offering this to home users," wrote one user.

"Many home users- especially gamers- do consider XP the 'greatest'- especially after all the media articles and benchmarks showing very poor gaming performance and compatibility on Vista," wrote another.

At the end of this year, however, Microsoft OEMs' contracts will no longer give them the option of selling XP-powered machines. This is despite problems that have surfaced for consumers as well as businesses, such as games and application incompatibility and driver problems.

Most recently, users complained that Vista's start-up, shut-down and application load times are far too long compared with Windows XP. Users on Microsoft's Performance & Maintenance forum, who sound pro-Vista for the most part, have vented about a variety of speed issues.

"I have XP and Vista running side-by-side [but] I twiddle my thumbs waiting for certain apps to load up on the Vista machine while the load is instantaneous on the older XP machine," wrote a user identified as William. "I've tweaked it as best as I could with the info available and I am still very disappointed."

Doubts have also been raised about Vista's security, after it emerged that Vista was affected by recent widespread hacks involving Windows' animated cursors, even though that portion of the code was addressed by an update more than two years ago.

Got Linux?

Comments

[iarraidh.livejournal.com]

Hell, I don't even run *XP*

Windows 2000 Professional is a stable and predictable platform and I never went XP.

I figure when I am FORCED by Microsoft to buy another computer, it won't be a Windows PC.

Mac's are looking good.

If the Linux (what is it? Wine?) Windows emulator actually runs the basic Microsoft crap, then I'd consider it just so I wouldn't lose legacy stuff.

[billthetailor.livejournal.com]

The link is to Xandros, a Linux distro that PC Magazine recommended for those who, 1. are already familiar with WindowsXP and don't want a sharp learning curve to a new OS, and, 2. need to be able to run Microsoft products and interact with the MS file system.

Everything I've read about it looks really good. I downloaded a .torrent but I haven't had time to try it.

[billthetailor.livejournal.com]

I have no technical complaints about Macs, but I have the same complaint about Macs that Frank does: with a PC, I can get 1/3 again as much computer for 1/3 less the price. I also think that, as technology has improved, their superiority as multimedia machines is overrated.

[eacole72.livejournal.com]

I don't know about the price point argument being quite as valid as it used to. Ray bought a MacBook Pro last year, with a 17" screen. To get a similarly sized screen with a similarly powered PC laptop, he had to go to Sony or HP. While we were close to $3K for the Mac, we would have been closer to $4K with either of the others, and neither offered the same photo editing capabilities (PhotoShop for the PC is rather handicapped in comparison to the Mac version), since they were both designed for watching DVD's on an airplane.

[jehosefatz.livejournal.com]

I briefly looked at Mac notebooks when I was looking to replace my gaming machine a little over a year ago. One of the last things I want is portability -- I'm already tethered by a notebook for work and 24/hr on-call.

My primary performance driver (gaming) is very specific and any machine that meets them will meet everything that I do. So, I went AMD based PC (AMD consistently outperforms Intel for gaming applications) and even with SLI and 2x256Mb video cards and 2Gb RAM, I paid a little over $1000 for tha parts. It took me about 30 minutes to get it all put together and another hour or so to get the OS installed (mostly waiting). Even adding a normalized billing rate for my time I came in less than $1200. And I have an upgrade path that is easy, cheap, and self-service.

The only thing I found in the Mac line that gave me a comparable performance profile (in side by side comparisons with people who actually owned them) was the Mac Pro ... and it's way more expensive. (Minis aren't expandable and the only real improvement I get in an iMac for more money is a bigger monitor... which I don't need.)

I think the Macs are good machines. I like the OS a lot. But the lack of licensed 3rd party hardware and Apple's tendency to insist that one can't muck around in the machine's internals annoys me.

All that being said, 90% of the population (possibly to include Bill) would probably be fine with some flavor of Mac and Macs may have the edge on power in portability (I haven't paid that much attention) and I would *definitely* suggest Mac for home recording (ProTools is the way to go and while they have a PC based version they have a lot more history and industry acceptance in Mac-land.)

But for my needs it came down to $1000 (PC) vs $2500 minimum (Mac Pro).

And, on the same hardware when I go Linux, I get about a 30% performance boost.

- Jeho

[eacole72.livejournal.com]

For the record, both my desktop & my laptop at home are PC's. Until the latest release of Parallels, I couldn't attach to the VPN here at work with a Mac.

When I replace my laptop, probably in 2008, I'll most likely buy a MacBook. The things I'm looking for, I'll pay more for in a PC.

What I'm saying is that the automatic assumption of "Macs are expensive & PC's are cheap" isn't true anymore. Macs are comparable, possibly even cheaper, in price to PC systems of comparable power that are pre-built to order, not homebuilt. Very often, we get an apples to bananas, (or worse, apples to engine blocks) comparison of prices between the two, either because the PC is a low-end stock, or it is home-built. Yes, either of those will be cheaper. But, they aren't a fair comparison.

What you did, 90% of the population can't do. You built a computer. I don't want my parents changing their keyboard out most days, let alone trying to build their own. I know if I put a Mini on their desk at Christmas, it is probably going to work for them without any real hassle. That's not something I can say about a PC.

[jehosefatz.livejournal.com]

I'm with you 100%.

And for the record, 90% of the population buys a lot more power than they actually need, even if the prices are cheap, and most of that is because of the "planned obsolesence" in the market not necessarily because of demands of the software -- e.g. people who write letters, do spreadsheets, and send email don't need 4.Ghz processors or 4Gb of RAM... or 200Gb hard drives, for that matter.

I'm also WAY willing to concede the OS stability/understandability/usability points, especially for the home user. I found this generally to be true even before OSX, but even more so now.

- Jeho

[iarraidh.livejournal.com]

Well if I'd actually take time to familiarize myself with Linux, I'd probably jump that way.

I remember that Linux used to be a real whore for getting device drivers correct and such, but understand it's greatly improved.

All I do with my PC (outside of work) is Email, browsing and graphics/multimedia. I sure as hell don't need Gatesware for any of that.
I do just want some cross-platform compatibility with the files I currently have.

[billthetailor.livejournal.com]

If you're talking Microsoft Office files, OpenOffice already offers that in both Windows and Linux. The biggest obstacle for me is that I have to be able to read Windows partitions and operate on a Windows network. Xandros seems to fit the bill nicely. (pun acknowledged)

YMMV, and all of this is as yet theoretical as I don't have a machine I can sacrifice to testing.

[jehosefatz.livejournal.com]

I would look at SAMBA (cross platform file/print services).

- Jeho

[jehosefatz.livejournal.com]

I pushed to convert my developers onto Linux (RedHat) last year. Our application platform is Apache/Tomcat/Java on Linux anyway (another move I pushed for that saves us about $60k/year in licensing... it was Weblogic on Solaris/Sun hardware), so I'd rather have their development environments reflect where we deploy.

The rest of the company is WinDoze based. We use Evolution for email/scheduling/etc and interface with the Exchange server. OpenOffice for everything else. I think the only application I've found that doesn't play nice (enough) with OpenOffice is Project.

- Jeho

[jehosefatz.livejournal.com]

I'm trudging ahead with my Linux plans. I have a buddy running World of Warcraft under both Cedega (a Wine-like substance) and WINE, so one of my last major compatibility complaints is fading quickly away.

- Jeho

[ladyniniane.livejournal.com]

If Linux (any flavor) can decently run the Age of Empires games (at least I and II - I just got III), I'm willing to switch my desktop system tomorrow.

That's basically what has stopped me from giving it a try until now. The desktop machine has nothing from Microsoft except the OS, but the games I play all seem to be Windows only.

[billthetailor.livejournal.com]

The desktop machine has nothing from Microsoft except the OS, but the games I play all seem to be Windows only.

That's slowly changing. Dell, for instance, has defied Micro$oft's dictum that WindowsXP no longer be offered, and they're even exploring adding a couple of flavors of Linux to their customization options.

[jehosefatz.livejournal.com]

Runs in WINE (http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iAppId=762) and cedega (http://transgaming.org/gamesdb/games/view.mhtml?game_id=3809)

- Jeho

[ladyniniane.livejournal.com]

Bookmarked and noted. Thank you!

When I get out from under the performing / teaching / sewing demonspawn, I plan to do a machine rebuild. Perhaps this time will be the great change.

[foolscap001.livejournal.com]

Sweet. Please do consider Linux.

One reporter claimed that ATI would start releasing info to allow for Open Source drivers after AMD bought them, but I've seen no evidence of it. I'd therefore recommend nVidia if you want 3D graphics performance (and do what you can to support nouveau, an effort to create Open Source 3D-capable drivers for nVidia hardware).

If you enjoy eye candy, check out compiz or Beryl (they'll be remerging soon, thank goodness...)

This is a good time to upgrade; AMD recently slashed prices on CPUs, and at newegg.com, you can get a dual core 64-bit CPU (I forget whether it's 2 GHz or 2.2), 65W power consumption, for $100. Intel, which last year finally pulled its head from its sphincter and dumped the ghastly Pentium 4 "Netburst" architecture, is supposed to be cutting prices shortly.

[ladyniniane.livejournal.com]

Linux lives in this house, but (at the moment) only on boxes that brother william plays with. Because a lot of my home computer time is spent gaming, I have avoided it until now. Obviously, that is going to change.

And you're preaching to the choir on hardware specs - the only Intel box I've bought in recent years was my Toshiba laptop, which is 4+ years old. I like it, but it doesn't get used for gaming (it's the machine that has gone to Japan with me, twice). All of the desktop systems around here are various flavors of AMD; one of them is really old but still functional (IBM Aptiva with a K6 in it - it's our print server).

And I wouldn't take an ATI card if you gifted me with it (not for a gaming machine anyway). nVidia all the way...