XP to be "retired" in Jan 2008!

What the Fr*g! Well it's only to be expected really:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6551429.stm

I don't suppose they'll withdraw support for a while after that though.

And 6 different versions just seems nuts to me. Although I just looked up some detail on that:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista#Editions_and_pricing

So I have to work out which of the 3 home user versions I need. I presume there is no difference in terms of DX and other drivers so games will work on them all even the business versions?

I will have upgraded to Vista long before then anyway. Its only the lack of funds thats stopping me doing it right now.

Games should work fine in all version of Vista. Home Premium seems to be a good compromise between cost and features.

...or the world could unite, everyone install Linux or switch to Mac, and the Microsoft empire falls freeing users everywhere from its draconian control of our lives.

markd: LOL!

I have Home Premium, and its okay for what I need, though, when I built my last PC, I bought XP Home, then I bought Visual C# 2002 a few months later and was a little gobsmacked that to run IIS (For ASP.NET), I needed XP Pro, so I had to buy that bugger as well!

And the same will probably happen again, lol! :D

Dabz

> And the same will probably happen again, lol! :D

Yeah, that Open Source stuff is looking better all the time. Although home should be capable of testing ASP components. (VS 2005 has a web hosting program that only works for the local computer, strictly so a developer can test the functionality of a website)

Yeah, I have that here, on Vista Home Premium, Vista support for a few niggles in XNA will arrive soon (They might of sorted it by now, I've never looked) and too be honest, my business runs on Open Office Portable (On my data key,lol), so development wise, I think Home Premium is enough for me, though, there might be a feature in, say, Vista Ultimate that could draw me too it.

Time will tell! :)

Dabz

> Vista support for a few niggles in XNA will arrive soon

Last I saw was "Coming in April"

Maybe they want more take up of it, seems like a bad market strategy to make Vista the only OS they have seeing as not all the flaws would have been worked out yet.

XP is thier best OS to date and to me Vista seems overkill on most of the things. Later versions of windows after 98 seem to be IMHO dumbed down, Vista is a perfect example the entire OS is catered to everyone who doesnt know anything about computers.

*surprise*

Aerial Antics doesn't seem to work under Vista. I was testing out some Vista rigs with a friend who's shopping for a PC and as soon as AA sets the 3D graphics mode the game crashes with an 'Unable to set graphics mode' error no matter what resolution etc... Running in standard 2D (the splash screen) seemed to work just fine though.

Hm... I just read this one:
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=197000165
Microsoft Extends Windows XP Support to 2014

Keep in mind, there's two phases of support -- mainstream support, during which the product receives patches as well as improvements, and then there's the extended support phase which means that they'll just release security patches.
either way, XP isn't going away anytime soon -- too many people (especially corporate customers) are hanging onto it with all their might.

Yeh, MS' policies used to be 5 years for active support and 5 years for bug fix support. XP being retired in 2008 gives it an extra year - so not a bad deal at all. No doubt that it to make up for Vista being so horribly late.


Only 2 - Home Basic and Home Premium. Home Starter is for underdeveloped countries. Home Premium has pretty much just Aero and Media Center/Xbox support. Small Business is another good option, Aero, no Media Center/Xbox support, lots of businessy apps that might be worth considering (wouldn't know).


I have Home Premium and IIS7 is in the Windows Components list. I havn't switched them on, but I'd assume them being there means I could if I wanted to =]


Your friend needs to install drivers.

Here is the MS page on the features.

Home Premium has a web server, but only 3 clients at a time.

http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/library/0d35e92b-ddb7-4423-b1e5-df550e25713b1033.mspx?mfr=true

well that's something.

Thanks Hotcakes (saying that sounds disturbing), for the info, so it's Basic or Home Premium OK.

So, let's see...

Currently, if my XP version runs out of system resources it crashes, sorry... disables, the 16-bit apps first (which I wrote, according to strict MS 'C' rules), saying that _they_ have a problem.

So, I can look forward to a time when Vista does the same to my 32-bit Blitz programs - crashes then first to free up resources for 64-bit programs?

Just to justify my above comment, I'm particularly amused (not) by the fact that 16-bit apps that I wrote which ran on Win 3.1, Win3.11, Win95, WinNT, Win2000, now occasionally produce a message which says 'Your program has encountered a problem...'
Yeah I know. The problem is XP.

Wasn't backwards compatibility promised?
Ah no, I forgot, that was the promise that Gates made to IBM the day of that first deal.

Well all I can say is "plurrrrr!" - I like XP and don't see mew upgrading just yet or any time soon, although inevitably I will have to.

The current project I am working on needs to be XP based because I trust XP.

IPete2.

XP will have extended support until 2014 - that is even longer than the support for Vista Home Basic, Home Premium and Ultimtate Edition will last, unless MS changes that. Only the Business and Enterprise editions of Vista have longer support than XP at the moment.

What will happen 2008 is that the big OEMs like Dell or HP will no longer be able to ship their machines with XP pre-installed. The little shop around the corner will still be able to sell XP at least until 2009.

An in 2009, if MS lives up to their promise of reducing the product release cycles significantly, they will already be shipping the successor of Vista...

Oh, you can sell it for many more years -- it's just that MS won't sell licenses for the OEM version of XP (which get tied to a piece of hardware). I'm sure that one can find the more expensive retail versions of XP for much longer than that.

I'll stick to OS X... Does everything I want :-)

Well in theory yes, but who on earth are you going to sell it to? Nobody in their right mind is going to buy an obsolete dead-end OS.

It's not like the masses are knocking down the doors for Vista at the moment, so I dare say that there will continue to be at least some demand for XP next year.

No, because normal people don't buy operating systems (unless it happens to come with their computer), and Vista breaks pretty much every single program you're likely to use in a professional environment. However just because people aren't buying it left, right and center doesn't mean they wouldn't if Microsoft had presented a compelling reason to (instead of say ridiculous "wow" commercials). However if you needed an OS right now, and you had to choose a Microsoft one, you would be stupid beyond belief to buy XP over Vista.

Perhaps -- Although so far personally I've seen more people wipe Vista in favor of XP than the other way around.

Well I don't know anyone who has Vista, but XP is living on borrowed time (and anyone thinking 2014 is in for a big surprise). Vista at least has an immediate future, and chances are good Microsoft will catch up eventually - early adopters always get shafted.

Check sig, or did you mean personally! ;)



I used Win98 on a manufactured PC, and adopted XP Home from the off. It was the same back then, but XP has had a cracking run IMO, and it wasnt going to last forever.

I think the big test for Vista is going to be DirectX 10, I havent plumped for a DX10 card just yet, as there's no games for it, but when they eventually trickle through, I will saved up enough for a good one, and then see what all the fuss is about! :)

I like Vista, but its every man/woman to their own I suppose, and just because I cannot see what all the fuss is about, doesnt mean there doesnt have to be a fuss, because fussing is what drives things forward for the better! :)

And if it makes Vista better for me somehow, result! :D

Dabz

I think the big test for Vista is much more likely to be DX11.

Microsoft Product Lifecycle:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/lifecycle/default.mspx

F"#!% 5#&t and M&/%"#(=c¤k+ng A&¤E!!

that means i might HAVE to start using vista more than XP sooner than i wanted (never). (for the 2-3 things i actually use windows for - not including at work)
Oh well, cant beat the reversal of progress i suppose.
The IT department i work in is already refering to 'upgrade day' as SAD. ('Santiy Armageddon Day').

I thought we had like 3-4 years left :(

Well, you COULD go with an OEM version of Vista Ultimate like yours truly.

I'll stick with my Atari 800XL and Atari DOS 1.0 . (lifecycle- 1983-???). Thing just never quits!

although I admit I've had some problems with the Cassete Drive lately.

From the BBC article: "A poll by US market research firm Harris Interactive found that only 10% of those questioned were planning to upgrade to Vista in the near future."

It's a marketing strategy, no more, no less... M$ insures that a "new generation" of computer users will be using their "latest and greatest, most secure Windows ever" product... Those of us who have suffered through the constant updates and security fixes for the last 10 years or so, will either upgrade or ... ?

And yes, I'm sure that there will still be support for XP for awhile.. just like the other OS releases from Redmond.

However, it is my fervent hope that M$ alienates enough users that they consider a Mac or Linux alternative. I for one will be purchasing new Macs for my wife and myself... and converting our current XP machines to Debian or Ubuntu after XP support expires...


LOL!

Just like every other PC, I'll use whatever OS it came pre-installed with.

The time to Armaggedon has been hastened.

What is somewhat funny is that the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) program is using XP as the core OS...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6571139.stm


Surprise, surprise...

No business is in it for being nice, they want our money, pure and simple. Whats the point of being a business otherwise?

Even ones that support charitys, they get their logo shown, everyone thinks 'Awwww, bless em, I think I'll buy X product now', and the revenue comes in!

Dabz

What I find most interesting is if XP is due to be "retired", then what will be the "upgrade" path for these kids? You can be sure the laptops won't support Vista! And, with Redmond's track record of producing even larger (read: bloated) OS releases with each OS evolution, I guess it'll just "dead end"...

No worries, they can always run a Linux distro... LOL...

> What I find most interesting is if XP is due to be "retired", then what will be the "upgrade" path for these kids?

Some people are still running Win95, so XP should be useable for a good decade or so - and old software will still work just as well.

"Amid significant customer demand, the computer maker said on Thursday that it has returned to offering the older Windows version as an option on some of its consumer PCs."

http://news.com.com/Dell+brings+back+XP+on+home+systems/2100-1046_3-6177619.html?tag=nefd.top

It looks like they are offering it back to business users, which makes sense when reading some of the posts from IT guys on here. Home users are still going to be Vista only.

Unless they wipe the harddrive and install XP themselves, which some might do.

I think Qube did just that on his dads PC because of sound issues, but I imagine any issues will be ironed out, eventually.

Dabz

Its not really XP as such, its XP 'starter' $3 edition whatever that is :/

i dont like the sound of 'starter edition', but if it gives the kids in 3rd world a very cheap working pc that does fun stuff for them its a good move.

However, i think m$ would have done this without being in such desparate times for them. They need the pr, publicity and dominance as linux is already getting a very popular choice in africa, asia, china, parts of europe etc...

Linux - just like everyone else.

Thats if the hardware holds up!

Dabz

From what I've read, the main 'features' of starter edition are that:

1) It's is very cheap
2) It will only allow 3 programs to run simultaneously
3) It is not available in an international/English language version, but only in certain localized language versions to prevent use in areas where Microsoft does not approve of releasing a cheap version of Windows.

indeed, they would be better off with edubuntu linux then, it might actually teach them some 'computing skills'.
They could then save the 3$ per child and pay for something more worthwhile...

Actually, linux trys to talk to hardware as it is 'supposed' to be. Trouble is, so many Cheap (or) shite hardware manufacturers have gone down the 'it works with windows so it will do' route that its kind of a pain. Good ting is, now linux is gaining in popularity (like at no other time) mabe these manufacturers will sit up and take note :)

The *real* problem is that it's not the actual hardware doing the job, but the software drivers. Very few modems for example actually do any of the work in hardware anymore. So if the manufactuer doesn't feel like the pay-off is large enough to write drivers for a platform, you're pretty much out of options.