We've got to save Windows XP! :O

KGhaleon

http://weblog.infoworld.com/save-xp/archives/2008/03/save_windows_xp.html

*signs*

Schluep

I wish I would have thought to have a save Windows 3.1 petition! Windows 3.1 was much more efficient in terms of memory usage than previous Windows such as Windows 2.0. Windows 95 used to crash all the time and those long file names were so tough to remember when compared to Windows 3.1. Windows 95 used up more than twice as many system resources as Windows 3.1. All of my 16 bit programs crash on Windows 95 since they weren't very stable.

The same things being said about Vista were certainly said about nearly every Microsoft OS. Some were ultimately improved (Performance on Windows 98 increased so it wasn't substantially slower than Windows 95 like when it was released or major security vulnerabilities that were patched for Windows XP that existed initially). I remember when everyone used to complain about the big blue bars on Windows XP and all the RAM it used instead of turning them off, and now they make the same complaints about Vista.

Whether Vista truly goes the way of Windows ME or Windows XP is yet to be determined, however it is still a stepping stone to improvement regardless. Imagine going back to MS-DOS now had improvement not continue to be made. Personally I wouldn't sign a petition like this out of principle. Eventually older technologies will no longer be on the market, and since Microsoft owns the technology they can do with it as they choose. Try going into Best Buy tommorow and ask where they keep their Ataris and their new copies of Pong to see what response you get. If they upset too many customers it will come back to harm them as other options exist and companies like Apple are competing particularly for the home market and Linux/Unix servers are very commonplace. Microsoft did respond to these petitions and stated they are listening primarily to partners and customers based upon their needs and they already bumped the date back once. It is highly possible they could do so again.

Personally I have been using Vista for home use since August on good hardware and am more impressed by how it worked initially without service packs as compared to any previous MS OS that I have used when it was initially released. I like the added focus on security a lot as well. Except for our programmers that needed to test some of our software for Vista compatibility all users are using strictly Windows XP SP2 for their desktop clients still. We weren't fully transitioned to XP until 2 years ago and most of our Call Center was still on Windows 98 until that time.

Mishra

Windows XP started out the exact same way. It used up more system resources and crashed a whole lot until service pack 1 came to save the day.

Although I'm not on the "ban vista" bandwagon I still think Microsoft has made the same mistakes and continues to make those mistakes. I haven't gotten used to the Microsoft marketing way or anything so they still get bad marks for that. I'm referring to more of the fact they push new OSes down your throat, everything before service pack 1 is their advanced testing they should be doing pre-roll out. I think their software is overpriced, and other things I won't go into.

When Vista was on the horizon I thought I would be moving to Linux as my next desktop OS... But as I see Linux hasn't really gained the edge in the last year as I thought it would then it looks like my desktop OS switch will be delayed.

dynamik

Schluep wrote:

I wish I would have thought to have a save Windows 3.1 petition! Windows 3.1 was much more efficient in terms of memory usage than previous Windows such as Windows 2.0. Windows 95 used to crash all the time and those long file names were so tough to remember when compared to Windows 3.1. Windows 95 used up more than twice as many system resources as Windows 3.1. All of my 16 bit programs crash on Windows 95 since they weren't very stable.

It might be nice to give users who don't want to switch a little more time, but I really don't think we need to have XP stay on the market indefinitely. I really think people are just expecting too much out of their old machines in terms of Vista performance. I have it on a decent number of machines at home and here at work, and I haven't any performance issues or other problems (aside from iTunes still causing a BSOD on this machine). The more I use it, the more I like it. There's a ton of useful (albeit minor) features I stumble across all the time.

I think it's time to move on though. The end of June is almost two years for business users and 18 months for home users. That's more than enough time to buy a new XP machine if you really want it that badly. You can always stock up with a few OEM editions from Newegg if you are desperately going to need them later on.

hetty

dynamik wrote:

You can always stock up with a few OEM editions from Newegg if you are desperately going to need them later on.

Ive a couple of spare ones at home, i might wait until after the deadline date to see if the price goes up a bit!

HeroPsycho

I'm still completely flabbergasted me and everyone I know who have Vista have had very few if any problems.

Since going from XP to Vista is analogous to going from Win9X to Win2K, or Win3.11 to Win95, this has been the absolute least painful migration of those for me by far.

My issues have all been driver related:

Itunes video playback skip - bad NForce4 SATA driver.

Early on, significantly poorer game performance - immature NVidia video driver. A few months after that when they finally had a decent driver, I never booted back into XP again.

And it still kills me how people rail against UAC. They seem to be missing the point. If you want an apples to apples comparison of XP to Vista with UAC, run XP as a non-administrator compared to Vista with UAC enabled. Hands down, Vista is better by a landslide. Not that it's perfect, but I'd still much rather run Vista with UAC enabled than XP with a non-administrative account any day.

In fact, several times Vista has helped me resolve problems far easier than XP. Itunes decided to corrupt my library file for no apparent reason. No problem, I just restored a shadow copy, was back up in a minute.

dynamik

Like you said, most of it is driver issues.

Did you see the recent Creative fiasco: http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soundblaster&thread.id=116332&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

It's been all over Digg, Reddit, etc. the last few days. They finally said he could continue developing the drivers. I guess a quarter-million views and 170+ pages of forum posters saying they'll never buy another Creative product really got the message across.

HeroPsycho

And I'm not the only one who has had Nvidia driver issues with Vista, either...

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080325-vista-capable-lawsuit-paints-picture-of-buggy-nvidia-drivers.html

It's crap like that people apportion blame on Microsoft or Vista when it's completely not their fault. I slam Microsoft when they do bad or stupid things, and believe me, they've done quite a bit of that, but as far as I'm concerned, Vista is a good OS that's getting an undeserved bad rap.

undomiel

I'll cast my Vista vote here as well. I haven't been involved in a business migration at all and where I'm currently working there is no plan for Vista for quite a while, but at home I've had no issues with it, except for a slight buffering problem with WMP playing mp3s that I suspect is related to an update but it just hasn't been annoying enough for me to track down. My wife and I were early adopters of it. I was also out on the front lines doing support for Vista when it started shipping and there was some legacy software problems but those got cleaned up with updates farther down the road. The big thing that gave the customers a bad experience was a horribly untested image that was being pushed out on the first machines that wasn't corrected for a long time. It would started up with a blocked unnecessary driver that wouldn't affect your experience at all (since it was unnecessary with Vista) except for the warning message on boot, but of course customers would understandably freak out about it. Once I figured out the new networking center I really liked it (though having to navigate it blind on the phone without ever having seen it or used it before the first few times was rough) and system restores are easier to work with as well. Customers didn't like the different interface, but they enjoyed Aero, especially Flip 3D once you explained that to them. I liked XP, and know a lot about XP, but it isn't as if all that knowledge is being flushed down the drain with Vista. Lots of it is applicable to Vista as well. So bring on Vista says I.

Trigun

As usual people are just afraid of change... there is nothing wrong with Vista, just requires people to get used to it. As for bugs, M$ will provide patches, fixes etc... you can't expect a brand new system, built from scratch to be flawless!

RTmarc

Another pro-Vista vote; albeit I'm using Server 2008 as a workstation almost exclusively now. XP was/is a great OS but it is time to put it out to pasture. The simple fact remains, XP cannot meet the demands of the technology or consumer markets anymore. Modularity and productivity are the ways of the future and XP can't cut it.

Much like Yoda, we all loved him but eventually it was time to let him go.

Oh, wow...

I just used a Star Wars reference...

cisco_trooper

I'll be the first to admit that I hated XP when it came out, but it was mostly for aesthetic reasons. We had hundreds of XP licenses and I simply did not use them, in favor of Win2K. Aesthetics are a bad reason to badmouth an OS. XP is simply the best OS Microsoft has ever released.

This is the same thing that is going on with Vista. While I admit I haven't used it alot, for the same reasons I didn't want to switch to XP, I refuse to badmouth it. It will more than likely prevail as the King of OSes as soon as people quit whining about it and take the time to learn it. But, as always, I'll wait for a Service Pack to be released.

My nickels worth...

Mishra

cisco_trooper wrote:

I'll be the first to admit that I hated XP when it came out, but it was mostly for aesthetic reasons. We had hundreds of XP licenses and I simply did not use them, in favor of Win2K. Aesthetics are a bad reason to badmouth an OS. XP is simply the best OS Microsoft has ever released.

This is the same thing that is going on with Vista. While I admit I haven't used it alot, for the same reasons I didn't want to switch to XP, I refuse to badmouth it. It will more than likely prevail as the King of OSes as soon as people quit whining about it and take the time to learn it. But, as always, I'll wait for a Service Pack to be released.

My nickels worth...

Service pack 1 is already out on vista!

cisco_trooper

Did NOT know that!

Shows how much I've been paying attention to Microsoft lately. Don't flame me. I'm a self-proclaimed Cisco nut.

RTmarc

Mishra wrote:

cisco_trooper wrote:

I'll be the first to admit that I hated XP when it came out, but it was mostly for aesthetic reasons. We had hundreds of XP licenses and I simply did not use them, in favor of Win2K. Aesthetics are a bad reason to badmouth an OS. XP is simply the best OS Microsoft has ever released.

This is the same thing that is going on with Vista. While I admit I haven't used it alot, for the same reasons I didn't want to switch to XP, I refuse to badmouth it. It will more than likely prevail as the King of OSes as soon as people quit whining about it and take the time to learn it. But, as always, I'll wait for a Service Pack to be released.

My nickels worth...

Service pack 1 is already out on vista!

So is SP1 for 2008. It comes shipped with SP1 installed.

snadam

for the 5 hours i messed with vista I thought it was cool. So for that, ill be pro vista. Unfortunately, I have little to no experience with the rest of the OS corporate or personal wise; so I cant give a full opinion either which way.

Talic

I have to put my vote with Vista also. After using both the 64 bit version and 32 bit version I'm not missing much from XP. I do see a need for XP though, with low powered computers like the Eeepc and low end Pentium dual core laptops with 1 GB of ram would be much better off with XP rather then Vista Basic. What I don't like is Microsoft forcing down those people's throats for the sake of a new product. Its not like they are going to make less of a profit selling XP compared to a low end edition of Vista.

hetty

Talic wrote:

Its not like they are going to make less of a profit selling XP compared to a low end edition of Vista.

They might be missing out on possible vista anytime upgrades.

HeroPsycho

Talic wrote:

What I don't like is Microsoft forcing down those people's throats for the sake of a new product. Its not like they are going to make less of a profit selling XP compared to a low end edition of Vista.

They can't support old OS's indefinitely. That's the issue. It costs them to continue to support old OS's.

blargoe

I would think it costs them more to put out and support total abortions like Vista RTM.

AlanJames

I have no major issue with vista (although i can't install SP1) updated all my drivers etc, and went through the 8 steps in the microsoft KB article.

Vista will get better with time, XP was rubbish before they released sp1.

I just downloaded fedora.. anyone ever used that?

hetty

hetty wrote:

dynamik wrote:

You can always stock up with a few OEM editions from Newegg if you are desperately going to need them later on.

Ive a couple of spare ones at home, i might wait until after the deadline date to see if the price goes up a bit!

Looks like I cant do that now!