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For them, the impending disappearance of XP computers from retailers, and the phased withdrawal of technical support in coming years, is causing a minor panic.Take, for instance, Galen Gruman. A longtime technology journalist, Gruman is more accustomed to writing about trends than starting them.
But after talking to Windows users for months, he realized his distaste for Vista and strong attachment to XP were widespread.
"It sort of hit us that, wait a minute, XP will be gone as of June 30. What are we going to do?" he said. "If no one does something, it's going to be gone."
So Gruman started a Save XP Web petition, gathering since January more than 100,000 signatures and thousands of comments, mostly from die-hard XP users who want Microsoft to keep selling it until the next version of Windows is released, currently targeted for 2010.
Microsoft, Please Save Windows XP [ap.google.com]
Thanks buddy, now I have to clean the coffee off my keyboard.
Anyway, Vista will probably boost my consulting biz. I've seen a bunch of nightmares already. The problem is that a lot of people buying vista machines will end up finding that it is going to cost a lot to get someone in to fix all the problems.
Some so far (some of these are known issues with no immediate easy fix)
- A usb hub blew Vista out to a blue screen of death
- It took over an hour to get a shared printer to be visible
- You need to change something (if forget what right now) to fix the slow copying of files over the network.
- One client had an incompatibility between their Real estate app, Norton and Vista that two previous consultants couldn't solve. I solved it but only after 10 hours of work.
Oh and we havent' even begun to deal with doctors whose Xrays are suddenly fuzzy because the DRM thought the image was supposed to be protected.
Yessirreee. An all Vista OEM world is certainly going to be interesting. It would be nice if the gave XP a stay of execution.
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And for gaming.
Other than no DirectX 10 for XP, I'm going to do my best to skip Vista entirely and wait for "Windows 7" - or whatever it gets called, which should be out late 2009 or early 2010.
quote:
"Epic Fail"
What an understatement. You have no idea how many corporations we deal with are stockpiling XP boxes by the thousand while they still can. For once, management is listening to their IT departments, and the IT departments want nothing to do with Vista.
I put vista ultimate x64 on a box 3 months ago. First thing I did was turn UAC off. Once that's done I love it, MUCH prefer it to XP (ironically the way people feel about XP now I felt about 2000 when XP came out - was years before I switched).
In fact it's the first windows OS that I've ever bought a licence for, that's how much I liked it! Give it 4gb (2gb minimum) of RAM and it flies. SuperFetch ftw.
Oh and I use this PC for everything (music, videos, games, work, vmware) 12+ hours a day. Current uptime 54days, and I've not had a single crash or hang of any sort.
Turned all security off - added Kaspersky and after 20 minutes swearing cos the ADSL wouldn't work.... it sorted itself out whilst I went for a beer - seriously.... unless a gremlin got in and sorted it... the system must have worked out the problem.
Anyways - apart from a couple of very minor software glitches (download drivers easy as that) no problems at all... touch wood.
It's fast - simple to nav and has a few good features... it must be said I like it... maybe I am in the minority...?
Some companies that are probably behind all of this 'Please Save Windows XP' nonsense are makers and distributors of video editing software, antivirus software, firewalls.
Gruman's efforts are then enhanced by all the noise coming from the anti-MS crowd.
Galen Gruman + Infoworld + [AntiMS Crowd] = [Bunch of noise and nonsense]
I believe it, brother! I purchased a new PC from the dell refurbished system outlet 6 months before the planned retirement of my old PC. Just so I could get an XP box. Apple must be doing cartwheels right now.
Luckily I started an exercise to switch to Ubuntu 6 months back. I think we will be ready to switch to Ubuntu by June.
This is on a machine with a 3GHz Celeron processor, onboard graphics, and otherwise ancient hardware--with 768 MB of RAM. Ubuntu runs with almost maximum graphical options enabled. The machine doesn't even meet the minimum specs to run Aero on Vista; that requires 1 GB of RAM.
I'll use my XP system until it dies and all the install disks I can obtain are irreparably damaged. Then I'll switch to Ubuntu.
I only use Vista at the office for daily stuff. Still have XP on my main programming puter and win 98 on yet another.
Heck, I still have a Netscape 2.0 diskette <grin>
How do I make decision now to buy new desktop with Vista installed if everyone just complains about it?
How many people are doing fine with Vista?
The only people complaining about Windows Vista are those who sell software and services that are no longer relevant or obsolete.
"How many people are doing fine with Vista?"
I know many people with jobs that demand productivity who are doing just fine with Windows Vista and Office 2007. In fact, these people have told me they would never go back to previous versions of Windows or Office.
zafile: I know many people with jobs that demand productivity who are doing just fine with Windows Vista and Office 2007
the what-what? are they typing faster with Vista? :-)
define "productivity".
On the flipside, I'm pointing a remote control at it now, and it's playing songs I like ;)
By using Windows Vista and Office 2007, these people save time, stay organized, and most importantly, they can focus their efforts on sales, marketing, and customers.
In other words, make money!
And by the way, these people don't need a Wizard to fine tune things in their machines...
...focus their efforts on sales, marketing, and customers...
The easiest person to sell to is a salesman. That the marketing wogs have bought the MS marketing is no great shock.
p.s. Mickey Kaus over at Slate spun a good riff on Microsoft's Suicide Marketing [slate.com] today. What's notable is that Kaus is a holdover at Slate from the days when MS owned the mag, and is a longtime MS booster.
It's not like Vista is going to go away either. At least not until Windows 7.
XP is great, but a virus program hung the machine one day and a hard reboot resulted in a reinstall of the O/S.
Vista has been running on that laptop flawlessly. I've yet to see a BSOD (dont even know if it has one) and the machine has been rebooted twice since I first plugged it in (once during the install of SP1.)
It took over an hour to get a shared printer to be visible
I found the above process VERY simple on Vista.
You need to change something (if forget what right now) to fix the slow copying of files over the network.
I'm glad I didn't change anything because this was also NOT my experience.
Finally, I find it especially funny when I see posts from people that have not even tried the system talk about how bad it is. Try it, you might like it.
Right!
There's plenty of people complaining about Windows Vista right now: Book writers and people that make money out of book sales.
Infoworld guys like Galen Gruman and guys from similar publications are used to write books about operating systems and their intricacies just to earn some extra money to buy Christmas presents at the end of the year.
However, Windows Vista is so easy to use there's no reason to buy a book just to learn how to play with it.
So these writers have no way to make a profit out of Windows Vista. Of course they want to keep Windows XP around for a few more years!
And yes, I can't wait for books on Windows XP SP3 just to learn what's new on it!
Or what about books on Windows Vista for Idiots!
A number of the very vocal people who do not seem to care for Vista very much do seem to have hardware or 3rd party software issues a lot of the time. The biggest complaints I've heard about Vista in my Enterprise environment have been about Office 2007. These two seem to get confused for some reason. There's a bit of a learning curve to the new Vista interface, but once you get the hang of it it will save you time over the old XP.
Another thing, Vista is a lot more stable for me. I only reboot when a software requires it. It just runs and runs. No crashes, no blue-screens, no unexpected freezing...like I get with XP.
