XP Forever

Ahhh surely not all of the clever people in the world are penguins !!

Can't someone hack the source for XP if MS is going to dump it and we will collectively keep the old girl running?

I'm losing it aren't I??

Sorry ... I'm still on Double D Link time ... aaahhh those CES booth babe pictures !!!
Put em up fellas !!!

Dos5?

I thought it was DOS4 that was the turkey.

J

Not quite sure, here

I think that MS is once again going to have to postpone its end date for XP.
Much too many people are still hanging on to their XP discs for dear life. Vista is lagging badly, and an as-of-yet-unknown-but-rumored-to-important part of new PC owners format the disk and install XP over their shiny new Vista PC.
Frankly, the fact that the Steam Hardware Survey (here : http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html) pegs Vista at a sliver over 15% of the market as of Jan 17th (hey, that's today!) says volumes about its uptake. XP still holds over 82% of the market. I think that is bad news for a new OS that is supposed to be selling like hotcakes, but is actually being shunned by everyone and their brother.
So I don't really see what an online petition - notorious for their total lack of effectiveness - is going to do any better than the simply dismal market figures on Vista usage.
MS is going to have to keep supporting XP simply because customers are not using Vista - even if they are "buying" it because of new PC purchases.

Signed

I just signed this.

...

I basically agree with the 3rd poster - I don't think anyone has to do anything else to keep XP as an available option. The utter failure of Vista is going to force M$'s hand in this anyway.

...and in all honesty, if M$ were to turn off the tap providing new XP licenses, they'd be handing an inestimable fortune to the pirate industry - right now, there is no real choice - you buy XP vs. buy Vista. If they "turn off" the "buy XP" part then the world is not simply going to say "OK" and buy Vista - the options then become "pay little or nothing to pirate XP" vs. "Buy Vista" and the pirates party like it's 1999.

Honorable Intentions???

I'm not sure their intentions are actually honorable. At the bottom of the petition, you've got 3 check boxes which, if checked, let InfoWorld spam you with their marketing material. They're checked BY DEFAULT.

This makes it *look* like they're not really interested in running a Save XP campaign, and actually more interested sending their unwanted bumpf to anyone who signs the petition.

One, and only ...

XP is the only version of Windows that MS got right so far. Some bells and whistles, stable kernel, even security is OK with SP2. I cannot wait to slipstream SP3 into the "WinXP corporate" CD I have :-) Conveniently, it does not require any activation, quite a feat these days! I forsee using that disk for another ~10 years, unless lack of drivers pushes me out.

Finally, WinXP runs OK on an old PII ~300Mhz (circa 1998), and flies on recent hardware. So any computers in the vicinity can be upgraded to it, with good performance.

MS its own enemy, and the activation BS is one of the most stupid moves a company could make.

Windows pain

Someone asked about hacking the source for XP.... Theres a couple problems with that.

One Vista is basically XP with a modified GUI. So Microsoft will go for blood if anyone tries to get the source for XP. This is also why they have not released the source for their last OS's.

Also, any OS can be as "User friendly" and flowery, or as complicated as someone wants to make it. When I say complicated I mean that there is allot of power in doing things to make the OS do what you want it to. The problem here is that people refuse to learn about Windows like they do Linux. Keep in mind that MS has had to compete with Unix. Most people don't know that Windows has a command line counterpart for almost everything that Linux does. The difference is in the syntax.
i.e. |grep pizza = |find pizza (redirection operators)

This also goes for installation. There are config files that one can modify so that only what you want loaded will be loaded. Beyond this MS moved from having config files all over the place like Linux currently does to a unified registry. I'm not saying that this makes Windows superior, I'm simply pointing out that most, if not all the little tweeks that people like doing to Linux can also be done to Windows.

This being said, when I bought my new laptop, it had Vista on it. My first instinct was to format it and reinstall Linux and XP, dual boot. I decided to give it a chance first as I'll have to deal with it at work soon enough. At first I was lost. They moved stuff around and I didn't know where things were. I was reduced to using the old XP hot keys and command line (windows button+R) to get around. Then I discovered that Vista still has a registry. Yeah, it's much more bloated then XP's (about 3 times bigger), but it's still there. It took me all of 2 hours and I was able to move my battery life from 2.5 hours to almost 4 and it was looking like a nice happy XP again. I was able to get it to dual boot with Linux, and was also able to get that annoying "This is trying to happen, are you sure" crap turned off.

Later on, after installing Alcohol 120% it crashed. I decided to install XP. 3.5 hour battery life. I was able to get 4 out of it with some registry modifications.

I'm not saying I like what was done with Vista. What I am getting at is that most people are just screaming because they don't like change and they refuse to look at a problem before they scream about it. The funny thing I've found with this is that this reaction we've had to Vista is similar to that we had with previous editions to Windows when they came out. Then, a couple years down the road when the hardware was available to make things run smoothly we stood behind that edition and screamed when it was going away.

Let the flames begin!

Pirated?

and how many of those vista copies where bought and not pirated?

DOS 6 Good, 95 Bad...

Okay so lets see...
Good
XP
2000
98SE
NT4.0
DOS 6
DOS 4

BAD
VISTA
ME
98
95
NT3.5
DOS5

nowt wrong with vista

Vista is better now than XP was at launch.

Who touched XP b4 SP1????
How slow was XP on a PII 233MHz with 64MB of RAM, it was alot slower than a 3GHz P4/Celeron with 512MB ram running Vista Basic or 1GB ram running Premium.

XP is old very old!
Win 95 lasted 2 years
Win98 lasted 2 years
Win ME lasted <2 years
Win XP has lasted 7 years now

Signed it as well

yay!

Re: XP Forever

Reynod says: "Can't someone hack the source for XP if MS is going to dump it and we will collectively keep the old girl running?"

You sir, are on CRACK.

How is one supposed to "hack the source"? To even get access to the source code, you would need to get into some form of agreement with MS.

And if you attempt to distribute their stuff without their permission, you'd be in a world of hurt. They'll bury your ass with lawyers.

All I can say is this, do yourselves a favour and start considering other Operating Systems. The more you become less dependent on Microsoft solutions, the better off you all are.

If you need an application that doesn't run on Linux or OSX, please list them. Maybe us open source folks can come up with direct alternatives for you.

I not understand your hatred...

I like Vista, but MS should probably wait until the Vista has its two or maybe even three year birthday party before dropping XP from the product roster altogether. The Luddites have one this round.

DOS5 and Win3.1x was good!

@Sound Friend

Yes, DOS5 and Win3.1x (with an updated Explorer.exe and Netscape Commander) was good and stable!

DOS5 and Win3.1x (on a 80386SX16) with an Win32 extension was my first CAD for Circuit-/PCB Layout with an A/D Simulator (EWB5.1) and it was good and ... the best Office for that was StarOffice 3.1. :)

...then Mr Penguin turned around and smiled.

Lifes tough when your PC lives in the Micrsoft world. I gave up my Windows OS partition in a experiment a few months ago to see how long I could survive without it. (Doing fine except for my gameing).

If the Vole goes ahead (and they are stubborn ones too) with this - then more users will be forced to look at alternatives. Its sad that Linux is not ready yet for the average user.

Don't forget that piracy dose have some moral dilemmas for a lot of folk.

I want a law,

that if a company stops selling a piece of software, it is no longer illegal to pirate it.

I mean really, It is their right to stop selling it...

Bu,t if they make the decision to officially forfeit revenue generation; then the piracy of said product is no longer denying them revenue.

As MS have already refused to take any revenue for it, should anyone really be sued for pirating (not selling mind you) windows 98se?

if all else fails...

...we can try to get more people to do work on ReactOS (reactos.org).

I would work on it if I had any knowledge of programming...