Microsoft spins about the Save XP petition

I'd like to believe that Infoworld's intentions are altruistic, but that's difficult when they're gathering so much marketing information and even soliciting for your permission to have them send you 'select' spam with the question "Would you like to receive other IT-related content and special offers from pre-screened third parties?"

at least they set it to a default of "no". I didn't sign the petition because I'm not willing to provide all of the 'required' marketing information in order to do so. if it was just my email address, I probably would have signed the petition.

As you may or may not know, I purchase a handful of systems every year, laptops, desktops and workstations...

I have recently bought a laptop. The make, model and cost are irrelevant. I bought it from a relatively small company which is usually unknown to most IT workers.

I wanted to buy it from DELL. God knows why, but at the time it made sense.

DELL have told me that they do not sell laptops without VISTA. I asked if there is any way I can buy a laptop that does not have it & after some discussion I was told that I can buy a 15 inch but no 17inch will come without VISTA.

I was told that I can simply remove it after I get it, but that was assuming I am computer literate. What if I wasn't?

After some more jabbering about the sales representative was adamant that there are no 17inch laptops without VISTA.

So I hung up.

I bought my laptop from a vendor that does not force an OS on me & even allows me to purchase a system without an OS. (god forbid)

Thank you microsoft and DELL, you have made my choice so much easier.

I bet the 90% of the people who they surveyed are just to conservative. 



The lower the age the more enthusastic people are over change and it's benefits. It's a bit like a mechanic saying he wont buy an electric screw driver and prefers the manual one simply because he won't buy the electric one and learn how to use it! In a years a few years time you wil all be moaning about Win 7 and 'how great' Vista is. then we will see a 'Save Vista' site and i'll be making the same dam comment!

...here's my not-so-bold prediction...

XP will live well into the reign of Windows 7 - probably at least a year. XP is weathering and will continue to weather the Vista infestation quite nicely. Hordes of businesses and users will not ever downgrade to Vista...ever. Their pressure, and the pressure of OEMs and integrators will force M$ to continue to provide and support XP.

There will then be a transition period while Windows 7 is vetted by world + dog. If it manages to suck less than Vista, then perhaps it will reign supreme and the XP hangers-on will migrate straight to Win7. If it sucks equally to, or moreso than, Vista, then the XP hangers-on will either continue to do so, or finally switch to Linux (or maybe *gasp* Mac).

M$ has designed and built a shotgun, positioned it firmly against their head, and now just has to somehow deny the urge to pull the trigger. We'll see how they do.

Truth be told i was hessitant to up grade to vista, mainly because i was happy with the utility that xp offered, however, i have since build two brand new computers and i'm not looking to have anymore xp machines in my house hold. true it may be some drivers still are a pain but overall i have not had any crashes on either system since they have been build, one has been running well over 8 months, and aside from the power outages, and update restarts i have never had to restart it because it was performing "slow." granted yes i had to purchase new HW but who care if you use computers you know that you have to upgrade every 2 years for midrange and every 4 years if you go high end. nature of the beast. Same thing happened when xp was release in 2001 driver support was horrible, app incompatability, yada yada yada. look what happened one of the most successful windows ever. CHANGE IS GOOD poeple. get some new HW and put 64-bit vista with 4 gigs of ram and see the difference.

Tut Tut
I bet the 90% of the people who they surveyed are just to conservative. 



The lower the age the more enthusastic people are over change and it's benefits. It's a bit like a mechanic saying he wont buy an electric screw driver and prefers the manual one simply because he won't buy the electric one and learn how to use it! In a years a few years time you wil all be moaning about Win 7 and 'how great' Vista is. then we will see a 'Save Vista' site and i'll be making the same dam comment! 


Well I dont think thats gonna happen, as we saw back in 2000 with ME, There were no save ME sites or groups out there and even today people say ME was junk.

You can put all the makeup and lipstick you want on a pig.......but when its all done you still have a pig and Vista just like ME is just one in what looks like a line of Microsoft pigs to come.

I dont know about save Vista...how about save me from Vista,

I build and repair computers on the side as a hobby and I upgraded to Vista (Duel Boot system with both Vista and XP) Just long enough to learn all I needed to know so I can work on customers machines that come with Vista, now the ones I build...I install XP on them.

Thats one hell of a joke..save vista.....roflmao


I've moved from Windows XP to Debian GNU/linux and never looked back :)

"...In a years a few years time you wil all be moaning about Win 7 and 'how great' Vista is. then we will see a 'Save Vista' site and i'll be making the same dam comment!..."
I bet there will be as many "Save Vista" sites as there are "Save MeII" sites...
By the way what are those benefits of upgrading, that you are talking about?

Hey fellas, 

You know this totally reminds me of that 'Save Millennium' petition we had going back in the day.

Wait, no, I'm remembering that wrong. It was the "For the love of god, save me from Millennium, because I lost my 98 disk" petition I signed on to.

Seriously, are we still having this debate? Even Grand Poohbah Gates admits it's a crap OS. When have we ever heard 2 freaking years of hype, about the 'full rebuild, future proof, next Gen Windows' Only to get word of Windows 7, BEFORE they even release SP1 for Pissta.

Here's something for all of you youngins with no knowledge of marketing strategy:
When a company introduces a new product, that for the last decade has used an alpha naming scheme, and it returns to a numeric one, there is a very good reason. It wants to make damn sure you don't associate it in any way with the POS that they gave you last time.

Please just let this argument die, hopefully Vista will follow soon after.

"Reportedly respondents' varied concerns about Vista ranged from anxieties about Vista's stability"
the irony is, (in my experience) XP is less stable than vista, and when something has crashed, my computer hasn't locked up and needed to be restarted, i've simply had to kill (and restart) the offending program.

It's just for Live CD use but it instantly shows you what a free OS can do. I had my ADSL connection up and running within 2 min of boot up. ICe Weasel/aka Firefox worked immediately. It was all there.

I agree with Torvalds, an OS should be invisble. Vista adds 15 Gbs of baggage and STILL can't copy files well - I tried the DVD copy thing today - it's true, takes forever to copy.

Vista is not to XP as a power drill is to a screwdriver. I'm 23, and I plan to make a it a point NOT not to purchase Vista thank you very much.

I agree with mitchel. When I buy laptop I get to choose XP or Vista. Because I like new think in IT World, I choose Vista. My choise was turn to be right. With SP1, Vista is mature. I get new technology. And I still can use XP in my other computer. Vista RTM is prove to be faster than XP, at least in My DELL Latitude D630.

Just because something is new and different doesn't mean it's better. Young can also mean you don't know any better and are more easily fooled. When you can show me that your product offers better value than what I currently own then I will consider its purchase. Not one pro-Vista user can tell me what I can do with Vista that I cannot with XP. With XP, I can still surf the internet, send emails, write documents, watch and record TV, watch streaming video, download movies(Unbox) and music, PLAY the latest games, etc.

You would have been better off with referencing a carpenter or construction worker with your electric screwdriver example. I used to do mechanics and we always bought new tools if they would make our job easier. We didn't use electric screwdrivers but air ratchets among many other 'powered' tools.

Given your comment, your inexperience shows why you and others like you would buy Vista. 





Say the problem is not that Vista is a Bad software; it is indeed a great OS. 

When they were making the new OS they grabbed XP, designed a new look that literally cripples the performance of your Computer and move things around so it is harder to get where you want and so it looks like a new OS ;) 

In the end it didn't bring anything new except for 1 or 2 things that are not worth the upgrade so... When they re-invent Windows I'm changing. Microsoft for Pete's sake, MAKE an OS.

I doent know if any of you have tested SP3RC1 yet, but it seems MS is slowing XP down to the level of Vista as far a games and graphics go anyways. I know my benchmarks dropped almost 20% Raytracing and the death of DX and my switch back to Linux cannot come soon enough.

"what makes sense based on their needs"

Newsflash : our needs are simple - we just want an OS that is going to run the applications we use without requiring that we renew every piece of equipment we have or that we sell our souls into slavery.

Ballmer, you make a bloody OS, for God's sake. Your JOB is to make the computer run, period.
Right now your are learning that, after almost two decades of market dominance and countless sheep blindly following your will, people have become increasingly aware of the power of their existing hardware and of the fact that Windows by itself is worth nothing.
The innate human resistance to control is becoming more powerful than your ability to impose immoral behavioral detectors, and by God am I glad of that.

...except our Symantec content filter sees the savexp.com website as a spam source and I can't sign the petition from work. Now I have to remember to waste my personal time instead of my work time.

I'm here in Xp, Auntie M! I'm locked in the wicked witch of the DRM's castle, and I'm trying to get home to you, Auntie M! The Apple Tree and cowardly Linux send their regards!

_signed Voley.


When will MS stop providing patche updates for XP?

Isn't that the question we need an answer to?

If MS provide patches for the next 3-4 years then that's all fine. I will be happy to use Vista then, or Windows 7, or easy-to-use Linux with drivers for most stuff.

I don't mean to be pedantic but is it just me that has noticed all the pro Vista comments here have some serious spelling/grammar mistakes and yet only 1 spelling mistake from a Linux user? (the rest either never specified or never had an obvious typo/mistake)

That means either/and:

1. The majority of Windows comments were made by 12 year old digg users.

2. The majority of posts were made by windows users and therefore the observation is biased by default.

3. Those Windows users use IE and don't have a default spell checker.

4. Something else that I've not come up with yet. :)

4.b Additional > Steve Balmer has hired far-eastern sweatshops/botnets to outsource positive comments for Vista on popular comments boards.

5. I need to add the 'obligatory' 'English is not my native language' possibility for all you tri-linguals out there. :)

Seriously though, I was browsing through the comments trying to pick out the fanboys of both camps and found these examples quite... startling 

" I bet the 90% of the people who they surveyed are just to conservative. "

" Truth be told i was hessitant to up grade to vista, mainly because i was happy with the utility that xp offered, however, i have since build two brand new computers and i'm not looking to have anymore xp machines in my house hold. true it may be some drivers still are a pain but overall........"

" I agree with mitchel. When I buy laptop I get to choose XP or Vista. Because I like new think in IT World, I choose Vista. My choise was turn to be right."

BTW, we all make typos -- hell I know I do and I'd be surprised if I haven't made one in this post.. so no spelling nazi here. Food for thought however.

To keep with the theme of sitting on the fence, here is the un-amused Linux users quote:

" I doent know if any of you have tested SP3RC1 yet, but it seems MS is slowing XP down to the level of Vista as far a games and graphics go anyways. "

I plan to stick with XP for a while yet.
I for one hates to be FORCED to upgrade to anything. I don't have tons of cash bulging out of my pockets; therefore I don't think I or anyone else for that matter should be forced to lay out a pile of cash not only for all the "approved hardware" upgrades but also the OS itself.

Price of the OS is crazy. Billie & crew must have been sniffing bad glue when they set that price.

Many of the Pro Vista people here seem to think just because their pockets are bulging with cash then everyone else on the planet has the same issue and MUST get rid of some cash ASAP!

As for XP not being stable ...
I can keep my XP box up and running for 2 weeks + at a time (shutdowns usually unplanned such as power outages)
I run RAM intensive apps alot (such as VMWare) and never had any serious issues yet I couldn't solve with a bit of tweaking.

Yes. For those who can afford it and have the machine for it and actually like Vista -- then by all means upgrade.
But just because you thing change is good -- it does not mean I should be FORCED to upgrade. At least not so soon.
We the people have been "corralled" like a bunch of cattle for too darn long for so many things -- it does often feel like one is forced to live in a match box with all lights off (to conserve energy) while feeding your donkey all too expensive grass (that has less "gas" generating features so not to add any methane to the atmosphere) and having to use this donkey to haul your overpriced preservitive infested stuff we are forced to call "food" home.
We are made to feel guilty because we need to turn on a light to use the washroom at 3AM yet it is OK to spend billions of dollars for space research all the while poking nice big holes in the atmosphere to see if landing on and eventually living on Mars will be possible??
Course all this multi-billion dollar research we as tax payers are paying for where this tax money would be better off going towards something like helping those homeless people clean up and get the heck off the streets so they too can contribute to society.

Nope! shouldn't own a farm and have cows so you can have your own milk. 
why?
Because these cows fart. This puts methane in the atmosphere and that is bad.
So instead let's make this chemical stuff that looks like milk, tastes like milk, has some of the same vitamins as milk yet after a few generations after drinking it out grandkids have all sorts of new fangled health issues due to some hormone crap in that fake milk that is forced upon those who wanna drink milk (but can't get the real stuff since we are not allowed to have cows because they fart)

/me crawls back under his rock and waits for WW3 to nuke us all & solve everything.

I am helping Info world with the petition please go to my youtube video and please sign it!

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=cCzUTHgtiKA 

My response is reflected in what Bill says(7 February 2008) and I could not have put it differently

If XP is withdrawn, we'll have to go for second best. Now for me, there are two second bests: Vista, and Linux. One is overpriced, the other is free. The choice is simple.