Don't quote Hegel. Haggle. It scores more marks - Mike Magee
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XP gets another stay of execution
MICROSOFT has told its system builder partners that they will be allowed to continue to sell XP after the January 31, 2009 cut-off date.
January 31 was listed as the last day that anyone could buy XP and Vole wanted system builders only to sell its Vista product after that date.
Now, according to ChannelWeb, Vole is allowing them to obtain XP licenses through distribution after the deadline.
In what Vole is calling its "flexible inventory programme" distributors can place their "last orders" for Windows XP OEM licenses by January 31, 2009, and take delivery against those orders through May 30.
Until then distributors would have to buy as many XP licenses as they could afford before January 31st, 2009, and sell them after the deadline.
Distributors have two weeks to send Microsoft their forecasts and book their software.
Apparently distributors are really happy with the new arrangement as they don't have to hand over cash for the new licences until they have already sold them.
The move will soften the January 31st deadline somewhat. But it appears that Redmond is going to stick to its guns and demand that as the final cut-off date. µ
L'Inq
AP
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Try Core two with 4 gig of ram 1500 dollar computer that takes longer to load Firefox than my Pent 4 garbage picked Xp sled which takes a full minute, no dude Vista sucks big time.
XP just needs some looking after by a small team of fixers. MS should continue to sell it since it's dev costs are now so low.
XP Pro is probably their most profitable large selling OS at present.
They should let it die a natural death.
Very few businesses are in such a monopolistic position that they can put 2 fingers up at their customer's wishes as much as Microsoft can. It should be illegal that they can do this.
The INQUIRER - When are you guys going to fix the lack of PARAGRAPHS in the COMMENTS? FFS guys it's been a few weeks of this crap.
Who did the dev/testing for you, you should pay them only 3/4 of the bill, they only did 3/4 of the work!
No, I just realise that a company that has built an empire that most of the world runs on (even many of my Linux and/or Mac customers have Windows PC's as well) will not just sit there with their thumbs up their asses and watch a 90% share dwindle away. Your argument that "patience" will see this happen presupposes that Microsoft will never make another OS that people like (which would diffuse a lot of people's ire) and that Apple will not drive away price conscious customers in hard economic times with their high ticket items. And Linux, well, they just simply aren't even a viable alternative right now for most users, so I hardly even count them.
I am not saying Microsoft will stick around because they make the best products, or because that's how it's always been, so that is how it always will be, but it is pretty tough to shake a giant like MS. People have long said that MS is going down, and it is time for Linux and Apple to take over.. how is that going so far? One of the other comments here illustrated this point perfectly. The local ISP only allows Windows/Mac so people have to build more Windows machines, whether it is XP, Vista, or Windows 7. People cannot build clone Macs (as has been shown by the Psystar situation, Apple will not allow it, and the courts upheld that) and the perception of Linux is that it is not easy and user friendly enough for 99% of the people who walk into my store, so Microsoft is the only viable option.
Because you do not like this fact does not make it less true. I'm not saying MS won't take some hits, but MS is already freaking out that their share has dropped to 90%, do you really see them doing nothing to stop it from going lower?
I don't like Microsoft as a company, but I am also not stupid enough to think that their empire will just fall. Too much important infrastructure relies on them for that to just happen. So you sit and patiently wait, hating Microsoft, and complaining about them. I'll suck it up and realise that for now and for the forseeable future, we're stuck with them.
...to Billy Gates. It's stuck on his finger and he just can't shake it loose.
The only version of XP that large numbers of people really want is XP-Pro.
Vista-Business and Vista-Ultimate both come with downgrade rights to XP-Pro, and MS make the process quite painless.
The only thing you need is the media and drivers to install the downgrade.
MS have not said that they are going to stop downgrade rights, only the sale of new XP licenses.
OEMs will continue to ship with Visa installed and downgrade media provided, so that customers can continue to downgrade to XP.
It's all about making sure MS record Vista sales rather than XP sales.
XP Home/Pro are/is the only stable OS Microsoft has produced in the last 10 years for the home/business PC, IMHO. They are shooting their own foot off if they lock out the sales of XP at the end of January. I am a small builder of custom PC's. I can only afford one install disk at a time, much less separate license's for each. I charge for parts, Install DVD/CD, and my labor. My clients prefer XP to Vista by 99 to 1. What do they want to do, The local ISP ony supports Windows/MAC already, or I would build systems around LINUX for a lot cheaper.
You sound like the stable hand laughing at the odd horseless carriages - after all no one will replace the horse - look at their marketshare! The rest of your windows dominance comments are so clearly flawed as to not require refute, only patience...
Windows 7 is as everyone already knows Windows Vista the way it should have been released on top of that in order to make more money rather than package it as SP3 for Vista and send out the fixes that they've made, so that you have to pay more
Ed, when did 2 GB of RAM and any processor better than a Sempron/Celeron become "world class hardware"?
Seriously, you guys all need to pull your heads out of your asses. Microsoft has a stranglehold on the PC market. Do you really think a 90% marketshare is going to disappear, and the company that pisses billions is somehow going to go under, or that every business that runs Microsoft products is going to stop immediately? There might be some migration, but we're talking miniscule amounts, and new users are always going to go with Windows, not Linux, and most low end users like Ed cannot afford the high price of a Mac, so Microsoft will persevere, and all your sad pathetic venom will be spewed at them the next time they release a crappy piece of software.
Well, thing is.. EA and co have been trying to kill PC gaming too- by making sure that legit users get a worse experience than pirates. I am not sure what their endgame is, or how they benefit.
MS has tried to kill XP more often than people tried to kill Dracula in Hammer films (and Drac obviously said "U CANT TOUCH THIS LOLS"). Gaming on PC is now under threat from the "Gaming" and "on PC" bits, it seems.
Ah well, I have Macs, I have linux, I have freeBSD, I have consoles. I would miss the lavish 3d games on monster PCs though.
Anyway, don't mourn for XP yet, they have EOLed it a few times now.
Does that make XP "abandonware"?
There should be a ruling that if the OEM is not willing to sell or support a product, after a time it should be made freely available to those who want it.
About that Linsux crap. I tried that peice of crap and it sucks real bad. Opaque and you need ten degrees to use it, be real.
Microsoft is the worst run company in the world in a lot of ways. For losers like me who can't afford world class hardware I don't want to hear about vista. I tried Vista on my sisters computer and it sucked bad on ten times the computer I could afford. Windows 7 doesn't sound all that great to me yet and isn't even delievered yet. XP sucks but it doesn't need absurd hardware to run it, until they can create an OS that works they should keep XP going.
Is the extension also a ploy to try and stop pirating or to create pirating with MS monopolising the customer stream? After all, withdraw the product/support and the field is open "custom" units.
In fact, if you think about cars, they create an interesting parallel for comparison of tradecraft.
VMWARE , Wine , PlayOnLinux are just a few answers to the death of Windows XP and my "Windows" games. Vista will never be installed on anything I own. I just do not trust MS and the co-developers of Vista. I can see MS asking for Billions for a bail out.
If MS are determined to bin the only viable PC OS they have on the market. They can't say we didn't warn them.
Competition in the OS market will be good news for the end user and for industry as a whole IMHO. I would expect many of the voleteers understand this.