Windows XP is hanging in there

Someone above complains of 'bloat' on XP LOL.
The reason XP slows is because users install 'BLOATED' Anti-Virus app's that take up resources.
Easy solution coming... M$ will be replacing Win Live One Care with Windows Essentials, a 'cut down' version,available only on earlier Windows like XP,NOT Vista or W7 & it will be FREE!!!

I have XP Pro, which is pretty good & if I wanted it to look like Vista,there are app's that take care of the 'Candy' look,although I prefer the 'Zune' look.

I also pre-ordered W7E Home Premium,knowing that if I want to run XP app's on it,it will work, without having to pay for the pricier versions of W7 with virtual Xp,which is nonsensical.
I like the fact that W7E comes without IE 7 MP bundled-choice is everything,although third party app's can be pretty bloated,which is why I would NEVER use Norton or AVG on my High End PC.
I also like the fact that W7 comes with a choice of install, 64bit or 32bit(can we 'Dual Boot' both versions,using each for whichever app's require either version?

I happen to be one of those users who use Linux on a daily basis. Even so, I prefer to have XP as a secondary Operating System.

In fact on my mini-mac I have also install XP. XP is a good OS, this can't be said for Vista. This laptop came with that bloat OS, and I downgraded it with XP -- and dual booting it with Kubuntu.

Google OS has a very good chance of over throwing Microsoft. I for one would love to use Chrome.

If you consider an OS a bit like a system of government for a PC, it
seems like Microsoft have become too communist with Windows. By that I mean they think they know everything you should have and shove it in the OS whether you need it or not. I'd much rather a capitalist OS that gives you the essential services you need to run your system, then if you want bells and whistles, you buy them as add-ons. Obviously what is considered core functionality does evolve over time, but certain things come to mind like Solitaire, Paint, Windows Movie Maker, Fido (or whatever you call that annoying dog in XP search), Windows Aero, that serve no useful purpose other than to entertain.
If I want an entertainment system I can buy an X-Box if I want an OS, leave out the junk!

7 is an improvement over Vista but there's still more bulk than I'd like. The European version without IE looks interesting, but unfortunately it's no cheaper, and I'm not in Europe.

Microsoft's only problem with XP is that people, businesses get their respective work done.
That work done on a PC running XP as its operating environment brings in the revenues they depend on.
Now getting these 100s of millions of individuals and businesses to take a percentage of that revenue and purchase an item that has added costs to only put them exactly where they are today (7/3/2009) is not a sane business decision.

That is the battle Microsoft and its distributors will face for the next 5 to 10 years.

It will be a long battle and if an individual and a business want to maintain their respective revenues and increase it during this recession, -not spending- revenues and savings it for strategic, revenue increasing, decisions is going to be very tough for the MSFT Marketing Dept to crack.

The main problem at this point with windows 7 is that there is no upgrade price from Windows XP. The price alone will keep many people from upgrading. Nemowho and dave must live in the uppper reaches of Suburbia where the average home has an income of 250k+. Most of us live in the inner suburbs or in the city where the average household income is less than 70k (in some cases a lot less). We can't afford the full price of the upgrade. MY computer will handle it just fine (I have the RC running in 64 bit mode now).
But when XP came out, you could upgrade from '98 or ME, ie. the previous version or the one before that. This time they are only allowing upgrades from the previous version. Until they bring the price down to something more reasonable (after all Master Bill doesn't need any more of my money), then Microsoft is just shooting itself in the foot.

This wont happen. Even if Windows 7 is better in performance. No one in the business arena will run to migrate it.
XP works fine for busines. MS word, excell and even programming and even for engineering. Only teenagers and gamers go for it as it has direct X 10 (vista included).

Do you want the looks? get OSX. It has better performance without the effort.

The only way to upgrade is dumping the hardware. so Microsoft will need to wait for all these old Pentiums 4, Duals and earlier to drop dead until the corporations upgrade it. say it in a couple or 5 more years on the road.

The biggest income of microsoft is from corporate licensing. then people acquiring a new computer.

No donuts Balmy
I wouldn't "up"grade if I got 7 for free.
7 4 free, heh.

Sure, 7'll work with my 10-year old printer. Not.
An OS that I buy and that can't run stuff I could run previously is a DOWNgrade

Your old printer will work trust me you havnt even tried or you are thick

funny because no one mentioned Apple OSX? or unix...here is why i my opinion OSX is Better in term of Core OS :

1-OSX: one flavor, all-dressed (everyone has all the features)

MS : plenty of flavor (crippled, basic, home, professionnal, extreme, enterprise....etc..confusing buyers)

2- OSX : 32bit/64bit switchable (same installation can do 32bit or 64bit
MS : 2 different version 32 OR 64

3-OSX : great Looks that don't take much ressources
MS : Aero...

4- OSX : configuration items easy to find and configure.
MS :(vista) having hard time to find the wireless configuration!

---
I work in corporate business and here what we want in 2010 from an OS :

we want only one OS : 1 that is good for old P4 2.6ghz and new core2duo

we want only one OS : 1 that runs 32bit and 64bit

we simply don't care about bells & whistle, in fact we put win200 menu styles on our XP machine...

MS really should look at other OS competitor and really see why New Windows doesn't shine.

----
it seems to me that win7 derived from vista, derived from XP, derived from win2000, derived from win98, derived from win95, derived from 3.1, derived from Dos, derived from a monkey eating his poo... too much legacy code...

@ MS : redo your OS from Scratch!

BTW, Vista SP2 is stable enough, so who cares for Win 7...?

Yes indeed, out in the real world hardware is extremely weak.

I've found that most users are using the following spec of gear -

2-3Ghz Single core P4. No dual or quad core out here in the real world.

512-1024MB of DDR ram. 1024MB is still luxury you know. Only seen one customer with 4GB...and he was using 32bit XP!!!

80GB-160GB HDDs rule! No SDD/Raptors or terrabytes here.

Media Centre/HTPC/Blu-ray??? Whats that?

SLI/Mega gaming? Lucky if you get a nvidia 6200 to run solitaire on!

24" monitors? Nah horrible no name 15" LCDs at 1024x768 rule.

It really is bad out there.

I wouldn't "up"grade if I got 7 for free.
7 4 free, heh.

Sure, 7'll work with my 10-year old printer. Not.
An OS that I buy and that can't run stuff I could run previously is a DOWNgrade.

MS should invest by revamping XP into a great premium lite product to attract current XP users who won't migrate to Vista or Win7 because of the additional hardware burden.

It would only take a team of 50 programmers a few months to clean up the XP core and get rid of the rubbish and polish it up a little with ongoing support.

Sell it for $50 a license and watch the money tree bear more fruit.

What MS fail to realise is that an aweful lot of people have relatively weak hardware which is considered low end for gaming and unsuitable for porting to Vista or Win7, so the users are staying where they are.

MS need to address this market niche - they aren't.

Polish XP please !!

Bill ... some good advice here for Steve ... give him a call mate.

Pretty soon we'll know the meaning of the old saw. Society is on it's way down to the least common denominator and that includes all the Power dudes. Sad thing is nothing is going to change because change became more of the same...Most people can't afford what they have now what are we going to have to sell plasma to give Microsoft more money?

First, cheers to nemowho and Dave. I totally agree with you guys. If you’re bitching about something you haven’t even tried yet I feel sorry for you. Your life must really suck to have adopted such a limited personal philosophy.

I, too, was a diehard XP fan, but no longer. I tried Windoz 7 beta, and now release candidate build 7100 and I have to say it is indeed very smooth and fast. No, it’s not revolutionary but it has many improvements that just make it easier and, yes, more fun to use. One of the most surprising benefits is that my laptop runs much cooler than with XP. That’s right, it runs cooler and the fans run slower or less often. I’m using the same temp monitoring and fan control software, I8fanGUI with the identical XP settings. I’ve even been able to crank up my T7600G unlocked CPU to 2.67Ghz resulting in the same temp range as with XP at 2.33Ghz. Again, I’m not comparing 7 to Vista; I’m comparing it to XP. The Vole must have finally realized that faster executing efficient code is actually desirable since the train wreck that was Vista was a very good teacher.

A few words about XP. Prior to installing 7 I’ve had the same install of XP for at least a couple of years. I upgraded to SP2 but elected not to upgrade to SP3 because of additional unwanted DRM. However, after a while XP became bloated and got slower and slower. It didn’t matter that I defragged the hard drive often, installed Registry Mechanic and corrected and optimized the registry often, ran CCleaner often and also monitored and minimized optional services from starting at boot-up, it began to boot and run slower than a one legged dog. True, I could have reinstalled XP periodically, but I had it set up just like I wanted and didn’t want to go through the hassle, especially reinstalling all the security updates again. I should mention that XP was protected with ZoneAlarm and AVG with frequent anti-virus scans, and Windoz firewall always on. That most people have to reinstall XP periodically to regain performance and speed is a huge defect in the software itself. I also believe the gazillions of required security updates are part of the problem. Some of them have actually caused problems such as killing my Wi-Fi connection. I actually had to use system restore to fix that one and block that particular update from installing again. Last year, on one of my rare tin foil hat wearing days, I surmised that the Vole was purposely slowing down XP via security updates to increase Vista’s horrendous lack of sales. I wasn’t alone in that hypothesis and I still think that’s a possibility.

Bottom line is Windoz 7 seems to be much better than XP. I hope it doesn’t become bloated over time like XP, but I suspect it will. XP is living proof that having one central registry that grows out of control over time isn’t a good thing. Maybe next new version M$ will find a way to get rid of that insipid monster. The biggest drawback I’ve found to date using 7 is that the user interface is dumbed down a bit. Many user features and options are buried and hard to find. Fortunately, they’re still there, just buried. Hmmm…must be some OSX influence. Anyway, my advice is to simply try the release candidate as it is quite mature with very few bugs that I’ve found. The best part is that it’s FREE to use for about a year. It just doesn’t get any better than that until Linux and open “sauce” become viable alternatives.

I'm still using XP on my main machine, and skipped Vista for the problems it had (but not because of hardware excuses). Having tried Win7 on a netbook, I was impressed enough to take up Microsoft's 50% off preorder deal on Win7.

XP needs replacing, and now is the time. The OS is simply too fundamentally prone to malicious attacks, and I'm sick of its archaic GUI technology and architecture. It is time to move on. I need and want something that is designed for hardware for this decade, not the last one.

For those who think they'll stay with XP forever: good luck with that. People said the same thing about Windows 98, and those people are very few and far between. Those who whine about bloat obviously haven't used Win7 yet, and really shouldn't be using Windows at all if they're so concerned.

If that was not a quote then it is the BEST VONDRASHEK IMITATION I have ever read.In which case you will make one hell of a reverse-engineer if you aren't one already.

I suppose Vondrashek is the result of someone having fun with some sort of language algorithm.

Can someone working for INQ please comment on Drashek and why you can't stop these flipping comments already?

Am I the only one who's had enough?

Sometimes the comments are more interesting than the articles here so to have this inane blather in between (sometimes) interesting comments is getting reeeeeally old.

Top potato AMD bling 234mhz in the gigabite oven. Now 20% slower than core i7 sausages. HP and Dell bake in hell.

Apologies for the above which makes 100% more sense than the Drashek gibberish.

And so I continue my desperate plea for you to actually go through the comments maybe. Moderate them. Check them. Discard the absolute nonsense ones? Idea? Yes?

100% agree with nemowho.

You all really need to get with progress. 7 is not Vista. Xp was not 2000. There's a reason you have been using MS operating systems (XP) for so long, and that is: They bloody work. Bloody well. And if you could muster the balls to test out any of your spurious claims, you would find out just how wrong and jaded your 'opinions' are. Seriously, try it, get back to us (actually, don't).

Like the cyclists that bemoaned the onset of the automotive vehicle, or those rtards that still think audio-cassette is the bomb, your opinion will only pass into the future as a sad, and somewhat funny, joke.

Oh hell, wrong meeting... ;/

again microsoft tells lies. in microsoft technet sebsite it states if change cversion.infi files, it can be done. thats BOLD Lie. also secondary website linked to by microsoft theu tech net states just to wait after fail & eventually it will upgrade. also complete lie. theres NO Point to lying, yet that what microsoft did on 7 beta to 7 R/C upgrade path. Microsoft Is TOWLUIE.

vondrashek

...do make an effort to stop by NewEgg's arpanet site and peek at today's prices of random access memory.

Or, you could just pick up your Motorola DynaTAC and ring the local Best Buy, I suppose. (I would suggest perusing ram prices on CompuServe as well, had we not just held its funeral this week. Did you pour some malt liquor on the sidewalk for that one?)

Ten dollars a gigabyte is not a horrific period in history to be living in. A sack of aluminum cans and bottles cashed in could get your machines that extra 512MB you've been putting off for so long!

Who are The Vole?

And Why must they want to steal Christmas?

I AM KEEPING MY XP PRO FOR 5 MORE YEARS
VISTA (ME 2) SUCKS
WINDOWS 7 WILL NOT RUN ON OLD MACHINES WITH LITTLE RAM (LESS THAN 512M)

1. Windows costs too much
2. If upgrading windows means upgrading hardware too, then of course we are reluctant. Our organization still have a few P4 and Celerons from the stoneage. It'd take a very lean platform for us to be able to afford an upgrade for all our users. Especially in this economy, it makes it that much more unlikely.
3. Our commercial software don't even recommend nor support the use of Vista. Let alone 7. Only time will tell on this one.

So to sum up, I don't see XP dying anytime soon.

MS = GM

The purchasing public finally crossed trough the pricing firewall. Diplomas for everyone that did! The diploma you get is actually more dollar bills in your wallet. If you pay people too much money it has a reverse effect on a quality product, supposed to be that is.

Like for instance, would you go to a super highly paid doctor with several lawyers in his pockets? He would get off thinking on his dreams [tied to the money] while operating? botched or not!

The tables are turning on the ends of who economically maims others.

The masses are speaking on these issues automatically by economic actions or inactions. People are banding on the demands of economic balance.

Wow, where is my popcorn!

I repair and service PCs for a living and XP outnumbers Vista 10 to 1. For folks that arent PC enthusiasts (read 98.5% of the computing population) it just does the job and has done for the past 5-7 years they've been using it.

Let them get on with it. As for me, as an enthusiast I am finding XP rather tired looking and a bit lacking in the performance dept. I dont like the bloat in Vista but I do like 7's attempts to curb that.

Still would be nice to have a custom install option like we had years ago with Win98...sigh.

If you just gave XP a visual refresh then for most it could carry on another 5 years. However, I dont wish to stem the 64bit migration so I hope not.

XP ain't particularly broke, so I don't intend especially to ditch it.

It's a bit of a toughie for MS. GPU manufacturers and the rest of the hardware industry will continue to do drivers for XP because that's where a large part of the market is. And if there's hardware support, many people will be unfussed about upgrading OS when they upgrade hardware.

I considered upgrading to 7 until I saw the price. No way am I paying that much for an OS, especially when my old OS does everything I need it too. If MS would drop the price to $50 for a full version, then I'd be interested. MS seems to still be out of touch with consumers.

Give us your money. You MUST upgrade. We will force you. You will not get XP drivers for new hardware. You will not be able to use USB v3. You will not be able to run new Office versions.

We will deactivate your XP. You have no choice. Cough up the cash, and shut your big traps. Give us your money, and everyone will be happy.

You have NO choice in the matter.

VC

I am happy with XP.
I use Ryan's RVM integrator to update XP with Onepiece's Service pack. Then I use nLite to install all my software, remove bloat, tweak the OS and automate the install. Then I use Ricktendo's Vista transformation pack to pretty it up. And last but not least I update my install disc with http://driverpacks.net/

MS is all about built in obsolescence. I can get UDF 2.5 with Nero In-CD instead of upgrading the whole OS. MS can keep their active activation, DRM bloatware.

The only way Microsoft can make people switch to Windows 7 from either XP or Visa is by PRICE. If MS sarts selling Windows 7 at a low enough price then they won't NEED to spend Huge money to market Win 7, Word of mouth will propel the sales faster then they can make it.
This of course assumes that Windows 7 can exist or run on systems currently running XP. If not then people would have to buy a NEW PC and that again might happen but ONLY IF Windows 7 is cheap enough to make then consider it , otherwise Win 7 will just be another failure.

I work in IT for Small Business's, and there is no reason to upgrade past XP. For your regular office worker (MS Office, Internet, accounting...), Vista, Win 7, does nothing that XP can't do, and cost more to do it.

"bloat alert!
there was no demand for a replacement for xp - just microsoft's desire for more cash "

Are they sending people round to your door threatening you to upgrade ?, no so give it a rest

there was no demand for a replacement for xp - just microsoft's desire for more cash
thats why xp's successors are just useless resource-sapping bloat

No surprise they can't kill it off...
It's matured into probably the best OS to come out of Microsoft. Vista IMHO was a step backwards.
It's going to take something spectacular that'll do what consumers want without slowing their high end hardware to a crawl for them to make a change.
I'm STILL running the Win-7 RC. This might be the ticket that will get folks to migrate from XP. We'll just have to wait and see.
I certainly don't see Joe computer buyer "downgrading" a new PC back to XP from Windows 7.

are unaware that 7 exists now, not being geeks and all. The concept of spending €100 to upgrade something they already have a working version of is a remote thought.

Still, Ms marketing may change their minds if it contains something they want or non-geek tells them they need...

What they have come to recognise is that xp is old. It looks old, feels old. Is old.

And if anything starts a landslide sale of 7 that'll be it. Besides, all the kids think Vista is cooler because of the eye-candy, my 14 year old nephew installed a bootleg windows 7 on his moms laptop, which I had to fix as it expired yesterday but anyway I digress, he'a not even computer literate in the old school sense. So anyway, the kids want the look, and XP has last century written all over it, it's 2009. In 2010 we are double digits into the new millenium, time to get a taste of all that new. People don't care about drivers and stability, they expect a computer they buy to just work and usually it does and that is that, though many a UAC have I turned off on frustrated friends' computers who give hoots about the look and feel like Vista is nagging them to death.

I use my engineering degree to make home-made bongs.

Unless someone is getting a brand new computer, there's really not a reason to 'upgrade' to Windows 7.
I'm testing Windows 7 RC on a single core AMD and it works ok, but like I say, there's no reason nor benefit to swap out the operating system for 7.
Too bad MS didn't wait to unleash Vista until it was fully baked and operational like 7 seems to be, they may have had a better chance of getting people to switch.

The real reason that XP is still doing so well is that it is not viable for many to upgrade to Vista yet. Just like Windows 98 users could not justify the jump to XP in 2001. (XP on 64MB RAM and 4GB HDD. Yeah, right)

Most XP hardware can't take Vista, and there is little benefit in upgrading something that works at the moment. My kids all have laptops about 5 years old with 512MB RAM. I have a netbook. There's no way I'm forcing Vista on to those (for both performance and cost reasons).

Only my desktop PC and wife's laptop are good enough for Vista (which is generally great).

Should Microsoft deliver Windows 7 good enough for 5-year old PCs, and sell a 3-PC upgade pack at a reasonable price, I will go and buy it on the day it is released. Otherwise they can put up with my XP machines bothering their Windows Update service for a few more years.