Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes - E.W. Dijkstra
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Dell will stop offering Windows XP
HOT OFF its recovery of second place on the PC sales charts, Dell has announced that it will stop selling boxes loaded with Microsoft's Windows XP.
The move, outlined on Dell's blog, points the finger at Microsoft forcing Dell's decision rather than the firm actively trying to flog the Vole's latest operating system. It says that Microsoft has told OEM system vendors like Dell to stop shipping machines with Windows XP Home or Professional after October 22 2010 and, not surprisingly, Dell has complied.
Although Microsoft managed to do a better job with Windows 7 than it did with Windows Vista, just about every survey that has been carried out shows that Windows XP usage is still extremely high. While the October deadline will help Windows 7 usage grow, it is likely to be some time before Microsoft's latest and greatest PC OS enjoys the same installed base that Windows XP has.
Dell says that in order to meet Microsoft's demand it will stop offering the Windows XP downgrade from September. However the firm also says that "qualified customers" can still receive Windows XP, explaining, "Only qualified end users meeting the Custom Image requirements will be able to get a new system with factory-preinstalled Windows XP Professional, XP Home and XP Tablet products after October 22 2010."
Of course, there's nothing stopping system administrators from loading Windows XP or any other operating system once the machine arrives, but given their overwhelming workloads, making sure that their company qualifies as one of Dell's special customers might be worth the hassle. µ
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Windows 7 is a bloated OS. It needs 2GB of RAM to do nothing. That's why someone is requesting 8GB RAM.
4GB will become the normal for a basic home/office pc in the next 18 months. 6-8GB for a power user.
Windows XP is the standard. It does everything good enough.
The usual cycle of upgrading is being pushed upon us. MS and pc makers are just doing their usual trick of forcing us to pay them some money for some "New and Improved Old Rope!".
It's hard to sell something to people in a recession when they don't need it. Hence the strong arm tactics.
For Intel and Samsung, anyway.
I have 7 on one new laptop. I used the occasion to put opensuse on my other two boxes and made a nice little vm from my xp disc to run on them in seamless mode (for the .Net app I have to have, and Mixcraft 5). XP boots and runs quicker with 1 G in a vm than it ever did with 2 as a real installation. (though it could be because I'm not running any AV on it).
I recently bought a laptop from dell for the sole reason that I could get it with XP installed. If they remove that option then my next machine will most certainly not be a dell.
Windows Vista\7 is great but it barely runs on the minimum 512MB RAM.
XP ran much better on minimum 64MB... (And I know, I've tried all 3)
Vista and 7 are bloated pieces of junk, Microsoft should have done a much better job!
So, for a speedy and snappy system that doesn't waste 1GB+ RAM for no good reason I'll be keeping XP as long as I can!
Wait until we have 48 core CPUs with 64GB of RAM before you bother with Vista...
Microsoft's problem is that Win7 has not been motivating a major transition from XP. In fact, install base data suggests that Win7 is mainly attracting upgrades from Vista users, but that the percentage of XP users is remaining relatively stable. The latter statistic also suggests that a large number of new Win7 systems are being "downgraded" to XP.
Forcing a change is definitely not the way to go, though. Microsoft is facing an invasion of Android devices in 2011, and throwing one's weight around and not listening to customers tends to drive more of them to "the other camp".
As to some comments about lame capabilities in Win7, e.g. audio, one needs to look no further than the content-owner-friendly user-neglecting DRM features that were cut&pasted from Vista. I had expected Microsoft to get it by now, but clearly that's not the case.
If Microsoft were smart, it would publish Windows XP with a Win7 UI. Strip out all that DRM and big-bad-evil-company goo that just gums up the works. But I fathom that the obvious is too easy for these guys.
I have both Windows XP SP3 and Windows 7 Ultimate and though Windows 7 is a fine OS, for the average user there's absolutely no reason to upgrade an older machine to run Windows 7. Sure, buy a nice new quad-processor PC with Windows 7 and all is good. But for people with aging dual-processor PCs, continue to keep using Windows XP as long as Microsoft will allow you to.
The only party being hurt by not upgrading to Windows 7 is Microsoft. They can't get enough suckers to bite when dangling that Windows 7 bait. Microsoft needs to keep those Windows licenses rolling in in order to keep the whole computer industry under their thumb. Corporations have finally caught on and they're squeezing Microsoft's gonads to the limit.
Windows 7 is supposedly more robust and has an attractive interface but Windows XP is tried and true and is probably the most tested and safest Windows OS there is. So unless you're Steve Ballmer or some Windows fanboi nerd you may rest easy and continue using Windows XP SP3 for another year or two without fear of it turning into a pumpkin. Don't worry, Microsoft has Windows 8 planned for the slowpokes. You're not getting away from their hook that easy.
If your present applications run fine for you, that's more than good enough to stay with Windows XP. Any faint weeping you might hear is just Steve Ballmer and his cohorts at Microsoft Corporate Headquarters.
Seems to be quite a bit of missing the point - which is "change". Like in politics, you have to give the impression that there is change for the better, regardless of how the change screws anyone or everyone.
Is LoseDoze XP sufficient for 99.99% of computer user? Of course. But change - "new and improved" - means more sales.
What would be the uptake of Vista (LoseDoze NT v6.0) / 7 (LoseDoze NT v6.1) if XP were still an option, and offered DirectX-11, Blue-Ray, DVD write capability, etc? Probably single digit percentages, and how exactly does that keep the revenue stream coming in for the mighty Vole?
By breaking backward compatibility - e.g. drivers & graphics - you can all but force users in to the latest and greatest bloatware that is the LoseDoze O/S. Sooner or later, hardware OEMs will have to give up writing drivers for XP, and the trickle at the faucet will turn into a steady stream of cold hard $$$.
You can run, but you can't hide. You can resist, but resistance is futile. You WILL cough up the $$$.
Yeah, why the hell would you ever want 8Gb of RAM? Unless you're some kind of subatomic physics scientist or something (which doesn't seem likely), you will never use half of that.
Windows XP is quite good for you and me, and it will only really "die" when Microsoft and its partners manage to release some software and hardware deliberately not compatible with it.
They did a great job with Windows XP and that became a problem now. This is why they will never do such great OS again (and this is why Windows 7 SUCKS by the way).
8GB of RAM? Windows XP 64-bit.
Why not make it 16GB?!
SSDs aren't mainstream yet. The average desktop workstation has no use for one, certainly not with XP which doesn't take 3 years to boot compared to Vista.
You're better off spending the premium excess of a SSD on a faster HDD and a better motherboard for general performance increases. Perhaps SSDs will be cheap and commonplace in another decade, but it's today that people have to choose between XP and 7. Remember that MS only showed an interest in SSDs for Vista - as a desperate measure to improve terrible boot times compared to XP.
XP is a solid, tested workhorse. Windows 7 is new, unknown, slower, and doesn't offer any remarkable improvements over XP that third party software doesn't already provide (just like MS claiming that only IE9 will do HTML5 because XP isn't capable of doing it - Tell that to Opera 10.7 running on Win98).
That is *not* a recipe to speed up adoption, especially for business users. No wonder MS have resorted to beating it out of us by banning Dell & Co from selling it to a market who want it. So much for freedom and the principle of allowing the market to decide. This is dictatorship.
Didn't you know that XP came in 64-bit too?! Ha!
is just too buggy for me. Till they fix the dvd-rom/floppy controllers (Which is very slow compared to xp) then there is no point for the downgrade. The sound in Win 7 sucks really bad too. What the hell did they do to the sound in windows 7? It is just plain horrible.
90% and home users browse the great wide webble. Not everyone needs a 250core proc with a gazzillion gigs of ram.
Experience between the 2 OS's Xp is a winner hands down. Hope OEM builders still pump Xp boxes right up till 2014.
It's all you need to browse the web and other ordinary little things, does so in a familiar way, and most people actually have *no* "use" for 8GB RAM. "Good enough" is a highly desirable place to be. With current levels of XP about 4 times that of either Vista or 7, you're in for probably a decade more of rolling your eyes at XP Luddites. Try not to let it upset you.
M$ is now where they didn't wish to be, with a usable XP inhibiting sales for as far as foreseeable. Windows 8 -- which is rumored to be based on Linux -- will really have to be WOW to shake up the market.
The current condition is that it doesn't matter what OS you're running anymore, as most folks can do what they need and/or want through the browser.
How does Windows 7 (or any current or future OS) make the browsing experience better than with Windows XP?
I'd Like to see XP make better use of SSD'd... or 8GB RAM etc. Good luck with that.
But that's just it. It's usage remains very high. XP is anything but dead, which is why it's what my next PC will be running, making far more efficient use of my RAM and CPU and other state-of-the-art hardware.
Come on people... XP is dead... Long live Windows 7