Microsoft shouts 'Long Live XP'
Extends XP sales as market snubs Vista
Posted in Management, 28th September 2007 11:33 GMT
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Microsoft’s dream of a Vista only world moved farther out on the horizon yesterday as the software firm admitted it would extend sales of Windows XP by another five months.
XP was supposed to be off the vendor’s price list by the end of January 2008. Now it will stick around until the end of the second quarter. The cut down Starter edition for very low end machines will stay on Microsoft’s price list till 2010.
Mike Nash, Microsoft corporate vice president, Windows product management, put a brave face on the decision, claiming that, “While we’ve been pleased with the positive response we’ve seen and heard from customers using Windows Vista, there are some customers who need a little more time to make the switch to Windows Vista.”
Or put another way, punters are doing anything they can to avoid having to install and run Vista on their machines.
Nash also said, “We’re also seeing more retail customers purchasing their new Windows operating system when they get a new PC than we ever have before, rather than purchasing it standalone.”
The problem is, while Microsoft used to have punters queuing around the block to buy a shrink-wrapped copy of its latest OS, this time it’s remaining copies of a six year old product that they’re carrying to the check-out.
Microsoft’s sputtering Vista launch has left vendors and the channel fuming, after they ramped up to deal with the hardware hungry leviathan of an OS.
UK retail chain PC World blamed the non-take off of Vista for an over-stock problem in its most recent results, with CEO John Clare saying “gross margins have been materially impacted as a result of increased promotional activity to reduce one-off hardware stock levels that resulted from lower than expected demand for Vista products.”
Vista’s half-cocked launch has also been blamed for a slide in component prices, that has exacerbated price cutting in the PC market, putting manufacturers’ margins under even more pressure.®
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COMMENTS
2k, XP and Vista
Having had XP Pro foisted on my for a good few years now can anyone tell me how XP is in any way an advance on 2k? Apart for some extremely irritating "helper" wizards, a quicker boot time (a major factor on a MS OS's usability) ever nastier GUI and wireless support (to be fair it is better than 2k) I can't see the difference.
I'm typing this on a AMD 2500+ (old) with 256mb of ram (small amount) and a Geforce4 Ti (very old), windows XP Pro (needed for some bespoke training software) runs like a dog, looks like a dog and is just nasty (imho). Linux on the other hand runs fine on the machine and will, if required, run all the flashy gui stuff without a problem.
I also have an old PowerMac G4 which must be at least 5 or 6 years old (second hand) and as much computing power as a pocket calculator and yet it runs OSX Tiger without any problems.
Now I'm probably going to have to upgrade my PC system and buy Vista Ultimate as I have to be familiar with all "consumer" MS products for my business.
So can anyone explain to me why I have to spend £100s if not £1000s on new computer kit when I can get all the flashyness, security (if you believe MS Vista is secure) from a 5 year old Apple Mac or a knackered old PC which I put together on a budget about 4 years ago using an OS that fully or in part was knocked up by some spotty hacker in his parent's basement?
As for the cost of Vista Ultimate - If I didn't have to buy it I'd be better buying a new Mac Mini, for about the same cost you are effectively getting a free computer.
Why don't they just admit...
They screwed up and produced, by committee, an operating system that does nothing that XP doesn't, doesn't do most of what it DOES do half as well and provides no real incentive to upgrade, beyond that you are buying a new machine and it will come with Vista.
Almost ALL the extra functionality in Vista is of no net benefit to the user, and just gets in the way. And those bits that are worthwhile are usually implimentable in XP. DirectX 10 isn't an "extra", other than in the sense that it's been designed not to work with XP in order to try to push Vista on people.
I'd have more respect for MS if they just admitted they screwed up and euthanised Vista, rather than trying to find ways to force it down people's throats. It's another "bob", guys. Sorry. But it sux.
Personally Windows 2000 Pro is my Favorite OS. Shame it's getting so long-in-the-tooth these days.
Vista, toilet, flush
C#, a microsoft attempt at creating a programming langauge. C# creates code bloated programs fom microsoft bloated operating systems. .Net hell is another fine example of microsoft code bloat, even Charles Petzold has comented that .net is just too big and cumbersum. If you cant do it in Win32 then your not a programmer.
As for Vista, I've been using the rubbish since its release, Ulimate addition. Its slow, my sound card don't work, its forever losing saved links, copying large files is one hell of a task, if it copies at all, burning dvd's can be just as bad. The system is DRM infested, hence the slowness. Icons in cartain folders have a strange habbit of going very large.. Vista is for ever asking "Are yuo sure" not once not twice but sometimes three times. Even before I start any programs Vista consumes around 600 MB of ram, even after some tweeking, I spent £150 on a graphics card but Vista isn't at all happy with it.
Good thing I have XP Pro to fall back on to get things done.
Vista is toiletware
Re: Dam
What sort of system did you run it on?
As for the person above who mentioned that they will stay with XP on their 3-4 year old system and just play games, anyone who wants to play the latest games would not have a 3-4 year old PC. I recently upgraded my 2 year old PC and I am now running Vista, I spent about 450 quid on a quad core, 2gig, 8500GT with 500gig HD (not a particularly fast one mind). 200 quid on Vista (I posted above, I am the person who could not find my XP CDs), and using all the peripherals from my old machine. Can I really afford this? Not particularly, usually, but I got a tax rebate. If you are someone who spent more on a PC than that, for lower specs, then think twice before you post, if you are quite happy to take packaged PCs from retailers like Dell and HP then you're going to be overcharged, and probably screwed.
I'm a developer, and I'm planning on installing Orcas tonight (if the beta is still downloadable), I've been too busy at work to want to code on it yet. If it runs fine, great, if it doesn't then I'll use my old machine which I have setup specifically for work use in another room. Having looked at .NET 3.0 and its backwards compatibility with XP etc. I'm very impressed, and don't understand why anyone would have a problem doing interface design unless you're writing in Win32. Whilst my job entails that I do some of this, it's just plain naive to waste production time on Win32 and MFC when languages like C# take less time to build programs with, and run at roughly the same speed as any native code (with the possibility of being faster). If your company does it without your say-so, it's naive of them, but it's not Microsoft's fault.
Vista is actually, strangely enough, good for programming. Microsoft has for a long time been pushing specific coding standards for Windows, eg using the user folders for storing files, and telling developers to adhere to them. The fact that many companies have not adhered to them is one of the reasons that Microsoft made many of the standards compulsory for working with Vista. It leads to safer and far better organised code. Of course, if you're doing things right already, and you've moved out of the Dark Ages of Win32 you shouldn't really have any problem upgrading to Vista, and complaining about the installers is a joke, if you're a developer your release team should be worrying about that, not you.
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