Windows XP - the OS that refuses to pass quietly into the night

[Ferral]

Running my current system on the specs I have listed with Vista X64 and not having any probs at all. When I first installed it was quite sluggish as I only had 1Gb ram but with 2 or above it seems ok.

Same thing goes for gaming, I can run most of the new releases in decent enough detail, only game that has caused aggro with my specs has been Crysis but not keen on it anyhow!

Have XP installed on my wifes machine which is a PIII 500 and 512 Ram, bit slow as its an old ide hard disk in there but it manages ok. Its good they are supporting XP up till 2010 but they can only support it for so long before it becomes obsolete. Been out there since 2001 now, 7 years ago it was typically a new OS finding its feet with the same kind of problems Vista has had for its first year.

Now that SP1 is out for Vista it is working much better, drivers are way better than 6 months ago and it works. Its not exactly that wow factor that has been getting plugged but it is a decent OS that is starting to mature.

Mentality of it all comes down to just how long does an OS have a shelf life, Windows 98 was a great OS but it has to be let go to make things move forward within the industry. There are still people out there that I know personally that are running 98 and are happy with it as they don't do games at all. Simply something that is used for kids homework and web surfing. If all the 98 users started putting up petitions to still support that OS after around 10 years of it being in consumers hands Microsoft would end up losing money if they carried on supporting it.

Whether you like Microsoft or not, it is still a business. Businesses are there to make money, especially a business model like MS. They are building Operating Systems that go better with modern up to date hardware. You want the latest and greatest system you may as well take the OS that goes with it. XP is great but it is time for it to start standing down and make way for Vista.

All the hardware manufacturers creating drivers for so many different Operating Systems also costs money which inadvertantly could push prices up. Instead of having to work on older OS drivers every month more time should be getting put into the new OS drivers. Start winding things down so they can put better time into supporting Vista so it has a lot more appeal for everyone.

Personally I love Vista now that SP1 is out, when my wifes machine gets upgraded in the next few month she is going for Vista also. No turning back for us from there!

[dc72]

I've been putting off moving to Vista, but I think it's about time to bite the bullet now that SP1 is out.

It was the same with XP, just like has been said. Everyone, from computer magazines to the man in the pub were bitching about how bloated it was, and how it had built-in spyware and so on.

When I actually switched from 98se though I couldn't believe that all of a sudden having a BSOD once or twice a day was suddenly a thing of the past. It didn't take long to get over the nostalgia.

I was on a friends old computer (this person uses the comp about once or twice a month maybe) that was running ME recently. It was decently fast, but so unstable that it made 98 look rock solid.

Every OS has had and still has it's problems and issues. I didn't touch XP till SP1 came out and to be honest I've never really had any problems with it that couldn't be fixed with a system restore.

I like the added security that Vista offers, and that's a big factor in encouraging me to move over.

I've always had a dislike of bloat-ware though, and the system requirements, though I meet them, just seem really damn greedy.

Guess I can't really comment on anything else till I actually try it though.

[Saracen]

.....

Whether you like Microsoft or not, it is still a business. Businesses are there to make money, especially a business model like MS. They are building Operating Systems that go better with modern up to date hardware. You want the latest and greatest system you may as well take the OS that goes with it. XP is great but it is time for it to start standing down and make way for Vista.

.....

Yup .... but that cuts both ways. A lot of corporate clients are telling their hardware suppliers that they want XP, and moreover, won't buy Vista-based systems. Most businesses are reluctant to run on multiple platforms without a very good reason, so tend (perhaps in a phased way) to upgrade all systems to a new, agreed and tested platform. But to get them to do that, and to stump up the not inconsiderable cost of upgrade licences, and perhaps to have to deal with compatibility problems with existing hardware, and perhaps most significantly of all, deal with staff retraining and the effects on their core business of the disruption involved, there has to be a convincing reason to upgrade. And a lot of businesses have reached the conclusion, at least for now, that the business case for spending all that money just doesn't exist.

Businesses aren't prepared to go through all that just because MS wants to sell them a new OS. MS has to make the case, and so far, it's failing to do it. So .... those hardware manufacturers writing drivers still have to provide XP drivers, and will for some years in all likelihood, if they want to avoid locking out the substantial part of the business market that either hasn't yet upgraded or is currently refusing to so.

Upgrading can be a complicated business. I've been working with one major retailer that has just finished upgrading retail systems across a substantial number of nationwide stores. Part of that involved hardware costs that ran into ..... well lets just say there were lots of noughts on the cheque ..... and it also involved custom software written to drive specialised hardware, and that software has to be certified for it to be legal to trade on. Change so much as a single byte of that code and each till needs to be recertified, because the checksum won't match that on the Weights and Measures certificates. So having spent the last three years upgrading hardware to a system based on custom software written for XP on thousands of tills, imagine how keen they are to do it again for a new OS?

Hardware manufacturers have to support what the customer has and wants, at least while there are large numbers of them that have it. XP drivers will need to be written for business oriented hardware for quite a while yet.

[AndrewJ]

That'll be why they spent so much money on it then

Hey I love Vista, just seems a little weird to spend so much on an OS just to replace it so quickly. But saying this it was said that Microsoft did plan to have more releases in the future rather than nearly five years apart.

[pow1983]

Think about it this way: Vista is rock solid. No, really - it's IMHO the most solid MAJOR OS to come from MS - period. Those who remember 2k's introduction (or even XP) will remember quite a bit of pain being involved. Time fades those memories and people now think XP (and 2k) were always as good (i.e. refined/fixed/patched/finished) as they are now. They simply weren't.

I think DOS was the most solid. I cant remember blue screens, 10 mins to boot or being asked 'Are you really sure you want to run this application'.

[greenalien]

Looking forward to Service Pack 3 for XP - at the moment, any time I have to reinstall this OS, I then have to download 100 or so patches from Windows Upgrade, which is a pain; one that has been exacerbated by one of the patches to Windows Update itself, which interferes with a reinstall.

[dangel]

Hey I love Vista, just seems a little weird to spend so much on an OS just to replace it so quickly. But saying this it was said that Microsoft did plan to have more releases in the future rather than nearly five years apart.

MS' OS cycle went AWOL with Vista because of the code restart. They're actually oblidged to release OS' on a ~3 year cycle for their larger customers. Seven is planned for 2010 currently, and is likely to be heavily based on Vista.

I think DOS was the most solid. I cant remember blue screens, 10 mins to boot or being asked 'Are you really sure you want to run this application'.

Ah yes take me back to the 'good old days' of command lines, 640k and none of this fancy mouse stuff. You're right - it didn't blue screen - it froze up or rebooted.

Security - this is probably the biggest pill for users and developers to swallow on the Vista platform. It's a huge mindshift away from the 'let anything run and do anything it likes' mentality of older OS' and there's a lot of pain involved for both groups initially (as it takes time for people to change their attitudes and for the software to mature enough to where it's not just putting up noise dialogs). I've spent a long time 'fixing' our software to work with UAC - not fun by any means but I suspect UAC isn't going away in Seven and I agree with the basic principle. Ground up it's not that hard to right compliant software though.
MS are damned either way - people will bleat about how terrible security is but if they try and fix it then..

Looking forward to Service Pack 3 for XP - at the moment, any time I have to reinstall this OS, I then have to download 100 or so patches from Windows Upgrade, which is a pain; one that has been exacerbated by one of the patches to Windows Update itself, which interferes with a reinstall.

Yup - ~150mb of downloads each time is a real PITA. Hopefully nlite will let me slipstream it all as usual

[Agent]

Looking forward to Service Pack 3 for XP - at the moment, any time I have to reinstall this OS, I then have to download 100 or so patches from Windows Upgrade, which is a pain; one that has been exacerbated by one of the patches to Windows Update itself, which interferes with a reinstall.

One bloke : RyanVM

Just grab nLite, his latest pack and it'll have pretty much all of the patches in