Save XP! - Page 8

I'm not in the habit of making financial information public, nor did I mention my business to impress anyone with the money aspect. I will say that I have 4 main clients that are medium sized multi-million dollar companies, and our networks support hundreds of users. We have been in business for more than 25 years, and have supported THEOS since it's inception. I also build an average of 3 to 12 custom systems/home networks each month, and have a steady stream of satisfied customers.

As far as Vista goes, more power to people that are happy with it. Some people would rather drive a Prius than a Hemi Cuda. I'm just not one of them, and plan to wait for something that is actually better than XP.

Again, my man, we are looking at the same writing but seeing two different things. Ed's article was not about opinions, it was about figures. How can the figures be opinionated?!

As in it is the period between Win 7 and Vista is third longest (or second, can't quite see) out of 7 in the business segment, and 4th longest out of 9 in the consumer segment. How is that "rushing it out"?!

Oh, and don't start with Windows ME - it's been beaten to dead but there is NOTHING simiar between Me and Vista. Anyway...

I agree with most of what you said with a few exceptions.

Other than pundits, I never hear people in the real world complaining about XP security nor telling me they going to Vista for improved security. Fact is I don't know anyone who depends on Windows OS based security. I don't know a single individual who hasn't turned off the Windows Firewall / AV and used 3rd party products because they simply have no faith in OS based protections whether they be WinXp or Vista. I put this one in the who cares category because both XP and Vista are unacceptable.

The question to my mind is should it be part of an operating system ? or should it be a plug in ? I have no problem with DRM being a plug in which I am required to install if I want to watch a BR movie on my PC. I do have a problem with it being loaded by default. Why stick me with the overhead if I do not intend to utilize it. Now WD has gotten into the act. WD's World Book provides access to your Exterior Hard Drive from anywhere in the world it claims.....unless of course it's a media file. So when I go visit grandpa in Florida, I can't show her the video of his grandson getting the hit that won their team the County Championship or his granddaughter doing a solo and the orchestra recital cause WD is worried whether it might be a Sony Pictures release.

That makes most of Corporate America retarded as it's a typical IT department mantra. To my mind, those people running the corporate help desk are in the best position to judge and that's where this sentiment comes from. NT4 was an abomination before SP3. NT5 (W2k) was pretty decent after SP3 and NT5.1 (XP) actually wasn't bad after SP2. Win95/98/ME never reached a point of satisfaction.

Now of course we can't expect a public release of software to be without flaws but how many critical flaws should remain in a piece of software before it is released. Is it 5 ? Is it 10 ? Is it 25....50....100 ?

Care to guess how many SP3 critical fixes there are in XP as of today ? I just ran Belarc on my machine and it reported 113 "SP3" critical fixes. Almost 7 years after it's formal release we still have a half dozen or so fixes every "Patch Tuesdays" ? This is not a record to proud of. And they call this level of performance "software engineering" ? Shall we hold automotive design engineers to the same threshold ?

Yes and no. While it is something different in Vista, it's also common in all previous releases. No MS OS has ever consumed less resources nor run faster than its predecessor.

Yes....though a user interface must be part of this, any "super-interfaces should be a plug-in.

I don't see how the word "modern" fits in here unless "modern" is defined as "bundling something in which allows OS vendor to gain an unfair advantage in other markets". Did you ever wonder about the decision making process which resulted in "Accessibility Options" being a plug in and MSIE a part of the OS ? The only reason IE was integrated into the operating system was that bundling it with the operating system failed to gain enough market share. It's not about the user experience, it's about getting advertising revenue from portals. And what's wrong with offering the option of alternate GUI's ? Linus Torvalds doesn't have anything against UI's he just doesn't feel the need to restrict you to just one. What's wrong with letting the user decide ?

What would be wrong with an install procedure which asked :

1. Do you want us to decide what you need installed ?
2. Do you want to decide what you need installed ?

Under 1, it sees a network card, it installs networking, if it don't it don't.
Under 2, it gives you a series of expandable checkboxes like we see long the right side here:

http://www.litepc.com/xplite.html

Why must I be burdened with the system overhead of having MSIE running every minute that my PC is running if I am never going to use it ?

Why not ? Having someone in Redmond decide what is enriching for is is a bit presumptuous don't you think ? If what they say is true with regard to enriching the user experience, how is this experience in any way diminished by giving me an on/off switch. I live in a modern world, with modern lighting fixtures but each one of them has an on / off switch......my surround sound system has an on / off switch......my TV has an HDMI switch....my PC games let me play at 1920 x 1200 or 640 x 480.

Would a system that gave you all those things as an option be "old fashioned" or "un-modern" ? Just think, for each extra service you could turn off, that performance margin would shrink. So why not give is the option ? Because MS is making money on the other end.

I don't have an issue with anyone deciding they want to run Vista. It is quite an amazing statistic however that, when offered the choice between 7 year old XP and the "latest and greatest" Vista, 2 outta 3 people who bought computers in 2007 chose XP. Not only that but the "default" choice was Vista .... you actually had to "special order" XP. Imagine going onto a car lot and seeing 2001 vehicles and 2007 vehicles on the same lot for the same price and 2 outta 3 people choosing the older models....that's pretty dramatic statement.

And let's not forget that even those numbers are skewed. When Joe Corporate bought additional licenses of Win2k back in 2001, those purchases were recorded as XP sales with "unreported downgrades" to Win2k. That practice continues today with Vista.

So why doesn't MS make the OS modular such that we have the option of installing (or uninstalling) the browser, firewall, AV program, system tools, games, services whatever ? NT4 installed MSIE by default but you could remove it, completely remove it with Add / Remove Programs. I have no problem with that even. How big was your XP footprint ? 2 -3 Gigs ? The LitePC folks have trimmed XP down to 350 MB. So why doesn't it happen ? No, it is not because of MS's desire to make life better for mankind, it's because they want to make money from other market side streams. If they don't hard wire it into the OS, people won't use them simply because 3rd party equivalents are better. And MS makes no money when I am using Firefox, Quicktime, Winamp, iTunes, etc because they don't control the portals.

Now if Windows 7 came out tomorrow and did give me the option to remove (not just hide) all those things like IE, WMP, etc. and pare down the OS to what I want it to be, not only would I buy all future machines with Win7, but I'd upgrade every machine in the office to Windows 7.

I don't think computer gamers have anything to worry about. Considering how much computer game enthusiasts spend on video cards and other hardware there is little chance PC games will die out. One high-end game PC can cost as much as 15 or more console systems, but a decent game system can also be built for about the cost of a console and it's accessories. Now that the 360 and PS3 are more than a year old, PCs and the latest video cards and processors are looking better and better in comparison once again. Consoles and PCs each have unique advantages, but the PC will always be the superior platform.


http://www.guru3d.com/newsitem.php?id=6491

Maybe you're not familar with actual human beings, because when given the chose between something that is old and comfortable and something that is new and different 2 out of 3 seems a little low. Look at how routinely people by inferior products over new and improved ones just because thats what they've always used. I'm not saying that Vista is necessarily an improvement but I don't think usage numbers are a real indicator as to which is better. Think about this, how long has it really been since most people had a PC in there home? or used one every day? Now think about how long XP has been the dominant OS. No other OS has even had 1/2 the run that XP has had and XP had/is having that run durring the time when PC usage is far greater then any other time. My point being that a large part of the resistance to going to Vista is that XP is so ingrained into how people use computers. And IT profesionals are not immune to that either. This may sound completely stupid but I've heard more then a few people even say that they don't want SP2, because they are afraid of how it may change XP.

Well as I said DX10 seems like a scam, and definitely a poor reason to accept Vista at this point. If you check out WIC I think you will like it. The battlefield looks impressive on a big screen. I agree model detail isn't fantastic up close, but it's pretty good considering how many are on screen at a time. I rarely bother to zoom in on units anyway. If you compare the graphics to CNC3, or something like Supreme Commander, WIC really shines. If you have checked out the reviews you will see it's a winner though.

^ nice to see that you can run 98 games on Vista. That could also explain why Vista is somewhat bloated. MS should kill support for 98 apps already.

There's one of the great contradicitons of Vista bashers. You simultaniously complain that it both lacks compatability with older programs and complain that it's too bloated due to legacy support. Honestly I would be fine if Vista supported nothing past 2005. My point is that you have somebody in this thread who states as fact that only 10% of programs that work with XP work with Vista and specifies that most older games do not work. So I went beyond just picking any old game at random and intentionally chose one that I knew to be problematic. And it worked.

I just tried a pre 95 DOS based CD of small games. It didn't work, but I really didn't expect it to. I doubt it would work on XP either. I'll try later.

I don't hate Vista, what I have been trying to say all along is that MS NEEDS to keep XP alive for people who STILL wants it and don't want Vista yet because of some software incompatibilities. For example SolidWorks 2007 Premium would crash when you try to run it on Vista (at least during RC2, probably fixed by now) and SolidWorks still crash under certain events. (ie during chamfering an edge of certain models).

OK I went digging and couldn't find a game, but check this out...

Emulators bring my Megadrive (non-US equivalent of the Genesis I believe) back to life, although playing at 320x200 or whatever isn't very cool. Bumbping up the res makes it look worse. I never played BZ2, but the original was quite fun, especially the US campaign (which was 3x the length of the soviet campaign) and the final soviet mission where you could build everything. Strangely that game runs quite poor even on a geforce 4 ti4400 at high res, it really likes 3dfx cards though, and looks so much more 3D with them Did you ever play any of the Strike series of sega games?

That GUI looks so old skool Dark grey

OS is not going to be adopted by any government agency that I know of

wow thats funny because I was doing work at a school and they have vista. Guess not goverment agencys want to use vista.

Do you actually read the links that you post? I find this hilarious...
Here's what I said earlier...

This is from the article you posted as part of the reasoning for why not to use Vista:

I'm gonna go way out on a limb here and guess that you're using SP2 on you XP machines?

I had a bad thought on this topic... like 5 or 10 years from when MS shuts down the server that handles XP activations, then what? Now I know no serious users will be on XP at that point, but think about it... how many of us still have around that old DOS computer to play really old games? You know... the classics... Ultima, Kings Quest, etc... well, todays regular games will be our classics then... and without XP, how the hell are we going to run 'em?

Seriously... I still have DOS 6.22 disks lying around somewhere just in case I ever have an old system that can run Ultima 6/7.

It's not a big deal. There's been activation cracks for XP as long as there's been XP. If you're using XP in 10 years I don't think cracking it will be much of a moral dilema for you nor do I think MS would even care (not that they care much now).

I didn't like SP2 either, specifically XP Security Center. Since I use Zone Alarm 7 Security Suite, I keep Security Center Service disabled on all my machines. I also shutdown Error Reporting, Indexing, Telnet, Remote Desktop, and a host of other services.

I just wonder who let Bill in the forums.

Meh... I have had no problems with Vista, that so many people are supposedly having. I am kinda glad MS is doing this because the faster they get people to switch to Vista, the faster companies will make drivers and support it, you know instead of sitting there and bitching about the fact that MS released a new OS.

You can run Kings Quest, Space Quest, etc, with a DOS emulator in XP, something called DOS box. You can also get the new Kings Quest 1 and 2 updates from a company called AGW for free (it has sound and speech packs). Ive run many 80s and early 90s games successfully on XP with a dos emulator and maybe you can do it in Vista as well.

What Im not comprehending is why are people who have activated versions of XP worried that it wont work anymore? If yours is activated already cant you just block microsoft with your firewall so they cant deactivate your copy? I block microsoft IPs with peerguardian already.

Government should probably use Linux, cause its free and more secure meaning they don't have to spend $ and better security (esp. with loosing laptops).

Considering one of the huge security benefits of Linux is that it's not a huge target for those looking to do ill, the US government switching to it would pretty much eliminate that advantage.

Guess you didn't read the rest of the article, or many of the other links I posted did you? Vista has been officially banned by a number of federal agencies, including the DOT, the FAA, and the NIST. The majority of federal agencies have not officially banned Vista, but their position is that they have no plan to adopt Vista. This is the same for virtually all large corporations, with the exception of Citi Bank. I have a friend who is a VP at Citi, and he says the migration has been put on hold due to compatibility issues. Furthermore 95% of all large corporations have reversed moves to Linux. The company I work for being one of them. We had more than a dozen Linux servers 3 years ago, and are now down to 3. These machines run Red Hat, and will be out the door soon.

I'm trying to bite my virtual tongue here and not resort to name calling, but you sound like an immature kid who just wants to nitpick details. I never said SP2 is no good. I simply said I don't use, or like some features. As you may, or may not know, all individual patches are available from MS. I prefer to pick and choose, because only a small fraction are useful security patches, or actually fix problems. Many are for so-called "enhanced functionality" that I don't need. Why do you think SP3 makes XP 10% faster? I also never said Linux is on the way out. What I said is that 95% of large corporations have reversed the number of planned, or installed systems. This isn't some fantasy I made up, it is common knowledge. On the other hand various flavors of Linux like Ubuntu have made great strides in offering an alternative to Windows for the home user, or small business who can't afford MS. I have tried virtually all popular incarnations of Linux, Mandriva being my favorite (formerly Mandrake). While some of them are quite interesting, none come close to the usability of XP. I stand by my opinion of Vista, and there is plenty of concrete evidence the tide is headed backwards on this OS.

Without intending to sound too sarcastic (please forgive my tongue-in-cheek), I'm afraid that on my planet (little blue one, 3rd from the sun), humans do not behave that way. Part of the motivation in purchases is the "look at me, I have the latest and greatest " . That's why you see people driving around in their new cars for 3 weeks after they buy one with the price sticker still pasted to the window so they can show as many people as possible that they bought a new car. That's why people line up outside the computer store at 9 pm and stand in the cold for 3 hours so they can be the first one on their block to have the new OS when it goes on sale at midnight.

Are you actually suggesting that if a group of people walked on a car lot and saw two rows of cars, one row with 2007 models and one row with 2001 models, both for sale at the same price, that more than 2 outta 3 people would choose the 2001 models ? You see Quickbooks 2008 and Quickbooks 2007 on the shelves, which one you buying ?

Do you remember what they did for the Xmas holiday season last year ? ....to prevent a slump in holiday sales, all the major vendors launched the "free Vista upgrade" campaign because they were afraid that sales would go in the toilet as everyone held off waiting for the latest and greatest and not wanting to be stuck buying "sunsetting technology".

Did these human beings you refer to go thru some sudden evolutionary change in the last dozen or so years ? Where was this need to buy something old, warm and comfy during past OS releases ?
-When XP came out, other than corporate users, was there a major call from consumers clamoring for Win2k ?
-When Win2k came out, other than corporate users, was there a major call from consumers clamoring for WinNT ?
-When Win98 came out, other than corporate users, was there a major call from consumers clamoring for Win95 ?

So, I gotta ask.... how come there wasn't this mass of people wanting to be "old and comfy" for all the previous OS upgrades yet there's this major evolutionary change in human behavior for Vista ? If this is true, we haven't seen an evolutionary change like that since that big rock hit our planet 65 million years ago. Corporate users have to justify their actions so they gotta show a ROI before they make a major move.....so on the corporate level, they buy test boxes and evaluate alternatives before doing major rollouts.

How many people are buying software looking for familiar and cozy instead of new and improved these days ? Do you know of a single software company who continues to sell the old version of a program (episodic games like Quake 1 - > 4 don't count) after the new version is out ? Heck, usually if you buy software within 90 days of a new version release they will give you a free upgrade to the new version.

MS has now extended the sunset date for XP sales twice now. How many times in MS's history has this happened before ? How many times have puter vendors and consumers come out with a "Betty Ford like "Just Say No" campaign ?

I can remember once.....from the "Save XP" link:

"In many respects, Vista is like the Windows Millennium Edition that was meant to replace Windows 98 in 2000 but caused more trouble than it was worth. At that time, Windows 2000 was promising but didn't support a lot of hardware, so users were stuck between two bad choices. Without admitting Millennium's failure, Microsoft quietly put Windows 98 back on the market until the fixed version of Windows 2000 (SP1) was available. Microsoft needs to do something like that again today."

And the one fact that I found most revealing.....how many people upgraded their machines to Vista or bought new machines with Vista and then uninstalled it and went back to XP ?

When in the history of MS OS's did you see magazine after magazine printing articles like this ?

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,140283/article.html

When in the history of MS OS's did you ever see surveys showing fewer businesses are now planning to move to Windows Vista than the same survey revealed months before ? The only approval rating that's dropped so precipitously in history has been Dubya's.

When in the history of MS OS's did you ever see 100,000 people signing a petition to save the old OS ?

Not stupid at all considering that SP2 broke over 200 programs. What smart people did was let others live on the bleeding edge. They looked at the broken problem list, and if they had any of the programs on it, they waited for fixes to be incorporated. Had nothing to do with "familiar and comfy".....had to do with "I don't want no down time".

There's an old saying "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me". I think consumers are singing along with Daltry and saying they "won't get fooled again". Consumers remember ME, they remember NT4 before SP3 .... they remember the atrocity that was Win2k before SP1 and how slowly it got better. They saying "show me" and "give me a reason" MS hasn't delivered.

On top of that, they are confused as all hell with regard to what the heck one to get:

Ultimate 32 bit Version
Ultimate 64 bit Version
Business 32 Bit Version
Business 64 Bit Version
Home Premium 32 Bit Version
Home Premium 64 Bit Version
Home Basic Full 32 Bit Version
Home Basic 64 Bit Version

One, peeps are hesitant to make the choice so they simply put off making a choice.....which is made especially hard when if you make the wrong one you are "dead ended". That is if have Dell build ya system with Home Basic 32 and then realize you really shoulda gotten Home Premium 64, sorry dude, if ya can't sweet talk Dell into being nice, ya gotta pay full price for ya new OS from MS.

Two, people are left feeling that Vista is a "not ready for prime time transition" to 64 bit computing and don't want to invest themselves in "soon to be outdated 32 bit tech". As TH writes today, 64 bit computing isn't quite here yet:

"Vista 64 still faces a few challenges, not the least of which is often a lack of drivers, though at least most standard applications run without issues. On the other hand, none of the current generation of applications can come even remotely close to utilizing the maximum amount of memory installable."

Since you need at least 20 - 50 % better hardware to offset a new OS's bloat and notice any significant speed differences, I simply don't have much to gain.....When will I buy Vista ? Well I can still get XP through the holiday season in 2008 from OEM vendors. At that point I will suspend any buying until 3rd / 4th quarter of 2009. When the buy Vista and get free upgrade to Win 2007 comes out, I figure:

1. 64 bit drivers will be available for all my stuff.
2. 64 bit programs will be able to actually take advantage of the 64 bit OS
3. Hardware improvements will more than offset any Vista performance penalties
4. I will be able to create an empty partition and install the atrocious Windows7 on it with my free upgrade coupon. I won't use it for 18-36 months while they get the bugaboos out and stable drivers get released....but heck what do I care, didn't cost me anything.
5. 16 GB of RAM will cost $50