And they say Acer is crap. But again pc for olympics must be mintpicked anyway. Good to hear nothing bad happen.

Well it is the most well known widely used windows out there. Should hope it's stable by this point.

I wonder what will happen to all those PCs after the Olympics? For longevity afterwards, Win7 would be better. But of course, the VANOC's job is to get the Olympics done right. And if XP works for them, I'm glad that's what they went with.

"she didn't want to part with a notebook hearty enough to survive a bowl of soup."

I see what you did there lol

If they're buying a crapton of computers for something that lasts a couple of months what happens to the computers afterwards? And what were they using before? I'm sure they weren't just computerless.

If they're tossing them, I'd gladly take a couple...

I'd like to know how long these 6,000 Notebooks have been issued for and how much use they've seen. I'm sure these will be nice collector items too as they'd have the Olympic Logo printed on them. I find it very impressive that they've worked with 100% reliablity. Did they go through extra Q&A before going out? Out of the 5 notebook computers I've purchased I've had one DOA. Also have experience 2 HDD failures out of the 5 notebooks after about a year each of service. My point is sort of Q&A is in the gutter these days and 6,000 of these things have work flawlessly so far.

I'm wondering if the employees get to keep them.

I think acer cherry picked the laptop that work the best since it also a free marketing for them. One swell swoops and their brand will be globally tarnished and no millions of dollars in marketing will recover that.

The laptop should be given a gold medal.

i second that lol

I got my daughter an Acer for Christmas and it has worked like a charm. It was by far the best value for the buck.

that's one rugged laptop

It's not like they decided to purchase these 3 weeks ago. Olympic events are planned far in advance. With the poor public perception of Vista, using XP was a simple choice. Besides, who wants to provide tech support for and/or train 6000 people from all over the world on a brand new OS? This is hardly headline-worthy.

My office’s 32bit XP workstation crashes so often it accounts for 80% of my computer troubles (I also “handle” three PC in my home; 2 x64 Win7 and 1 x64 Vista)

They just want to be safe because XP works for them. Not a surprise.

That's like blaming a car crash on the gasoline you put in it.

Ah, hockey, the only game that matters. =)
(Is curling even a real sport?)

I've been using Win7 for well over a year now though, new my ass...

Wish I was in Vancouver when the games started, one of my cousins was telling me people were looting the local shops. I'd beeline to the nearest NCIX. >_>

If it isn't broken, don't fix it.

If its running fully up to date with SP3 this means you either have a hardware problem or its being caused by some badly cded 3rd party software

a fully up to date XP SP3 installation on quality hardware running decent software is as reliable if not more than vista/7

VANOC is a bunch of crooked group... I bet they went for xp to maximize their profit... If you were in Vancouver, you would know how much monopoly they impose on people... BUT NEVERTHELESS, they did a fantastic job of organizing stuff. Go Canada, GO

Da man, "Shall we simply push out the established XP platform, save man power and be damn lazy?"
Employee's, "Yes, why actually do some work when we've been lazy for years and can do this standing on our heads?"
Da Man, "cha-ching!"

Lazy, lazy I.T.

@excalibur1814
Not lazy IT...

The XP choice could be explained by some custom software (a desktop program writen to do something to the organizers) that might not be web-based. For custom software, the OS should just do their job - and XP's NT kernel is just as stable as 7's. It's very common that happen and XP adoption was so wide just because everyone (home and companies) was getting a stable OS at last (up until Millennium, we had a kernel based on 3.11 - which was unstable EVEN when the hardware was perfect).

I always been pushing 64bit. Vista 32bit was a mistake, it made it so companies were too lazy to develope for 64bit. Now I am glad 64Bit OS is almost on every PC, and 32bit is a thing of the past.

Now with how well vista and windows 7 runs, there is just no point in Xp. Xp is just holding everyone back.

Marcus, we beat you once in the men's hockey. We'll beat you again in the finals! Best of luck.

Anyone remember the Windows XP BSOD at the opening or closing ceremonies?

Id like to see that. The russians got raped in case you didnt watched.

Haha yes the states did beat us, but your goalie was the saving grace of your team, we had double the shots, coupled with bad luck (hit a few posts)

We steam rolled the russians 7-3 the other night, and the team is actually playing how it should now

Your probably a whinny end user, arent you?

Here is the reality.

IT: Can we blow a few hundred thousand $$ on licenses and new PCs?
Upper Management: Is the old PoS still working relatively well?
IT: mostly
U Management: HELL NO.
IT: we better not harass them with Win7 Licenses if we want our new servers...

Normal. The old platform is know "stable". The new platform is "unknow" and could be "unstable".

Company take more times to move in that kind of business since they doesn't need Direct X, theirs computers aren't for gaming.
And since they plan Windows 8 in 2012, the time laps is too soon to move to Win7.

This is not shocking... XP is still out there more than vista and Windows7. You have people all over the world coming to help put the Olympics together which takes years of planning (like 8 years!). Windows7 came out a few months ago... Vista is not an option and WinXP works. So everything works, everyone is happy.

For the summer Olympics, I'd say there is a 99.5% chance that the computers will be Windows7. Don't see why not.

Because you're an end-user, not a company or corporation trying to manage thousands of computers. Windows7 isn't quite vista. Vista sucks today almost as much as it did 3 years ago. "okay, we'll have our scores up and. er... sorry, the UAC is in the way.. GO*DA***IT!*!?!"

Yeah 64bit was important for vista, its a memory hog due to design defects in its memory handling (articles are here on this very site). so yea, people need 4~8GB to get good performance out of vista... oh WOW I have 4GB to browse the net and check emaiL! YEAH!!! Er, but the experince is ZERO difference on XP or Windows7 in 32bit with a 1GB computer. THAT is not impressive.

64bit is the future... but its STUPID to require 4~8GB of memory to do every day stuff. Thats a rather large jump from 1GB.

XP is not holding anyone back. if you feel this way, please provide everyone with a voucher to get a free copy of Windows7, paid out of your bank account.

I run XP on my 2GB Core2Quad desktop, I use Windows7 on my 1GB Core2Duo notebook (that came with XP on purpose). Three of my productivity programs barf or have problems under Win7... Feel free to send me $700 to pay for upgraded software so I can use Windows7 on my desktop.

Windows7 runs fine on my notebook with 1GB of RAM and in 32bit mode. Notebooks faster than mine and more memory that have vista are slower and those users complain about it or live with it.

the Olympics is a short duration event. you have to be productive immediately. so they decided to use the more familiar XP instead of 7. no Citius, Altius, Fortius (faster, higher, stronger) here. only familiarity, reliability and getting the job done.