So... just because Microsoft isn't going to sell it any more, won't there still be copies on the market for a while longer? They can't have sold them all.... Maybe Linux really is the way to go... the penguin can' be wrong!

I had Explorer 7 installed on my XP SP2 machine. When m/s distributed SP3, it crashed IE7. The only fix from m/s was to step IE 7 back to IE 6. I used to get paid to test software. m/s sticks it to customers and when their product finally sort of works, they stop selling and supporting it. Boooo!

The long goodbye. From PC Mag


http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2321849,00.asp

Wow, a really sucky thing is that they stopped selling XP on my birthday LOL. Another sucky thing about it is that when I get a new laptop in around 4 years, it will not have XP on it. It will probably have 'Windows 7!" oh boy, that will be fun lol.

Hmmm. every time i help a friend with there computer and see they are running vista, my head starts to ache. Guess i will have to get used to it now

I really don't see what's so wrong with Vista.

UAC puts Vista's security level much higher than XP's in my opinion.


In other news, 4GB RAM and DirectX10 make for an incredible gaming experience.


Edit: grr English grammar...

I am glad the sale of XP is going to end. Eventually everybody is going to have to put up with Vista like me.

Not that I am bitter or anything.

I know that there used to be a law that said that support and parts need to be available for at least two years after sales of a product has ended. Car companies need to do this for ten years if I remember correctly. I think that software companies shouldn't be allowed to stop support until two after they stop selling a product but unfortunately we're stuck with putting up with beta quality software until they just get it working somewhat properly and finally get comfortable with it. Then they force more beta quality software down our throats where, once again, nothing works and we start the cycle all over again. We'll see the same complaint when the next one comes out. We'll miss Windows Vista because it'll finally be working the way it was intended. I see this every time a new OS comes out. be it Windows or Mac.

I know a lot of companies are still stuck with Windows 98 because some of the older PLC's won't work with anything newer.

With Windows 7(working title) due out around the end of the decade, they've got there work cut out to make Vista missed.

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/39594/140/



just give us another 6 months to fix vista

lol. When they fixed Vista, their new buggy Windows 7 will be released .

Bill Gates once said, "You will never need more than 256Ks of Memory!"

Edit? Nowadays People forget what the CMOS is? It is such a tiny part of Memory? Yet can shut down any Powerful Machine!

Heh, actually the quote doubtfully attributed to B.G. is "640K ought to be enough for anybody"

one month ago, I bought a computer with XP installed, and THAT was the big selling point of it! We had to call around and drive many miles to find one in stock, they came out in August and sold that quick.

This is a big disappointment. I had Windows Vista but went back to XP as I can't be bothered dealing with the issues. I don't mind pulling my hair out for customers, but not at home.

Nothings wrong with Vista, but I think XP was a ton easier to use. I chose Vista just to upgrade but if I could make a new change without spending money, i would definitely switch back to Xp. Bleaugh, oh well. I knew it had to come someday.
Tony

I'm getting ready to take my XP in to the shop for some repairs. Don't know how much it'll cost me, but now wonder if it's worth it or should I just go with a new one with Vista. Vista seems like such a nightmare. I'm so confused, arghh.

Microsoft has never been a company that listens to its customers. It has a practical monopoly, and it doesn't need to listen to what the customers want. Until there are real choices, this won't change.

I have never seen so much pointless whining and complaining.

Get over it people. Vista is here to stay.

I have used Vista for over a year without any problems. All my former applications worked just fine (and they are not exactly common applications) and migration of data was a snap. Establishing a network and installing NAS drives was also a snap. Everything in the entire migration has worked as it should and I have not once had to fire up my old system for any reason. In fact, the greatest surprise in the entire experience with the migration to Vista has been that there has been no surprises. Having lived with the migration headaches of migrations since the days of Windows 3.1, I can safely say this has been a real pleasure. Everything has worked the way it is suppose to. Sure there are minor differences from XP but they are improvements generally and besides, if everything were the same, it would just be XP. When you buy a new car, you don't expect it to be an exact duplicate of your old car.

Vista compared to XP is superior. It is better, easier to use, more secure and more stable. Sure, it doesn't offer any magic or revolutionary changes that would make one run out and upgrade but if an upgrade or new system is in the works, it would be plain foolish to not select Vista. There is just not any downside, while deliberately avoiding Vista (or worse still, downgrading to XP) is like taking careful aim and shooting your own toes off.

The core technology of Windows 7 is Vista. Get used to it.

Hi chiimo79,
I've never heard anyone praise Vista so highly and report so few difficulties. It sounds almost like an advertisement.

Well, it's not! I entered into my venture with Vista with some trepidation. I remember the horror stories about previous releases of Windows and, having lived through them, I was fully expecting there would be some truth to the current batch of negatives about Vista. There were all kinds of people around that were more than happy to tell me how bad Vista was. It turns out on close examination that they had little more than a casual acquaintance with Vista. Perhaps they tried it in a store or friend's house and saw exactly what they wanted to see. Either that or the reviews tested under configured systems or systems that had the bare minimum and found it didn't compare favourably against XP on the same system. It is not rocket science to see these were deliberate attempts to create a 'story'. They provided an opportunity to bash Microsoft and thereby somehow promote their own image.

These days anyone who wants to promote himself uses a practise I call "Big Bashing". Take any 'big' person, organization, country, event and offer some severe criticism (doesn't have to be true) and you too can suddenly have the spotlight turned on you. Want to become famous? Tell a bunch of lies about 'Big Oil', 'Big Pharma', big USA, 'big movie star', big auto maker, or big bad Microsoft. That's what sells the all those tabloids in the grocery store. If you write a column for a PC magazine or web site or blog and you want to attract readers, then a very good way to do so is to include some sex or second best, bash Microsoft. Read back through this thread. There is almost zero concrete criticism of Vista. Mostly it is just the uninformed offering opinions about how 'terrible' it is.

The bottom line is Vista is as good in every respect as XP and significantly better in many.

Yes maybe you have not had any problems with Vista, but others have. There are compatibility issues out there with old hardware and old software, if I were to try and install Vista onto my current PC it would not work at all because all of the hardware is not "Vista" compatible. Many of us are so BLAH on Vista because we have greatly enjoyed our time with XP and do not want change(at least us suave computer users) . Like those who are very comfortable with Windows 2000 absolutely despise XP because it is change(although it is not much change).

Not everyone enjoys having to right click on some link and having to "Run as administrator" cause I would not be clicking on the link in the first place if that's not what I wanted to do in the first place. And who knows what other things people might complain about, I myself have not done the research to dis Vista, but I know XP, and do not want change so I dislike Vista.

Oh and yes trying to be on topic. Microsoft is stupid for ending the sales of Windows XP so soon, as everyone else has said it will cause a lot of people to quite upset, and also piracy will continue to be on the rise. Thankfully I have my Windows XP Home Edition CD that I proudly bought for my PC.

grr, XP is fine, no need to change the entire OS, also they shouldnt make the worse of the 2 compulsory, many people prefer XP and those that dont are usually on the fence. I suppose they want to make major appearancce changes so that it looks more modern but doesnt it require 1G RAM just to function smoothly?
tsk tsk microsoft

the point is that there actually have been quite a few problems with compatability. Just becaue you havent had any doesnt make it perfect. And the point is we dont want a new car!

Compatibility issues are a problem with the hardware or software vendors, not Vista. All compatibility issues that exist are related to obsolete hardware or software. No vendor worth his salt would try to sell their products as "current" without having done whatever is necessary to make them Vista compatible. Any vendor that has not made their products Vista compatible has do so because they have made the decision that there is no longer a market for that product and most of their customers have (or should) upgraded to a more current version. The few dinosaurs who cling to the old product are not worthy of their consideration.

XP was/is a fine product but Vista is better. The biggest complaint by the unfamiliar is the User Account Control and it is just not the huge inconvenience so many would have us believe. To begin with, for the fool hardy,it can be turned off so it is not an issue at all. For the more cautious, it only ever pops up when one launches some program with privileges. It NEVER happens just by clicking on a link during simple browsing. So, its not a huge inconvenience and it offers some good protection. The recent severe security threat related to "MS08-067 – Critical Vulnerability" was substantially less of a risk to Vista user precisely because of UAC.

Of course Vista requires more hardware. Every new release of any new OS anywhere has required more hardware. Even XP required more hardware than its predecessors. That doesn't make Vista bad. It makes Microsoft smart for taking advantage of new technology. More memory is not exactly new but more memory at dirt cheap prices is. Vista not only requires more memory but aggressively uses the additional memory unlike XP where it is left to sit unused much of the time. I can even stick a spare 2Gb SD chip from my camera into the card reader and Vista uses the extra 2Gb as ReadyBoost memory.

XP is no longer sold because (like the obsolete hardware mentioned above) it is no longer a product worthy of the marketing and on going support effort. The foot dragging in the migration to Vista within the business community is more a reflection of the current economic environment than any kind of commentary on the quality of Vista. It costs a business lots of money to migrate thousands of XP seats and, without a significant and immediate benefit, they are not going to rush into it in today's economy. Even a home user like me would not rush out to upgrade unless there a good reason. In my case, I wanted to set up a Home Theatre/Media Centre and upgrading my old XP system would have cost more than the $650 I paid for a new quad core system with Vista that included a fully integrated Media Center (compared to the kluge under XP).

For those who are satisfied with their existing XP system, stick with it. But that doesn't make Vista bad and certainly not any kind of good reason for encouraging others to not upgrade. And, it definitely is not any kind of good reason for telling people that Vista is so bad that they should downgrade a new purchase. Eventually you will become dissatisfied with XP because you will want some new feature or facility available only under Vista and you too will upgrade to Vista or one of its successors. If you have talked your friends into sticking with XP, you are going to look very foolish when you upgrade to Vista in order to get something better.

I think this was my biggest beef. I can't just install Vista onto my old computer. It's not an upgrade, it's basically a requirement for a new system.

I've got an extra 2k Pro box at home that would upgrade to XP without having to buy any more hardware, I'm pretty sure. When you can accomplish that, it's considered an upgrade.

When I have to go buy a new system, just to run an OS... It's not an upgrade anymore.

. . .

Something bothers me about your comment on memory consumption and how XP just "left it unused." I can't put my finger on it yet, though, but something's wrong with that statement. ::shakes head:: I'll let you know when it comes to me.

Why are business xp computers still outselling vista ones? Why did MS extend the sale of xp on business computers?

Don't believe the MS sales hype on how much better vista is than xp, snake oil is still snake oil.

Smoke and mirrors

so they are doing what they did to windows 98*starcraftmaster lol but theres so meny people with windows xp
are they going to still make updates?

If you are an IT Manager with (for example) 1000 PCs running XP, doing a competent job for the corporation, and being well supported by your IT staff, it will cost at least $250 per seat to migrate to Vista. That's a total of a quarter million dollars out of your budget to accomplish a migration that will buy the corporation exactly nothing. After the migration, the PCs would be doing the exact same job. They would not do it any better or faster. Just about the only advantage is some increased security and that's not a major benefit considering tha corporation operates behind an iron firewall that has not allowed any significant malware in a long time. Oh yes, the PCs will all look slicker as well.

Not much benefit for a quarter million.

But, every IT Manager knows there will be additional applications appearing that the corporation will need and they will only work well under Vista. That, combined with the gradual disappearance of XP support, will eventually dictate a migration to Vista. That's why all new machines are bought with XP to integrate into the existing environment but with assured upgradability to Vista because upgrading will eventually happen. It will happen when the resources are in place (money, hardware, software, training, etc.) and the IT Manager can effect a smooth corporate wide migration.

It is a bit different in the consumer environment and my own personal experience is probably fairly typical. I had a system that had ran XP well. It was a 2.0 GHz that began life with 512 Mb of memory but I had upgraded to 1.5 Gb. It began life with an 80 Gb drive but I had added an additional 120 Gb drive making it the C: drive and retaining the 80 as D:. I also had a CD player/burner and a DVD player only. It had only 2 USB ports on the back and no card reader capability.

To upgrade the system to effectively run a reasonable Media Center environment, I needed to (if I wanted to stay with XP) purchase the Media Center version of XP, increase memory, add additional disk capacity, upgrade to a better Graphics card, and buy a DVD player/burner. And, I would likely have needed to upgrade to a better/faster CPU and motherboard, made more necessary because I wanted to move to SATA drives if I was going to add more capacity. In the end, I very nearly had to replace everything except the power supply and case.

Along comes an ad for a $650 Acer M5620 with a Core 2 Quad 6600 at 2.4 GHz with 3 Mb of memory, a 500 Gb SATA drive, a CD/DVD player/burner and a whole whack of card readers and USB ports. It included a 22" LCD monitor that I upgraded to 24" for $150 (1920 x 1200 native resolution - IE, High Definition). It also included a HP printer (not a particularly good one) that I used as a Christmas gift to a Nephew going off to university. All this came with Vista Home premium and (most important) its integrated Media Center. I have had to add a better Graphics card but beyond that, both the hardware and Vista software has performed flawlessly. I migrated all my data and applications including a 10 year old HP printer and an HP scanner that is just about as old. I now have a dual monitor system (24" and 20" from my old system) that has given me no reason to regret Vista or Acer. BTW, all this increased capacity and speed cost a whole lot LESS than the the system I got rid of with all its limitations.

Vista has had a few quirks but it is better than the XP I got rid of and far better than XP was when it came out. The crap you hear about Vista being bad/unstable/slow/bloated/etc. is just that - crap. Like many businesses, I could have continued happily with XP so long as I was satisfied to continue doing the same things. When the desire for some additional application came along, I would have been a complete idiot to try to force it into my old system and even more stupid to buy a new system and then handicap it with XP.

By the time that transition happens, especially with the recent beta release... wouldn't most businesses, at least, be better served by waiting to make that migration to Windows 7? I am not that market savvy, but it looks like Vista is going to be bypassed as a corporate platform in favor of 7.

It honestly wouldn't surprise me. I don't remember any companies leaving the OS they were using when ME hit the streets. It probably happened... But I never saw it.

Strang! Vista support is missing, I mean they charge 50$ for each request while XP support id free and very efficient. I wounder, how they can spent a lot of support dollars on an OS that is already gone "EXTINCT" by design.

I have a computer with XP and another with VISTA and am always having trouble with VISTA. Even loosing my dvd-WR from my computer on uninstalling some software and MS refuses to give any support and their help sites for vista are as dumb as the vista itself. But my old computer with Xp gets immediate and first class help from very active support individuals followed always by a survey done to ensure that the support was quick and usefull.
Is this not an irony? are there is a "goubachoff" sitting for Bill gates.
RGDS

Wasn't there an announcement recently that the new MS OS is coming out early in 2009? My computer and many of its applications have been gifts from my relatives. I have changed by browser to Firefox and use a number of Firefox add-ons and have been downloading free security packages for a while. I didn't upgrade to Xp until Microsoft made it available free. I was going to bar SP3 after having read the entries on this site, but when I went to my computer the next morning, SP3 had already been installed via "essential upgrade".

The U.S. election finally having come round, and 8 years of Bush/Cheney working toward its end, I have concluded, like a lot of you members posting here, that MS is a bully and mediocre. In fact, it's a lot like the current Republican party in the U.S. They don't pay any attention to the electorate, nor care for their welfare, and MS is the same way about its consumers. It wasn't worried about return trade because they assumed all their customers were either ignorant or were trapped, and thus had no say in the matter. MS hasn't been paying attention to the growing number of shareware/freeware users, which has been around long enough to no longer be considered a revolution in intellectual property rights. The Bush admin has been rushing to push thru deleterious regulations regarding the environment, pharmaceutical tort liability, consumer protections, etc. and ad nauseum. It will take a long, long time to undo all the damage that the Bush admin has done and will continue to do until Jan. 20. MS seems to share the same philosophy. I am concerned about Vista being dowloaded thru "essential download" labels, because I am not at all versed in operating systems languages.

By the way, Bill Gates has quite the reputation as a philanthropist. One of his major efforts was to place "Gates rooms" in government run (public schools in the U.S.) and public libraries thruout the country for years. Of course, no one noticed that he was bringing up a new generation of dedicated MS customers, because most people will go with what they are familiar with, even if it is a bit of stinky, moldy cheese.

What people should do is push government agencies around the world to patronize shareware companies, which would be of benefit to everyone. Better quality proramming at a lower cost, and better programming to those in the public who cannot afford to pay full or part price. but this would be too, too revolutionary.

Viva la Bama! An ignominious era in the U.S. will soon come to an end.
t

Corporations, unlike emotional and irrational people, don't upgrade (or not) for reasons like wanting to look cool or slick. Nor do they refuse to upgrade in order to stick it to Big Bad Microsoft. Corporations are very pragmatic. They don't "hate" or "love" Microsoft. If you want to explain why business is doing something, you hve to look at business reasons.

When an IT Manager presents a budget that includes a very costly OS upgrade, he had better be prepared to defend it with cold hard facts demonstrating greater benefits than the cost else he will be laughed right out of a job.

To some extent, it is not a simple matter to wait for Windows 7 release. Usually, most corporations do not want to jump to the first release of a new piece of software so the Corporation would have to wait for the release of 7, wait for the delays in the release (nobody, let alone Microsoft, ever meets release dates) and then wait for something like SP1. So the actual migration date could be out around 2011 or even 2012. In the world of IT, that's a long time to go without the new developments that will come along. Then there is the problems associated with "jumping" a release. The migration process is usually best defined as "from the most recent release". There could easily be serious problems with upgrades from older releases.

But the reasons for migrating to Vista or waiting, as we are discussing, have absolutely nothing to do with Vista being bad/slow/unstable or even ugly. For any individual or corporation, there are many good reasons they might elect to upgrade to Vista or wait for 7. The crap about the poor quality of Vista is not among them.

The Working Version of Vista is here !!!!, Called Windows 7

@chimo

let me rephrase the question you failed to answer before

Why are IT managers still ordering new computers with windows xp?

It's a simple question

This may seem a silly question, but does this mean that after April next year there will be no more updates, security or patches, for those of us still using XP?

I like XP and have heard bad things about Vista, especially about it needing a ton of RAM to work properly. I was planning on buying a new computer next year, at the budget end of the market, so would I be better getting one with XP if I can or with Vista?

Any advice for a newcomer to this site would be much appreciated.

Nikki

Any IT Manager buying new PCs must integrate them into their EXISTING infrastructure. That means, for an XP shop, they must be XP until such time the entire infrastructure is migrated to Vista. To migrate to Vista, a costly and time consuming project must be mounted that will pretest all applications under Vista, survey all hardware for suitability and upgrade as necessary, provide upgrade training for all IT Staff as well as the user community, and finally create a rollout plan that will minimize impact on business interests.

All this takes time and money and that's why IT managers that need new PCs now, are buying them with XP and will continue to do so until they are ready for a smooth migration. It has absolutely nothing to do with the crap reports you hear about Vista. The objective reports on Vista all indicate good performance, stability and security. It is only ever the irrational Microsoft Bashers who like to report how 'bad' it is and they always do so with personal anecdotal stories. They never have reproducible objective evidence for their 'opinions'.

If you have "heard bad things" it is probable you have been listening to people who like to promote themselves by beating up on something big. I call this "Big Bashing". It could be anything from Big Bad Oil to Big Bad Pharma to Big Bad USA to Big Bad Microsoft. Anything that is Big and cannot fight back. Tell whatever lies you want and someone will believe simply because anything Big must be Bad.

Read some objective reviews from reputable sources and you will find that Vista is a fine product with nothing more than the normal quirks expected in anything new. Buying a new system with XP would be like buying a new car and putting an obsolete engine in it. It will certainly work as well as the old engine can work but it can never have the new features and technologies intrinsic in the new engine. In the case of a PC, the new technology is the platform for all future development. One would be a complete fool to cripple a new system with XP.

BTW, any new system would cost about $50 more to add a Gb of memory beyond the minimum you would likely buy for the same hardware under XP. The crap about Vista needing a "ton of RAM" is just that - a bunch of crap.