What's so bad about XP?

I prefer XP to Vista. Am I alone?

(Credit: Microsoft)

In an interview with Computerworld UK, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had some interesting things to say about the enterprise and its desire to keep Windows XP instead of switching to Vista.

"If you deploy a 4- or 5-year-old operating system today, most people will ask their boss why the heck they don't have the stuff they have at home," Ballmer told the publication.

Ballmer went on to say that it's incumbent upon the business world to make employees happy and comfortable and the best way to do that is to deploy Vista as soon as possible.

According to market research firm Forrester, Windows Vista can be found on less than 10 percent of all the computers companies in North America and Europe are running. Windows XP can be found on over 71 percent of enterprise computers. Ballmer wants that to change.

But his premise that an increasing number of people will be asking for Vista doesn't really make sense. According to research firm Net Applications, Windows XP still controls almost 64 percent of the worldwide consumer market. It's trailed by Vista and Mac OS X 10.5 with 27 percent market share and 5 percent market share, respectively.

Based on those figures, I'm not convinced that there are that many people walking into their supervisor's office wondering when Vista will be deployed at the office. In fact, it's far more likely that they would rather use something they know--XP.

But Ballmer's desire to get enterprises to switch to Vista has me wondering what's so bad about Windows XP. Is it really such an awful operating system that every company should switch?

No way.

I realize Ballmer has a vested financial interest in seeing more companies switch to Vista, but I'm a firm believer that they should stick to XP until Windows 7 is released and all the kinks are worked out. That's why I only use Vista when I must.

It's not that I hate Vista, I just think that it suffers from too many issues to justify using it. It's too resource-intensive and I don't want to buy a new computer to optimize its performance. But I can (and do) run XP on my Asus Eee PC, as well as an older machine that isn't even capable of running Vista.

And although the mention of security is always made when comparing Vista to XP, I don't take the bait. I've installed Service Pack 3 into XP and you know what? It's just as secure, based on the way I use the OS, as Vista with SP1 installed.

But it goes beyond security. I prefer XP because, unlike Vista, I don't need to worry about the quality of my GPU or how much RAM my computer has. It just works with what I have. More importantly, I find that Vista is much slower, even with better components, than a comparably equipped XP machine. For a newer OS, that's unacceptable.

From a business perspective, it makes perfect sense to keep XP for now. The enterprise is still upset about Vista's compatibility issues when it first launched and because it's so resource-intensive, many companies would need to update their machines just to deploy the OS. Windows 7 is also right around the corner and it only makes sense, especially in uncertain economic times, to wait and save money for now.

Maybe Ballmer is right and he really does have his finger on the pulse of computer users across the world, but I prefer XP and think it's a better operating system than Vista. I know he has to say that companies should switch because his company spent all that money on developing Vista, but I think his logic is flawed (do employees really complain about Vista vs. XP?) and I think he's being too hard on the elder OS.

And it looks like many companies agree.

"IT decision-makers don't have an entirely rosy outlook for Windows Vista," Forrester analysts said in a recent report. "We found that 15 percent plan on skipping Windows Vista entirely and going straight to Windows 7 soon after its release in 2010. And another 22 percent still have no definitive plans for deploying Windows Vista, and 6 percent simply don't know yet what their plans are."

Yikes.

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[cuwickliffe]

I'm sure you'll get some XP haters on here soon enough, but I've rarely used Vista and tested 7 on my netbook and yes 7 is snappier and XP is like a rock. This is all about Microsoft's bottom line and Ballmer would be remiss to not want everyone over on Vista and then again on 7. Sure XP is 7 years old, but it works and it's what is on my work laptop now. My work laptop would die if Vista was put on it; I prefer its near-death to its death ;)

The bottom line to me is that Microsoft has been heavily pitching 7 and that indicates to me that Vista even to them is an afterthought.

[JCPayne]

Those poor folks @ Microsoft. They still haven't gotten over the shock of their VISTA defeat.....

[heygeo]

you are flat out wrong...
The bottom line for MS is that they cant build new innovation on a platform that has security flaws at its core.. they have patched the holy heck out of XP but with all the layers that they added to XP, it simply cant be stretched to encompass new cool tech and remain secure.
Vista was written to address security, unfortunatley it had higher requirements on hardware and didnt get the driver support from all the HW vendors, hence the perception that Vista was/is bad...
MS doesnt have a choice but to bring Win 7 to the front of the line now as it is essentially Vista which has been optimized to scale.. from netbooks and crappy older HW to the latest top gear... and since its driver support will require minor tweaking in comparison Win 7 is going to be the second coming of XP but with all the security it lacked built into its core.

[shinelikeitdoes]

@heygeo - for a second there i thought you used "MS" and "innovation" in the same sentence...

[Mark_Anderson]

There's nothing wrong with XP, it's just that Vista and 7 are better.

[bdaughtry]

I absolutely agree. Windows 7 is what Vista should have been, but Windows XP is still what people prefer. I would even go so far as to say that Microsoft had a hand in the economic meltdown by trying to force users to buy Vista machines. Ask Dell how many fewer machines we bought now that XP is not a choice. I bet there are lots more companies that did exactly the same thing.

[DigitalFrog]

I agree. the argument: "If you deploy a 4- or 5-year-old operating system today, most people will ask their boss why the heck they don't have the stuff they have at home," is totally off. If anything, I'm jealous that my company can stick with XP while I was forced to go with Vista for my wife's PC.

[ad2lxo4]

XP server 2003, is the most stable XP out there, so it would seem that XP64bit is the only way to go at this point. I have XP pro at work, its OK, but being able to take advantage of 6GB of ram or more when rendering and modeling is so much better. It will launch most programs I throw at it and contrary to popular beliefs, I don't have any compatibility issues, the only one to date that I have is that the 64bit version of Firefox - minefield- does not have a flash player, which is solved by simply using Firefox 3, 32 bit. Unlike Vista 64bit, Xp64 can actually run 32bit applications. All new hardware bought these days comes with 64bit install files, so that is no longer an excuse either. Vista... not great, the only thing it has going for it really is the DirectX 10 support. If I had a choice between not using a PC or using Vista, I'd buy a Mac or a old, cheap laptop and run Xubuntu instead.

[crazynexus]

at Ad2lxo4:

Vista64 runs 32bit apps just fine. I've only encountered EXTREMELY old apps that didn't relaly want to run on my Vista64..so I'm not quite sure what you're getting at.

[MrGadgetman]

You can buy a PC from Dell with XP SP3 loaded on it, but it's a FREAKIN $150 OPTION!!!! We called Dell and got them to work with us on a quantity purchase discount cuz we didn't want Vista, but we also didn't want to be price-bullied into buying XP either.

[bdaughtry]

Yep, we simply refuse to pay for Vista and XP too. Gee, I wonder if that has any reason at all to do with why 'netbooks' are so popular. It's not just the price, it's the only machine you can get XP on without having to buy Vista too. Some real geniuses at Microsoft I tell ya. ;-)

[Inconnux]

@crazynexus

Autocad Lite 2006.

$1200 program that will NOT work with Vista. Not exactly an ancient program either.

[ITcomposer]

No offense Don, but um, there are security features that XP doesnt have:

* INTERNET EXPLORER 7 is virtualized (won't infect the o/s if u click on malicious code)
* INTERNET EXPLORER 7 has the capability of blocking malicious code, i forgot the name of it
* NX bit can be enabled on IE 7 to kill off any changes the above 2 fail.
* BITLOCKER, in case your hard drive is stolen
* MRS: Memory randomization space, makes the attack surface a little harder to hit

did i mention that not all the patches for xp apply to vista?

Now on to the little stuff, the only reason why enterprises arent switching to VISTA is this, we've not hit the next hardware upgrade cycle, at least i believe not everyone has, so the machines are probably 2-4 years old (think: 1GB of ram, and single core CPUs, and dont even get me started on graphics) so thats the reason why.
On Vista being to resource intensive: You can shut off all the features sunshine, have u even bothered to look this up? Heck you can even turn the darn file indexer if u want off too!

PS: Vista is now about to receive SP2, if i were running an enterprise about to receive the upgrade cycle, which i tend to believe ill happen late this year to early next, i'd stick with vista instead of seven
by the time 7 arrives, all the kinks are worked out of it, i'll probably be in the next hardware cycle, this happened to XP too, remember prior to SP2 how buggy XP was, or dan are u conviniently forgetting?
Either way, do some homework dan.

Techworkz
A+, NETWORK +
4 year Network Admin

[pentest]

IE 7 is the cause of Vista's memory protection being broken completely. Not only can you get infected, you can lose total control of your system. Memory randomization is a very weak roadblock.

IE7 in Vista is the doorway to complete ownage of your system.

What is the point of implementing features that run 10x as slowly as the implementations they copied, if people just shut it off? (Editors' note: Personal attack removed.)

[bdaughtry]

Who cares? Internet Explorer is a dog anyway. Do your clients a favor and recommend they use Firefox or Chrome......on Windows XP. Maybe you'll get to be a "5 year Network Admin"

[tdreher]

I dont think you can hold IE again a version of windows though, since hopefully no one out there still actually uses it

[tm_anon]

@tdreher

Unfortunately there are some IT departments which will not use any browser other than IE. My local library has every computer set up with IE only. A friend of mine is provided a laptop from her workplace. Her laptop is set up with Windows XP and she's not allowed to download or install any programs, including an alternate browser.

[bdaughtry]

@ tm_anon

That just shows why the person in charge of your IT Department is not qualified to be in that position.

[Noneyabeeswax]

"On Vista being to resource intensive: You can shut off all the features sunshine, have u even bothered to look this up? Heck you can even turn the darn file indexer if u want off too!"

Well sunshine, I'm not some super duper Net Admin, I'm just a poor stupid normal home computer user. But poor ol' idiot me, I managed to tie my shoes right when I dressed myself this morning, and I turned all that junk off in Vista long ago, including the indexing service. Vista still runs like walking through mud. So how about another heaping serving of condescension for all of us pal? I'm not sure you dished out enough!

I've owned an XP Pro machine, and I have XP Home edition machine which I'm using right now, I've never had any problems with bugs on either of those machines. My Vista machine cost more than my previous machines, and it was just the box with no peripherals, and it's been loaned to my daughter because I despise the thing. It's still got two and half years left on the in home warranty. I despise it so much I'm giving some thought to dumping Vista, thereby nullifying my warranty, and loading Ubuntu on that machine, because I consider it money down the tubes. I bought the Vista box as a back up machine while I worked on my XP box. I had to replace the MB cooling fan, and the CD/DVD reader/writer. And it took a couple of weeks for my parts to arrive for some reason or other. I didn't believe all the bad press about Vista, but after using the system intensively for a couple of weeks, boy do I ever now.

[unknown unknown]

*There are products to visualize applications like browsers, one that comes to mind is Sandboxie.

*NX bit is called hardware Data Execution Prevention in Windows and possibly else where.

*TrueCrypt seems to decent drop in replacement for Bit Locker, if you don't want to spring for Ultimate and Buisness version of Vista.

BTW There is a nice little program for XP called DropMyRights, it's opposite of Run As Administrator.

[xaydes]

Oh nos, security flaws in IE?! Who would have thought!! Oh gosh! Internet Explorer is a joke, like windows millenium edition. Switch to firefox or chrome and have no problems.
Yes you can switch off the "flair" in Vista, and turn the indexer off, but check the processes that are running and indexer is in fact, still Running, whether "active" or not. Microsoft themselves officially declared Vista a failure, and decent beta etc versions of 7 are out now, so how about wait a few months, and just bypass Vista altogether from XP?? I know of NO intelligent IT proficients who support Vista, at all.
So to you sir, do your "homework" if you may, but know a thing or two about operating systems other than what you may read on the cover of Stuff Daily before spouting for a ruin of an OS.
And, network admin, "you" is spelt with three letters.

[KaBarsEdge]

You sir, are an idiot. As a Systems Engineer with 14 years experience, I can assure you the masses do not switch to Vista because it is the second most horrible operating system Microsoft ever developed, second only to Millennium. Beyond that, most corporate environments extend their hardware replenishment cycles well beyond the recommended times to cut costs and positively effect their bottom lines. I've been on every operating system since Windows 3.1 can tell you with certainty, Vista is an abomination. That's why MS is working so hard to get Windows 7 here, because they know that they failed.

[xcal78]

"I can assure you the masses do not switch to Vista because it is the second most horrible operating system Microsoft ever developed, second only to Millennium."

I don't know where you been working but with more years of experience then you the companies I've worked for never upgraded to any new OS within the first 1-2 years of its' release. ME was a home OS the version that was used by business was called W2K Pro. ME was release as a home version AFTER the W2K line was released. ME and Win98 were both pretty bad home OS's but I don't see how that applies to a business setting via work experience. What's your guess on the next business OS? Do companies start switching out XP for Vista over the next 1-2 years or do they wait 3-4 years for Win7?

[pentest]

That Ballmer quote just shows that the idiot needs to go. He is now saying that work machines should be set up like home PC's? What a mindboggling statement. I guess junior high arguments is all that is left.

The most amusing thing about Vista is how it has made XP respectable, when in fact XP is a substandard OS as well.

[SteveW928]

@ pentest - "The most amusing thing about Vista is how it has made XP respectable, when in fact XP is a substandard OS as well."

No doubt! For years and years, Windows users were just waiting for Vista to arrive, as they would then be somewhat comparable to OSX. Now they seem happy to just stay on XP. Though, I suppose this is at least part of what is driving all the switching to Macs.

[heygeo]

That Balmer quote just shows that he actually understands that people are no longer just working from their office... he's right, I do more work from home than in my office and I get frustrated that I have to deal multiple OSs. And as far as the crack that XP was substandard, you should remember your talking about a OS that was released at a time when Linux was still primitive (who here remembers dependencies and packages... anyone?) and Mac OS was only good for editing a picture?!
no question Vista has bloat but to call XP substandard just shows that you clearly havent been in the industry or if you have you have no regard for your internal consumers outside of engineering.

[SteveW928]

@ heygeo - " ... your talking about a OS that was released at a time when ... Mac OS was only good for editing a picture?!"

XP was released in 1984? What the heck are you talking about? When was Mac OS ever only good at editing a picture? It is comments like this that pretty much show the mentality of the average M$ user... which explains how they get away with making such crud sell.... the users aren't informed enough to think outside the M$ box.... captive audience.

[SteveW928]

"If you deploy a 4- or 5-year-old operating system today, most people will ask their boss why the heck they don't have the stuff they have at home,"

Like OSX?

"Ballmer went on to say that it's incumbent upon the business world to make employees happy and comfortable ..."

Hmm... maybe give them Macs then.

"Maybe Ballmer is right and he really does have his finger on the pulse of computer users across the world..."

Yeah right! This would be a first. It is clearly $$$... all M$ has ever cared about.

If you're faced with buying new hardware to support Vista, just save yourself a lot of headache and get a Mac. If you then, for some reason, decide you need some Windows app, you can run it there too, and on nicer to use hardware. However, I've not had a need to run Windows on mine for over a year now.

[Dalkorian]

I love Apple too, but in today's economy we should point out the other option. Linux. Runs on the hardware you have now, is more secure than what you have now and is more stable that what you have now (keeping in mind you have winblows now, of course). Plus it stays out of the way, allowing you to own and manage your system the way you want.

I haven't even got to the best part yet - it's free! Free as in freedom AND free as in beer!

The best thing a person can do for themselves is to escape from the shackles imposed upon them my their M$ masters.

[heygeo]

I own a Mac book Pro.. why do i have one.. to play with itunes, play with photos and play with imovie... notice I said play 3 times... I bootcamp into.. yeah you guessed it Windows, thats where I get work done without hassles to access AD shares, VPN with 2-factor authentication and virtualized apps and Citrix.
Macs are still toys, notice the coincidence that their market share started to grow when they went with a Wintel compatible proc ... i guarantee you if they would have stuck with Motorola they wouldnt be anywhere close to where they are now.. but make no mistake ... its a case of the right tool for the right job.. and Macs are just not there and may never get there... they have not enterprise footprint (LDAP is to generic). As far as linux is concerned the biggest reason why its still only has .085% market share is that when a fortune 500 runs into a desktop problem it will have to trust a community of unknown devs who can easily backdoor your environment.. so when that IP gets stolen who are they going to sue or go after for a bug? the linux community?! uhn..no..

[SteveW928]

@ heygeo - give it up M$ fanboy. Geez... it's one thing to say you prefer Windows for some reason... but to say you can't get real work done on a Mac... then you're just a fanboy idiot. I've been a Mac user for almost 20 years and have gotten TONS of REAL work done (and no, not just photo editing... I've worked most of that in IS/IT... though I've also done CAD, writing, grad-school, computer animation, etc.). If a company is set-up such that a Mac can't be just as effective as Windows, that is the result of an incompetent IT staff, not any fault of Mac OS. Get a life!

The reason Apple switched to Intel was both strategic (and you're right, it worked and is helping) as well as technical. Intel finally got the hint that it needed to head in a new direction with chip design, at which point Apple realized it was the right direction and was going to be the leading chip technology. That is why they switched. Notice, Apple didn't go Intel until the 'core' lines of processors. Before that, Intel chips were WERE inferior to Motorola... which is why Apple didn't use them.

You are correct that some IT departments avoid Linux due to the lack of the 'blame game' ability. These are usually the same incompetent ones noted above that need something to blame for their problems besides themselves. The reality is that while you can more easily BLAME M$ for your troubles than an open-source community... that doesn't really help you FIX those problems. M$ is far less competent in support than the open-source community. It's all politics... smart IT departments do have to be aware of that game... but aren't controlled by it.

[superswiss]

Everybody's mileage varies. As for me, my work laptop, a Dell Latitude D620 runs better with Vista than it ever did with XP with the exact same hardware and I did a dirty upgrade to Vista rather than a clean install. Imaging that. My Media Center PC at home, a new Dell XPS 420 with Vista Home Premium w/ Digital Cable Support has less kinks than my wife's Dell XPS Gen 4 running XP Service Pack 3. My Media Center PC together with my Windows Home Server runs my entire house entertainment and automation system, so it must be reliable. The system is rock solid.

I had most my issues with my workstation at work due to crappy Nvidia Quadro drivers. The latest driver seems to allow the machine now to successfully sleep and resume finally. Before, the driver crashed the machine about once a week when resuming. Seems like Nvidia is finally getting around to fixing the Quadro drivers after fixing the GeForce drivers for all this time.

Let's just make sure we blame the right party for the issues. Sure Microsoft could have and probably should have worked a lot harder with the hardware vendors to make sure their drivers actually work, especially such import drivers as the video card drivers.

[superswiss]

BTW, the only reason I haven't upgraded my wife's PC to Vista is because she has an exotic digitial mixer that I already had a hard time finding an XP driver for.

[Dalkorian]

Riiiiiight.

No worries. Go tell your masters that you have done their bidding and maybe they'll pay you like they promised.

[xcal78]

Wow an Apple Troll! Based on this awsome response I want to sell my PC for a MAC so I too can post as informative and classy as this Apple user. An anti-MS post is just as much of a slave thing as a MS post for MS by your own comparison. Go tell your masters you did their bidding by going in all the MS threads and bashing them.

[Fordry04]

yup, pretty much been my experience as well. Vista, while definately more sluggish, was far more stable on my old Athlonxp 2700 with 512mb of ram than xp sp 2. And on my new computer with a dual core and 2 GB of ram, vista is quick and is VERY stable, i run it for weeks without turning it off and have absolutely no trouble at all. And for the record, i run Ubuntu as well and have been using linux since red hat 6.

And for those busting on Vista at this point in its life, lets look back at Windows XP when it first came out. 2001, It was just a little less than a month after the AthlonXP line of cpu's had appeared and many people still had old athlons and P3's. The pentium 4 was still new and most computers had 32, 64, or 128MB of ram. Can anyone on here imagine running windows XP on 128MB of ram? I did not too long ago and it wasn't pretty, even with an athlonXP 1800. fast forward 2 years to 2003 and we are looking at the release of the Athlon64's and the northwood core pentium 4, both very good, very fast for their time. and most PCs were shipping with 256MB-1GB of ram, it wasn't until then that most computers being made really ran XP very well at all. And SP2 still was not released yet, which means XP was still little better than a pile of crap. Ahh how quickly everyone forgets how XP started. Vista is sooooo far ahead of XP in terms of its capabilities, stability, and security at the same stage of their development. Granted Vista was cooked for a number of years before it came out, but XP was just a prettied up version Win2K itself. Vista is definately not the second coming of WinME, its far better than that.

[abseeguiz]

I have a 4 year old desktop running XP and a one year old laptop running vista home edition. Which one do you think I enjoy more using? Of course my desktop.

My laptop takes about 5 minutes to start and all the RAM is used for background processes. I tried disabling the services that I do not use, but that would always give me problems.

I really hope Windows 7 has more to offer.

[BigGuns149]

Even the $400 machines that had Vista back in Jan 2007 didn't take 5 minutes to boot. Either you have a lemon, you installed a lot of other junk software, or you are making up BS. Considering that most non-business laptops have a lot MORE stuff installed that often dramatically slows bootup time I would be surprised if even half of that boottime is from merely booting Vista.

[Inconnux]

Actually I have worked on a couple of Vista laptops that DO take around 5 min. to boot up. When they first got them they booted fine, but in a couple months they were taking forever to boot. Under XP they were just fine (so its not a hardware problem). I recommended that they buy Macs when they go to replace these laptops.

[TX-Sunset]

Laptops inherently are slower anyway. You can take a desktop and a laptop with the exact same specs and the laptop will benchmark slower. It is due to the lower power requirements of laptop components. Lower power components do not perform at the same level that desktop components can.

[BigGuns149]

@ TX-Sunset: Laptops tend to be slower because generally speaking the components are slower NOT because the same spec components are slower because they are in a laptop. This is the mistake that a lot of people who don't know a lot about computers make. Merely because a desktop machine and a laptop have a CPU that is the same clock speed doesn't mean that they have the same specs. The desktop often has a dramatically faster bus speed, RAM speed, faster HDD, etc.

[ITcomposer]

WOW PENTEST How mature are you, buddy, attack one's credentials why don't ya?

And about features turned off ITS CALLED A GROUP POLICY!

PS: I have a soon to be 4 year old laptop and yes all the VISTA HOME PREMIUM features are on, hereare the specs

Pentium M @ 1.7GHZ
2GB PC5300 DDR RAM
ATI MOBILITY RADEON X300 64MB
40GB Drive
[CNET editors note: Prohibited content deleted.]

[ITcomposer]

And to the person who said about becoming a five year admin
I recently lost my job due to this wonderful economy, so im now doing freelancing, thanks for
your kind words

Techworkz

[Hunnter2k3]

You know, people would maybe take you more seriously if you weren't typing "you" as "u".

Just my 2 cents.

[bdaughtry]

@ Techworkz

My comments weren't meant to be mean spirited. Sorry about your job loss.

[tm_anon]

The only thing in your entire post that came even close to having any value was the specs to your machine.

[dumbspammers]

"Ballmer went on to say that it's incumbent upon the business world to make employees happy and comfortable and the best way to do that is to deploy Vista as soon as possible."
Stevie boy, are you out of your ever-loving mind?!? My users are happy and comfortable with XP. If I were to deploy Vista, the Help Desk phone would melt down with all the calls from users who (1) couldn't use our Corporate ERP program; (2) couldn't use our Corporate CRM application and (3) couldn't run anything without a UAC popup demanding that they sacrifice their first-born male child before they were allowed to read email.

Only a complete MORON would do that.

[ITcomposer]

DUMBSPAMMERS, i agree with ur comment, yet disagree in a way

Vista can be customized with the xp look if u so dersire, i was wondering since im getting flamed here by these guys, where is ur it department in the hardware upgrade cycle?

Techworkz

[TX-Sunset]

@Techworks

Why would companies go through all the hassle of upgrading to Vista just to dumb down the UI to look like XP again?

You would not gain any advantage yet still do all the work to upgrade the systems.

[jessiethe3rd]

If you virtualized your applications with Soft Grid you could cut down on support calls (SoftGrid is Microsoft app virtualization strategy - get rid of the need to patch.) Connecting with AD would also be a bit more friendly as Group Policy with Vista is 100's of times better than XP. UAC is a fantastic standard given that your users probably have no group policy today and are free to run around installing everything and changing system settings... if anything SoftGrid and Vista could save your organization money by reducing support calls not increasing support calls. There's the initial training that comes with a new OS, however, things would be a lot better for the organization's environment.

[ivorycruncher]

The idea that people give a rip about their home and work PCs matching each other is laughable, at best. There's just no way that's going to happen. Windows 7 is a great step forward, and I do believe it is going to be an XP killer, one way or another. Primary support for XP is ending very soon, and when Windows 7 comes out, you won't be able to order a computer with XP in any form, not even a netbook. Also, older computers running Windows XP are aging fast, and many of them will have to be replaced to keep up with newer software, hardware, etc., and as previously mentioned, Windows 7 will be on all new OEM hardware. But not only that, there's a ton of new features in Win7 that quite honestly put XP to shame, both in terms of security, but also end-user functionality. It was the end-user features that were majorly lacking in Vista.

But aside from all that, I have only had one request from a user to be upgraded to Vista, and that was a user was a computer geek. Once in a while people talk about their home computers in regards to remoting into work and such, but never have I heard a complaint that they are missing stuff that they have at home. Business use and home use are simply two different things. If we find people stuffing their work computers full or music and pictures and stuff, they get chewed out, because the computers do not belong to them and are intended for work use only. Although there are a lot of great new features in Windows 7 that benefit IT departments, most of the new stuff won't be of any real significant use to people who just run their daily business apps. What really increases productivity in the workplace is better application software, not a new OS.

I believe Windows 7 will be a good step forward, and I say IT departments should start planning their migrations as soon as possible. However, I do NOT believe the ridiculous notion that failing to do so will cause employee backlash. That simply is not going to happen. Even if somebody does complain, they're just going to get told to deal with it and get back to work. Employees generally do not dictate what kind of IT equipment is at their disposal. IT departments and management do.

[jessiethe3rd]

Common interface = more productive users. It's just not about blinding the line between work and home (which it is partially...) it's about making users more product at work by using the same OS at home. That's the point he's trying to make. Take for instance a WAH or work at home license - users can take a copy of Office home and use it on their home computer for all their needs and this cuts down the time needed to train people on an application because they are using it at home as well.

In the grand scheme of productivity many people believe that when it comes to support most users get upset because of the fact that they are faced with a new OS and they are not quite up to speed on how it's used. If it's being utilized at home prior then the challenges migrating become less of an issue.

Microsoft is a company and they want to put out a good product. Vista has not been the greatest especially for older hardware but Windows 7 certainly is proving to be worlds better at adapting to that old hardware and giving companies the unique opportunity to REALLY standardize on a common secure platform.

[aka_tripleB]

There's a problem with waiting "one more year" for Windows 7. When it comes out, everyone's going to say, "wait until all the bugs are worked out." By then the next version of Windows will be a year or two away and you'll say, "I'll just wait for that one." It's an endless loop of procrastination that Luddites are hopeless to repeat. Why don't you say what's really going on here...you have metathesiophobia. You fear change.

[Maccess]

That's exactly what's happening with XP and Vista. Users don't see much benefit in migrating to Vista if they're already using XP. Heck I still have Win 98 running on some general purpose machines on the firewall protected internal network. It's an operating system, how much change do you need as long as the programs and system you need run reliably? The opposite of metathesphobia is "change for change's sake," as opposed to change for tangible improvements.

[pcsstoreowner]

I'm not sure what world you people are living in but i fix computers for a wide range of customers some of which are mid-size companies and most of them are still running 8 to 12 year old hardware and OS's range from 98 to XP. out of the 400 to 900 systems i work on each year for the past 3 years only 5% are even vista capable. 10% windows 98/ME 30% are still using windows 2000, 40% is XP, 15% is either Linux or UNIX, 2% vista, 3% mac. as far as what people are going to do, well about half are ready to upgrade within the next year and with that most will be going to windows 7.

i saw someone say something about INTERNET EXPLORER???? does anyone actually use that? i don't know anyone that has used it for over 3 years now. so theirs my 2 cents

Private Computer Service & Salvage.
16 years in the Business.
RJR.

[superswiss]

While the overall IE marketshare has been shrinking, it is still the most used browser and therefore most developers target IE first when developing applications. Do your homework before making stupid comments. Firefox is only at 25% and the other browsers are not worth developing for with their marginal marketshare at the moment. As a Software Development Director I can tell you that I'm looking for the biggest bang for the buck and in my industry 90%+ of users are still using IE and that's not gonna change any time soon.

[sanenazok]

@pcstoreowner: If someone's running Win98 or ME today then they have a screw loose. I think the DOS-based OS's belong in grammar schools and "community organizer" PC labs. If someone's business can't afford a new or even used computer after 8 or 12 years then they have a serious, serious problem. Tell them to get a used HP desktop. On fleaBay or Craiglist these go for $100. Now you can buy a dual core desktop if you're a little careful for around $120 shipped. Do them a service and tell them to upgrade every six years at the most.

[Dalkorian]

by superswiss February 9, 2009 1:43 PM PST
While the overall IE marketshare has been shrinking, it is still the most used browser and therefore most developers target IE first when developing applications.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

LOL. You spelled "M$ web monkeys" wrong.

Real developers use standards that are compatible with virtually every other browser on the planet and curse internet exploder for the different code branches it forces upon them (assuming they feel like supporting an atrocious hack like IE to begin with).

(Editors' note: Offensive comment removed.)

[rapier1]

Umm no. Real developers do not build applications around standards. They build applications around users. If using a standard gets them there then that's great but the end goal is a product that meets user needs. If you have to 'loosely' interpret standards to get there then that is what you do.

[gggg sssss]

real developers devlop for Windows and IE. Everything else is flaky, unsupported, here today-gonetomorrow crap. Try running activeX in FF, VBscript in Safari.

[heygeo]

do a quick search in google for "browser market share"... IE owns roughly 70% of the market .. as in use.

[ice82]

While the Windows 7 has been better than my Vista Home Premium, I went back to XP on my laptop and I feel better that it'll run anything I throw at it without much fuss. I'm going to hold off my next desktop purchase until Windows 7 comes out.

[nerdinanutshell]

As an IT professional, our users' complaints are the exact opposite of Ballmer's predictions. I have never heard any of our users ask "When are we switching to Vista?" However, I have had a few complain that they bought a new machine, and Vista was the only option they were given, and then lament that they wish they had XP on their home machines like they do at work. For them, the killer is this: Despite hotfixes on our Exchange 2003 Server and SP1 on their home machines, our users still experience problems with OWA crashing IE7 on Vista. Microsoft has been coming up with all sorts of reasons users should switch to Vista, usually based on false or nonexistant data, and it's getting a little tired.

[Dalkorian]

In their defense, when you spend that much money making that much of an atrocity, you can't market it as a blunder. You *HAVE TO* defend it - constantly. Or until you can release the patch for it AND sucker your customers into paying for the patch by giving it a new name.

[dudemanguysondog]

Why not switch the machines to linux/bsd/solaris? People keep complaining about the amount of time it takes to set up, but my ubuntu setup can do everything XP could in less time. An Windows install usually takes about an hour or more, Ubuntu was running in 30 min, and then after 20 min it was playing dvds and mp3s. On this same machine XP would still be installing, without dvd support, wifi, etc. I see no point in ever going back to windows, and after much playing with display macs at Best Buy I can tell they are not for me. Besides these 3 options are for free and have a live cd option for most of them (like test driving a car), what do you have to lose?

[mgc0cnet]

I agree with you - not to mention it could do what XP can do with less resources like RAM or CPU.

[superswiss]

There you go again. When do people like you realize that it's not the OS that matters, but the applications. As much as you guys tout the free Microsoft Office alternatives, fact is people are still willing to pay the premium to own a copy of MS Office rather than using the free alternatives. If you people are not swarming to your free alternative as opposed to buying expensive MS Office licenses, your product is inferior. As simple as that. Until you can buy a copy of MS Office that runs on Ubuntu or until the Office market shifts, which is not gonna happen, Windows rules. You guys are like crying babies who don't get what they want instead of facing reality.

[gggg sssss]

Hard to run MS access applications, or Outlook forms, or Excel macros in anything ending in ix. Why woudl you even bother? Office workers arnt supposed to be surfing p*rn anyway.

[heygeo]

because unlike installing ubuntu on my laptop to pirate SW anonymously at the dorm, companies need to have accountable service/product providers which provide real SLA and privacy guarantees that things will be fixxed and not trust blindly in an open source community which cant guarantee that special extras arent included in those zero day patches until the realy backdoor fix comes in.. its a trust issue.. kinda all goes back to the fact that corporate america is trying to make money where as Linux isnt.

[d2globalinc]

HA! You guys must only be trained in and use Windows! Come outside your little Windows box and let me give you blind IT guys a lesson about where the trends are taking us and what you should be learning in order to have a place in the IT infrastructure of the future. As for the guy who says its hard to run Access, Outlook, Excel, etc with anything ending in ix? Not true, I'm running office 2003, Adobe CS4, etc all on my Ubuntu Hardy 8.04 machine. Thanks to multiple core cpu's, cheap memory, etc - on a cheap workstation you can run XP virtually more securely and efficiently on top of ubuntu seamlessly using Vmware Workstation.. Even better, forget running anything on the workstation itself and host the applications centrally using servers in a datcenter instead of installed locally on each machine. I thank MS for releasing vista, office 2007, and soon Win7 everyday - because of their bloated software (in both price and resources used) we have clients contacting us daily looking for alternatives and ways free themselves out of the pricey MS circle. We give them new options, and free them to work anywhere using Ubuntu Workstations, openoffice for most employees, and a few office and xp licenses for those old timers who aren't ready to give up excel. We also get rid of exchange, and switch them to Zimbra and they love it! By myself today I installed 10 new notebooks from scratch with all software pre-installed, drivers, custom theme with the clients logo's and apps, etc in 30minutes, and will be installing and converting over another 50+ workstation network later this week. Everything is going to hosted apps or web apps. We only need to buy a limited number of Microsoft licenses until we switch them over to another open source alternative when the time comes. If you think we don't get support, what a joke! I'd take the ubuntu community over the Microsoft knowledge-base any-day! We can maintain and install ubuntu workstations in a fraction of the time it takes to do a windows network, and with less overhead and people doing it. Since no data is stored on the workstations, if clients have a hard drive failure they can boot with an emergency liveDVD and still have all the same apps and data available to them. Oh and did I mention our clients can do this securely from anywhere they have an internet connection? Hows that for cost savings. Downsize your office space because most of your workforce can work from home, and you can even monitor them with real-time webcams, voip phones, and desktop monitoring. Eliminate your anti-virus licenses, eliminate your server hardware - because we consolidate servers into a virtual infrastructure in our datacenter, with full redundancy and a central place to manage all applications to keep things uniform. Businesses can get rid of lame IT guys that don't know anything but how to maintain a windows network. You don't need them anymore to constantly be removing spyware, adware, answering support calls and troubleshooting windows issues on every-ones workstations. Adding and Installing software on a new workstation is as easy as inserting a DVD and waiting 10minutes. When done, ubuntu is already customized w/ all your applications, customized theme for the business, and software ready to go - thanks to our custom build liveDVD distributions. The future is already here and its sad that most of you IT guys who hang out on CNET, only DO windows, and think Ubuntu is just for play and hobbyist are not seeing the big picture or the way things are heading.. Do yourself a favor and google (not MSN live search) virtualization, hosted applications, zimbra, virtual desktop, "The Cloud", etc. Then go take a dip into the ubuntu forums and watch how people are helping others more efficiently than Microsoft or your software vendor's support has ever done. For businesses - we are taking workstation issues out of the picture. By consolidating and centrally managing everything, I hate to say it, we are eliminating a lot of your jobs.. And in this economy and the state of Microsoft software, its an easy decision when the solution is put together correctly.

[Sausagebiscuit]

d2globalinc casts wall of text.
Wall of Text Attacks!
Wall of Text critically strikes you for 2,053,352,235 damage.
You have died. Respawn at nearest graveyard? (Y/N)

[neowolfwitch]

Personally I hate all things Microsoft, BUT- I definitely agree that sticking with XP is the right thing to do. Frankly- it was Vista that pissed me off enough at Microsoft's products to look elsewhere. We tried rolling it out at my company on new computers- and it was universally hated. My staff was asking- how come this brand new computer is slower than my 3-year old one and you can't get my printer to work?!?! Why does it take me five mouse clicks to do what used to take two, and where do I find ____?

After fighting Vista for close to a month, we "downgraded" the new computers to XP and set a corporate policy that we absolutely would not support it, and would wait for the next version of Windows to come out before considering a switch.

We are actually migrating many of our workers to Macs now instead, and so far I haven't seen anything compelling in Windows 7 that makes me want to switch to it. We have a handful of employees using Vista at home, but they don't seem to be having problems switching to XP at work. Frankly it pisses me off that Balmer feels corporations should provide employees with the same operating system they use at home. That's ridiculous. Yes- and we should allow them to watch streaming movies and surf porn too then!

As I already said- Balmer is sort-of getting his wish as far as my company is concerned. Many of our employees have Macs at home- and we are getting them Macs at work. I for one use Linux at home, and do so at work, and on almost all of my servers as-well. :)

[BigGuns149]

Frankly, in a lot of respects Microsoft has really gone downhill since Windows 2000. Windows XP despite all the love that it started receiving after Vista came out wasn't much of an improvement upon Windows 2000. Due to the dramatic similarities between the two it was usually trivial to use Win2K drivers with XP. While Microsoft touted better support for Win9X software that would allow a lot of Windows 98/Me users to jump to the NT kernel there was still quite a bit of software that didn't run properly under XP. There were still quite a few Windows 98 holdouts well into 2004-05.

Quite honestly, Ballmer I think was merely referring to the basic UI, not that people should really be using the exact same OS. Microsoft wants corporate users to be using either Vista Business or Vista Enterprise, which a lot of networking preferences that the home versions do not.

[jrichview]

i don't know anyone (except people like Ballmer with a vested financial interest) who recommends moving to Vista. I use it at work because I have to, but I much prefer XP. I think Microsoft management is being hardheaded and foolhardy (in a similar fashion to the Bush administration by the way) to insist on their original path rather than being flexible and milking the XP cash cow they COULD have. Happy customers should = max profits... over the long term at least. The board of directors at MS ought to be raising serious he|| to get this strategy changed.

[Trerro]

What it really comes down are 4 simple factors.
1. XP works fine, and there's no software you could possibly need that won't run on XP.
2. Vista introduces extra annoyances, many compatibility problems, and requires more resources to run. (Saying you can turn the extra resource using stuff off means saying you should turn all the advantages of Vista off... and it does NOT justify the absurd memory requirements of these features.)
3. Vista is FAR more expensive than XP.
4. Vista does have some advantages over XP... but not many.
So... take a look at what you gain in #4. Is it worth dealing with #2? Most people say no.
If you decide it IS worth it, is it still worth it when you see the pricetag? Most people say no who didn't already.

In reality, Vista may not be as bad as many say it is (and really, it isn't), but that isn't the standard to buy it on. The big question is whether it's worth dropping XP for it, and the overwhelming majority of people at all levels of computer skill have agreed - it isn't. Vista's sales figures are a reflection of that simple fact, and no amount of marketing spin by MS is going to change that. If they want to see real sales on Windows 7, they're going to have to clean up the mess they made of Vista, offer a few compelling reasons to upgrade like they did with 98 and XP... oh, and losing the 7-tier sales model designed to milk more money out of an already hesitant customer base probably wouldn't hurt either.

ITComposer -
Sure, IE is more secure in Vista than XP. Firefox, however, is more secure than IE regardless of what OS you run it on, and has a convenient price tag of 0. If you're worried about browser security, there's your answer. (Opera and Chrome of course, are also options, though I'd recommend FF as its larger userbase means both faster patches and more addons.)
Yes, you can shut off the few good things that make Vista different from XP... but then you have XP with extra annoyances, and you're paying twice as much for it - so you're paying for pretty much literally nothing.
A+ certification is a joke - pretty much anyone can get that, and it proves you know only the very, very, basics of computer maintenance and repair, if that.
It sounds to me like you're one of those people who makes a lot of money "upgrading" companies to Vista, and so it's in your best interest to convince them to use it.

[BigGuns149]

As for the XP works fine I would note that until a few years ago one could easily use the same argument for Windows 2000. Until recently I still saw quite a few Windows 2000 machines that people just didn't see the need to upgrade. While many people may have forgotten it took Microsoft a few years for XP to catch on either. Anecdotally I knew quite a few large organizations that didn't even start transition plans to XP until after SP2(ie. 3 whole years after XP was launched). Particularly with MS Office and increasingly with Windows Microsoft's biggest competitor hasn't been another company, but rather older versions of their own products. For a lot of people the benefits of the newer versions aren't compelling enough.

I think that people's natural resistence to upgrade is a big factor particularly in this economy, which is considerably worse that 2002-2005 when XP picked up most of its' market share. I don't think that the cost of Vista was a big factor though. The OEM versions of Vista aren't that much more expensive than the XP OEM licenses. I think the problem is that given the minute benefits a lot of business users have a hard time justifying the cost even if the licenses were half the cost. For a lot of businesses their software has enough 9s of uptime and there is no dramatic improvement in the UI.

[dudemanguysondog]

Why not switch the machines to linux/bsd/solaris? People keep complaining about the amount of time it takes to set up, but my ubuntu setup can do everything XP could in less time. An Windows install usually takes about an hour or more, Ubuntu was running in 30 min, and then after 20 min it was playing dvds and mp3s. On this same machine XP would still be installing, without dvd support, wifi, etc. I see no point in ever going back to windows, and after much playing with display macs at Best Buy I can tell they are not for me. Besides these 3 options are for free and have a live cd option for most of them (like test driving a car), what do you have to lose?

[dudemanguysondog]

sorry about the double post

[Seaspray0]

Why? Because it's not just the client that counts in a company. As it stands now, I can push software to any group of computers in the domain using policy with windows. I can make global policy changes that will propagate to all the computers on the domain. That doesn't work with linux. I'd have to visit each and every workstation to make software and policy changes. If you just sit at your desk and use the computer, you don't see these reasons. If you have to manage the domain, you do.

[rapier1]

Well, that's not entirely true about linux. There are ways to standardize environments and applications from a central controller using tools like depot and so forth. Its not the easiest thing in the world to use and I don't feel it provides the same level of fine grained control though. It also doesn't necessarily restrict a user from installing applications - its relatively easy to circumvent in that regard.

[d2globalinc]

Not true - using multiple open-source applications we have developed a custom solution based on Ubuntu that does just that. I can push out any update, any software as a hosted or virtually installed app, montior any workstation, and prevent any user from doing anything I don't want them to be able to do form my own workstation. Oh and guess what - those workstations can be anywhere in the world as long as they have an internet connection. They can also move from one workstation and login another and their running applications follow them, as well as their settings, documents, etc - and no user documents are stored on a workstation, everything is securely stored in the datacenter and redundant. Workstations are locked-down, and if they are compromised and change from the template, they are automatically locked out of the system and we are notified. Users, groups, policys, are all centrally managed from a secure web interface.

[Hunnter2k3]

Completely agree.
Vista was and still is a mess, it shouldn't have even been considered, biggest waste of money Microsoft has spent.
And you wonder why Bill left? THIS, this is the real reason, he was the guy on top, he could see how bad everything really was, the whole "Vista capable" thing proved that.
I actually felt bad for him. His empire just lost its thumbs. Now that grip is slowly getting worse with each passing month.

XP was perfectly fine.
The only thing they needed to change was:
The start menu, make it easier to navigate.
Improve on Transparency. (which was already pretty decent on XP)
Oh, and completely scrap IE, unless they decide to actually update it to any decent standards (which IE8, so far, appears to be dodging like the plague)
Shame that people still actually use that thing. Hopefully other browsers eat more market share from that horrible mess of a browser.
Oh, and UAC, what a laugh that thing is. Not only was it ripped open by at least 2 virii, it is a horrible security measure to bombard people with messages anytime they try and do something simple.
Then they have the cheek to say that every other OS vendor needs to adopt it, that really made me laugh.
Oh wow.

Sadly, it appears that they are going with the same horrible GUI from Vista in Windows 7.
The worst GUI of all GUIs ever, i'd seriously rather use CLI over Vistas GUI.
The idea was there, but they screwed it up so badly.
And speaking of Win7, Starter Edition - most pointless thing ever.
Users only use 2 programs on average? 3 is enough for anyone? Oh my, where have i heard "enough for anyone" before?
Oh but lets say i wanted to use sandboxie to run a browser in, instantly i can't do that anymore because sandboxie runs 3 processes, 2 that handles the program you are sandboxing, 3rd being the Sandboxie process.
4 programs already. There are countless other examples (not to mention Chrome)
They just done this to try eat more money out of people, especially the netbook market.

[DrtyDogg]

FYI Windows XP Starter edition was also limited to 3 apps at a time.

[BigGuns149]

Bill Gates left because I seriously think after ~30 years of working for Microsoft and more money than he could have imagined 30 years ago he probably doesn't feel like working at Microsoft anymore. He doesn't need the money for sure and he looks like he is having more fun in his current role as a philantropist. Even a lot of non-Billionaires start to get tired of working for the same organization after 30 years.

I would differ on the notion that IE8 isn't improving standards. It still has some work, but it does add support for more web standards. The problem isn't the lack of a decent standards mode, but most web pages aren't written to W3C standards therefore Mozilla, Webkit, and Opera have all created a form of quirks mode rendering, which is capable of rendering pages that play fast and loose with the standards. Mozilla long ago designed their rendering engine to know when to use standards mode and when to use quirks mode and it not only accurately knows which to use, but the quirks mode renders things pretty much how the webmaster intended. IE8 doesn't seem to be able to infer which mode to use.

I have to differ on UAC as well. It is a great idea that simply had poor implementation. Any real geek would realize that Microsoft was the LAST major OS to add some type of user authentication for the elevation of privileges. We aren't running Windows 98 anymore folks. There is a reason that you aren't supposed to let any application have admin rights. You lost a lot of credibility the moment you wrote such a simplistic view on UAC.

If you don't know what you are talking about PLEASE do everyone a favor and not waste space posting such stupid rants.

[israeljamesbond]

Vista a mess? How? It is completely stable on my alienware computer. I rarely get any crashes, and the performance is very good. I cant imagine going back to XP.

When you put XP next to Mac OS X, it looks like crap. It looks like an antique OS versus a very modern and visual one. When you put Windows Vista next to OS X, both systems look modern and futuristic. If you like the way XP looks, then you might as well be using the "Windows Classic" Theme. They had to improve the looks of the OS completely, and they have pushed further with Windows 7. You can make Vista look any color you want, and make it transparent or a solid color, but I guess you didnt know that. You could alsmo make it look like "Windows Classic".

All I see are random messages from people who probably havent even tried Vista for AT LEAST a month. If you did, youd miss so many things on XP that you wouldn't be able to go back to XP after trying Vista.

And umm.. Starter Editions are for poor 3rd world countries, especially to tech at schools. I dont think students will be multitasking much.