Microsoft will extend life of Windows XP--again
MIAMI--As I predicted last week, Microsoft has decided to extend the life of Windows XP, although only for a limited class of machines.
Microsoft said on Thursday that it will continue to allow Windows XP Home edition to be sold for a class of computers it calls "ultra-low-cost PCs." It's a category that covers machines with slower processors, smaller screens, and in many cases flash memory for storage, rather than a traditional hard drive.
Microsoft will give PC makers the option of using Windows XP or Vista on ULCPC devices, said Michael Dix, general manager of Windows client marketing.
Still, the minimal hardware used in ULCPC systems might make Vista ill-suited to such a task. The decision to discontinue Windows XP might have driven even more device makers into the hands of Linux, hence the extension.
The Asus Eee PC.
(Credit: Asus)Overall, big-name computer makers are still scheduled to have to stop selling Windows XP for all other uses by the end of June. Mainstream technical support will continue to be available for Windows XP through April 2009, and more limited support will continue through April 2014.
Dix said that Microsoft is confident that it can discontinue Windows XP at the end of June for mainstream PCs. "We have received affirming feedback from partners that they are ready to make the transition," he said.
Computer makers will be able to sell XP Home on new ULCPC machines through June 30, 2010, or one year after the launch of Windows 7, the next major release of Windows, whichever is later, Microsoft said.
A Microsoft representative on Thursday reaffirmed that the company expects to ship the successor to Vista roughly three years from Vista's January 2007 debut.Microsoft is also publishing a set of guidelines Thursday designed to make it easier for makers of flash-based computers to use Windows. Many of these initial devices have launched running Linux, though some, such as the Eee PC from Asus, are also being offered in Windows versions.
Microsoft has already extended the Windows XP sales deadline once. In September, it said that computer makers would be able to sell Windows XP until June, rather than the original January 2008 deadline.
At the time, Microsoft also announced that computer makers in emerging markets could sell Windows XP Starter edition until June 2010.
For Microsoft, Wednesday's announcement is an acknowledgment of two things. First, that Starter Edition alone does not fulfill all of the emerging market demand, and second, that developed markets are also showing interest in low-power, low-cost laptops.
News.com's Mike Ricciuti contributed to this report.
During her years at CNET News, Ina Fried has changed beats several times, changed genders once, and covered both of the Pirates of Silicon Valley. These days, most of her attention is focused on Microsoft. E-mail Ina. 
I have developed software for over 11 years on multiple platforms both open source and proprietary. I have used windows since 3.11 up to Vista, Mac OS 7 to 10, and linux in multiple flavors for about four years.
I have decided my next computer will be a Mac or a Hakintosh both dual booting with Ubuntu and using Wine in Linux and on OS X.
Surprisingly I am not the only one choosing this path.
I tried Ubuntu but due to a couple of pieces of hardware in my machine it was a painful and horrid experience.
My machine runs faster under Vista than under Ubuntu due to this. Add in the fact that I can run games and use the programs I wish without having to scour the net to find the one program that works the way I want with the distro of Linux or even the version of Ubuntu that I am using and I can see why people will stick with an OS from a major manufacturer.
Don't get me wrong I love the idea of free software I just find in practise it doesn't work great.
Not surprisingly, numbers show I am among more than 90% of people choosing this path, whereas you are among less than 10% of people choosing that path.
So yet another reason to frequent your local PC builder / brick & mortar shop.
The June deadline only applies to big volume OEMs.
It is also what half the population who HATE Vista will do also.
Redmond is going to lose a lot of sales to "hacked" versions of XP with this decision.
Oh well, what else can be done.
Long story short, although the laptop was bundled with Vista, we had him install XP instead.
Why should we have to upgrade RAM on a machine that is sold with Vista?
More power to you.
Kind Regards......
As Gates himself said it best "resistance is futile".
Awesome, however with XP or Linux I can install everything plus the kitchen sink and still have better performance than Vista.
Windows 7 I only get one or the other? What was the marketing strategy again?
So I have a friend teaching me how to use Linux so I can be Microsoft OS free since they can't seem to make an OS that doesnt run like rubbish.
Thanks Microsoft for pushing me to learn new things - like how to live without you. Good job.
Only the word Ubuntu and the sense of what it means..will make you happy and part of a community
I'm not young and so its hard a bit but every time
I got things right I learned something new.I'm so sorry for you that Micro$oft got your money for the OS.If you knew before only the (Toshiba)was good and saved some money as well. Adrienne a computer is a machine just like an Air Conditioner ...ones you open Windows it stop working!
best regards to you Ciao Claudio T.
ps:Sorry for my poor
English I hope you
got what I mean.
The truth is that MS will just keep plodding along and Vista will eventually get all it's bugs fixed. Market share for these alternatives will stay about the same. That's abouit it folks. I have Vista on the computer I'm typing this on right now. The computer isn't new it's 4 years old. I upgraded just like any thinking person would do before a major OS change. It runs just fine on my computer and better than XP SP1 did when it was new. The thing about Vista is MS took so long to bring it to market users had collected all this old software that still ran on XP. If they had brought something out sooner the overall change wouldn't have been that big a deal.
Techies keep making up excuses for Microsoft and the PC vendors, such as "You can always remove X and Y to make it faster" or "Reformat and install clean." No, with the millions of PC buyers out there, a large majority of them will not make the effort to optimize (or even realize the need to do so.) And they really shouldn't. In commerce, it does not make sense for a consumer to purchase a finished good, and then be required to modify it to maximize performance.
Updating drivers, viruses, and Microsoft Windows will be a thing from the past.
Sure it will take time for MS Windows to wind down. But winding down it will.
Issues to consider:
- Need: PCs will still require no network connectivity. This is especially needed for classified systems and other systems where access to an outside resource is not a requirement.
- Performance: I still believe that metal alloys is faster than air. Accessing applications - either by server-end processing or downloaded - will never match the performance of an application that runs in local memory and off a local fixed drive. A person running something as intensive as Photoshop or AutoCAD needs as much speed as one can afford.
- Security: Even in 2010, protocols can still be reverse-engineered. Applications can be tampered with in the streaming process. And then you have to address issues with the various legislations like HIPAA and such.
If I had to choose, I would choose a virtualized technology like SoftGrid over web applications.
I run xp on a fast system and it "work"
A buddy run Vista three tmes faster than mine it "sick". All Microsoft is more ,more and more money I am not going to update again.
Mac system is the way to go or Linex?
Thank you
doesn't cost a fortune. It can read/write office file formats. I find
it easy to use, and produces nice results. It's not as heavy weight
as Microsoft Office for Mac, but I think for a large number of
users it provides more than enough.
I have both it and Microsoft Office 2008 on my Mac, and iWork is
my "weapon of choice". OpenOffice.org is fine, but doesn't feel
quite right on the Mac (it eschews a lot of Mac conventions).
GoogleDocs just doesn't cut it for me.
I think a lot of people underestimate just how cool iWork'08 is.
True enough for Media Center Edition --- the only catch is most of the components for that functionality is available from third party suppliers.
XP Professional? There is no phase out. There is a price increase as anyone who licenses Vista Business have the right to upgrade to XP Professional.
So as long as Microsoft gets their notch in the boot for Vista Business, they don't care if you actually use XP Professional.
As with XP Home, XP Professional can be upgraded to include Media Center functionality with third party apps.
Face it, Microsoft Vista is toast.
I personally have no major beef with XP but as of yet only have it on a single laptop. My gripe was having to get a new printer to use just with my laptop and upgrading Adobe Acrobat to ver8. I had planned to just transfer it from the old desktop I was retiring.
By the way XP home will no longer permit joining domains so it can not be used for business even low end workstations. It used to work at first but not any longer. The window to let you set up a domain to use with a server no longer appears. The same for Vista Home Premium.
power. Ram at least 3 gigs and a Quad core.
I am going to buy me a new Macbook pro, I plan on using boot
camp and I want XP Pro.
How soon until Microsoft starts phasing out boxed XP?
Thanks
If you want to get XP you need to hurry and get the OEM version. The last time I saw it, it was $109.00 and I ask about it and was told get it now, it would be $129.00 in a few weeks.
I think he said he would have to stop selling it the end of May or maybe it was the end of June.
back. Thank you, Microsoft. The five years you spent developing
Vista has clearly been wasted. What were you thinking? What are
you thinking? Wow? Not even close! Your inability to deliver a
finished, polished and functional successor to Windows XP has
converted me to Mac user for good.
I've been using Windows since 3.1, and have always hated having to write programs for it. I always thought that bloated pig was wasting my time when DOS and Deskview would have been a better path for technology to follow.
Every engineer at my office, myself included are moving to Ubuntu. Bye bye "meglo" Bill!
Home users simply don't need the latest and greatest. Often if you don't update things like Word Processing Software and you aren't a gamer, an old PC is good until compatible hardware components can no longer be found when they wear out.
Every time Windows stops support for a version of its operating system, Linux becomes more and more attractive to switch to if a switch is needed. With Linux some capable user can always write a new software driver for old or new hardware.
Things have changed quite a bit over just the last 3 years in the Linux world.
High-quality distros, built from the Red Hat Enterprise Linux sources (like Scientific Linux and CentOS), are truly capable platforms, as are others (such as SuSE EL).
Now I have a graphics desktop splayed across three LCDs, and wireless laptops that auto-connect across access points, not to mention rock-solid super computers.
Quite amazing, modern Linux is.
But I still have XPP. It came free with some of these machines.
I don?t mind it.
What I do mind is having the rug ripped out from under me every 5 or 10 years.
That simply doesn?t happen on my open source platforms.
Ive thus come to regard Microsoft as something akin to a distant cousin that appears
every once in awhile, with the fake ?hi friend! how are ya?? jovial behavior, when you know its only a matter of a few moments before the pest hits you up for cash that you will never see again.
- Down Windows - Up Linux
- by BitBoi33 April 3, 2008 8:21 PM PDT
- What's so pathetic is Microsponge is loosing market share and they know it but they keep on trying to dupe people into buying defective software!?!
- Reply to this comment
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- re: Down Windows - Up Linux
- by BitBoi33 April 3, 2008 8:28 PM PDT
- (what's also pathetic is that I can't type)
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- Who cares...certainly not the 90+% of PC users
- by developIT April 3, 2008 9:45 PM PDT
- What is so pathetic is how Linsucks zealots keep metioning market share. Since when is less that 5% market share significant?
- View reply
Processing -
- Down Unix, Up Linux?
- by albizzia April 5, 2008 11:11 PM PDT
- Actually, Microsoft hasn't lost market share.
- View reply
Processing -
Showing 1 of 2 pages (110 Comments)Strictly speaking, I still have a legal copy of XP legally installed on one particular machine but that dual-boots beautifully...with Linux as the dominant OS...and I never any files and I have full access to them. My other computers ALL RUN LINUX!!!
Cheers.
Of course, the 2nd paragraph SHOULD have read:
"...and I never lost any files and I have full access to them."
(meaning Linux allowed me to switch with no compromise to using/creating/editing documents, spreadsheets, graphics, music, videos)
Sorry about the omitted word.
Most of the gains for Linux has been at the expense of Unix, which is slowly collapsing under the freeware onslaugt. Linux was designed to appeal to Unix geeks, but it really doesn't appeal to the non-tech computer users, who continue using Windows and/or Mac.