Windows XP era draws to a close

After a long-announced transition, June 30 marks the end of an era at Microsoft. Well, really it's the end of two eras.

Most people think of Bill Gates, of course, and I'll have plenty more to say about his impending shift to part-time work in the coming days. But another epoch is also really coming to an end--that of Windows XP.

Windows XP: Get it while you can.

(Credit: Microsoft)

As of June 30, large PC makers will no longer be able to sell Windows XP-based PCs, at least on mainstream notebooks and desktops. Retailers will also have only until their current supply is exhausted to sell boxed copies of the operating system.

Despite a brief "Save XP" movement (and continued criticism of Windows Vista from many corners), it appears that Microsoft is not going to change the deadline, which is now just two weeks away.

Although XP will disappear as an option for most computer buyers, the operating system will live on in several key ways.

• XP will be available on PCs from smaller computer makers known as "system builders" until January 31, 2009.

• XP will be available for so-called ultra-low-cost-PCs until June 30, 2010.

• The low-end Windows XP Starter Edition will continue to be available in emerging markets until June 30, 2010.

• Windows Vista Ultimate and Windows Vista Business come with downgrade rights. Some computer makers are using this option to offer machines that appear as Windows XP products but are "factory downgraded" to XP. The downside is that only pricier versions of Vista qualify, but the benefit is that the machines come with the option to eventually move to Vista for no added fee. Microsoft says it will continue to make XP discs available to computer makers to enable downgrade rights through at least January 31, 2009.

• Microsoft is not ending support for Windows XP. Mainstream support continues until 2009, while extended support is not due to end until April 2014.

The "wow" didn't happen as fast as Microsoft expected when Vista made its splashy debut in January 2007. On stage, from left to right: Dell's Kevin Rollins, Intel's Sean Maloney, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, AMD's Hector Ruiz, and HP's Todd Bradley. For more photos from the launch event, click on the image.

(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET News.com)

For those who want to get their PC the old-fashioned (and soon to be obsolete) way, you only have a few days left. Here is what some of the big name players had to say about their plans.

Hewlett-Packard: "All of HP's latest consumer and business computing products currently ship with Windows Vista. But we do still offer XP on a select number of our existing consumer notebook, gaming, and business products. This will continue through the XP end-of-life date on June 30, 2008.

"HP has been offering business desktops, notebooks, and workstations with the option to downgrade to Windows XP Pro from Vista since August 2007, and will continue to offer this option on its business systems through at least July 30, 2009. These systems are pre-installed with XP Pro, and the customer receives the Vista license so that they can upgrade to the new OS when they are ready, as well as restore discs for both operating systems. After June 30, if a customer already has the XP image and license, HP also can also install that customer's image on their Vista Business systems through our HP PC Customization Services."

Lenovo: "In line with our agreement with Microsoft, Lenovo will not offer any PC's preloaded with XP after June 30, 2008. Lenovo offers select Vista models that ship with a downgrade XP CD in the box. Microsoft will allow us to continue putting these downgrade CDs in the box until January 31, 2009. However, the majority of PCs we ship don't have the downgrade CD in the box. If a customer purchases a Vista system and wishes to downgrade and doesn't have the CD, they can contact our Help Center to get an XP downgrade CD."

Acer: An Acer representative said that the company plans to stop selling XP June 30. "Acer will offer CD downgrades to XP--based on customers order requests--until the Microsoft deadline, January 31, 2009."

Dell: Unlike the other three, Dell plans to stop selling standard XP machines via its Web site on Wednesday. "Dell systems with XP as the only OS will no longer be available after June 18 on Dell.com," the company said. It will offer a downgrade program for a number of its machines, including all OptiPlex desktops, all Latitude laptops, all Precision workstations and most of its Vostro systems for mid-size businesses. Two consumer gaming systems--the XPS 630 and the XPS M1730--are already eligible for the program with a third, the XPS 730, to be added soon.

The downgraded machines will ship with XP installed, plus an XP restore disc with drivers as well as a copy of Vista and its Vista drivers. It said it will keep shipping XP media until the Microsoft mandated end date of January 31, 2009.

News.com's Erica Ogg contributed to this report.

[cptnkirk_1]

Time for a Mac!

[patch991]

So if Mac (Apple) is soooo good, why do they constantly have OS upgrades?? And why do they charge for this? Isn't it the same as a FREE service pack?? And why do the recommended system requirements keep changing???

1. OS X 10.0 Cheetah $129 Recommended RAM 128M
2. OS X 10.1 Puma FREE Recommended RAM 128M (hey this was a SP!)
3. OS X 10.2 Jaguar $129 Recommended RAM 128M
4. OS X 10.3 Panther $129 Recommended RAM 512M
5. OS X 10.4 Tiger $129 Recommended RAM 512M - 1G
6. OS X 10.5 Leopard $129 Recommended RAM 1G
7. OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard - Cost ???? Probably another $129 Ram?? At least 1 G maybe more?

So Microsoft isn't the only one with increased system requirements. But at least their service packs are FREE ... and OS upgrades usually only $79!

[Igiveup2]

Why? For the all the bugs and instability that are in leopard? For the failure-prone logic boards? For the buggy wireless stack? For the random shutdowns? (Yes, random shutdowns are STILL happening on MacBooks and iMacs. Power management has only been getting buggier since Panther.)

[Slotmech]

Because, patch991, the money for updates and upgrade development has to come from SOMEWHERE. There's a reason Red Hat isn't working on a consumer desktop distro anymore: too few people were willing to pay for support; i.e., to buy the distro and media from them so they could pay their programmers to do upkeep on it. Businesses are willing to pay to have someone around that does that, so that's why they're going business- only. With Apple's upgrades, in some cases they've either let you upgrade all your Macs for free or only charged a smaller additional amount to upgrade your extra machines (and no product keys or online activation needed). Let's not forget that Linux has upgrades and updates as well, and that non- geeks are highly dependent on the specific package manager that comes with each distro. Then there's power management on the x86 platform... All three major OS's have had pm problems at one time or another on ntel-compatible platforms; why should Apple be any different? Sleeping or hibernating is a issue with XP and Vista as well, depending on the hardware. For my part, I'd like to know why MacOS and Ubuntu can run all their eye candy on hardware that also runs XP with muscle to spare, but has a hell of a time running Vista's full Aero interface with the same smoothness and speed....?

[Remo_Williams]

... a Mac? Get outta here. Time to learn to use torrent clients and Google. Users need to wait out Vista for a few years until Windows 7/8 arrives... or a real Linux desktop that doesn't require a few years of arcana experience to get wireless connectivity working.

-C

[Renegade Knight]

What's the odds 7 will be better than Vista? If they don't strip out some of the structural flaws in Vista by design...7 will just be Vista warmed over.

[rossstock]

I just did parallel installs of Ubuntu 8.04 and XP on a Presario notebook and it found all the restricted drivers I needed. I've done a couple of desktop installs, and, honestly, this is the first distro I found easier than a traditional OEM XP or 2000 install -- all hardware working without touching the command line.

[cnetcensorssuck]

Clown!

[OokiiMamoru]

A larger than normal % of my customers (WalMart) are rejecting XP out right and keeping their machines until they die a painful death and then repairing.

[ppgreat]

" Users need to wait out Vista for a few years until Windows 7/8 arrives"

No they don't. They already did that with Vista over XP and look what happened.

[Lerianis]

What happened? They got a good product, that is what happened. I haven't had ANY complaints about my Windows Vista machine, except that UAC prompts too much sometimes. I would LOVE Microsoft to put something into UAC where it remembers where a program was, remembers that I ran it from there, and doesn't ever pop up a UAC prompt again unless the file hash changes or something else changes, like the size of the file.

[Imalittleteapot]

Lerianis -
As I write this there are over 100 posts here, many of them anti-Vista. Apparently the fact that you have Vista working on your one gaming computer that mommy probably paid for doesn't mean much. Right now I have Vista with SP1 installed at home just to see if that works. Yes with 4 gigs of ram and after multiple driver updates, driver rollbacks, multiple Vista updates, then finally SP1, and a handful of other tweaks it does run quite nicely. Now, let me teach you how it works in just our tiny tiny office. Most of our computers have 512 megs of ram or less, and they happen to work great with XP. Mommy doesn't buy our computers. We do something called, try to save money. Buying cheaper computers and putting XP on them can save money. Not having to replace or upgrade XP computers that are running fine can save money. Using XP instead of dealing with possible compatibility quirks can save us money. Now imagine a real business where real work might actually get done with hundreds or thousands of computers. Do you want to pay to upgrade all those? If you think Vista is so awesome let's see you come in here and make it work for us. I'd even be half tempted to let you actually try so I could get a good laugh out of it. Remember these don't play Crysis. If you want to pay to upgrade everything to 2 gigs of ram then that's fine with me, but if not I think we'll stick to running what we already got. After all, we might as well wait for Windows 7 now.

[Igiveup2]

Mr. teapot, hardware sufficient for Vista is less expensive in real terms than hardware sufficient for XP was when it was first released. I just came across the receipt for my Win98 machine. I laughed.

[Imalittleteapot]

And what's that tell you? Many people didn't want to upgrade to XP right when it was released, but it was quicker going than Vista has been going, and the hardware is cheaper now. Besides, that argument isn't even logical. The hardware may be cheaper today, but the point is the hardware you already have is already paid for. Nothing is cheaper than using what you already have. If the hardware you bought 2 to 4 years ago is still working why upgrade hundreds or thousands of computers in an organization just to run Vista? Some upgrades are worth it. Some are not. The argument is, just buy new hardware. The counter argument is, XP works fine and so does the old hardware. No reason to upgrade at this time. When it comes time to upgrade, Windows 7 may have been released. What's so hard to understand about that?

[Imalittleteapot]

One more thing. Computers come down in cost like you said. Wouldn't it be even better to wait for Windows 7? With the same budget you could probably get much more powerful hardware. 8 cores might be all the range then.

[pubdomains-com]

Time is right for moving to *nix platform now, OS has become more complex and Vista prevents me from doing things on my machine .. :( not the right approach. My machine doesn't trust me as its owner and I have already started playing with linux.

[bob2600]

I think that vista is truly the beginning of the end for Microsoft Windows and I for one has been using any Windows versions less and less and using Free Open Source operating systems more and more. My upgrade path is directly from Windows XP to Ubuntu Linux then possibly to Windows 7 if Microsoft fixes their bloat and bug problems. I probably will give Windows another chance once Windows 7 ships but after seeing how horrid Windows Vista was I am not expecting much from Microsoft as they have truly dropped the ball as far as Operating Systems are concerned. If Microsoft wants to continue to drop a reliable OS like XP in support of a crap operating system like Vista, I say go on ahead it will only cause people who used XP to go and find alternative platforms like Linux and possibly Macintosh.

[mgozaydin]

To Bob 2600
I agree with you.
I will never use microsoft products any more.
Linux should be promoted by all manufacturers of computers. Linux should be developed every year by a consortium of computer producers.
Microsoft does not respect its customers. Why we should respect them ?
[e-mail]

[Igiveup2]

Your opinion of Vista is clearly based on hearsay. It is a very fast, stable, and secure OS. Before you comment on it, you should actually use it.

[eyepoker]

Vista works fine with 2GB of RAM. You can knock it all you want but if you have the RAM then you have a good experience. Of course, a Mac user would chime in... thats to be expected. Anyway, XP works fine too. There is nothing wrong with the operating system - the issue is with people's ignorance of malware and their gullibility in downloading it. But the OS works great. My system is on 24/7 for months at a time; no crashes like what Apple would leave you to believe. I'll be buying an XP disc today just so that I have another license and so i can get a disk with SP2 on it. XP for my desktop machine and I'll leave Vista on my Vaio laptop. As to wireless connectivity issues - wifi works very well, and bluetooth on my XP machine works very easy as well - connecting to an Apple Keyboard!! No I didn't buy it, the checkout girl at BestBuy didn't ring it up so I feel better about it ;p

[Penguinisto]

Why should I have to throw RAM at an OS when (with other OSes) I don't have to? Unless Microsoft starts including sticks of RAM in the box with their product, I much prefer to have my extra RAM working towards doing what I want the machine to do, not just run the OS.

[Lerianis]

I have to agree with your statements. Frankly, the ONLY time I have had Windows Vista crash is when I have installed something that I had ample warning from the manufacturer of said software or game that it would crash Windows Vista with no harm, and then to just restart, apply a patch, and that would fix the 'crash problem'.... usually coming from the use of a software management tool like StarForce.

[Igiveup2]

Well, Peng, it looks like you wouldn't want 10.5 by that standard either.

[rcrusoe]

That should read "Windows era draws to a close", at least at my company. My boss has already asked me if I plan to convert everyone to Macs. While that won't happen, we do have fewer people than ever that require a PC and we plan to keep buying only Macs and reassigning our existing PCs to those that need them. If we still have need for some Windows machines, when Windows 7, SP1 becomes available we'll give it a look. But we won't be buying Vista.

[mgozaydin]

to rcrusoe
Don't ever "give it a look "
It won't be better than Vista. Rather there is no repect for customers. We customers are always right. Providers must respect the customers.
[e-mail]

[bob2600]

Thats the problem right there a properly constructed OS would not need all of that ram to run properly and by vista needing that much ram to preserve the semblance of a stable OS is terrible and needs to be fixed because it is obviously a problem with the design of the OS. The sad realization is this: Vista was a mistake and a poorly planned successor to XP and as a result of that people are holding on to windows XP instead of upgrading. When Microsoft sees that its flagship product, Windows is selling poorly because people are using an older version that they purchased several years a go and not paying M$ for a new operating system they will go and spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt about Windows XP in order to scare people to an operating so poor that it requires such heavy requirements that not even your typical off the shelf computer can muster which results in a a computer that is brand new but slower than the two or three year old computer loaded with XP which is just awful! Microsoft needs to ditch vista before people start losing confidence in their software. And because of vista I have basically lost faith and Microsoft and embraced open platforms that actually work!

[Lerianis]

It isn't a problem with the design of the OS. Frankly, there are a LOT of features packed into Vista and preloaded by default.... that is the reason why it uses so much memory, and frankly.... Microsoft WARNED EVERYONE that Vista would be a DOG with anything less than 1GB of memory.
When you have THAT MUCH WARNING...... you cannot really complain.
Also, Microsoft is not going to 'ditch Vista'.... why ditch a product that for 99% of the users out there (those who are not the whiners who want to buy 200 dollar systems and expect it to run Vista or run Vista on 10 year old machines) have no problem with it.

[Igiveup2]

"...[Vista] requires such heavy requirements that not even your typical off the shelf computer can muster..." Nonsense. Laptop hardware sufficient for Vista is available for well under $1k. And Vista is not slower than XP, especially since SP1. Lay off the FUD.

[Thomas, David]

I can't figure out the logic I keep hearing repeated here.

Users need to wait out ...

That logic is in-excusable, un-exceptable, with out rational thought, no value, and COMPLETELY disregards the user.

Get a Mac, or buy Linux. Most users will end up buying Macs, if they are looking for a new computer. If not, they will become Liinux users. This is a huge advantage for Linux.

How in the name, of all that is Holy (regardless of ANY religion), can ANYONE tell people they need to stick to Windows/Microsoft at any, and all costs!?!?

[sanenazok]

Dude, "in the name of all that is Holy"?????? CALM down, geez it's an OS end of life statement. People continue to use Windows, so what, calm down. Nobody forces them, they actually want something different than what you do. Choice is a strange thing, isn't it?

[mgozaydin]

Dear Dave Thomas
Then do not be slave of windows.
Let us get all Linux. Microsoft will continue XP.
We, the customers, make the world.
We do not want to be used by the manufacturers of softwares.
Until now we were stupid. Not anymore. There are alternatives now.
[e-mail]

[bond6996]

I will buy 1000 TB of WEBSPACE to run my applications using WINDOWS XP rather than purchasing WINDOWS VISTA.

[bond6996]

Microsoft and its employees are mindless literates. They need to realize that their products will be found in the corner of the stores in no while.

[Travis Ernst]

RC, your Boss has the right idea. Go Mac, split it to duel boot (Windows or Mac OS) so the office can stay Windows if they want, or they can also go Mac all on the same computer. No special software, no shell to run software in. Just install Windows on the Mac and DuelBoot upon startup. The suits can decide if they want to force everybody to go Mac or Windows later on. However the physical machines can be all Apple.

[tonyz00]

I used to use a Mac when they were just a simple little box. It worked well for my engineering work. Looks like I may have to go back to one. But how will I play my Flight Sim X?

[bdaughtry]

Someday will be offered in university business schools as a study in Microsoft bungling it's monopoly position in the computer industry.

[mgozaydin]

Dear bdaughtry
You are absolutely right.
Anybody who refuses the rights customers and tries to become monopoly deserve to be extinct.
Even Roman empire became extinct because they did not respect their population. Windows does not respect customers so it will have the same destiny.

[sanenazok]

While I could care less what kind of OS someone else uses, shouldn't there have been a large increase in LInux/Mac users already? The general trend (in these comments especially) is that Vista SUX and nobody wants it, and yet where's the increase in Macs or Linux'es beyond statistical error? Supposedly, businesses were going to drop Vista, yet it's been out for a year and a half and whatever shift was going to happen I guess it must have happened already. I guess if there was a poll taken on these boards, the Ron Paul would be the winner too, shows you the connection to reality doesn't it.

[E McCann]

"nd yet where's the increase in Macs or Linux'es beyond statistical error?"

Statistical error?
http://www.ifoapplestore.com/stores/charts_graphs.html
Looking solely at retail store CPU figures by quarter.
Looking ONLY at the first quarter (NOT yearly, and this is not the direct sales, etc.) you see
Q1 2002 - 14000
Q1 2003 - 46000
Q1 2004 - 73000
Q1 2005 - 119000
Q1 2006 - 193000
Q1 2007 - 308000
Q1 2008 - 504000

I'd say that's more than "Statistical error," and that is just comparing one quarter over those years.

[sanenazok]

Do you have any data that controls for the number of stores? In Q1 2005 they sold 119K CPU's with retail expenditures of $33 million. That comes out to 0.003 per unit. In Q1 2007 they sold 308K units, but spent $36 million, which is 0.008 per unit. Sounds like they're getting DIMINISHING results on retail investment/advertising. Given that Apple is increasing its retail presence hence the $3 million difference in just ONE year, they better be selling more of their computers. The increase in sales at Apple are still within statistical error of any one of the top 4 Windowze Micro$oft makers.

[open-mind]

OS X market share has been increasing for several years, and increasing more rapidly since Vista. I work at an all-XP fortune 100 company, and more of my colleagues are switching to Mac than I've ever seen before. So it is happening, it's just that people tend to resist the unknown and resist change. Many people tend to feel comfortable with Windows even when they hate it. And many have been trained to believe they need Windows even when they don't.



Personally, I would like to see OS X + Linux market share get up to around 50%. With multiple main-stream platforms, the PC industry would be so much more interesting and productive.

[cnetcensorssuck]

Pull your head out of your arse and look around. There have been numerous articles regarding climbing Linux and Mac usage. You're a clueless clown with your "statistical error" b.s....Mac laptops now account for nearly twenty percent of all consumer notebooks sold. Go away!

[wzrobin]

open-mind, you are exactly right. It would be much better for all of us if Microsoft was facing significant competition. They'd have to be more reasonable in their pricing, their draconian licensing terms, and more responsive to their users (DRM, trusted computing, etc).

[sanenazok]

Dear cnetcensorsuck:

20% Mac Laptops, where exactly? Is that limited to sales in Apple stores? Mac market share is about 6%, up from 4-5% a few years ago:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-9920664-37.html?tag=bl

And that's from the Mac Blog. Sure, Apple sales grow by 10-20% but that's starting from virtually nothing. An increase of 1-2% is statistical error when it comes to U.S. market. I think Apple share of world market is at or less than statistical error (2% or less).

I couldn't find a single story discussing increase in Linux share, can you send a link.

Also, let's not take this personally, these things are not that important - life is. Computing platforms are nice so there's no need to arse all over the place.

[eyepoker]

"platforms that actually work". But it does work. I do agree that the RAM requirement might imply something negative, but, look how cheap ram is... so, does that really matter? Apple started from a clean slate and didn't care that previous Mac owners would have to throw away their old systems in order to buy all new hardware and software (thousands of dollars). If you take that approach then yes, you can build something leaner. The fanaticism that surounds Mac -users allowed Apple to get away with it. The reality is that the world runs on Windows - if you throw away everything like what Apple did - which is what an Apple user complains about with Windows (the "bloat") - then imagine the impact!!! Its impossible and incredibly irresponsible to imagine such a thing. But, when MS does try to skip/leave behind certain things in an attempt to move forward then people complain about it! They are in a unique and difficult position. Is there a ton of stuff in there that I personaly don't use? Sure, i agree with that. But to say its wholesale junk when everyday so many great things are done on that platform is really short-sighted. What do you think your 911 services runs on? How about all the software that runs your local hospital? or the systems used in the Pharamaceutical industry, or... ad infinitum. I know i seem like an "MS-Fan boy" (to quote the oft-used Apple-inspired phrase) ... but one last thing - if you want the system to stop asking your permission to do stuff (which is to protect you from yourself), if you want to go back to the old way of browsing for files, or go back to the XP look, then configure it to behave that way. Not hard. There are lots of options.

[Penguinisto]

Actually, Apple went out of their way to ease transition from MacOS to OSX... and even as late as OSX 10.4, you could install OSX onto an ancient 1998 G3. Even with Leopard, you can happily use a G4 machine that's 10 years old, no sweat. Does Vista run on a 10-year-old PIII 1GHz machine?

[open-mind]

I agree with Penguinisto. Probably very few people (if any) have had to "throw away their old systems in order to buy all new hardware and software (thousands of dollars)." But even if a small handful of people must do this, I think that's better than subjecting all users to a slow and bloated platform that tries to be all things to all people. I've owned Macs for over 20 years. and I have no complaints about Apple's legacy support. If anything, I would complain about the opposite ... the periods of time in their history when they (like Windows today) carried too much backward-compatibility bloat.

[cnetcensorssuck]

Yup, another clueless "Windows Monkey". Come back later when you've actually learned a thing or two.

[Igiveup2]

The claim that 10.5 runs "happily" on a 10 year old G4 is disingenuous. That's not the word from the Mac forums. The word is that 10.5 is a significant slowdown from 10.4 and requires - guess what! - 2gB RAM to run well.

[Brons2]

bob2600, that's nonsense. If you go visit any retail outlet and look at computers, the vast majority of them have 2GB or more of memory installed. Furthermore, an upgrade to 4GB costs less than $100. Vista is just taking advantage of modern computer hardware. My new Toshiba with Vista Home Premium runs a lot faster than my old IBM Thinkpad R32 with XP Pro.

I hear people ask me about Vista all the time when I tell them I got a new laptop. I tell them, I love it and I have it on my desktop at work as well. I think this Vista-hating is taking on a life of it's own, beyond any actual or perceived deficiencies with the product.

[davidbmac]

Brons2, try doing a defrag on your two machines. Even if the vista box is barely fragmented and the xp box is heavily fragmented, the xp will finish first. this is only one instance, an older xp is much faster.

[sanenazok]

Nobody wants comments like this here, this is all about how Vista SUXXX. Get a Mac, yeah!

Seriously, Defrag is faster on XP? Maybe that's because it's a smaller system and there's less data to drag. Sorry, I guess you don't want non-Vista sux explanations.

[Roberia]

Personally, I don't see what all the hoopla is regarding the end of Windows XP. As a secretary, I've used both systems, and I find Windows Vista to be much better.

[rossstock]

The web is the platform.

[The_happy_switcher]

On June 30th the 'Ow' starts now and becomes the unofficial switch to OS X day.

[Laserdisc]

XP will be missed. I'm not looking forward to Vista... too many companies are building crappy drivers making Vista a not so viable option with my current rig which is less than a year old. I'm hoping Windows 7 will be the OS we've been waiting for. Sort of what Windows2000 was for Windows 98.

But Microsoft isn't the only company that released a crappy operating system. Anyone remeber Apple's Mac OS 9? Oy vey!

[sanenazok]

What companies have crappy drivers, ZoNet maybe? I haven't had a single driver issue (use AMD platform) since I got Vista in Jan. Even the All in One Brother printer/scanner worked.

[cnetcensorssuck]

OS 9 was much better than Windows 98 and Windows ME.

[Laserdisc]

To clarify... my statement about Mac OS 9 was comparing strictly to past Apple Mac OS's not a comparison against Microsoft's. Sorry for the confusion, It was not my intention to open a debate about who's better. I prefer Mac OS over Windows, other people the opposite. Different strokes for different folks.

As for Vista drivers... I've had problems with products from Creative, ATi and Epson. Not Microsoft's fault since they gave these companies ample (in my opinion) time and resources to code new drivers for Vista. One piece of hardware that did work without a hitch and without any interaction from me is an 8 year old HP inkjet printer.

I've read that Microsoft has a new initiative for Windows 7 for avoiding the same problems the Vista launch had. And I'm actually eagerly awaiting for Windows 7. Not since Windows2000 have I been this giddy about a new Windows release.

[fgoldstein]

> Get a Mac, or buy Linux.

Uh, no. Macs are designer hardware, very specialized, and the OS is not available for 95%+ of the hardware out there. So it'll never be a good answer, any more than telling 95% of the population of the country to move to one state because that's where the weather's nice or the jobs are, etc. The mass market and mainstream markets need support.

Nor is Linux an answer. It's a pretty good server OS whose design is antithetical to desktop support. It cannot reliably support mainstream desktop hardware, and never will, because Linus insists that the drivers become GPL'd as part of his kernel, for him to distribute and modify. That's not how most desktop hardware vendors operate, and many key drivers often (usually) don't work. Sound and wireless are both serious sore points. Let's not even mention 3D gaming.

Besides that, it has two other fatal flaws. Its application base is limited (great for some areas, awful for others where Windows gets the developers) and it is hard to use. The latter is a because most Linux distros have nobody who really understands non-31337 users. So they either require you to be a Unix sysadmin or they treat you like an imbecile. It's a wonderful science fair project; Linus should have gotten a ribbon. It's a terrible substitute for XP.

Vista's a disaster but Microsoft may yet end up forcing it down the throats of an unwilling market just because of their monopoly power.

[open-mind]

I don't see how you can refer to Macs as specialized designer hardware, since it's the only hardware that easily runs Windows, Linux, and OS X, even all at the same time. And Apple's hardware is actually pretty price-competitive when you account for the extra goodies (camera, 802.11N, firewire, DVI, etc) and software they include. Not to mention complete freedom (so far) from viruses, and no need to purchase anti-malware subscriptions. Sure the OS X EULA limits OS X to Apple hardware. That's just a wise business decision, similar to the Windows EULA that limits it to the original PC it was installed on.

[cnetcensorssuck]

Please come back when you have at least some semblance of a clue as to what you're talking about.

[sonymaster101]

as to you, open-mind, he means designer hardware as in not easily accessible. for instance, the HARDWARE that is actually compatible with MACITOSH makes up around 5 % of all hardware. it is very rare that u can buy something off the shelf for a mac. unlike with windows, where any part in existance can be used if it has the right connector.

-they(apple) limit osx to apple hardware b/c they are trying to create a monopoly, except greater than ms's. and apple fanboys like u are too short sighted to see that.
-baseline for a mac pro is almost 3000 dollars. thats a hard pill to swallow for almost everyone. for that price i can get a gaming pc that is twice as fast and twice as powerful.
-also, there IS NO anti-MALWARE SOFTWARE. so when a virus is developed, which i can guarantee will happen in less than 3 years, all macs will be prone. and that will open the floodgates to windows like years of virus issues,

and u had better get a lot of goodies when u are paying twice as much as you should for a computer thats only good for the arts.

[taggartromkey]

Wrong. You don't have to be a system admin to run Linux. I think you sir need to go download a live cd of Ubuntu or PCLinuxOS. It plays 3D games like need for speed carbon quite well i'll have you know. There are also plenty of drivers for hardware for it. You just need to know where to find them.

As a Computer Service Technician i completely endorse Linux and Open Source over any of the new MS garbage which is bloated and full of glitches for the most part. Ubuntu 8.04 and PCLinuxOS are much better than anything MS has produced in my opinion. You know what those distros were made unpaid volunteers who made a superior product hands down when compared to Vista and XP.

The only things hindering Linux is ignorance and misinformation spread by MS Fanboys along with everyone being afraid of change. My advice to anyone would download a Live cd of either ubuntu or pclinuxos. Just try it don't like stick with xp or vista.