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That's what I was wondering too... until about a month ago, when I nuked my WinXP partition in disgust with Microsoft's attitude toward future updates to the operating system. It just seems like Microsoft does *not* want to support XP at all anymore, whatsoever, so it's about time I stop supporting them.

It's become disturbingly obvious that Microsoft wants XP to just die a quick death, which shows in their silence regarding SP3 news and tendency to try to get people to just forget about it and "upgrade" to Vista, so let it be. If they weren't forced to release it by their market share of XP systems, SP3 would be vaporware. Now I'm using something else... and it sure ain't Vista.

On top of that, when does XP support (ie. updates, patches) officially end again? I recall it being relatively soon, as in within just a couple years.

Well, XP SP3 RC2 was posted early this month. I would expect to see the final posted "real soon now".

It's natural.

Microsoft is a company, its goal is to make money.
They have to push new products, and stop supporting old ones (not because they are bad, they just need people to buy new ones so they can meet their commercial objectives).

I'm just glad, that they will release XP SP3 (maybe last SP for XP).

XP has all the features i want for a OS, so i'm not upgrading until Microsoft makes me...

Edited 2008-03-18 18:59 UTC

How dare you interject logic into a conversation about operating systems. Let's get back to reality: Windows Suxorz! Linux is w00t!!

(I'll be installing Vista Ultimate in a few weeks, dual-booting with Fedora Core 8 (yes, I use both)).

Wow. It's like the comedy just writes itself around here.

Really though, how do you feel about the fact that you'll be using the two most bloated operating systems in existence on the same hardware? That wasted 22GB taste good?

Why does this surprise you or are you one of those sheep who just realized Microsoft had you by the balls?

Microsoft have to sell Vista and then improve it to get people over and make more money, XP is not going to do that.

Rather aggressive I know but thats what they call tough love.

Edited 2008-03-18 19:36 UTC

Considering increasing popularity of cheap, low performance machines like Eee, microsoft should keep XP running and selling. Otherwise, they would leave the marked with only possibility for OS - Linux.

and I thought Dr. Phill had a patent for "Tough Love". Vista performance is pretty bad, it take around 3-4 minutes for for Vista to shutdown on the Sony Vaio notebook we have Core2Duo 2.0 ghz with 1 GB RAM, and don't get me started on USB files transfer or a simple copy/paste command. Hope sp1 has some performance boosts to offer.

Why blame the OS for the hardware vendor's laziness?

In a couple of years? Oh poor baby.
Shame on Microsoft for supporting there OS for 10 years.

Oh, you mean Windows Vista? It's still in beta...

Installed. <-;

I'm not going to start using an OS for it's "pretty icons".

One has to look at the features, and see if there are gains. This is a per person decision, not a fashion trend decision.

I'm a IT tech, i know what to look for in a OS.

oooh. Can I be your friend?

actually FWIW I always felt w2k was the best OS MS ever released. Much more stable than the pre-NT codebase consumer OS and less inclined to be 'helpful' when when installing unsigned drivers, no pain from WGA etc etc.

I second the above.
Windows 2000 was indeed the best OS in MS' history.

- Gilboa

and for the ones that say it has all you need in an OS, why you changed from NT or 2000 or Win98 OSR2 ?
they were "good"...

I remember when XP came out.. people were saying it was basically Win2k with a Phisher Price interface, and Win2k was going to be their last OS because WPA was of the devil and Bill Gates was a seal-clubbing bastard.

Well, here we are almost 7 years later and now they're pissed because XP will someday soon no longer be supported. I'm surprised they're all still not running Win2k.. maybe they all made the jump when XP SP2 came out

Reality check people - even if MS stops releasing updates for it, WinXP is not going away anytime soon. As long as you practice common-sense security practices, you'll be ok.
And by the time it gets to the point where you really need to upgrade in order to stay current, the problems in Vista (sans the DRM, which is more of a political issue anyway) will have been fixed, and Windows 7 will probably be out with its own set of issues.

Edited 2008-03-18 21:20 UTC

well actually win2k was my last windows for mostly those reasons (and that it wouldn't recognize my shiny new modem which both win2k and linux cheerfully did)

So win2k cheerfully recognized the modem that win2k didn't recognize?

I generally agree that Windows 2000 was a better OS than Windows XP. Until XP SP2, there was virtually no difference between Windows 2000 and XP at any level. The claims that it was just Windows 2000 with a different (annoying, patronising) GUI were dead on.

Windows 2000 was EOL'd years ago, which means no more security updates. Not for the general public anyway. Even XP SP1 doesn't get those anymore. So it's not at all safe to use. Even if I wanted to use it (I don't - I moved over to Linux and Mac OS X years ago), I just couldn't.

And that's the reason most people are going to end up upgrading to Vista - Microsoft will stop supporting XP, and it'll gradually become too dangerous to use. Probably within a few months of the last security update being issued.

Edited 2008-03-19 04:19 UTC

Of course there are security updates for Win2000 for the general public. There will be up to 2010:

http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-us&x=10&y=14&...

Security updates for Win2000 get released monthly along with the rest of the Windows updates.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/results.aspx?DisplayLang=en&...

Rubbish Just put a decent firewall in front of it and use Firefox to browse the web and you're just as safe as vista. 99% of windows security updates are for IE/OE/WMP, if you don't use these programs and infact uninstall them(which is easy in win2k) you're as safe as pie!

Just to fix the above post a little ...

1. There are differences between win2k (my favorite) and winxp on several layers. Those who used the two, know this every single day ...

2. Both OSes are 100% safe to use if you know how to use a computer .... Don't stick them on any network and your good to go ....

3. I can't bother to read the rest since the 1st 1/2 of the post was not correct.

It's more along the lines of where Windows is heading combined with the killing of a halfway-decent OS to shove pure garbage down our throats as a replacement.

Sure, I obviously don't like the way Vista is heading, but face it: it's not going to stop there. It's obvious where Microsoft's incentives lie and who they choose to listen to these days--themselves and other big businesses, not us--and Vista just appears to be the beginning.

I'd love to be proven wrong (with their monopoly, you're pretty much guaranteed to come in contact with and have to use a computer running their operating system, so a change for the better is always good), but I just don't see a bright future for Windows. Instead, the OS is going to lock us down from ourselves copying our own media, while ironically still having the typical *real* security threats that have haunted Windows since its early days. Windows Vista Live OneCare, anyone?

It's not exactly like corporate America have been falling all over themselves to upgrade to Vista. It's difficult to explain why such radical hardware changes are necessary to support a new operating system or that you need to train staff on Vista so they can support brand new machines.

If I must use Vista, I'd like to wait until the majority find it stable and it's likely I'd need a new computer to support it by that time. How long did it take XP, 4 years?

It wasnt difficult at all, read the white papers .... sheesh.

Wow, another troll post in this article. They seem to be attracted to these kind of articles like flies.

It's probably phased by location so that the servers don't get overloaded.

"It's probably phased by location so that the servers don't get overloaded."

Good point. Didn't think of that. Ah well, will check it tomorrow. Decided to boot back into linux for the night anyway.

XP will continue to get extended support (ie. security updates etc.) until 2014 (just like Win2000 has extended support and gets security updates until 2010) so I doubt anyone has to worry about that anytime in the near future.

IIRC, they said they would release an update that will allow XP to be installed without any activation.

I've heard of running Windows for playing video games, but this is certainly a new one to me.

So you run a brand-new OS on shitty hardware to watch porn?
Get. A. Life.

Trolling gets you nowhere but in a 1/2 house where trolls belong. Microsoft never advertised a hands-off install of SP1. If you believe other people's fake reviews concerning the installation, then it's your loss.

Besides that, the 32bit install is hands-free, and you don't need to be around for it.

>> Trolling? What the hell are you talking about? I didn't say I watch porn on the machine, but that I run Vista (to download it), thus I call it my "porn machine." Got a better description for what I use it for? My employer uses Vista throughout our data center, so what does that hurt to throw it on an old machine? Besides, the 64-bit version is NOT an unattended installation.

>> Vista is 1.5 years old â€" that's new?

>> So you're anti-porn? Jeez, next thing, you'll tell me you believe in gawd.... grow up.

Edited 2008-03-20 07:48 UTC

Totally brain dead. Considering you can't even mod UP!!!
Please OSNews, change this policy...