“What do you do if your flagship operating system isn’t designed to run well on a popular new class of hardware? It’s a problem currently faced by Microsoft. Budget laptops like the Asus Eee PC with minimal amounts of RAM, relatively slow CPUs, and solid state storage have proven popular, and Vista wasn’t designed to operate well within such hardware confines. In response, Microsoft is reportedly planning to extend the availability of Windows XP for the budget laptop category.”
.. and wants its OS back
XP SP3 is set to arrive soon…
While you may believe that the OS was “created” in 2001, the servicepacks contain a lot of changes besides simply security updates (whether you agree with that or not is a different matter).
This notion that XP is somehow “ancient” because the first version of it was released in 2001 is quite ludicrous. You can’t nail any one OS down to a a single year in which it was created – all modern OS designs span many years prior to their release date (often decades).
I’m no MS fanboi, but MS bashing for the sake of … bashing is just lame.
Let’s see, what (besides security updates) has been added in the Service Packs?
IE 7 (which could very well be argued as the biggest security update, so we won’t really count that).
Windows Media Player 11 (or whatever they are up to, frankly I haven’t liked any WMP since the Classic.)
Firewall on by default (again more security related).
.NET and updates.
Windows Genuine Advantage. Need I say more.
Really I can’t think of anything more that has been added to XP besides bug fixes and security updates (and those mentioned above.) Can you?
Besides the fact that each servicepack often improves the core OS components – SP2 came with “enhanced security features” and enabled them by default…
Newer drivers…
All you’ve done really is enforce my arguments – I’m not sure why I felt the need to respond.
Please provide an equivalent excuse why <insert_your_favorite_new_os_version> was a major improvement over a previous version.
BTW, I still don’t have WGA installed on any of my Windows XP systems… I’m not sure why people believe it *must* be installed.
Edited 2008-04-01 23:18 UTC
You “must” install WGA when you download software from Microsoft’s website. So there’s your reason.
——–
This download is available to customers running genuine Microsoft Windows. Please click the Continue button to begin Windows validation. As described in our privacy statement, Microsoft will not use the information collected during validation to identify or contact you.
Windows Vista users must pass Microsoft Genuine validation requirements to enable certain product features and to obtain non-security updates and product support from Microsoft. For more information, go to the Windows Genuine Advantage FAQ.
———
Edited 2008-04-01 23:39 UTC
uuh, I’ve never had to install WGA to download files from MSs website. “course, I’m running “Windows XP Pro Corporate edition” with a VLK.. but still
Hello? – you mean to use the Windows Update website? That’s not even necessary. If we’re talking about Vista, that’s an ENTIRELY different situation… but we’re talking about XP.
I generally download my servicepacks separately and install them myself. In fact, I install XP SP2 directly so I don’t have to bother with a service pack (So, therefore, my version of XP was released in 2004 right?… yeah…)
Furthermore, if you use Automatic Updates and set it to “Notify me but don’t download or install” – you can pick and choose which security updates are installed. Along with this you get to choose NOT to install WGA and you can tell it to stop bugging you to install it as well.
Even the IE7 install (which claims to require WGA for install) doesn’t really require it.
Edit: typos
Edited 2008-04-02 00:20 UTC
I’m just giving you a “must” situation, I’m sure thousands of people download software from Microsoft’s site and have to validate it with WGA.
Just because you can do it one way dont mean the rest of the world will.
Well, just choose any Linux distribution and you’ll see more than just updated drivers and applications. There are always new technologies (even if they are only new to Linux itself) in every new Linux distribution that I’ve seen released.
But that’s the thing, a Linux Distribution update (as well as any other non-proprietary Operating System update) it’s more like a “fix old bugs, add new features, add new applications.” Whereas with the Proprietary ones (namely Mac OS X and Windows) It’s mostly fixing bugs and adding new features. But with Windows especially, it’s a “Oops, guess we screwed up when we initially released this. Now we’ll fix it.” I’m mainly talking about having no firewall, yet having services enabled by default.
Besides, updated drivers doesn’t mean a whole lot, since all the drivers that were released with SP2 are now incredibly obsolete, not to mention things like Graphics drivers do not support all features of the hardware that they install on.
I think you very much proved the other posters point.
What about tools to roll out automatic installation/deployment on network environments?
And also, again for a network environment, what about WSUS?
Despite being very pro FOSS, I have to admit, MS Windows XP went far beyond its roots and become a very good OS to be deployed on large network environments.
Don’t let your love to the FOSS philosophy and community aspects disturb your sight. MS is where they are because of many things and, specially, because they were able to give to customers tools that they could make good use of and follow a viable upgrading path, in many aspects better than what the other contenders could offer.
Do I think the scenery is changing? Yes, but MS is not a foul company many paint them to be.
Edited 2008-04-02 00:15 UTC
…and what’s your point? If you want whiz-bang new features, umm, get Vista. The XP service pack is just that.. a service pack. It will provide all of the critical and other updates to date. I don’t even think it provides the latest IE or MediaPlayer but these area available via Windows normal download channels if anyone desires them. In short, one would slipstream this service pack into current installations to provide the most stable, secure Windows XP yet. Those looking for more would be better (or worse, depending on ones point of view) served by Vista.
If you are looking for whiz-bang, Vista would be your absolute last choice. It is as slow as molasses, even on expensive & capable hardware.
Get a decent system with a solid Linux and all the compiz-fusion bling enabled.
Mint, Mandriva, Fedora, Ubuntu or even OpenSuSe would fit this bill. On a system that could run Vista moderately well (even if a little pedestrian), an up-to-date full-featured Linux distribution would really fly and give you some REAL whiz-bang.
If you have some legacy binary-only Windows applications that you absolutely must still support … well Wine is now approaching version 1.0 and it may even be able to now run your legacy application better than Vista can.
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS7959950148.html
//. It is as slow as molasses, even on expensive & capable hardware//
Funny, Vista is quite fast on my three-year old P4 3ghz with 3 GB RAM.
Sounds like you either: 1.) have crap-ass hardware or 2.) simply parrot stuff you read online and you’ve never tried Vista.
You have 3GB of ram? That was pretty damn high end for 3 years ago. As far as I can remember having 2GB was pretty tight. I think most people had like 1GB and low end machines had 512MB.
Perhaps his machine came with two 512mb DIMMs and he added two more 1gb DIMMs recently (after upgrading to Vista)…
So that cost him an additional what – $50-80 within the last year?
I don’t see that he has stated it came with 3gb RAM – only that it’s a 3 year old P4 3ghz which currently has 3gb RAM.
Edited 2008-04-02 22:19 UTC
yup, I added two 1 GB sticks last year, at a whopping cost of $50.00. Now i dual-boot XP and Vista (though rarely XP anymore). Both are plenty fast.
Unless they’re going to be in SP3, IE7 and WMP11 were not part of any service pack. In fact, SP2 added a popup blocker to IE6.
But you’re right.. service packs haven’t added much of anything except bug and security fixes, but SP2 sure did a hell of a lot in the way of security
It seems as If MS COULD be admitting that Vista is not all that is supposed to be, OR that they could not influence the industry to stop making inexpensive PCs
inexpensive pc’s running linux no less…
XP, this old war horse gets another extension for the low end market? Means, they don’t have an OS that scales well. That – among other things – leaves me wondering what they exactly did the last 7 years in Redmond, apart from re-inventing wheels, throwing chairs and pissing off customers.
I’d say they’ve been busy over-estimating the amount of memory in the average machine in 2008 and continuing to think that they can ride the wave of faster and faster hardware at the same price… when the market has gone towards cheaper hardware that is “fast enough”. But fast enough for what? Not Vista.
Spot on.
Meanwhile, despite being criticised some years ago for not being scalable, Linux is by far the most scalable of any OS used in a “desktop” context today.
Linux runs on wristwatches, through embedded devices such as routers, LCD photo-frames, PDAs and mobile phones, through UMPCs, notebooks, laptops, desktops and workstations all the way up to full-blown servers and mainframes.
The Windows-NT Kernelwas never intended to run on mobile and embedded devices. For these applications Microsoft offer other brands like Windows CE (6.0 even runs on non-x86-hardware), Windows Automotive and there is even Windows XP embedded.
With Win CE especially Microsoft missed a big opportunity. It really looked promising but since the delay and rebranding of Win CE 5 embedded developers seem to prefer Linux-based highly customizeable platforms. Sad to see that even Microsoft doesn’t seem to prefer their own product any more and instead base their new initiatives on the good ol’ (but still old) NT-platform.
In 2008 there is no need for anyone to live with the pain of microsoft products. Obviously a Mac has anybody up and running straight away and you get the whole range of iLife apps average Joe needs.
For a cheaper alternativ there are all the Linux and BSD distributions which are also a far more sensible choice.
I myself work as a java programmer on a MacBook Pro and a Suse Linux Desktop, as do the better half of my co-workers.
Now, if only the resellers could stop selling their hardware bundled with MS licenses and crap-os related bloatware I’d be a much happier nerd!
In 2008 there is no need for anyone to live with the pain of microsoft products.
Actually, not true. If you do anything related to your job you just might have to opt to using MS Office, like f.ex. your employer uses MS Office and you need to make sure those documents don’t get messed up if you edit them. Also, most computer games just happen to be for Windows. Macs, although getting more popular, still lack a large amount of games. Oh, and then there’s thing one little thing called money: a regular PC with preinstalled Windows just costs less than any Macs and not everyone is willing to waste 2000 bucks for a Mac. (I wouldn’t but that’s just my opinion)
In the context of this topic – an OS for low-powered budget laptops – Linux still wins out by a long way over either XP or Mac.
Firstly … for the level of document and applications that are important on this class of machine … Linux comes with all required applications for zero cost. You won’t be attracting gamers with a low-powered budget laptop, and you won’t be developing or running complex macros in your documents either. Come to think of it you won’t be even doing any significant amount of text entry at all … taking a few notes for a report to be written later is about it.
I’m not sure what your point is, but in reality the original poster was 100% correct … in 2008 there is no need for anyone to live with the pain of microsoft products on a low-powered budget laptop.
Run a good Linux distribution with OpenOffice 2.4 or even KOffice 2 when it is released and you will still have a snappy, useful and compatible laptop with even limited memory and a very underpowered CPU (since there is no need to run anti-virus, for example) … and all at a very cheap price.
Linux & FOSS applications makes for excellent value-for-money for this class of machine that neither XP nor Mac OSX can hope to come anywhere close to.
Unless you work in one of many industries that depend upon Windows only software. Then there’s a need. That includes low power laptops.
Edited 2008-04-02 13:28 UTC
What are the reasons for this, I can only think of a few:
1: Microsoft genuinely are scared of Linux getting a foothold ANYWHERE
2: It is another way to generate cash for the shareholders. (Microsofts SOLE reason for existing).
3: Vista cannot scale down to machines this “underpowered”.
Now it might be me, but I think I head someone at Microsoft, either Mr Gates, or that Dick Ballmer, who said that these small laptops will never take off, as people want a “real” laptop with a proper OS on it… or it might be a misquote, like that whole “640k is enough memory for anyone”
Saying that though, the chairman of IBM did actually once say that the global market for computers would be five, and we would not need more than that !
That’s any public company’s sole reason for existing.
Edited 2008-04-02 08:08 UTC
exactly, however, there is a lot of people around here that think Microsoft exist to make a great system just for them….
All these small laptop are actually quite usefull if it’s using the suitable OS and software such as DSL, Puppy Linux, AbiWord etc
Another way is to connect it to a big server and run the software from it
http://www.aikotech.com/thinserver.htm
http://www.nomachine.com
Yeah, just what you want when you’re in a Starbucks. A thin client. Well done.
If your smart, your already running your notebook as a thinclient when your at starbucks. You connect to the coffee shop network (untrusted) then blow through with a VPN to your work or your own tunnel through your home machine; both cases tunneling through the untrusted network so you can move in and out of the trusted network point.
A thinclient would be great for that, your whole machine would reside at home behind it’s encrypted tunnel; desktop, saved files, installed programs. You pop out your trusty thinclient, connect to the coffee shop wifi and blow through to your thinclient session off the server through it’s tunnel. If you loose your connection, it’s all waiting for you on the server still.
The semi-thinclient aproach would be simply using SSH X forwarding but a full blown thinclient with barely enough storage for the connection software would work pretty well as a tiny mobile terminal.
“If your smart”
Oh, the irony. I can’t bear it.
Guess that should have started with “If you’re smart” huh..
I had to trade some of my ability to spell well (and two magic beans) for these mad computer skills.
I frequently use a bootable Mandriva CD as a thin client too my desktop. The local machine needs only enough hardware to run X, a basic window manager and OpenSSH. The remote machine does the processing, provides the hardware and simply forwards the display graphics or collects the keyboard and clicks.
(I’ve even had my music blasting out of the computer room when I forgot that I was not on the local machine and started the player. It’s also strange to have Firefox ask about restoring your session when you previously crashed out of it through the thinclient session.)
I should really check out some of the purposefully built thinclient distributions but for just a quick and easy remote screen/keyboard/mouse a bootable DSL or any other distro should include X and SSH.
(I’ve even had my music blasting out of the computer room when I forgot that I was not on the local machine and started the player. It’s also strange to have Firefox ask about restoring your session when you previously crashed out of it through the thinclient session.)
You could have the sound also forwarded to your thinclient instead of it playing out on the remote machine
Esound server, nas server or using NX client would do that. Though, in your case as you are using Mandriva CD you’d need to customize it a little. It’s not difficult to add a few extra packages there and reburn, it just takes a few moments. I personally would use NX client as it seems a lot more responsive and faster but that is just my preference 
I don’t usually need my music when not at my desk but that is probably a fun puzzle too look at later. Mandriva uses Alsa so I’d have to config my way around that to base it off a more networkable sound deamon I’m guessing.
You do remind me of a question though. Have you a good howto on modifying the ISO for a liveCD? I’ve got an ISO in my toolkit and want to upgrade a program on it to the latest version. I was thinking this would require mounting the ISO, somehow doing an upgrade install from tarball and finally confirming that the CD booted and program ran automatically still.
Anyhow, if you have a good howto on modifying ISO handy I’d be interested to have a look.
You do remind me of a question though. Have you a good howto on modifying the ISO for a liveCD? I’ve got an ISO in my toolkit and want to upgrade a program on it to the latest version. I was thinking this would require mounting the ISO, somehow doing an upgrade install from tarball and finally confirming that the CD booted and program ran automatically still.
Anyhow, if you have a good howto on modifying ISO handy I’d be interested to have a look.
Sorry, I don’t have any howto handy. But well, it’s kind of a long-winded process. The way I would do it:
1. extract the whole ISO somewhere
2. Extract the squashfs image to some temporary location, chroot there and install any additional stuff you wish to be included.
3. Compress the contents of the temporary dir (the contents only, not the folder in which they reside) using squashfs tools and name the file as the previous one was.
4. Since more or less all livecds use Isolinux, just use the files that were inside the ISO and do a new Isolinux boot sector.
5. Create new ISO file, and burn.
It is somewhat lot of work and compressing the squashfs image does take a while, but it’s not really that difficult. Hope this helps you. I don’t really wish to write a full howto here since this is definitely not the right place for such.
Drat.. not a ten minute job then. It sounds like a great project to add too my list though. I may even “learn” my way through the process before the latest OPH liveCD get’s released.
Thanks WereCatf, now too bookmark your comment for later reference.
If so, then our dear linuxian colleagues should declare another “battle” as lost. What is left there “to win with the win” ? Cellular phones ? Wrist watches ? Talking clocks 😉
If so, then our dear linuxian colleagues should declare another “battle” as lost.
Care to tell me one thing: I’ve noticed you trolling in almost every single post here talking crap about Linux users..but why? Are you really that bitter?
And well…I don’t really think Microsoft can “win” this one. Linux, BSD et al just are more suitable for these low-power laptops. XP can run on them, no doubt about that, but Linux just runs a little better and one can even have eye-candy effects with Compiz-fusion as long as the laptop has GeForce 2 or better integrated.
These low-power laptops attract so many people mostly because of their low-cost. Having Linux installed doesn’t cost anything, but if you buy one with XP it adds some more cost to it, and then Office suite would add even more. Sure, one CAN use OO.o under XP…but what does XP then offer over any Linux distro on such a machine?
Exactly my point!
And I can tell you that even here in word-centric enterprise corporation land I successfully use the open office suite when collaborating with colleges.
In either case, on any computer, low end or high we are no longer bound to any specific vendor if we do not want to!
Its 2008 and its all good, free and functional in FOSS land! 🙂
Trolling ? Context of this news is quite obvious. “Budget” laptops are capable to run XP, not Vista, so Microsoft is considering to extend the XP availability period for such devices.
Consumers like to have a wide choice. And what people usually choose when they had to choose between Vista, Linux and XP ?
Consumers like to have a wide choice. And what people usually choose when they had to choose between Vista, Linux and XP ?
In the case of low-power, low-cost budget laptops they only get to choose between XP and Linux. But the problem is, people go for these kinds of laptops because of their very low cost. Cost is the primary factor you see. So, my hunch just is that people will choose Linux because that way the overall cost is lower than one with XP. But as said, that is a personal estimate and we don’t have enough statistics to say anything definite, not even “usually” yet. Maybe in a year we’ll get some better stats though.
”
Consumers like to have a wide choice. And what people usually choose when they had to choose between Vista, Linux and XP?
”
I tend to choose a Linux based OS but that’s because I realize my available choices are more than the two brands displayed at futureshop. How many other people realize what an OS or userspace is let alone realize tehre are choices outside of what is preinstalled on the shelf display model?
My guess is that he just needs a life. Maybe Ebay? 😉
PIRACY!
…well you did ask….
–bornagainpenguin
The real question is: What do you do if your flagship operating system does not run well on ANY hardware
At least network performance improved after sp1
It runs great on my Athlon X2 4000+ machine; a proc that costs roughly $50 these days from Newegg.com. Yes, Vista is slower than XP. But this constant online crap about Vista not running well on any machine, about it being slow as molasses, etc. just has to stop. It’s ridiculous.
Why not release a new Windows Shorthorn? Put a Vista theme over XP kernel, update some libraries so it will run SOME new software, block drivers for high end hardware so it doesn’t kill Vista, and you are set to make money. Sort of like ME. This way some people would even update their old machines.
Somehow I think you just answered your own question…
–bornagainpenguin
*Emphasis added.
Linux’s stronghold will probably never be the current PC world as we know it today, but will mostly likely be established on the smartphone and networked realtime/embedded devices. Over time, these modular components will probably displace the monolithic PC — that is once their capacity is good enough you can just walk up to a monitor and keyboard with one, and it remotely connects to this terminal via its embedded Linux bios and voila, your smartphone is now operating as the tower in an ad-hoc PC system. Features like this will hinge on having something that is very secure, lean, modular/flexible, and can be quickly adapted to many different and interesting hardware architectures and configurations. I wonder what OS fits those categories.
Edited 2008-04-02 14:50 UTC
It is no surprise that Microsoft made this decision.
Microsoft is all about sticking their nose wherever Linux might ever gain a foothold.
Right now the big topic is the EeePC and I think Microsoft may have won this round.
XP is just a better (or should I say, a more standard) OS than that crappy version of Xandros. I would not expect many people to buy the XP version then replace it with a better Linux distribution.
Edited 2008-04-02 17:10 UTC
I don’t expect very many people to buy the XP versions of items like the ASUS Eee–not if they do any research beforehand any way. According to what I’ve read ASUS is planning on offering them at nearly the same prices–both the Linux and the XP branded models, only the Linux (Xandros) model comes with a larger SSD by default….
Do the math!
–bornagainpenguin
Oh come on, it doesn’t deliver the goods, given it’s memory footprint. Four GB of ram to run applications on a slow operating system–that features fake glare on it’s user interface!
Security doesn’t take that much processor, but the watchful eye of DRM does.
Microsoft is all hollowed out, with no real innovation.
All the bloat and useless .log and .tmp files are coming back to haunt them. Let this be a lesson to anyone daring to design an operating system. That piece of unknown hardware, the solid state drive might breath some sense into OS designers.
Edited 2008-04-02 20:08 UTC
The longer that XP is being used the more backword pull Microsoft’s new operating systems will get from things like WINE and ReactOS. Right now we are in a phase where things in WINE are just starting to work good for a larger number of apps, and there is the real threat that things might start really coming together in the next few years.
But if everybody has moved on then it is suddenly not that relevant. The best thing that can be done to harm Microsoft is to promote XP instead of Vista. What will start happening is built in house apps will start being ported to Linux using WINE here and there, like Google Picasa.
In a few years when the .NET framework is working perfectly under WINE you will see a even larger opportunity for migration. Plus imagine having multiple WINE bottles (separate WINE directories) that are all isolated with SELinux.