Windows XP just refuses to die. Have you ever notice that in movies they hit the bad guy just hard enough to stun him, then go about their business with their back turned to him while he slowly gets up and surprises them by attacking again? In this allegory, Microsoft management is the cute couple and XP is the villain: "Microsoft's deadline for allowing OEMs to sell PCs with systems that are "downgraded" from Windows Vista to XP is still a moving target. Initially planned to expire on June 30 of this year, Microsoft at first granted an extension to July 31. However, OEMs are still selling the downgrade option (often for a premium) and, according to new reports, the deadline apparently has been officially extended for six more months to January 31, 2009. The information is based on one leaked email sent to an OEM."
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Member since:2006-07-25
i was gonna say the same thing, windows vista only driver problem was with crappy video drivers from nvidia and the drivers from creative., who apart from the fact the beta of vista was in the public domain for such a long time still couldn't get their drivers togeather.
Creative are well known for being the slowest when it comes to drivers for their products. Most of the drivers than were on the CD's for windows XP felt more like beta releases then finals.
I would say that the only problems vista suffered at the begining was that some of the newer tech introduced was a little rough (i.e. new file copying routines, network copying and some memory management).
I use Mac OSX at home and Vista at work. At the beginning i wasn't to impressed with vista, however the various updates and SP1 as polished it off. It's now quicker and more hard wearing, which i know is a weird term which ill explain. I use virtual machines, sometimes maxining out the memory in Windows XP and then releasing it, windows xp would still thrash the hdd after as if it was still maxed out of memory. Vista however seems to handle this process a lot better.
There are other things as well such as the impressive network speed when used with Windows 2008 server.
The only problem which still remains and will always be their is resource requirement. It has sacrificed being lean for adding features which is not a bad thing on today's desktop.
However on netbooks and lower spec'd PC's this is a major problem. Hindsight is a great thing, however this is not a critisim as such as netbooks suddenly came out of nowhere in popularity (i know that netbooks or ultramobiles had been around for longer, but these were very niche such as the sony TX Series and only used by a few due to high price). Microsoft could have repackaged XP as Windows "light" to run on lower grade hardware.
It seems that Microsoft are leaving open a market in which they are only plugging it with an older product, which is good on one side as XP works, is familiar and very matured/stable. However from a marketing/blog worthy side it's also pretty damaging as they still have this 7 year old OS out there confusing consumers.
The only other thing i would say in defense of Windows XP and why it's still about, is that Vista, apart from some small things (most of which are covered by third parties) it offers very little reason to upgrade from Windows XP on the business desktop. For example for my network i would have to purchase a whole set of desktop's just to get everyone to where they are now. Windows XP works well, it's stable and it gets the work done. If there was some amazing incentive then i could understand it, but there's little to entice.
Member since:2005-07-06
And that always so far has been the problem with Vista, for people without top of the line hardware at the time when they first bought it.
Vista almost certainly needs them to do some upgrading and that costs money, plus Vista costs money, yet on a small percentage of people see any real benefits moving from XP that they have already paid for to Vista.
Member since:2005-12-15
Member since:2007-08-11
Creative drivers come to mind from my own experience. I don't blame Microsoft at all. I blame Creative.
It is as much Microsoft's fault as any hardware incompatibility on Linux is Linux's fault.
Does that change your views at all?
If not, then i'm with you on this one.
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2007-02-17
If there are driver problems in Linux, say with a Broadcomm wireless device ... who to blame then? Until recently Broadcomm refused to release drivers for Linux, even though Broadcomm had them, and even though a customer had paid for their device (say as part of a laptop purchase) and that customer wanted to run Linux.
Yet most "internet gurus" would want to blame Linux for that.
If Linux cops it for poor driver support, even when it is clearly not the fault of Linux, then so too (by the same illogic) should Vista cop the blame when it has poor drivers.
Member since:
2007-05-18
What driver problems? For my PC Vista has better driver support than XP. And its more reliable. The only driver that sucks is the ATI driver for my Radeon card, but even that is better on Vista, as Vista just restarts the graphics-subsystem when the graphics driver crashes (just a flickering screen for a moment). Windows XP shows me a bluescreen and all work is lost.