“I can’t count how many times people have asked me if Windows XP would be available on new PCs following Vista’s release. In the near term, the answer is as much a factor of user demand and OEM and system builder policies. That said, Microsoft will make Windows XP available for from 12 to 24 months after Vista’s general availability, depending on the sales channel.”
Some of our customers are just in the progress of migrating NT 4.0 workstations to Windows XP. No way they will introduce Vista for at least the next 5 years.
No one can help companies that are that backwards. It’s fine to expect place not to jump right away, maybe a year or so. But if someone works on that slow of a path, the world will just move past them.
Any larger company will just have policies such as no computer should be more then X years old (x =3 to 4 years), that alone will cause most systems to be running new OS’s.
Also just trying to keep older stuff supported and going would be a pain. I think a company that moves that slow has more of any issue with an IT department that want job security in forever helping employees issues instead of just installing XP or Vista and having the phones be fairly quiet.
I can see companies not wanting to dive into Vista right away, but they will just have their dells arrive and wipe the disks and install XP on them from their site license and be done with it.
For regular folk, I think they will be more miffed if after Vista launches they buy a computer and it has XP on it and not Vista, that will definitely make a lot of people mad.
“No one can help companies that are that backwards. It’s fine to expect place not to jump right away, maybe a year or so. But if someone works on that slow of a path, the world will just move past them.”
I’m guessing you’re not in business, nor IT management and decision making.
Having a stable IT framework and platform that does what you need is worth infinitely more than having a bunch of up to date but entirely unnecessary features.
The only companies that are actually risking anything are the early adoptors, depending on how far they jump with Vista, how early.
Edited 2006-12-24 06:13
The only problem I see is that support is going to run out for XP sooner rather than later.
we estimate Windows XP Professional Mainstream Support ending in late December 2008, with Extended Support ending in December of 2013
taken from http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060103-5891.html
I couldn’t find it on Microsoft’s website.
XP Home support is going to be ending even sooner than that but shouldn’t really matter.
Most home users are happy with what they get.
Indeed, like many corporate owners, one of my brothers is still sufficiently happy with Windows 98 on his computer (which admittedly is insufficient to run Vista nicely as-is) and chances are he’ll still be using it as long as that computer is functional, despite all its shortcomings: he doesn’t have the real desire to upgrade when what he’s already got appears to serve his needs more than well enough (I’m the computer geek in the family: he’s a steam engine/railroad geek, and uses his computer largely towards supporting that) and doesn’t require him to buy new stuff.
In short, he’ll end up with a more recent version of Windows when his computer dies and he replaces it with a new one that it comes with, and it isn’t likely to be a moment sooner than that. Considering he upgraded to his current P3 system from a 386, that could be a bit longer…
That is exactly what happened to my sister. She upgraded to a new laptop with Win XP when her P 2, Windows 98 laptop was destroyed by a thunderstorm, last year.
With other words, it is only the geeks who want always the latest and greatest.
Edited 2006-12-24 00:07
The problem with continuing to run Win 98 is a lack of security patches, putting that on the internet is probably a bad move.
>XP Home support is going to be ending even sooner than that but shouldn’t really matter.
Depends about what you’re calling support: if it is security updates, it *does* matter.
Considering XP, Vista and 2000 Professional before them are “desktop” operating systems, and XP being released in 2001, a 7 years support term is more than enough for most people. (And it’s actually ten years for business contracts)
To make a comparison one can look at these sites:
* http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/
* http://www.redhat.com/rhel/
RedHat also provides supports up to seven years, so they’re pretty much similar.
Windows Vista…*YAWN*.
Wake me up when Service Pack 2 has been released in 2010.
amen
Why on Earth would you buy Vista when you can still buy Windows XP? Vista offers little, for a much larger price tag.
Don’t be surprised to see XP availability go out of the Window when Vista sales aren’t forthcoming. Of course, with Microsoft’s illegal stranglehold on the OEM market, they’ll probably still get away with it. I mean, if you can no longer buy XP OEM preloaded on a new PC/Laptop, then that pretty much kills XP yes? Sure, Microsoft can still offer XP retail, but very few people buy the retail versions.
It’s about time governments started taking action on Microsoft’s OEM agreements, banning them from being able to increase the license prices if a OEM manufacturer decides to ship their systems with an alternative operating system. Banning Microsoft from dictating the terms that no OEM computers must ship without an operating system. It’s a protection racket/rort, nothing more and nothing less.
Microsoft is so afraid of real competition that it uses its monopolistic powers to stop competition. It has done it before, it will do it again, because in reality it knows that it will never be punished by an American government for fear of the damage to the US economy that it’d do.
Dave
just that and it looks very basic.
and they surely don’t wish to issue one…Anyway, I stay on Ubuntu 🙂
For PC users, there doesn’t seem to be anything new in Vista. XP has everything one would need for a desktop.