“Responding to feedback from customers and third parties, Microsoft has extended the availability of Windows XP to both original equipment manufacturers and retail channels through to June 30, 2008. Originally slated to be pulled from retail shelves and OEMs on January 30, 2008 – only a year after Windows Vista’s debut – customers requested more time to prepare for the upgrade to Vista.”
Who wants to bet that MS will extend XP support even after June 30, 2008?
“Who wants to bet that MS will extend XP support even after June 30, 2008?”
So long as XP is profitable, that’s a bet no one will wager against. The problem then becomes supportability though…since they are extending the front end (sales) they’ll also have to extend the back end (support), which if you’re MS is many millions of dollars lost by having engineers who are still trained on supporting XP.
I’m sure they’ve had an entire fleet of accountants crunch the numbers, and my bet would be that they’ll barely break even by pushing both the frontend and backend out 6 more months…however they also have to keep their big customers happy knowing that eventually they’ll recoup those costs in Vista licenses.
The point is that I’m sure this wasn’t some sudden decision. It probably went all the way up to Ballmer.
“Support” is not the same thing as “availability to OEMs and retail channels”. MS’s policy has been to support their various OS releases for a number of years–even after newer, shinier ones have hit the street. Didn’t Windows 2000 just get its’ final “rollup” within the past year or so?
Nevertheless, I agree with what I assume is the actual sentiment behind the statement–XP will very likely be available for well beyond June 30.
I bet they will because Vista’s sales are not what they expected currently.
…to let XP go, that much is obvious. I’m glad OEMs are getting tougher with MS and putting they’re feet down about this. I certainly would not like to be involved with a forced upgrade for a large company with many custom or in house apps that need tweaking for them to run on Vista.
An interesting part of the article is the much longer availability of XP in third world countries. The fact that MS feels most new machines in the third world will not be able to run XP before June 2010 is quite an eye opener for me. I knew there was a difference, but 3 years in the IT world is forever.
“I certainly would not like to be involved with a forced upgrade for a large company with many custom or in house apps that need tweaking for them to run on Vista.”
You make it sound like it’s such a cut-and-dry decision for large companies to just say “hmm…let’s move to an entirely new platform.” That is not the case, and most certainly if they have mission critical apps that were designed to run on XP, then they most definitely wouldn’t just upgrade for the sake of upgrading. New platforms have to offer some sort of value for new application development…convincing companies to rewrite existing apps is a lose-lose scenario.
I work in IT (as a programmer) for a Global 500 company, and Vista isn’t even on our 12 month horizon. We’ll actually upgrade most of our servers to Windows Server 2008 long before we start general deployment of Vista to the desktop for one reason alone: The value is many times more apparent.
Agreed.
The multinational I work for has Solaris servers in each location, and Windows desktops.
Windows 2000 desktops to be precise.
We have a mixture of Linux and Windows XP on the personal machines they give us. The laptops and the lab machines, but the main network is still Windows 2000.
We have a few test machines with Vista on them, but, so far, they are useless as they are not compatible with the scripts in use by our network admins.
We run 24/7 and if someone in Singapore has a computer problem, the admins from UK or Brazil will remotely have a look, and fix it. Using our tools Vista will let them look, but not touch.
When a machine dies, it is replaced, sometimes with a machine with Vista, but it is immediately formatted, and Windows 2000 installed.
Until we re-write all the admin tools, we will not have a rollout to either XP or Vista.
are Win2k drivers for Vista presintalled PC available ?
They have to be… most of the new hardware is of course also being marketed at XP users as upgrades as well as at new Vista PCs.
Good point and no offense but the amount of times, usually on a departmental basis, some fool of a manager has pushed the idea of an upgrade for whatever reason has been a large bone of contention for both myself and many sys admins I have worked with.
Only recently, in my experience, have companies started to take the ‘IT guys’ allot more seriously. I remember one bank I was working for where a director decided that he absolutely had to run his Minidisc NetMD apps on his company workstation. We where running Win2k on all our internal desktops at the time, yet he needed WinXP to be fully compatible with his home setup.
At the time, we had lots of internally developed apps that where having teething problems with XP, and the reason why we hadn’t even considered upgrading was the relative immaturity of pre-SP1 WinXP. But all these arguments fell on deaf ears.
As far as this (financial) director was concerned, if his desktop could not run the latest version of his app, then there was something fundamentally wrong with the OS and we, the IT department, where just a bunch of lazy sods for not having upgraded the entire bank’s PCs. It took our manager two weeks of all kinds of tactics to stop a company wide roll out of WinXP, because telling your boss that he should mind his own department requires quite a delicate touch.
Granted, it has been a few years since I was in a similar situation, but you make it sound like this kind of situation doesn’t happen. Believe me, it happens all the time.
It depends on which Third World country they are referring to. Down here in Jamaica we have systems that are capable of running Vista. We’re not an emerging market.
I suppose I myself don’t see Jamaica as a third world country – but as a second world (new world) country with problems. Or perhaps I just like the music!
Call it a two-and-a-halfth world coountry?
biteydog (UK)
I’d love to gloat over the failure of Vista, and take some solace in the fact that Microsoft’s overreaching DRM is not *yet* the norm, but I’ve rather have news that included things like *mass migration* or *rival OS challenges dieing Monopoly*. Its sad to see that Linux and Apple grab a few percent of a growing market, while the faithful pin their hopes on Vista SP1, blindly denying anything is wrong…rather than this is the unacceptable norm for Microsoft. XP took two service packs to get *better* and still isn’t great, yet can compete with Vista an OS 5 years in the Making for those who can choose, and however you move the dates was RTM last year, there have been 2 version of X and Gnome and 4 of Linux since then, all those success stories have suddenly gone quite, SP1 is looking later and later, and what is it really going to change…its not a rewrite. Why is nobody saying it was released before it was ready for the Desktop? Although we are staring to see people questioning its existence at all.
What I don’t get is if SP1 is going to answer all the faithfuls problems is why they are not saying “If I have to buy XP now because Vista is still not ready, can I upgrade to Vista for free if it ever is?”, because the OS is just so expensive to buy separately. I just find it all so bizarre.
Edited 2007-09-28 23:30
Same uptake problem with XP, and now it dominates the market.
This is not a sign of doom or impending failure, this is a sign of a cautious consumer and less-than-perfect drivers.
If you think the monopolistic grip Microsoft has on the Operating System is going anywhere soon then you’re delusional. This will not happen until rival operating systems become just that — rivals. Right now the situation OSX/Linux/etc are in is not even close to competition to Microsoft.
I really don’t see this as a big issue, I think this entire Vista thing has been blown out of proportion. I use Vista, and I’ve upgraded my entire family to use Vista and it’s gone with little or no incidents.
Remember the die hard Windows 2000 users? This is the same situation because at this point in time the culmination of bad drivers with some minor issues (most actually ARE addressed in Vista SP1) and mild performance problems (Already partly addressed in two patches, and more patches incoming before SP1)
Vista, like OSX(10.0) and any other Operating System iteration with major architectural change, is experiencing growing pains.
You can point out it’s impending doom, how it’s rivals are going to overtake it, how it’s DRM is so absolutely horrible, etc. but you need to wake up from your dream world some time.
“I really don’t see this as a big issue, I think this entire Vista thing has been blown out of proportion. I use Vista, and I’ve upgraded my entire family to use Vista and it’s gone with little or no incidents.”
Good for you but many have lots of issues. Oh for starters there’s the whole Vista not playing nice with XP networks. There’s the random “explorer” crash, yeah it recovers which is a step up from XP at least but still. There’s the bizarre random crash when I try to make a new folder in a directory. There’s the DRM nonsense where they now hold my soundcard hostage!!!! I relied on my in and outputs for taking family tree casette interviews into the computer but NOOOOOO MSFT in its infinite DRM wisdom now holds my soundcard hostage because *GASP* I might just record my old music tapes into the computer and we just can’t have that.
There remains only one reason left I have Vista (or XPMCE before it) on my computer: MythTV is a bitch to setup. Why multimedia software for Linux remains so cryptic boggles my mind and frankly pisses me off. I realize some of the problem is having to reverse engineer the hardware cards but the rest of it doesn’t have to be so bloody cryptic does it?! Gawd.
Once OpenSuse 10.3 is final I plan on finding a MythTV guru and just paying them to set the damn thing up for me because I don’t have the time, I’ve combed through the web page tips and it still won’t work.
MythTV, I heard you can use that for multimedia etc, I never actually got it working fully, that must actually be the Myth !
I got pissed off with MythTV and deleted the crap out of it.
Instead, I installed FREEVO from here; http://freevo.sourceforge.net/download/freevo.php
It is still awkward to get going the first time, but it is nowhere near as bad as MythTV.
In your humble opinion, that is.
One other point Nelson. Some of the reason for the venom at Vista is from a business standpoint. Your home computers likely use all purchased off the shelf, and possibly all Microsoft products even, so of course your Vista systems work. But in business much software is specialized and built by inhouse programmers or on contract. They may not run AT ALL on anything but the hardware/OS combination they have at the moment and the company doesn’t plan on changing it all just yet. Thus the reason for the extended XP end date. I think situations like that are a reason for the popularity for server based virtual machines atm.
Its sad to see that Linux and Apple grab a few percent of a growing market, while the faithful pin their hopes on Vista SP1, blindly denying anything is wrong…rather than this is the unacceptable norm for Microsoft.
To be honest with you, for those of us still on XP, nothing is wrong. We don’t really give a rat’s ass about Vista. Why? Because XP is working great. By the time XP starts to go the way of Win98, Vista will have already been whipped into shape, and they’ll probably be about ready to replace it with whatever the next version is.
Why is nobody saying it was released before it was ready for the Desktop?
I don’t think anyone (except maybe MS) is denying that it was released too early. But even if it were rock solid out of the box, for the vendors that didn’t have their hardware and software updates ready, there still would’ve been compatability issues. Nothing much that can be done about that.
Microsoft’s overreaching DRM
No, you’re making a common mistake in thinking that. It isn’t Microsoft’s DRM. It belongs to Microsoft’s partners (ie. Sony, Toshiba, etc). Why do you suppose it’s so difficult to get DVD/HD-DVD playback support under Linux? Is it because Linux vendors are lazy? No, of course not. Because Linux vendors won’t ship closed-source drivers, Sony/ Toshiba/etc aren’t going to let Linux vendors use any unauthorized means which works around their DRM schemes. Microsoft made its deal with the devil, though, and consequently Windows contains support for DVD/HD-DVD playback.
No, you’re making a common mistake in thinking that. It isn’t Microsoft’s DRM.
No, you’re making a common mistake in thinking that Microsoft shares no culpability at all. Please take Google for a spin to see just how heavily Microsoft is investing and promoting DRM. Just one of many sample pages from Microsoft’s own web space:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/drm/faq.aspx
That looks like a FAQ to me.
Perhaps you should read it? It may answer some questions you have, since it’s obvious you have a misunderstanding.
Rad that FAQ he posted, pay attention to 4.6
They have been promoting that for years.
ummm…. WRONG. It IS Microsoft’s DRM. Microsoft has a huge stake in HD-DVD which is why they chose it for the XBox 360. Microsoft created their DRM to sell to content providers. They in essence created the movie/music download market, without them we’d actually have non-drm music and movies.
As for Linux vendors not shipping playback again WRONG. Several vendors do just that. Linspire, and Mandriva, to name just two. For that matter, running the so called hack to make them work in Linux I see no problem with whatsoever because when you buy a DVD/etc… device you expect to use it for that purpose! So what if the software for it is for Windows what matters is the device, hell if it weren’t for MICROSOFT demanding the stupid codec exist in the first place there wouldn’t BE a freaking license agreement. Computer hardware devices used to work right out of the box before they came up with all these stupid schemes to sell licenses for them or have you all forgotten the Apple 2’s and Commodore 64’s?
That drive maker x didn’t make software for Linux is their problem not mine, I didn’t rent the device or borrow it I turned over my cash for it and I’ll use it however the HE double hockey sticks I want. The founders of this country would roll over in their graves if they saw how easily we’ve given up our freedoms and sovereignty.
ummm…. WRONG. It IS Microsoft’s DRM. Microsoft has a huge stake in HD-DVD which is why they chose it for the XBox 360. Microsoft created their DRM to sell to content providers. They in essence created the movie/music download market, without them we’d actually have non-drm music and movies.
Sigh. Read the wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_DVD), for chrissakes: “The HD DVD standard was jointly developed by Toshiba and NEC.” In other words, Toshiba and NEC own the IP. Microsoft partnered with Toshiba and NEC because the licensing terms are more favorable than Blu-Ray. Sony apparently wants royalties on every copy of Windows sold in order to distribute Blu-Ray drivers. So, again, the DRM doesn’t belong to Microsoft. It belongs to Microsoft’s partners who license it to Microsoft.
As for Linux vendors not shipping playback again WRONG. Several vendors do just that. Linspire, and Mandriva, to name just two.
The overwhelming majority of Linux vendors will not distribute closed source drivers.
For that matter, running the so called hack to make them work in Linux I see no problem with whatsoever because when you buy a DVD/etc… device you expect to use it for that purpose! So what if the software for it is for Windows what matters is the device, hell if it weren’t for MICROSOFT demanding the stupid codec exist in the first place there wouldn’t BE a freaking license agreement.
Got any more straw man arguments? These comments are out in left field. I never even discussed this issue at all.
Computer hardware devices used to work right out of the box before they came up with all these stupid schemes to sell licenses for them or have you all forgotten the Apple 2’s and Commodore 64’s?
Again, relevance?
That drive maker x didn’t make software for Linux is their problem not mine, I didn’t rent the device or borrow it I turned over my cash for it and I’ll use it however the HE double hockey sticks I want. The founders of this country would roll over in their graves if they saw how easily we’ve given up our freedoms and sovereignty.
This may come as a shock but you don’t have the right to violate copyright law, regardless of whatever twisted definition you apply to your “freedoms and sovereignty”.
Linux don’t have trouble playing DVD’s. That works quite fine. Legally – even in USA (circumvention of DRM or other copy-preventing measures do not violate DMCA unless you distribute the cop{i,es}).
Linux don’t have trouble playing DVD’s.
No kidding, Sherlock. I never said that Linux had trouble playing DVDs. Read for comprehension.
And oh btw. Pre-Vista Windows cannot play DVD’s or anything really. WMP is completely incapable of doing so unless third party software is installed, which usually cost an awful lot of money.
Apart from mp3 and pcm it supports nothing. Of containers only vmw, asf. avi and wav are supported.
As a media OS it stinks – until you have everything installed (after googling for days to find all the codecs, splitters etc. required to get proper media playback).
And oh btw. Pre-Vista Windows cannot play DVD’s or anything really. WMP is completely incapable of doing so unless third party software is installed, which usually cost an awful lot of money.
Which proves my original point that it isn’t Microsoft’s DRM.
As a media OS it stinks – until you have everything installed (after googling for days to find all the codecs, splitters etc. required to get proper media playback).
Oh, please. You have the nerve to suggest that XP is more difficult to get multmedia running than Linux?!? Dude, lay off the crack.
“Why is nobody saying it was released before it was ready for the Desktop?”
I’ve maintained for years that SP1/.1 releases are a necessary part of the OS development process, and OSes are never “ready” until that step has taken place.
No matter when a .0 version of a new OS is released, it will be before it is “ready”. Part of the process of getting a new OS “ready” is to actually release the .0 version, then fix the reported problems in the SP1/.1 release. Vista had the largest public beta program in history, but that’s still nothing compared to actually RTM’ing the product when it comes to getting feedback on problems.
OK, I don’t run Linux, maybe it’s different there, where every .0 release of a new version is flawless. But I’ve been running Mac and Windows for years, and I know that every .0 version of those OSes since 1987 has required a SP1/.1 release to get it “ready”. Microsoft could’ve continued working on Vista for the next 10 years before RTMing it, and it still wouldn’t have been “ready” because the required SP1/.1 step would still need to take place.
No, Linux isn’t the Jedi of all .0 releases. For instance openSuSE 10.2 (<– .2) still has ridiculous bugs, problems, annoyances and what not.
Every year I give Linux another shot and it lets me down time after time.
I’ve yet to see any maintained software that’s been released without any follow-up bug patches or fix-up releases.
Maybe you should make a partition for a small Linux install. Give you something to tinker with for an hour or so sometimes.
There is something about .0 releases, so much so, that if I see one, I will install it and have a look.
If it is marked alpha, I will install onto a test machine, and try to help the author by either finding the bugs, or reporting back if it works perfectly.
Linux software beta versions, while still in development, have been that much tested and altered, it would put any major companies QA department to shame.
You see, almost 100% of the authors or a Linux app, will appreciate feedback, and they make the changes or fix the problems after they are notified.
Large companies like Microsoft, and to an extent Mozilla and Novell will get around to making the changes/fixes. In the case of Microsoft, it will either be in a monthly critical update, or it will wait until the next SP.
I have beta tested for Microsoft for years, and although the cheques are nice, it would be better reward to report a problem, and have the author email me back within hours saying they have now got the problem sorted and appreciate me letting them know.
It might not be much, but at least I then feel as if I have helped out (my) Linux community.
There is a lot of people around here that keep saying Linux only has 1.5% or 0.7% of marketshare so no-one is using it, emm, last year there was 250 million computers sold.
So, lets use last years figures alone, lets say there is actually only 1% of users running Linux, thats 2.5 million users. Now, 80% of those users are simple users and could not care less about the system, but the other 20% are hackers, that is 500000 hackers.
These 500000 people are the ones who make the difference. They are the ones who will report bugs to get them fixed, they are the ones testing for usability etc.
Many major corporations would relish having half a million people helping them get it right.
These figures are not accurate, one of my own website shows Linux use at 8%, but that site is Linux orientated, so it shows, all them stat pages can not be trused.
full time developer works 40 h/week (moust of europa)
beeing a developer wiht a family i manage 6 h of productive programing in my spare time….
round this up to 8h.
a free time developer is 1/5 as prodactive as a full time.
that is steel 100000 developers on the linux side.
but you have to divide by the number of projects. there is no linux. there are a multitude of projets that make a distribution. we have to compere not wiith windows, but the complate user environment, office, media players …
kubunt has 21485 paketage available. so 4.65 full time developre/project on evarage. some more (kernel, kde gnome…) some less (games ?)
the bright seed is that the developes are a % of the users and the user base is growing, so the speed of linux progres will increase.
(sorry for the poor english)
dzien dobry i dziekuje z twoj interesujace wrazenia
Your English is better than my Polish, so do not apologise about it.
Bull. If companies so readily wanted people to report problems – they certainly wouldn’t do what Microsoft did and expect the customer to pay $50 to lodge a bug report – that may or may not get addressed.
*WE* the hardcore as happy to help fix a product IF the company provides a door for which we can enter and communicate with their engineers *DIRECTLY* without needing to go through 100s of layers worth of bureaucracy.
Companies *DON’T* want that model because it would then impose a level of responsibility for the products they ship – they could no longer hide behind the myth you perpetuate by claiming it is ‘too hard’.
They create the bureaucracy so they can hide their incompetency from the public. They use the mystic of ‘complication’ to justify why their products are crap, and they wrap their engineers and management in layers of bureaucracy to protect them from the ‘average user’ who it sick and tired of the excuses.
Are you running a company?
If yes, I’d never want to work for you, as you don’t seem to know anything about how to run one.
If no, try to learn a little about how to run a company that has to make some profit.
As for reporting a bug, I don’t know how it is for where you are, but here in Sweden, you have two free support calls before you have to pay (not applicable to OEM versions), but if it’s actually a BUG you report about, it will not decrement your number of free calls or cost anything.
But if what you report is just something that is due to your own incompetence, then obviously it will decrement the free calls, or you have to pay for it if you don’t have any free left.
And I don’t see any problems with that system.
Yes I have; and when ever customers had a problem – I encouraged them to contact me; for them to ring me up was a *GOOD* thing. It was good because then I could find the fault and fix it in the proceedures. Rather than a negative, I saw it as a way of improving.
Excuse me; Sun seem to be able to do it quite nicely. I’m using OpenSolaris right now; their engineers are on the front line. I submit a bug report and normally within 24/48 hours of submitting the bug I’ll have a follow up by the assigned engineer to fix up the issue.
I don’t know about you, but that is how it should be done. Prompt and efficient.
Excuse me, but *I DID NOT REPORT THE BUG TO MICROSOFT – DO I NEED TO YELL ANY LOUDER?* There was a article of a gentleman who came across a bug in Microsoft Office, he rang up Microsoft, who CONFIRMED it was a bug but wanted to charge the gentleman $50 to lodge the bug with Microsoft.
Mate, this was a guy who went OUT OF HIS WAY to inform Microsoft of a bug, Microsoft *REFUSED* to address the bug unless he PAID MICROSOFT to do so. That isn’t just greed; its stupidity in action. Its basically saying to the customer, “we don’t give a toss about our products, we have no intention of fixing any faults with out products – bugger off and leave us alone”.
Solaris has a much smaller and more technically adept community than Windows. The OpenSolaris folks don’t have to deal with all sorts of whackos or simply honest less-savvy consumers reporting issues. But I do agree with you… Microsoft’s communication with the outside is a bit too filtered. I’d be happy to see more transparency into the bug reporting and fixing process.
But I like XP now(customized it how I want), maybe because Vista just hacked me off so much. Running XP 64bit for gaming and it runs great and have absolutely no reason to install Vista. Ok so the poor sods who have a 8800 for DX10 games will but as for the OS itself XP is better and much more mature, I’ve had people turn there nose up at Vista over XP already.
I used Windows for my needs, so I’m the one in control and if I ever lost that control Windows gets kicked to the gutter for Linux.
Running XP 64bit for gaming and it runs great and have absolutely no reason to install Vista.
Exactly. XP works fine, so why pay again? It has nothing much to do with Vista’s quality.
This is an often asked question, and it’s not an easy one to answer.
You need to take a look at what you want out of Vista, and what you currently have.
Then make the choice to upgrade or not, weigh the options.
I think on the gaming front, Vista shows (perhaps future) potential to be a great gaming PC. Once the kinks in (moreso nVidia’s) graphics drivers are worked out, things should turn around.
In fact, recent releases of ATI’s latest Catalyst drivers have done a lot for me in terms of performance. This is a positive sign, there is improvement on the horizon.
Off the top of my head though, I’d tout DirectX10 (No idea if this interests you or not), rearchitecture of the Memory Manager, Cache solutions for lower-end rigs, improved sound subsystem, Networking Stack rewrite, etc.
It’s really a combination of all the above, plus the great multimedia features (Even though the nicer things like Live Photo Gallery is backported to XP) which sell the OS to me.
It has the goodness of XP, with the improvements of Vista (Instant Search, Tear free Drawing) but you may not be into the same stuff at me so your milage may vary.
Good luck =)
Yeah, there ARE a lot of great things about Vista. The WDDM driver model is actually a lot better than XPDM. It provides better virtualization and state management support. But since it’s largely invisible to most people — and hasn’t been leveraged fully by IHVs — it will take some time before the advantages are obvious. But it will happen. Vista really is a solid OS, despite what its critics say.
It’s really that solid eh? http://www.nvidia.com/object/windows_vista_hotfixes.html
Even XP didn’t have big vm issues like this and these fixes still don’t FIX it, make it better not fix it. You need patches for 4Gb memory as well, SP1 can’t come soon enough so no wonder people are holding off on Vista and want XP.
Driver issues, like I outlined in my post.
Are you reading what I say at all?
They are operating system fixes, address space usage in Vista nearly hits the 2G ceiling, that has nothing to do with drivers.
Edited 2007-09-29 02:53
The Addr Space issue was never even encountered, it was more of a foresight.
The others, were the Reliability and Performance patches which I talked about in my post as well. Their main purpose was to remedy slow file transfers.
I’m not getting the point you’re making though, are you insinuating that refining the performance of an Operating System makes it less of a solid system?
I’d call it improvement.
In my own view and experience Vista is not solid, you can show the driver card all you like but drivers are part of the OS, you have to wonder why companies can’t write solid drivers for it.
Right foresight is a good thing to have, Vista takes more than double the address space of XP, we’ll fix it when it becomes a problem, typical Microsoft speak.
Why CAN’T they write solid drivers. Ask them, they’re the ones pumping it out.
You’re blaming Microsoft for the incompetence of third party vendors, that’s not fair.
WDDM is a brand new driver model, which brings forth a LOT of new improvements to reduce the overhead of relaying information to and from API->Video Card.
Without WDDM, the advantages of DirectX10 would not be present. The only thing holding it back from superseding DX9 in performance is DRIVERS.
The Virtual Addr Space issue was that in WDDM, the Video Manager manages video memory and virtualizes it for sharing between Gaming/Aero and other things.
With DX9, the Games store their own copy of Video Memory it contains the Video Managers copy of the memory along side their own.
This was an issue FORESEEN by Microsoft and patched. The problem may still reappear in other incarnations but this fixes this specific issue.
You’re either refusing to see the facts, or not understanding the reading.
You know – it’s funny to see when a driver in Linux fails it’s always the fault of Linux, but when a driver in Windows fails it’s the fault of anything but Windows. Talking about biased…
But there MUST be a reason drivers in Vista are not functioning well – even if Vista is out for almost a year by now. There MUST be a reason they still can’t get it into decent working order.
Could it be the holy WDDDM from heaven has some dark speckles on it? Could it be the hardware makers are seriously and desperately trying to write some working drivers, but are hindered by too complicated and right-on inconsistent API’s produced by Microsoft?
Could it be the design is so broken it is nearly impossible to write a decent driver? Maybe it could be like a water bed – flatten some part out, only to see it bump up somewhere else?
Just a tought…
I wouldn’t fault any system for a driver failure, don’t throw me into that category. It’s something outside the hands of the kernel developers.
I’d call it the laziness of the Driver vendors themselves, it’s the reason why there are performance variations between ATI/NVidia in many different places.
WDDM is a brand new architecture, Windows XP’s driver model already had the chance to become refined over the years. That’s why the performance (for a little while) will be better.
I think it’s silly to start making assumptions about the quality of WDDM especially when the Driver vendors themselves admit what the problem is.
Unless you’re forgetting, WDDM was something that was drafted and implemented as a result of working with the Driver Vendors.
I’m not going to keep repeating myself though, you can re-read my past comments and make your own educated conclusion.
Best of luck.
I have been running with 4 GB on 64bit since RTM with no problems. The 4 GB problem was with certain motherboards.
as long as you look at the HCL before you build a new pc you shouldn’t have any issues (doesn’t GNULinux have one also?)
I do already have Vista
Ultimate 
My point was that slow uptake of Vista, or Microsoft extending the availability of XP, has nothing much to do with Vista’s (poor) quality as some people love to claim.
The thing is, XP works fine, and a lot of people, businesses especially, do not rush to replace it.
The quality of Windows Vista is crap – but the issue isn’t that. The issue is the fact that Microsoft is expecting people to pay upwards of NZ$800 for a retail copy of Windows – the price of a low end Acer laptop.
There just isn’t the justification; there have been no developments in Windows Vista that actually make customers want to upgrade their hardware or upgrade their software.
Windows XP was geared as an upgrade for 9x – a unification of the two. 9x was crap, the improvement in stability was worth the upgrade alone. But the reality is, Windows Vista offers nothing over and above what Windows XP SP2 can offer.
Yes it does! A pretty GUI!!!
A guy I know recently bought a new HP tower that came with Vista.
… Oh, god. He has had nothing but issues. From the computer being sluggish (its a quad core, 3ghz, intel machine with 4gb of ram) in general use, explorer freezing up, his network being slow as f–k (he’s on 8mbit cable and was getting ~100kb/s, we have that mostly fixed. but it is still slow)… It has just been a pain in the ass so far.
It also boots slower than XP. It’s going to be SP2 before I even THINK of touching Vista.
That’s obviously not the expected behavior for Vista. Instead of moaning about it, why not help your friend fix his computer or troubleshoot why it’s slow? You have a couple options: if your friend has an old copy of XP laying around and you don’t want to waste time, just install that. If you two are willing to invest a little more time, then reinstall Vista cleanly (or uninstall all of the HP junk, if there’s no simple Vista CD) and upgrade all the drivers to their latest versions. Also get rid of any “security” software on the system. Commerical AV software always seems to be poorly-written junk that just slows down your machine.
Vista really is better than XP. It’s the drivers and system-level software that hasn’t yet caught up which is holding it back.
Dude, don’t you think we have already done all this? I’ve spent the last 2 weeks ‘trouble shooting’. I found some beta drivers for the NIC which helped the slow network speed. He is going to deal with it until SP1 gets released which should fix a lot of the issues we have had.
The system has none of the extra shit HP preloads on it.
Vista is better in XP in a few areas, I’ll grant you that. But it will be awhile yet before it is up to par.
I doubt I’ll ever upgrade to it. XP is probably the last version of windows I’ll use in the coming years.
And, no, I wasn’t one of those saying that about windows 2k when XP came out
p.s.
Looking over my post, I realize that the fact I HAVE tried working on it was not made overly apparent. Those, to the astute reader, the line “we have that mostly fixed.” in reference to the network speeds should insinuate that we have been working on the pc.
ugh, I need to stop posting right after waking up. sorry for the typos and grammatical errors.
Stupid edit time limit….
I agree with your statement my personal reason is I am in IT and need to keep up with trends and My Media Center just needed new features.
I have 6 copies at my house either Ultimate, Business or Home Premium Microsoft gave me 5 I bought 1 3 other PC’s including my wifes laptop are running Linux or XP
(I think if Microsft didn’t give me those copies I probally would have bought 2 but the rest would still be XP)
Most of my customers have volume licenses and recieved Vista for free so why not upgrade.
There are little features that have save my butt a couple times such as the Volume Shadow Copy used in restoring single folders after a change (I know this is available in a domain enviroment but its a great feature on a stand alone machine) that feature alone saved me around the cost of Vista by itself.
Because a lot of people these days trust XP SP2 + latest fixes as it has been working great on their machines and do have it as an alternative to Vista when purchasing a new PC. Otherwise there is a potential that some people may have moved to linux. But since they know XP very well they are likely to choose it if they didn’t want Vista. So it is still a win for Microsoft.
Agreed. Extending XP’s lifespan makes it possible for MS to address deficiencies in Vista so that, when they’re ready to buy another computer, Vista won’t seem quite as bad.
Or, by June, the hardware will actually be powerful enough to use Vista respectfully for basic consumer machines.
I’ve seen Vista machines shipped with 512MB RAM, 32 of which taken away by shared graphics. Performance was as can be imagined.
I’ve seen similar machines with more than adequate performance in Vista, so your point isn’t that valid.
Vista is the new Millennium. Most people find that XP has matured to the point where it does everything they need and on older hardware. Those wanting bleeding edge hardware may end up with Vista but they may not know what they’ve bargained for. Those faced with an upgrade to Vista or a switch to an alternative should give one of the myriad Linux flavors a serious look. Chances are most people will be thrilled with Linux for most mundane tasks and have a breath-taking 3D desktop via Compiz or Beryl that blows the doors off anything Vista has to offer.
But does this mean anything to the XP Pro lifecycle? Will mainstream and extended support also be lengthened? If not, then this announcement is fairly meaningless.
I dont think Microsoft have a choice in not offering XP any longer.Why not milk the old cow till its dead until your new calf grows up.?
I seem to recall when XP first came out, people were sticking with 98 (the gamers) and 2000 (business use). It happens with -every- major upgrade to Windows. People protest because the OS is new, and needs bug fixes… vendors need time to figure out all the little ‘snags’ in the API before they can write really stable drivers… people will have upgraded their hardware because of their multi-year cycle between updating hardware -anyway-, and it’ll come with the new Windows.
I really don’t understand why people come out of the woodwork every time Microsoft releases a new OS, just to bitch and moan. Yes, XP is ‘mature’ now. It’s had years of service packs, updated drivers, hardware designed -for- XP use, et cetera, et cetera. Short of making Vista, well, completely XP compatible, you’re going to run into those snags. Just like moving from 2000 to XP. People protested there, too.
People would run XP in “Windows Classic” mode because it was ‘faster’. All the ‘eye candy’ was useless, slow cruft. Now we see XP-alike skins for independent OSes, hobby OSes, and even certain DEs for Linux.
I mean, I’ve stuck with XP myself. I participated in the public Vista release candidate 2 program, and decided XP was ‘good enough’ until I can afford a Mac. Everyone’s welcome to their own opinion. But can we all admit we’ve -all- been here before?
Yes, but back when XP came out, neither Linux nor OS X could be considered ‘better’ unless you were already users.
But now, people can clearly see that Vista sticks out as a sore thumb compared to Linux and Mac OS X, even if they’ve never used either.
One thing I’ve noticed is that over the last year, everybody has become much more open to linux and macs, even if they have no intention of switching, they can start to respect other’s choice.
There’s still Linux and Mac trolls/zealots, but the big difference is that a slashdot thread now has lots of honest-to-God “give Mac a chance” comments and recommendations that even admit to their previous blind bias against the platform. Whenever “what’s the best laptop” comes up, there’s tons and tons of recommendations for the MacBookPro, even if running Linux on it.
People can no longer deny that the alternatives are faster, more efficient, less resource wasteful and more compatible than ever before.
Just like moving from 2000 to XP. People protested there, too.
well yes, but the difference between 2k (=nt 5) and xp (=nt 5.1) is much smaller than between xp and vista (=nt 6).
Mate, if they completely broke all compatibility but there were new, native applications which ran even better than on Windows XP – people wouldn’t complain. If the driver APIs weren’t so riddled with bugs and contradictions, the drivers would be developed a lot faster and a lot more reliable.
Take Intel 3945 A/B/G driver, for example; it was horrid on Windows XP and Vista – and yet, on Linux, OpenBSD and Solaris – very reliable.
It took a while, and many false starts. I decided to go cold turkey and remove Microsoft from all my computers in favor of some Linux and BSD stuff.
Since quitting I have also noticed that my health has been improving. I can actually breath better, and food tastes so much better to me now! I have started exercising, and I am in the best shape of my life. And financially? WOW. I now have far more money then I had before as I am not wasting it with Microsoft. It may seem like your not spending a lot with Microsoft, but once you quit you realize how much it can really add up! My time is more free as well, because I don’t waste so much time during the day constantly having to use Microsoft products rather than be productive. I have noticed that this has caused my IQ to increase and it allowed me to spend more time with my family.
I know for some folks out there it may be difficult to quit or you feel you CANT quit, but let me be an example to you that it can be done.
You know, I hear the die hard geeks bitching and moaning about DRM – when the number of law abiding users for whom this causes problems seem to be able to be counted on one hand. ‘Joe sixpack’ could give a flying **** about DRM.
As someone who builds and sells whiteboxes, the REAL problems with Vista are obvious.
Audio drivers – Creative was giving little more than lip service in this department prior to launch on the RC’s, after it’s not much better. Intel’s drivers are unstable as hell, in fact the only company that seems to have gotten it right is VIA
Because when I think quality audio output, I think VIA integrated chipsets.
Networking Drivers – Even when you can GET working drivers for existing devices, a lot of times the automatic updates will **** your networking install. A LOT of nForce4 chipset mainboards for example work with the ‘default’ drivers – until automatic updates runs or you try to use the drivers from nVidia – then your NIC stops working, and the only solution is to reboot in safe mode and delete the new one manually (including all of it’s files) reboot and PRAY the auto-detect reinstalls the old driver. (took four hours on the phone to MS to solve this one) since even system restore won’t roll you back to the old driver – of course unless you set it to manual updates and tell it never to install the NIC driver, it’s just going to **** you again on the next update.
Stability – I’ve seen brand new hardware with all the right drivers, with a ‘Vista Experience’ rating in excess of 7 just ‘lock up’ inexplicably – oh, I’m sorry, have an application (at random – no single app seems to be the cause) in under 10 minutes. We had one machine in the shop that there was NOTHING wrong with it mechanically or that we could find anything wrong in the drivers – where left up/running overnight Trillian, Opera, uTorrent, excel and Word had ALL ‘hung’ – while vista plodded along as if nothing was wrong, not even giving you a ‘not responding’ after the program name. Try killing them from task manager, and it acts like it did it without throwing an error, but the task is still listed?!?
I am for the most part an advanced user who can handle most anything any OS throws at me, comfortably switching between OSX, Gnome, KDE, XFCE and Windows with barely breaking a step… and I have to say this is the WORST DISASTER of an Operating system I have EVER seen. This makes Windows ME look good – hell, I’d get more functionality out of going back to Windows 3.1 than Vista is able to provide… and the problem has exactly two things to do with DRM – and Jack left town, took his **** with him.
Our shop no longer sells Vista, and has NO interest in doing so in the future – in fact we are stockpiling copies of XP since NOBODY who walks in the door wants linux and the few that tried come back comparing the functionality to a trip in the wayback machine as far as a deskop OS goes.
Edited 2007-09-29 08:23
People like to argue about which OS is better.
I say run them both at the same time seamlessly and sacrifice nothing.
If you need Windows stuff use Wine or Cedega to run games and apps that are well supported. Everything else can be done in seamless VM mode.
Just get VirtualBox 1.5 installed on your Linux machine.
You people just so easily forget that running Windows at home is so far from running Windows at companies, in mixed environments, multiple dozens of apps you never see at home, network issues a home user never thinks about. Seeing them work seamlessly, [Windows is a bigger issue these days, no offence, but it is as it is], is more a matter of luck than anything else.
Well what I meant was VirtualBox supports coherency mode on Linux hosts like Parallels does on OS X. No need to deal with SeamlessRDP and RDP servers anylonger.
“Customers requested more time to prepare for the upgrade to Vista.”
As for myself, I don’t ask for time to prepare for the upgrade, I want to stick to XP as long as possible.
There are four problems with Vista, imho
1. It’s too expensive for what you get.
2. Linux and perhaps Mac can afford betas and rough edges. Their users have come to expect it, and in the case of Linux substantial numbers of users enjoy the testing procedure. Microsoft can’t afford to do this, just as a builder can’t afford to sell a “beta” house where the window-frames fall out once a week. By releasing something that isn’t ready, Microsoft have gone completely against the expectations of their customers.
3. Vista has been so long in the making that it’s end up as the last of the 1990s OSes – huge, bloated, monolithic. Just as the PC is splitting up into smaller, nimbler and more energy-efficient smart boxes and indeed components – multiple cores, etc – Microsoft come along with this. They are out of step with the times.
4. Too many aspects of Vista – DRM, authentication, constantly watching you, expensive new compoments, etc. – are there because they suit Microsoft and their corporate pals. Users aren’t stupid. They’ve seen this coming a mile off and they don’t like it at all.
Windows CE is a good product. A lot less bloat. They would do well to make a desktop OS out of it instead of restricting it to PDAs and such.
Microsoft’s decision to let OEMs sell Windows XP for six additional months is the right move. But continued XP demand isn’t a knock against Windows Vista.
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/vista/xps_success_isnt_vista…
Look for the most part non of us have a special Interest in this OS war other than seeing out favorite come out on top. Lets look at the important Facts.
Number 1.
MS still has around 89% of the Market so they are not going away anytime soon but they are declining. Although with such large numbers many people will move to Vista simply because people will do with what they know.
Number 2
Mac is gaining market share and has lost its stigma as a useless computer. People now see the value in it and with Advantages like the EA, Transgaming deal Mac will soon start closing the Gaming gap.
Number 3
Linux is also on the rise and is Also starting to enjoy better gaming threw Transgaming. More OEMs are offering it including Dell, HP and Lenovo. It is being pushed into main stream light much like Apple has.
Number 4
This is probably the most important, The rise of OSX and Linux and the decline in MS is good for everyone (I am referring to customer) as it will give us more options and standards will be more important as being cross compatible will be need to stay in the game.
Unless we work for MS, Apple, the FSF or a Linux distro what is the point of this argument all 3 OS can be a success without the others failing and as consumers we should be looking for the best tool for the job.
If a company can’t write a good linux driver guess what the community will write it for them… So why isn’t one of the worlds biggest company at least over seeing and actively participating in it’s own driver development.
dx 10 has been said to be a selling point of vista many times but as I have pointed out twice this year falling leaf/ alky will bring dx10 to everyone.
http://fallingleafsystems.com/compatibility/
Microsoft has always stumbled here and there but these days they may not have ample time to pick themselves up. By the time Vista is actually good Linux will finally be good enough for seemless use.
Edited 2007-09-29 19:41
If a company can’t write a good linux driver guess what the community will write it for them… So why isn’t one of the worlds biggest company at least over seeing and actively participating in it’s own driver development.
How does Linux drivers have anything to do with Vista or XP?
dx 10 has been said to be a selling point of vista many times but as I have pointed out twice this year falling leaf/ alky will bring dx10 to everyone.
If you mean that DX10 would be available to Linux users…Guess what? Not gonna happen. They would essentially have to duplicate all the work the Wine project has done and then implement a fully functional DX10 on top of that…There just is no point in doing that cos Wine already exists and they’ll be heading for DX10 support anyway eventually.
But if they manage to get DX10 working properly under XP then it might be of atleast some use to people.
This is nothing surprising, all of Microsoft products are competing with themselves, Exchange 2007 is competing with Exchange 2003 and in a lot of places 5.5.
Same for Windows Server, a lot of people have 2000 and see no need for 2003, when 2008 the uptake will be slower because 2003 works so well.
The early days for Microsoft were much better as they could offer big reasons to upgrade to the next release. However now the products are maturing, is there any need.
Standard offices require a system to manage their files and applications (Windows XP) they need to create and share information (Office 2003/XP) Many offices don’t need any extra stuff which Vista or Office 2007 are offering, and this is gonna be Microsoft’s biggest hurdle, how do you persuade people to purchase upgrades they don’t really need.