Windows Archive

Microsoft will shutter its Windows XP line June 30, as planned, ceasing sales of Windows XP Professional and Windows XP Home to retailers and direct OEMs, Microsoft confirmed to eWEEK April 3. The statement from Redmond executives ends weeks of speculation that Microsoft would extend the life of the operating system as users turn up their nose at Vista, the operating system meant to supplant XP, and OEMs argue lighter versions of desktops and notebooks don't have the juice to run Vista.

"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."

Despite reports that Windows XP Service Pack SP3 would hit Release to Manufacturing soon after the RTW of Vista SP1, Microsoft has released yet another build of the next (and possibly last) service pack for its most popular operating system. The build, dubbed 'Windows XP Service Pack 3 Release Candidate 2 Refresh' (not to be confused with SP3 RC2), does not contain many changes. According to Microsoft Technet, "Beyond fixes for common Windows Update issues and the inclusion of support for HD Audio, there are no substantial differences between this beta release (build 5508) and XP SP3 RC2 (build 3311)."

"When Windows 7 launches sometime after the start of 2010, the desktop OS will be Microsoft's most 'modular' yet. Having never really been comfortable with the idea of a single, monolithic desktop OS offering, Microsoft has offered multiple desktop OSes in the marketplace ever since the days of Windows NT 3.1, with completely different code bases until they were unified in Windows 2000. Unification isn't necessarily a good thing, however; Windows Vista is a sprawling, complex OS. A singular yet highly modular OS could give Microsoft the best of all possible worlds: OSes that can be highly customized for deployment but developed monolithically. One modular OS to rule them all, let's say."

"Perhaps it's a sign of how desperate some sites are to get linked by the big aggregators, or perhaps it's a sign of how disappointed people are with Windows Vista - or both - but the endless stories about Windows 7's 'official launch' are silly and (more importantly) quite misleading."

"After many rumors as to when Windows Vista would get its much-anticipated first service pack looked improbable, Microsoft has finally dropped SP1 on the masses. SP1 rolls together 23 security updates and 550 hotfixes into a 434.5MB download (726.5MB for the 64-bit version). Apart from improvements brought by individual updates that are now part of SP1, changes that SP1 brings by itself to Microsoft's flagship OS are numerous."

"The court-mandated committee overseeing Microsoft's compliance with a federal antitrust settlement has commenced reviews on the company's next major operating system to ensure it meets the settlement's terms. The so-called Technical Committee recently received a build of Windows 7 from Microsoft and is checking it for any features that might violate the agreement. Presumably, most heavily under scrutiny is whether the OS causes host computers to favor Microsoft applications over third-party software - a practice the federal government cited in its original complaint against the company."

Another interesting tidbit to surface from the Microsoft internal emails made public as part of the "Vista Capable" lawsuit is the revelation that Wal-Mart and other large retailers were very unhappy upon being briefed about the Windows Vista Capable program. These retailers, Wal-Mart in particular, did not like Vista Home Basic, seeing it as a crippled product that would confuse and dissatisfy customers. A Computerworld article has more details.

Microsoft has admitted that SP1 for its Ultimate edition of Windows Vista will not be made available to everyone in mid-March as originally planned, because of a delay with 31 of its language packs. Vista product manager Nick White said in a blog post yesterday that Microsoft will now ship Vista Ultimate SP1 in two 'waves', with the second one coming 'later in 2008'. Customers running the 'premium' version of the operating system on their computers in English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish will be able to get the service pack shortly, according to White. But the remaining Vista Ultimate computers around the world will not receive the long-awaited update until the 31 language packs, that the software giant is presumably tweaking, are supported in SP1.

Microsoft's Sam Ramji explains how open source influenced Windows Server 2008. "Overall, we've learned and continue to learn from open source development principles. These are making their way into the mindset, development practices, and ultimately into the products we bring to market."

"Windows Server 2008, which was released earlier this month, was officially launched today. Windows Server 2008 brings many eagerly anticipated admin-pleasing features such as a stripped-down mode called "Server Core" that does away with many unnecessary features that are normally installed, and a new virtualization platform - 'Hyper-V' - that should increase Microsoft's foothold in this increasingly important market sector. Windows Server 2008 wasn't the only product to be launched today either; Visual Studio 2008 also saw its official launch, even though it has been finished and available since November, and some fanfare was made about SQL Server 2008, though that won't be finished until later in the year."

AnandTech takes a very thorough look at Vista SP1, and they conclude: "As far as the Vista user experience is concerned, users shouldn’t expect any significant changes with SP1. In this respect Vista SP1 is much like any other Windows service pack, rather than being another XP SP2. To that extent if you threw a pre-SP1 system and a post-SP1 system in front of us, we’d need to do some low-level benchmarking to identify which one was using SP1. In day-to-day use, the difference is not obvious outside of the specific improvements we’ve talked about."

"A little over a year after the first appearance of Vista, Service Pack 1 is nearly ready for download. SP1 is a useful but not crucial update to the OS, and one that won't greatly affect your computing day, at least not outwardly. The bulk of the development effort has gone toward upgrading security subsystems - elements that enterprise clients find appealing but consumers and small-business users won't really notice (although they'll feel better knowing about them). The bottom line is that there's absolutely no reason not to download SP1 (which you'll receive automatically if you have AutoUpdate turned on), so it's almost a given that it will become the standard in the very near future."

Despite expectations for a March 18 release, reports all over the Internet have surfaced that Vista SP1 x64 RTM has been released via Windows Update. Not everyone seems to have access to it (yet, keep hitting that 'Check for Updates' button): it has only appeared for certain individuals at the moment. The update is of course optional; users need to manually choose to download it even if they have their Windows Update set to retrieve updates automatically.