Windows XP support ended - day 1

andydiysaver

securityguy wrote: »

And perhaps you thought that in 2001, too. But a lot of people didn't, and it's interesting to see that the beloved Windows XP that is the perfect balance was seen in a very different light when it shipped.

I think with emotive language like that you've got as much of a problem with XP as I have with ridiculously resource hungry processes - "beloved XP" is beloved because not one system after it yet has had the sticking power that XP had. in short, it was a damn good product.


...too good, which is why the industry is very anxious to not repeat that mistake, and therefore happier to put out substandard, resource hungry , expendable rubbish with a shelf life of five minutes rather than any sustainable quality in the hope that there's not another XP in the future that represents the financial equivalent of them cutting off their noses to spite their faces and another decade or longer in the wilderness wondering what pays their six figure salaries while the public stop moving a second time!


XP was too good and that's why people on this thread are having this discussion, Microsoft wanted a disposable cash cow that they couldn't wait to get on the scrap heap but they ended up with an industry standard that bit their !!!!!! for a decade longer than they expected especially because they started churning out the expendable rubbish far too quickly afterwards not reckoning on people having to leave XP first before getting into their disposable OS model.....

andydiysaver

......... and it really isn't rocket science. To defend the disposable OS business model is to have a financial interest in making OS's disposable........

spud17

Let's all go back to driving Mk1 Escorts and Morris 1000s. (I did)
Perfectly adequate at the time, but.......

robatwork

Wasn't expecting an exposition on Elite but it was a pleasant reminisce.

I bet understanding the code Elite used wasn't quite as tricky as docking that damn ship!

Lum

spud17 wrote: »

Let's all go back to driving Mk1 Escorts and Morris 1000s. (I did)
Perfectly adequate at the time, but.......

Actually a good analogy.

These days the info needed to break into one of those things is available to anyone who cares to google for it, meaning any bored teenager can do it.

The modern ones are a bit tougher to get into leaving it in the realm of the pros who generally aren't interested in Joe Blogg's school run wagon as it's not worth their time.

buglawton

With the demise of XP, Chromebooks and Android laptops look like the true successors for economy laptop-like keyboard and screen experience. With MacBooks taking the top end. Windows just doesn't look relevant for home or on the move computing any more.

securityguy

buglawton wrote: »

With the demise of XP, Chromebooks and Android laptops look like the true successors for economy laptop-like keyboard and screen experience. With MacBooks taking the top end. Windows just doesn't look relevant for home or on the move computing any more.

The point about Windows is that for a long time it was OK. I managed a large Windows estate, or at least I managed the staff who managed a large Windows estate, and I never heard any of them getting excited about it, in the way that Unix nerds do. They talked about how it was "professional" and "for business", although as about 99% of the users only used it as an application launcher, I suspected they were actually talking more about the user-space libraries than any particular magic in the kernel. But it was OK. For any given application there was usually something better, but the point about Windows was that you could run roughly the same thing over the whole gamut from laptop to data centre. OSX was usually a better desktop/laptop experience, Linux ran your routers and firewalls better, Solaris was (and is) superior for your big database and messaging workloads, Android's better on small devices, VRTX and PSOS are better for real time and embedded in a way.

But it didn't matter: if you went with Windows, you could at least have a tolerable solution in pretty well every niche, and at worst you were running the second or third best. And the same people could manage the whole range, which is a massive cost saving. So Windows won by being the second or third best in every position, while no-one [STRIKE] except nutters like me[/STRIKE] would run Solaris on their laptop (even Solaris kernel engineers use Macs), you can't run Oracle on Android, etc, etc.

But for consumers, none of that matters. They don't have all the issues that heterogeneous networks bring, they don't need to do detailed system admin (and wouldn't be able to anyway) and have no particular reason to run the less than excellent rather than the best value. And you're right: Chromebooks are cheap and effective, Macs are nicer, Android is bomb-proof, iOS is fashionable. Windows is just, meh. The colour beige. Naive users are frightened into believing that their children will be disadvantaged by not using it, which is largely !!!!!!!!, but now the centre of many people's digital lives (particular mothers of young children, who are the most influential in many ways) is either a tablet, and whether people have iPads or Android devices, they sure as hell don't have Windows Surfaces.

buglawton

It's almost a pity. MIcrosoft put its hand in the greedy box and grasped the gold. Now it cannot remove it's clenched fist through the hole it entered by.

The solution is to continue to make lightweight operating systems, supported and if not free, at least cheap, to all comers.

If MS goes the way of Nokia it will be because it did not do this simple thing.


Typed on my tablet

debitcardmayhem

buglawton wrote: »

It's almost a pity. MIcrosoft put its hand in the greedy box and grasped the gold. Now it cannot remove it's clenched fist through the hole it entered by.

The solution is to continue to make lightweight operating systems, supported and if not free, at least cheap, to all comers.

If MS goes the way of Nokia it will be because it did not do this simple thing.


Typed on my tablet

Not a good analogy using the greedy box argument, Microsoft don't do much in the hardware arena c.f. Apple say. Apple kit has it's fans because of its "must have the new offering (albeit after only 6 months....) ", but do they still supply updates for iPad 1s and probably shortly 2s. Compared to "Smart TVs" which never seem to get upgraded after 1 year, I feel too much venom is being directed at M$ unfairly compared to other tech vendors , but that is just my opinion and of course others are entitled their own , some may say misguided, opinions.
I prefer to use linux , but for compatibility with my lovely wife's employers and many of my friends I try to keep my Windows knowledge fairly up to date, however I no longer desire to keep XP going on any of my systems.

securityguy

buglawton wrote: »

It's almost a pity. MIcrosoft put its hand in the greedy box and grasped the gold. Now it cannot remove it's clenched fist through the hole it entered by.

The solution is to continue to make lightweight operating systems, supported and if not free, at least cheap, to all comers.

If MS goes the way of Nokia it will be because it did not do this simple thing.


Typed on my tablet

Microsoft's problem, in terms of its internal politics, was that the Windows division always saw itself as the heart of the company, and Gates and then Balmer supported them in that. So the basic purpose of the applications was to sell more Windows licenses, and Microsoft saw its main driver as getting Windows on as many desktops as possible. The OSX/Office deal was the exception, but it was an aberration signed to try to fight off the DoJ monopoly investigation, and Microsoft made it as difficult as possible for Apple to get anything useful (the benefit to Microsoft of Windows on OSX was that it staved off the claim that they had a monopoly).

That was why Microsoft made the stupid decision to not sell the (long done and dusted) port of Office onto iPad, because they assumed that every license sold would be a Windows license (in this case on Surface) not sold. And it's why the Office 365 web service is so hobbled.

Under their new leadership they have realised two vital things. Firstly, that their real crown jewels are in Office, and whether Office runs on Windows, Linux or iOS/OSX is neither here nor there, a license sale is a license sale. People are a _lot_ more locked into Office, both in terms of file formats and in terms of usage and training, than they are into Windows. And secondly, that the nightmare for Microsoft would be people deciding to adopt whatever Office-alike they could get for their iPad and them deciding that actually, they'd be OK with running that on their lap/desktop as well. Losing both the Windows _and_ the Office lock-in would be disastrous.

Hence Microsoft will now sell Office on anything. I wouldn't be surprised if they shipping it on Linux, too.

They're not going to ship XP, for a whole bunch of reasons to do with OEM relations, drivers, branding and face. The "lightweight" thing is a red herring: with memory at buttons per gigabyte, there is no Intel platform shipped in the last five years which can't run 8 (or couldn't given drivers, which is a different issue), and no commercial enterprise has the slightest interest in providing operating systems for obsolete hardware that hasn't been made since the Bush presidency, free, low-cost or otherwise.

But they are going to ship Office on other platforms, which will render Windows a minor side-show.