Why does Windows XP refuse to die? - Page 5

[caperjack]

7 is also harder to use

never found win7 harder to use than XP ,now when I went from win 3.11 to win95 I was lost .!!

[Palebushman]

Ah yes caperjack, them there were the days. But as with all things beautiful, it's usually quite difficult to comprehend, until one becomes more aquainted. Then of course, some become bored and proceed to tinker.
They even try to do that to Apples they tell me.

[karurozu]

the xp-sp3 is the new classic and we can't leave to die. i like its the best, too easy, you can modify all and more compatibility and don't question you commands with this stupid black screen!!!

[karurozu]

why do this question "you are the administrator" or "open as administrator" then i'm the administrator!!! in seven or vista

[ggeoff]

I suppose one important reason why XP refuses to die is that users only upgrade when they buy a new PC. There are a lot of users in the World, if not the USA, that are grateful to have a PC.

[greenknight]

Good point - even if you can afford new, several-year-old hardware does everything most people use a computer for, and it lasts a long time. You get more improvement from upgrading your internet connection or monitor.

[ggeoff]

@greenknight Yes agreed. I have a Dell 8200 as my main PC. It has MS Office etc. I bought it in 2001. I have increased the memory but it is pricy (RDRAM) so have only 750 MB. Local Broadband is slow, so I suppose to some extent the PC (Dell 8200) is limited anyway. I have of course replaced all hard drives and the DVD drive and have a nice new monitor. At present I only miss Bluray; but could add a bluray writer on one of my networked PCs.

On reflection I would like Microsoft to prtotect those PC users that are unable to update their PCs due to financial problems but are maybe vulnerable to attacks. These users would of course be computer users, other than USA users, although there must be some USA users that for financial reasons are also unable to upgrade their operatoring sysem.

[Wil 0' Wisp]

Happy new year to all my readers... Since we have a Microsoft dominated world, when will they protect the investment of the poor(er) people answer highly unlikely or never. Technology spreads like warm butter, slowly. Yes Xp was good, Win7 is OK, Win8 loks more like WinHAte and ok if your on Tablets (and small ones at that?) See previous comments about windows activation and hardware failures. If one don't get you, the other one will, so learn to upgrade or learn to virtualise. XP won't die it will just fade away like broken monitor, or a TFT with backlight failure

[Palebushman]

Yes indeed Wil O'Wisp, May 2013 keep all of Dani's community happy, safe and well.
I hope too, that my 'Good old XP Pro' will see out, yet another reliable year of good service. While I see all around me diving into purchasing these 'Smart Phones' and 'Tablets' because they are so very convenient to carry around, I wonder how they will all feel when their ISP's find every conceivable excuse to hike up the service costs, which, as sure as eggs are eggs, they most certainly will.

[JW1234]

Simple because XP is good and is what an O/S should be - It does not need buzzers and bells at all its a good O/S. We still useit as well as Windows 7. Would not bother with Windows 8 though (unless it has Start 8 installed) , what a total waste of time that is.

Microsoft are just keeping their shareholders happy to garner new financial support from the money markets. That's all they are doing they have to be sseen to be releasing "something new", but it's really not that new at all.

Most AV systems these days are pretty robust to overcome XP flaws in reality and provided you keep it up to date there are not going to be that many issues I would not have thought.

[David hakim]

let there be freedom of choise whether XP OR 7 Freedom is mind and i prefare xp the rest is up to you.

[Prasad Thale]

What about the users who purchased Windows Xp single user or multiuser licences? They will never give up Windows Xp. Windows Xp with SP3 is not as unsecure as Windows 98; so chances are that Microsoft will never be able to impress users to go for their current & future OSs. Win 7 is OK; but Windows 8 is undoubtedly OS with worst interface for non-tab type system desktop users. What one can mere guess. Microsoft`s efforts for Windows 8 were in wrong direction....

[MidiMagic]

The more I use my wife's Windows 7 computer, the more I appreciate XP. The new versions of Windows are clumsy, and often do things that get in the way.

I think that no mouseover functions should ever be allowed. The computer should never do anything until you actually click on something.

[ggeoff]

Well, maybe I have not had enough time with windows 7. I am still getting used to Office greater than 2003. One issue not mentioned (I think) is that XP etc can only use 4GB of memory(3GB?) unless its a 64 bit edition. So if one has for example a Dell workstation you'll need a 64 bit operating system to make use of the memory that can be installed. Or have I missed something? This issue applies to all the other MS operating systems to. So I presume that those PCs that can take more than 4GB of memory are supplied with a 64 bit operating system and have dual boot into 32 bit for legacy programs.

[MidiMagic]

That is of little use when the computer can't take more than 1 GB.

What I want to know is why software keeps getting bigger. There is no real increase in function.

I still have a 1 MB MS-Dos 6.22 computer I need for a wonderful music composition program. The company went out of business after getting hit with the forced change to Windows, and two years later, with a totally incomatible Windows 97.

I worked in a lab in the 1990s, and the conversion to Windows made hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment unusuable, because the new OS could not work the old hardware. We kept as many DOS computers as we could running, but ran out of working hardware.

[Reverend Jim]

Software keeps getting bigger because once the market has been saturated with version x of an application, the only way for the company/person who produced that software to get more money is either to release a new application or release a newer version of the same application. If it already has the features that you want and need then they have to create an artificial demand for the new version. There are various ways to do this including

1. adding features that you don't need but are touted as the "new wave"
2. deprecating software tech in the current version
3. hipster advertising (you don't want to be a loser who has yesterday's software, do you?)
4. compatibility

Before I retired, we were forced to upgrade all of our copies of Microsoft Office because those control centres who had already upgraded started sending their documents in a format that our version could no longer read.

So the features keep on piling up and the software keeps getting more bloated.

[20Tyr12]

I had about 12K invested in software that worked on XP. Even some DOS based software would install and run.
Tried Vista but returned that computer within hours. Still use XP when Win7Pro doesn't have the usual structure tree so I can find a file (Worksheets for 2011 taxes needed to do 2012 taxes). Will the SP**** install on the XP portion of Win7Pro? Why all the renaming of things in Win7Pro? Years ago a file became a folder but what is a Homegroup? What were the so called problems with XP? The jerks with virus'? I'll just use Win7Pro online and XP will NEVER be online--maybe THAT will solve the alleged problem.*

[Palebushman]

How many enterprises both large, medium and small, are still using Microsoft XP? The answer is not what some would have you believe. Most of the 'Converts' are not going to be moving across to so called "New" Microsoft platforms either. Open Source and others are making their way into this market area with admirable progress, and the era of Microsft dominence is rapidily shrinking. But that's not to say that I'm going to be getting rid of my wonderful XP Pro any time soon, on the contrary, and in fact 'offline' is where it excels in driving my Flight Sim X and performing all my other computational needs. But..... Like Adam, I would definitely like a beautiful ...le. And why not? No one out there that has one, has ever had anything bad to say about them!

[BigPaw]

To the great majority of end-users, or home-users, there really is not a lot of differences between them, or at least justifiable differences. For a lot of people out there it was also free, as a result of piracy. The arrival of XP also caused, or coincided, with a PC boom. All computers of the XP era were sold with XP on them, an OEM OS to which they could attach their cameras via a honed USB capability that was also capable of handling an array USB gizmos hitting the market. It opened up a horizon of software journeys too. Do you remember Encarta, with its full-on use of mpeg technology and quote by Martin Luther King? XP was its name, and an eXPerience was its game, it just worked. How would Microsoft follow the monolithic success of XP?

Vista was an unmitigated disaster, or a ploy on Microsoft's part to get us all to super-invest in our personal computers to get something that would possibly have us see the desktop within 10 minutes of turning the computer on. Joe public thought that the computers they bought running XP would fall in love with this new product, from Microsoft - the company that gave them their beloved XP, would work out of the box. Sadly, for many their computers couldn't stomach it. It's true, there were many driver issues due to laziness on the part of hardware vendors along with an inordinate amount of bloatware, but Microsoft really do need to ask why that happened.

I think they did ask that question when it came to Windows 7, but some were still reeling from the fears and catastrophe either they experienced, or learned from 'experts' they listened to on the 'Internet'. There was also the fact that XP was still very 'free', or on their restore discs. Their computers, games, and whatever else, worked fine with XP, they know and understand XP. Windows 7 was a slow grow at first, but came at a time when people were changing their computers, or home-users in general had picked up enough techie savvy see what was what and found it quite easy to install for themselves. For real techies they could now go 64 bit, and they got a whiff of multicore octanes.

Windows 8 had to happen with the arrival of tablets and many websites endeavouring to be finger friendly to accommodate mobile devices. Architecturally it's basically Windows 7 without Aero, but with the swishness of a slidey buttony experience. Windows 8 is different enough to keep it interesting without making you feel that you've waded out too far. It also fulfils a very practical purpose - it's ready, willing, and able for the age of the tablet. Microsoft have released their own tablets with Windows 8 to help home-users accept it, to educate hardware vendors.

[raavn111]

most important feature is its so user friendly

[ggeoff]

Yes XP is friendly. Just been trying to share my data with my other PCs on my home network. Windows 7 assumes that the network computers are all running Windows 7. Of course I am not the only user to have a mix of PCs running XP Pro and other Windows operating systems. In Windows 7 you have to select Share with - Specific people. And then options hidden in an empty form field but with a pull down button which offers: yourself! Guest, Everyone and Create a new user ( why not Everyone on your home network?)

[JenniferArden]

"Upgraded" two of the laptops in our office from XP Pro to 7 Pro last week and really still like and prefer XP. In 7 the path to achieve what you want to is longer than in XP, XP is much easier / simpler / faster to use. Also in XP you are automatically connected to the network which is nice, in 7 you must manually connect to the network everytime. 7 isn't bad but XP is better - thats the bottom line of it. 7 feels a bit cheap, light, cumbersome and not as thorough compared to XP to me. XP feels solid, is solid and is still the master. With a little customization you can make XP look really great providing an even richer user experience such as integrating a modern visual style, integrating AHCI drivers so XP will install on modern systems, integrate additional drivers, integrate IE8 and MP11 etc as well as preconfigure settings as to how you want XP to behave after installation including which integrated visual style should be default and lastly you can configure unattended setup so you don't have to choose any options during setup. XP was way ahead of its time and I would say still current. One can still find xp drivers for 95% of components, even XP Pro x64 which I use on my acer 7740G core i3 laptop

[professor123]

true because most systems and application were literally 'WIN XP-Specific' thus they were no compartible with XP thus its easy for it to be continually used because it still delivers great value to the users.

[chizy2]

In the medical world of PC's and support. A lot of the medical applications only run on XP, so the majority of medical centers cannot upgrade the PC's. Heck even servers are still running 2000 in a lot of places because of the way the software was made from the vendors. I know as of last year, a lot of the lab devices could not run anything higher than sp2 because of how old the equiptment is.

[Reverend Jim]

I was just informed that my former place of business (5000+ employees) has officially started the migration to Windows 7.

[JenniferArden]

hmmmm good luck to them, hope the ride isn't too rough. Unnecessary in my opinion.

[Reverend Jim]

I presume they will stick with Windows 7 for the next decade or so. Doesn't bode well for Windows 8 at the corporate level.

[jaly]

Windows xp is better than windows 7 which limits your freedom as a user, its also better than windows 8 which caters for the mobile market.Microsoft instead of ignoring its users of Xp which are its biggets microsoft os users still, it should respcet them and incorporate key features of xp into windows 9 which will come out 2014-16 . microsoft is continuing updates for xp until 2014. I think there will be the big shift of xp users to windows 9 which does not extist yet, but microft instead of ignoring xp users as they did with win7 and 8 maybe by win 9 they would of learned some humility and listened to what xp users are saying instead of ignoring them, with there we know best attitude.

[Palebushman]

The thing that puzzles me about Microsoft is, why did it choose to totally ignore one of it's competitors. After all, didn't they have a team working in the other camp to get MS Office to work on their OS?

Steve or his Marketing geniuses had the right idea about OS versions, OS X Panther OS X Tiger, etc, had a special kind of 'ring' to it. Why on earth didn't Microsoft do similar. XP Longhorn, XP Cutlass, XP Lancer, XP Samuri etc, sounds so much more classy than Windows 7, 8, 9 or 10.

Instead of just releasing a 'Buggy' mess of an OS. Why not just release a new Service Pack for XP and give the SP a name, rather than trying to convince the masses that there is now a new OS altogether, and
in so doing, seriously damage your credibility in the process!

[Reverend Jim]

Instead of just releasing a 'Buggy' mess of an OS. Why not just release a new Service Pack for XP and give the SP a name, rather than trying to convince the masses that there is now a new OS altogether

Because service packs don't translate to profits. Microsoft has to generate a consistent revenue stream. The two big cash cows are

1. Windows
2. Office

If they don't release new versions then they don't get your money. In order to sell you new versions they have to convince you that, effectively, New Coke is better than Coke Classic. In the software world that usually means piling on features that nobody asked for. In the case of Windows 8, Microsoft not only did that but also removed features that were in wide use (Start Button, for one).

Don't be too surprised if Microsoft ends up renting you your OS. They are already offering a version of Office with this strategy.