Killing XP

[Buddy J]

CoolTechZone says it's good that Microsoft is killing XP (http://www.cooltechzone.com/Departments/Featured_Story/Why_Microsoft_Killing_XP_Is_A_Good_Idea_200806183015/). I LOL'd.

[_k_]

Yeah XP limiting Vista Sales, thats why its included on all new puters and people still buy XP to replace.

[Leonardo]

What a puff piece! There is certainly truth to their thesis that Vista would advance faster if XP did not have so many diehard enthusiasts. The glaring lack of logic: 1) no mention that Windows 7 is more likely to be ready sooner - and in very good form, if Vista adoption continues to lag, and 2) encouraging Windows users to dump a tried and true, and generally very good OS - XP, is not economically smart for consumers or business.

So what was their point? We should dump an OS with which we are happy so that Microsoft can make progress?

So, if we wish to accelerate innovation and quality of product by Microsoft, we are then to support products, such as Vista, that we don't consider worthy of purchase?

[Crazy Joe]

We wipe Vista off every new computer that comes into our school and image it with XP...

[lemonlime]

I've disabled almost all of Vista's "great new features" to keep performance acceptable. What am I left with? Windows XP, essentially. :)

[Qeldroma]

Yeah. This got me at a good time.

>Start Grouse<

I'm playing with 64 bit Vista Ultimate right now. Many of my favorite apps won't port or install and none of the compatibility selections are worth the pixels they're written on. So why bother enabling them? So yeah, I probably could revitalize the economy buying software to replace my losses but heck, those companies aren't around and/or making Vista versions. I can only think to virtually emulate XP- a solution that may not fly either.

It's unfortunate. I love the destop, many of the UI features and DX10. By comparison, Crysis is noticeably better looking. But...

I would HATE to be a standard "95% of" XP users upgrading to this. I can't figure out why they could manage to port many FAT16 apps off 95/98/ME when they did XP, but fail so miserably to do the same with Vista 64.

So another upside to Vista is that by comparison Microsoft acutally managed to make Windows ME look good.

>End Grouse<

[RADA]

My 4+ year old Inspiron 8600 1.6 w/ XP is minutes faster on all levels than my wife's 8 mo Duo Core HP w Vista Home Premium...

..Least with a Dell you can reimage to XP.. ..No can do with these HPs. Co worker tried to reimage his wife's new HP with XP, couldn't even get XP installed, no drivers available...

I'll limp my Inspironasurs Rex along till Win 7 come out....

[Thrax]

With a stopwatch, my mom's 800Mhz Thunderbird Athlon + 256MB of PC133 computer boots and launches apps more quickly than several of the vista computers I've used over the years.

[Zuntar]

:screwy:

[rapture]

Most of my Vista problems went away when I removed the preinstalled version on my laptop and went with a clean install.

That said, I still prefer XP.

[GHoosdum]

..Least with a Dell you can reimage to XP.. ..No can do with these HPs. Co worker tried to reimage his wife's new HP with XP, couldn't even get XP installed, no drivers available...

True, a reimage won't work on many preconfigured machines. Fresh installs still do, however, and drivers can usually be tracked down. (http://icrontic.com/articles/upgrade_vista_to_xp)

[airbornflght]

I use vista, but only because I have an overclocked Q6600 and 4 gigs of ram. lol. I haven't ever had any problems, but if I did I would have went to XP. I guess a Q6600@3Ghz and 4 gigs is what it takes to get fluid performance.

[GooD]

I Had a tough ride when i tried to make my Dell M1530 work with XP, but i'ven been able to find every drivers i needed.

Most difficult was to find the good one for the Touch Pad =/ lol I tried serveral from other model and finaly i took one that worked out just great :P

Video drivers are a mess to find too if you want best game performance as possible for a laptop.

I think Dell should support XP even for those models that 'can't' be bought with XP pre-installed. But that will never happen heh

[bullzisnipr]

I personally like vista. Although, my computers are higher-end systems so i can enjoy vista and have it run the way its meant to be ran. However, i just went to XP actually on my AMD 6400 rig because of my peripherals not working with vista. For instance, i play TONS of racing games, DiRT being one of my favorites. I bought a USB to xbox controller adapter on ebay (the original xbox) and vista detects this and disables it because i guess they want you to go buy the 360 controller. It's stuff like that in vista that pisses me off, i love aero and DX10 but you cant beat the stability and responsiveness of XP, especially for getting those extra few FPS in games.

For gaming i prefer XP, but thats me personally because of my peripherals. For typical everyday computing, i prefer vista. Which is why i dual boot :).

EDIT: Didn't think about this, but at work we load all new systems with XP Pro. Sure they have Athlon 4600 X2's, 1GB of ram and a 160GB harddrive, but the first thing i usually hear out of a customers mouth is "these dont have vista, do they?". Vista has such a bad wrap its ridiculous, we'd have to give away vista if it weren't for microsoft telling us what price to sell it at.

[TheLostSwede]

If you lite Vista, it is as good and fast as XP. It just isn't as easy as XP. Lite it, prep it and slipstream it with the drivers and updates you want.

[Qeldroma]

If you lite Vista, it is as good and fast as XP. It just isn't as easy as XP. Lite it, prep it and slipstream it with the drivers and updates you want.

I'm sorry, I'm not sure what this means- "lite"?

[Thrax]

See a program called vLite.

[bullzisnipr]

See a program called vLite.

I've heard of vLite however i havent tried it yet, ill give it a shot... its not that my computers have problems running vista, thats not it at all, its more-so the peripherals i use with my computers which is why i use XP on my LAN computer. For my usual home computer, i use Vista and have no problems what so ever.

[Qeldroma]

I've installed Vista twice- 32bit original and now 64 bit SP1. This time I'm installing on a quad-core system with 4GB. Vista actually boots faster right now than my XP rig- but I have yet to install all the apps I want (mostly because the frickin' thing won't let me).

I think if you've got a newer rig with lots of memory, basically don't give a dam about software more than 3-4 years old and aren't running a business much older than that- you may not notice or care as much.

But those of us that do and have hundreds and thousands of dollars invested at home and have thousands, even millions of dollars of installed, viable systems and infrastructure at work can't afford to upgrade everything everytime Microsoft wants to lay on us a new OS. And many people and businesses gave MS the finger when Vista came out and have either stuck with Windows XP or adopted Linux or Mac OS. In fact, many businesses had to buy Vista licences they used to install XP with. Windows Vista may also be the best thing that's ever happened to the alternative market.

And as a word of caution- don't expect Windows 7 to fix it either.

In a world where you and I can get freeware that will emulate an OS to run our older apps, there is no good reason MS can't make an OS- 64 bit or not- to run older applications either. I personally think that MS Vista was as much an attempt create an expensive and unnecessary market as it was to give us new and improved features. The abysmal adoption rate of Vista by XP + other users is really the only "vote" we have to stop MS from repeating this performance.