Windows XP Professional SP2C

Robert Hallock 14 Aug, 2007 at 11:46am ET Article published in Tech

While Microsoft jumped the gun and wanted to peg Windows XP’s EOL in 2008, Microsoft has been forced to release a “Service pack” for XP Pro only to address the shortage of CD keys. Due to the volume of licenses still being purchased for the venerable operating system, XP Pro was set to run out of license permutations long before the EOL. As a result, Microsoft’s new service pack features nothing more than a new batch of permissible key permutations.

This comes on the heels of Microsoft revising its revenue predictions from their OS segment, turning an 85/15 Vista/XP split into a 78/22 split.

Microsoft fans: See? Look how great XP is!

Vista haters: See? Look how terrible Vista is!

They’re both right.

Comments

14 Aug 2007 ~ 1:16pm kryyst Well it doesn't much matter anymore for the Vista haters. IBM, Dell, Sony, HP, Toshiba, and Acer are no longer selling any XP equipped machines (at least not in Canada). Even though a couple of their sites list XP Pro equipped business machines if you try to order one they'll give you the appology and ship it with Vista.
14 Aug 2007 ~ 1:32pm Thrax All of those manufacturers can provide XP pre-loaded if you purchase the computer through Futureshop.
15 Aug 2007 ~ 12:35am BLuKnight Just another indication that XP will "... will not go quietly into the night."
15 Aug 2007 ~ 12:59am jared Dell will only put on XP if you buy through Small-Business on up.

I told this lady who was buying a notebook to ask for XP instead of Vista and they told her 'no-can-do'. Bastards.
15 Aug 2007 ~ 1:27am Shorty

BLuKnight wrote: »

Just another indication that XP will "... will not go quietly into the night."

Mass adoption through business is very very slow. My employers roadmap has Vista in 2009. Waiting for the first service pack at least.

The biggest issue is that we have a lot of laptops with just a celeron and 256MB of RAM. Those laptops creak enough with XP, Vista would annihilate them :o
15 Aug 2007 ~ 8:12am Linc

jared wrote:

they told her 'no-can-do'. Bastards.

And there should end the order.
15 Aug 2007 ~ 8:43am Qeldroma

jared wrote:

I told this lady who was buying a notebook to ask for XP instead of Vista and they told her 'no-can-do'. Bastards.

They tried to do this to me at Best Buy a while ago- and I said, "Fine, I'll go to someone who does."

I did- paid less for an equivalent machine with a 3 year warranty and let me put the OS I wanted on it.
16 Aug 2007 ~ 3:05pm muddocktor

Shorty wrote:

Mass adoption through business is very very slow. My employers roadmap has Vista in 2009. Waiting for the first service pack at least.

The biggest issue is that we have a lot of laptops with just a celeron and 256MB of RAM. Those laptops creak enough with XP, Vista would annihilate them :o

Yep, I can heartily agree there, Shorty. I got to mess around with a Vista Basic HP with 512 MB ram and and a Celly and it was simply painful to even try to use. It took at least 5 minutes to boot up. And I see no advantage at all with Vista Basic over XP Home since it won't do anything that XP can already do and they stripped Aero out of basic too (dubious as Aero is as a reason to justify Vista). I upgraded them to 2 gigs of ram and that improved performance quite a bit.
16 Aug 2007 ~ 5:18pm airbornflght My friend bought a computer with a low end pentium D and 512mb of ram. Lets just say that on XP it'd probably be a pretty decent computer. Vista home basic kills that thing. It is painful to use.
16 Aug 2007 ~ 10:43pm QCH Microsoft... Service Pack 3 please. Roll all those 90 patches into one big service pack. I am tired of re-compiling patch CDs every month.
16 Aug 2007 ~ 10:49pm Thrax SP3 is already being circulated in beta, and should be out by winter.
16 Aug 2007 ~ 11:55pm Leonardo If Microsoft were smart, they could spin this SP3 news to their advantage: "Windows XP, the most successful operating systems the world has seen, is still in such demand that....." It would actually be more accurate then most of their other marketing (or any large tech company's marketing for that matter!).
16 Aug 2007 ~ 11:59pm airbornflght I want DX10
17 Aug 2007 ~ 10:52am GHoosdum What is scheduled to be included in SP3? Just an update rollup or are they adding any functionality?
17 Aug 2007 ~ 10:59am CB It'll be able to play XBox games, control spy satellites, and manage memory better.
17 Aug 2007 ~ 11:39am Thrax

GHoosdum wrote:

What is scheduled to be included in SP3? Just an update rollup or are they adding any functionality?

Rollup and brand new fixes. Microsoft says that they dislike adding new features, and never again will a service pack be like SP2.
17 Aug 2007 ~ 12:41pm QCH WOOT... A smaller patch CD. :celebrate
17 Aug 2007 ~ 1:04pm Leonardo

WOOT... A smaller patch CD.

Yeah, for sure, but Service Pack 3 requires first the removal of SP2.

i just made that up