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Microsoft to sell WinXP till 2020?! WTFBBQ?!

Ed Bott over at ZDNET is saying that XP will be available for downgrade only until Win7 completes it sales cycle, which will be 2015. 2020 is the end of support cycle for Win7. Still it seems crazy that an operating system (XP) would be available and in use for 20 years.
 
There are a number of medium and large businesses that do not want to maintain multiple operating systems, and the accompanying application software changes that that entails. It would be bad for MS to force customers away from XP - keep your customers happy.
 
The XP train has left for everyone except casual users (email, internet). People who use newer programs, as well as enthusiasts, have moved on to Win7.

Windows 7 64 bit + SSD an amazing combo. 🙂
 
OCGuy said:
The XP train has left for everyone except casual users (email, internet). People who use newer programs, as well as enthusiasts, have moved on to Win7.

Windows 7 64 bit + SSD an amazing combo. 🙂
Click to expand...

Total BS.

I work for an Engineering firm, and all of our machines are still XP, and no plans on changing for another couple of years at least. There were rumblings here about changing to a Linux build if MS was going to force W7.
 
OCGuy said:
The XP train has left for everyone except casual users (email, internet). People who use newer programs, as well as enthusiasts, have moved on to Win7.

Windows 7 64 bit + SSD an amazing combo. 🙂
Click to expand...

You must be unemployed or something as the vast majority of businesses have not moved to Win7.

From the article:
A full 74% of Microsoft's business customers are still using the outdated Windows XP, Windows marketing head Tami Reller said this week at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference in Washington, D.C.
Click to expand...
 
Drako said:
Total BS.

I work for an Engineering firm, and all of our machines are still XP, and no plans on changing for another couple of years at least. There were rumblings here about changing to a Linux build if MS was going to force W7.
Click to expand...
This
 
Schools shouldn't have too many issues. All of the software I've seen run on high school computers can run on Windows 7. There may, of course, be an exception or two if the school uses some extremely out of date software related to some rarely-found extra curricular activity or something. As for colleges, same deal. Most of what I've seen on their computers will run on Windows 7, but one or two departments may have specialized programs that might not transfer over without an update (this would primarily affect statistics and music programs IMO).

Businesses, on the other hand, are going to vary greatly.
 
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Ive been using XP since 2003 and have no plans to upgrade.....ever. Vista was garbage (removed DOS support and made easy access impossible without fooling with extra popup permissions and crap), and I wont even bother with 7.
 
not surprised, seems corporate customers are bypassing vista and waiting a bit to verify 7 stays a solid choice. i was somewhat shocked when corporate sent out an email about a month ago asking for those resposible for inhouse programs to submit them so they could begin win7 testing as they are planning on finally leaving xp withint the next 24 months.
 
Damn, I thought 2014 was the end of support for xp. Looks like the corporate world will be stuck with XP for quite a while now. I know my job (high school) won't upgrade until support is dropped, people would freak out if we upgraded. The end of the support cycle would at least forced us.

mrjminer said:
Schools shouldn't have too many issues. All of the software I've seen run on high school computers can run on Windows 7. There may, of course, be an exception or two if the school uses some extremely out of date software related to some rarely-found extra curricular activity or something. As for colleges, same deal. Most of what I've seen on their computers will run on Windows 7, but one or two departments may have specialized programs that might not transfer over without an update (this would primarily affect statistics and music programs IMO).

Businesses, on the other hand, are going to vary greatly.
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Our high school is struggling to find ways to not lay off teachers / cut classes. Not to mention we still use software that barely runs on XP (one such program broke when SP3 came out, the sw vendor said it was only written for Windows95). If other schools are having the budget nightmares like we are, they will milk XP for all it's worth, and only upgrade when absolutely necessary.
 
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The only reason I'd use XP for any reason, is if I were forced to at work. My last reason for dualbooting expired a couple months ago when I got a new scanner. Good riddance....
 
MS has found that by not further developing things like Windows Media Player, Internet Explorer, etc they can pretty much get home users to upgrade as long as they have a decent alternative like Windows 7.
So, letting businesses and a few die hards stick with WinXP is a a win/win for MS. They look like good guys for not forcing people to upgrade, and the lack of further development of XP will get most people to upgrade anyway.
 
lxskllr said:
The only reason I'd use XP for any reason, is if I were forced to at work. My last reason for dualbooting expired a couple months ago when I got a new scanner. Good riddance....
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You take that back! XP is the greatest piece of software ever written by MicroSoft. Greater than that flop Vista. Greater than 7. It is elegant, simplistic, powerful, charming and dare I say even useful.
 
OCGuy said:
The XP train has left for everyone except casual users (email, internet). People who use newer programs, as well as enthusiasts, have moved on to Win7.

Windows 7 64 bit + SSD an amazing combo. 🙂
Click to expand...

Wrong. I can't think of a single company that uses anything other than XP on their PCs. Every business I've worked at or been to in the last year (from media conglomerates to mom & pop shops) all run XP.

The reason... there's no incentive to use anything else. Any computer that runs XP can do any mundane business task quickly. Companies just don't upgrade there hardware often. The radio station I interned at still had Pentium II servers on their racks for god's sake.

Plus, it's vary expensive and time consuming to upgrade operating systems. IT departments are lazy enough as is. That explains why most of those computers still use IE6 with it's open door security policy. 🙄
 
Drako said:
Total BS.

I work for an Engineering firm, and all of our machines are still XP, and no plans on changing for another couple of years at least. There were rumblings here about changing to a Linux build if MS was going to force W7.
Click to expand...

Same at our company.
 
GodlessAstronomer said:
This is so far from the truth it's ridiculous.
Click to expand...

Let the naysayers say nay, but Windows XP will survive in perpetuity because it contains natural DOS support, doesnt annoy its user with security popups every 10 seconds, allows easy and complete customization without permission hassles and you can even handle multiple email accounts all from MS Outlook - without having to login to each account!!

Who would have thought users would prefer this method of computing versus the mysterious bloatware called Vista or 7?
 
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