retiring XP

[VirtualLarry]

Just wondering what will be the reason for the final death knell of XP. Does anyone want to speculate?

Will it be PCI-E 3.0 and USB 3.0 and SATA 6G? (Will XP SP2 or XP SP3 install CDs BSOD with chipsets with these new features, like XP Gold and XP SP1 does on systems with PCI-E 2.0?)

Will it be the widespread need for AHCI mode, for SSDs and TRIM to work properly? (How many XP boxes have floppy drives, and the ability to load F6 drivers?)

Will it be the eventuality of everyone having MORE than 4GB of RAM?

Or will hardware mfgs stop writing XP drivers? (Doubtful that that would happen anytime soon, most mainstream hardware still targets XP.)

Edit: Perhaps lack of security patches from MS? This has already started, MS has refused to patch a recent TCP/IP vulnerability.

I'm all for Windows 7, I plan on running 64-bit on my newer rigs, the ones that lack floppy drives, and have SATA DVD burner, and will have 4GB or more of RAM.

But I do plan on keeping my main rig, the one that I've got with a multi-boot of Win98se/W2K SP4/XP SP2, for as long as possible.

 

[Kalmah]

Xp installed computers have already completely stopped being sold in retail stores. (If I'm not mistaken) The casual computer user isn't really going to have a choice. And probably not even know better anyways.

Those that have purchased copies of xp will probably just keep it around for using old software/hardware that isn't supported anymore. (I have alot of discontinued pro-audio equipment that at this time still only have beta drivers for xp!) So, Until I have an extra couple grand to spend to replace old software/hardware(if I ever do this) I will still need an xp machine around.

At this point, I'm definatly looking at windows 7 for my next build. I completely skipped Vista. I want to finally go 64-bit and have more than 4 gigs of ram.

So to sum it up, I'm going to move to a new OS when I can.. but I will need an xp box as well.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

The toll will sound when the majority of businesses stop using it. The home user/enthusiast has zip to do with it.

 

[mshan]

The toll will sound when the majority of businesses stop using it.

Agreed; at that point, I would think Micrososft would stop any and all types of updates and support.

 

[Brovane]

The final death knell for Windows XP will be April 8, 2014 which is when MS will end support for XP and will no longer be doing doing security updates and security hotfixes.

 

[Nothinman]

Agreed; at that point, I would think Micrososft would stop any and all types of updates and support.

So MS should just ignore home users?

The final death knell for Windows XP will be April 8, 2014 which is when MS will end support for XP and will no longer be doing doing security updates and security hotfixes.

If only that were true. Sure, at that point MS will stop supporting it but people will continue using it for years, just like there are still some Win95 and DOS machines floating around.

 

[Arkaign]

For offline systems with simple/dedicated purposes that still work, WXP will probably linger for a very long time. For online systems or people who need to use newer software/hardware, it will die out fairly soon. Thank GOD Win7 is really good. Vista had me worried that Microsoft had lost their marbles.

 

[Paperlantern]

Originally posted by: Arkaign
For offline systems with simple/dedicated purposes that still work, WXP will probably linger for a very long time. For online systems or people who need to use newer software/hardware, it will die out fairly soon. Thank GOD Win7 is really good. Vista had me worried that Microsoft had lost their marbles.

I agree, though many will argue that Vista is just fine with the right tweaks... my thought is, why do you have to TWEAK an OS with registry hacks and umpteen configurations to make it work right? It should just work out of the box, and configs you do should be preference or environment needs, not to make it function.

I use Win7 on my main home rig and now, as of today, being that i just loaded it, my work rig as well, and its been on my home rig for almost a month, it screams, and it IS really good.

Though our entire infrastructure of user PCs are ALL WinXP, and will most likely be that way for a solid year, maybe 2 more.

The market IS businesses. Businesses buy 100s or even thousands of licenses at a time, they are Microsoft's bread and butter. When they go to 7 for the most part, WinXP goes.

 

[ilkhan]

people still use XP?
In Intel's name WHY?!

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: ilkhan
people still use XP?
In Intel's name WHY?!

(1)- It works really really well for domain clients and mixed infrastructure environments. New systems with Vista business are fairly rare unless you order direct, and systems with Vista Ultimate are hugely expensive. Vista basic, Vista Home Premium, etc do not support domain logons (officially).

(2)- It works really really well with business software that may not have Vista-compatible patches. I worked on a client site the other day where they were using Quark Express 6 along with some various Adobe software that would not run on Vista (one new i7 system was running Vista Home Premium, which I upgraded to Vista Ultimate with the anytime upgrade in order to get it on the domain). Buying new versions of software that businesses don't need the new features of is just wasted $ when the older versions fulfill their needs completely.

(3)- It works really well on low-end hardware. Another one of my clients has a stack of Dell Latitude P3 notebooks for simple tasks for their couriers. They have 512mb of ram, and run the custom order/delivery tracking software perfectly. There is no reason to spend thousands of dollars to replace all those systems when they work fine. Occasionally one of them will have a HDD fail or whatnot, so loading XP is the only thing that makes sense.

(4)- A lot of people have valid XP retail copies that re-use the OS as they go through PC upgrades. For someone that doesn't game, there's not really any pressing reason to upgrade right this minute. Continued security and compatibility will eventually force these people into something nice like Win7.

There are some very valid reasons to stick with XP, particularly for businesses.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

I hardly doubt the massive corporation that I work for will move away from XP for a very long time.

Many of the PC's in circulation are s478 P4's w/ 1GB of ram. Literally ancient hardware if you have to use it on a video surveillance machine like I have to.

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: Paperlantern

Originally posted by: Arkaign
For offline systems with simple/dedicated purposes that still work, WXP will probably linger for a very long time. For online systems or people who need to use newer software/hardware, it will die out fairly soon. Thank GOD Win7 is really good. Vista had me worried that Microsoft had lost their marbles.

I agree, though many will argue that Vista is just fine with the right tweaks... my thought is, why do you have to TWEAK an OS with registry hacks and umpteen configurations to make it work right? It should just work out of the box, and configs you do should be preference or environment needs, not to make it function.

I use Win7 on my main home rig and now, as of today, being that i just loaded it, my work rig as well, and its been on my home rig for almost a month, it screams, and it IS really good.

Though our entire infrastructure of user PCs are ALL WinXP, and will most likely be that way for a solid year, maybe 2 more.

The market IS businesses. Businesses buy 100s or even thousands of licenses at a time, they are Microsoft's bread and butter. When they go to 7 for the most part, WinXP goes.

See, I've got the opposite experience, I'd never go back to XP after Win Vista/7. The hardware support is just so out of date, and it's a real pain to get setup compared to the nearly automatic vista/7 install. Vista will actually install with AHCI enabled, and automatically find most drivers.

Of course, ease of use still goes to Linux imo. Easiest system to set up, I usually don't have to do any config after the install (which consists of just hitting next 7 times, and thankfully prior to the actual install starting; unlike windows' hit next in the middle of the install bull crap) is complete.

That said, old computers that are on XP should stay on XP. Vista is a pointless upgrade for most, but it's definetely the way to go for newer hardware.

 

[Paperlantern]

A lot of businesses that have a root set of machines on XP will probably continue to use XP even on newer machines to keep the platform the same across the board. I know we will. But it really depends on the demands of the business, if something surfaces that really works well in 7, we may take the leap, even as expensive as it will be.

 

[Bateluer]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Agreed; at that point, I would think Micrososft would stop any and all types of updates and support.

So MS should just ignore home users?

XP was released in late 2001. In 2014, 13 years will have passed. Home users using XP won't be able to run any commercially available software, surf the web, sync their phones to their PCs, play games on their PC, etc. They will have to upgrade long before then.

MS isn't ignoring home users, they've been given ample time. Some are incredibly resistant to change and will only move forward if kicked.

 

[Nothinman]

Home users using XP won't be able to run any commercially available software, surf the web, sync their phones to their PCs, play games on their PC, etc. They will have to upgrade long before then.

If only that were true. Lots of people will get a long just fine with XP. They might not be able to get the newest version of everything at some point but they'll likely be happy with what they currently have for a long time.

 

[KeypoX]

MY grandma just updated her windows 98, because we couldnt find a printer compatible with win 98. That was the only reason for her upgrade. Though now she is online and everything but she never wanted that lol.

Xp is slowing being fazed out right now. Most news systems come with windows 7 now, or vista. Old systems will remain.

 

[ChaosDivine]

Originally posted by: ilkhan
people still use XP?
In Intel's name WHY?!

Couldn't be bothered to make the switch to Vista and to keep uniformity across all machines (couple of netbooks, HTPCs, "net-servers", office systems, etc. in the family).
nLite XP SP3 is still fine by me (esp. with custom visual style, UltraMon, etc.)

 

[JBT]

All my home PC's are Win 7. My company is XP and even some 2000's still. We have a push for Office 2007 by the end of the year to all our users so those pc's that required hardware upgrades (RAM for the most part) will be upgraded to completely new systems with XP and 7 licenses.

 

[n7]

Netbooks have ruined killing off XP.

At pretty much every major retail store, every single prebuilt has been Vista since it came out.
XP is not an option.

But sadly, craptacularly performing netbooks & nettops have actually pushed XP back into being sold alot again, which is really too bad.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: Fox5

Originally posted by: Paperlantern

Originally posted by: Arkaign
For offline systems with simple/dedicated purposes that still work, WXP will probably linger for a very long time. For online systems or people who need to use newer software/hardware, it will die out fairly soon. Thank GOD Win7 is really good. Vista had me worried that Microsoft had lost their marbles.

I agree, though many will argue that Vista is just fine with the right tweaks... my thought is, why do you have to TWEAK an OS with registry hacks and umpteen configurations to make it work right? It should just work out of the box, and configs you do should be preference or environment needs, not to make it function.

I use Win7 on my main home rig and now, as of today, being that i just loaded it, my work rig as well, and its been on my home rig for almost a month, it screams, and it IS really good.

Though our entire infrastructure of user PCs are ALL WinXP, and will most likely be that way for a solid year, maybe 2 more.

The market IS businesses. Businesses buy 100s or even thousands of licenses at a time, they are Microsoft's bread and butter. When they go to 7 for the most part, WinXP goes.

See, I've got the opposite experience, I'd never go back to XP after Win Vista/7. The hardware support is just so out of date, and it's a real pain to get setup compared to the nearly automatic vista/7 install. Vista will actually install with AHCI enabled, and automatically find most drivers.

Of course, ease of use still goes to Linux imo. Easiest system to set up, I usually don't have to do any config after the install (which consists of just hitting next 7 times, and thankfully prior to the actual install starting; unlike windows' hit next in the middle of the install bull crap) is complete.

That said, old computers that are on XP should stay on XP. Vista is a pointless upgrade for most, but it's definetely the way to go for newer hardware.

I agree, XP is no long a valid option on ANY of my PCs infact its been replaced by good old Linux since it does it all and more,all for free which is never bad.


As to Vista well it gets a lot of stick for no reason(there are a lot of happy Vista users not matter what you hear),infact I have it on 2 PCs,Win7 is a small upgrade IMHO,its great if you got a really low spec PC since Win7 will run better then Vista,however Vista/Win7 really shine on modern PCs,do you really want to use 2001+ hardware with 2007+ OS?..I know I don't.
Anyway sooner XP is phased out the better in my books(well its phased out for me already),we should just move with the times,sure you can say business etc still need XP but end of the day I think Microsoft should decide when it has to go.

I do wish OEM companies would stop installing bloated software on operating systems with new PCs,its been that way for too many years.

 

[sourceninja]

I have a friend with a 98 machine he still uses. In fact he recently raided my old junkyard for parts to repair it (needed a new IDE hard drive and he found some more SD ram woo 256 baby!.)

I've been trying to get him to upgrade for almost 10 years.

 

[Maximilian]

Well it depends what you mean by "death knell" I think they stopped selling/shipping windows 3.1 as late as 2007, apparently a lot of embedded stuff used it and i saw a cash machine that had crashed/frozen and it said "windows 95" on it a year or so ago. So XP will be around in one form or another for a very long time to come.

 

[Snapster]

Originally posted by: Maximilian
Well it depends what you mean by "death knell" I think they stopped selling/shipping windows 3.1 as late as 2007, apparently a lot of embedded stuff used it and i saw a cash machine that had crashed/frozen and it said "windows 95" on it a year or so ago. So XP will be around in one form or another for a very long time to come.

What cash machine did you see? All the ATM's I programmed for (NCR) were NT/2000/XP based.

 

[Bateluer]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Home users using XP won't be able to run any commercially available software, surf the web, sync their phones to their PCs, play games on their PC, etc. They will have to upgrade long before then.

If only that were true. Lots of people will get a long just fine with XP. They might not be able to get the newest version of everything at some point but they'll likely be happy with what they currently have for a long time.

I respectfully disagree. Running XP in 2014 will be like running 95 today. You won't get newer versions of IE, AV programs, productivity programs, many web APIs won't function, etc. Plus, hardware breaks down and needs to be replaced. An XP machine running today isn't going to still be running in 2014. Remember, we're talking about home user systems here, no server grade hardware or embedded devices. By 2014, the number of home users still using XP will be so insignificant as to be inconsequential.

 

[squirrel dog]

Its XP Pro for me untill I go Linux !!