RIP XP?

[zoozilla]

If Windows Vista is the technological breakthrough everyone is making it out to be, does that mean XP is practically dead? Is there any hope left? Direct 3D 10 sounds like a pretty big deal, and I really don't want to miss out, but... I don't know. Will I have to upgrade? I really, really, really, don't want to, but it seems like not getting Vista will leave me out of everything new...

 

[drag]

Vista isn't a technological breakthrough in any sense of the word. It's a progression from XP like XP was from Windows 2000 Pro.

XP will be dead when Microsoft tells you it will be dead, that is when they stop supporting it. Giving it a educated guess I expect you have at least 2 years of life left to your XP OS before you will have to get rid of it in order to run the latest stuff.

 

[Nick5324]

For gamers, when a game comes along they want that uses DirectX10, it's time to go to Vista if they haven't already. However, a lot of computer users are not gamers, and I think XP meets a lot of people's needs, and therefore won't upgrade to Vista for a couple of years. Of course, new computers will ship with Vista installed fairly soon, so the number of people using Vista will grow, but I wouldn't write off XP just yet.

 

[Noema]

No reason to update to Vista just yet. XP is still perfectly functional, updated regularly, supported and like 99% of the newest Windows programs will run great on it.

Vista will eventually replace it. But not just yet. Heck, many people here still run Win 2000 boxes without hitch.

And even gamers can wait a bit for Vista to mature. With some very notable exceptions (Halo 2, which is of course a marketing strategy) most games in 2007 will run just fine under XP in DX9 mode, albeit without the DX10 bells and whistles.

 

[Bill Kunert]

I read today that Microsoft will support XP till at least 2010 and probably a little longer. They have supposedly been getting a lot of pressure from the Orient to continue support.

 

[stash]

The plan has been to support XP for 7 years (2 yrs of mainstream, 5 of extended) after the release of Vista for quite awhile now. Today's announcement just stated that they were making that the date for XP Home and MCE in addition to XP Pro, but it was a foregone conclusion that that would happen. It would have been a nightmare logisticly to say that XP Pro is supported for five years longer than the other versions of XP.

So given that, XP will be supported until around 2014, by which time Windows 7 will (hopefully ) be out.

 

[RebateMonger]

From my point of view, Vista's biggest advantage over XP will be maintainability. XP was a huge jump over Win98 on ease of repair. Vista's ability to self-diagnose and to track changes in system performance should be a big improvement over XP.

Additionally, Vista has several features that should help solve some key security issues experienced both at home and in business. I've got clients that have big problems turning off Local Administrator rights for their users. Vista should make that a lot easier.

I'm still very concerned about the complexity of Vista's DRM solution. I hope it doesn't make Vista implode. But if Vista works as well as it should, it should be a good basis for a solid home and business OS for the next several years.

Originally posted by: stash
Today's announcement just stated that they were making that the date for XP Home and MCE in addition to XP Pro, but it was a foregone conclusion that that would happen..

Yeah, I don't know why Microsoft took so long to make that announcement. There was little technical reason not to support XP Home or MCE. And lots of political reasons TO support them.

I think that people will be more willing to jump to Vista if they believe that it will be useful and supported for as long as XP.

 

[russell2002]

I ran widows 2000 on everything until last week. Until IE7 came out i was able to run anything I needed. Hopefully XP remains that way for a good 5 years.

 

[Roguestar]

Hell even win2k is supported until 2010, and think of all the businesses, organisations, schools and institutes that use XP. XP isn't dead yet, not by a long shot.

 

[jlbenedict]

We were just informed here at work that all of our desktop clients were to be upgraded to Windows XP. Windows XP will be around for a very long time. I'm quite sure the Windows XP faithful will be ever as strong as those who chose to hold onto Windows 98 for as long as they did.

 

[Nothinman]

Hell even win2k is supported until 2010

Somewhat, they're only releasing critical security updates now, you have to have Extended Hotfix Support and contact them for the 2007 DST patch or use tzedit to manually fix it yourself.