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I have kept my old XP machine because I find it easier to do things in that than I do in Vista. If only I'd known better, I would have upgraded my old XP with more room on it. I have programs that I loved on my XP that will not work on Vista, I haven't been able to burn many CD's on Vista and have them work... Xp, they were so simple to do and came out like they should.. LOL! I use my thumb drive to transfer stuff to my XP machine so I can burn it to a CD..
I find Vista confusing even after having it almost 2 years, still can't find stuff on here that I KNOW is here.. And if I can find it, I can't get it to work like it should. That is why I still have my XP machine.
I agree that with the help of third party applications, XP is capable of doing everything anybody would need to do today. This is really sad considering the OS is now 10 years old. Imagine using MS-DOS 5 and Windows 3.0 in the year 2000. Time-frame wise, that is the equivalent of using XP today. Shows how slow PC technology has really advanced in the last decade vs in the 90s.
Agreed, it is like a guy starting to work-out, initial days with proper rest and diet, you develop muscle really fast but after a few weeks or months, you eventually hit a plateau. XP was that plateau for most people. There are always those who are either out of curiosity, necessity or 'I am so hip' idiocy, jump on new technology.
64-Bit Windows 7 is what I am using at work, it looks nice and runs fairly fast but 80% of the programs would not run on it, programs that we need to use it at work so I am running VMware WS not only for testing purpose but also to be able to run certain system administration tasks. We have Exchange 2003 in use so the compatible RSAT add-on doesn't work on 64-bit Win7 so other than the basic Administration tools and AD snap-on, I have to use Exchange Tools that comes with RSAT on my 32-bit XP Pro that runs on the VMware. The programs (mainly proprietary that seems to be running on Win7 either run odd or simply crash out of the blue. Certain features are nice or more like nice looking but still perhaps I am too used to XP but XP seems a lot more straightforward and practical to use for me.
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Microsoft released 7 so quickly because of the negative public image Vista had. 7 could have easily been a service pack to Vista, but the Vista brand was so tarnished that it was best if a new version was released.
I never used Vista but I could tell the tarnishing was justified. Since you stated that Win 7 was released quickly either a) MS knew Vista was a BS scam of an OS released to make $$ while they were working on the 'real' next OS -or- b) MS didn't know or expect Vista to be such a failure and they came up with 7 in such a short amount of time, you have to be naive to thing it was nothing more than a tweaked, re-coated version of Vista.
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Microsoft has to move beyond XP at some point. A 10 year tenure for an operating system is like a century in computer time. Vista/7 was a huge step forward for consumers.
Perhaps for customers and only for a certain group plus some of the techies that needs to be on the cutting edge side of things...Both OSes seem like eye-candy to me, 7 being the undisputed superior one compared to Vista. Software compatibility and stability issues need to be resolved for the 64-bit version because if I upgrade from XP Pro 32-bit, it would only be to a 64-bit version of 7 otherwise like I said, even with application compatibility, it is not much more than a pretty shell to XP. With all my customizations (tweaks), XP rocks and rolls just the way I want it.
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I refuse to install XP on my home computer due to the fact I have to take a whole Saturday to install the OS, apply the updates, and then install all the third party software I need to get what I want out of it. I can install 7 and have a fully functional PC within an hour or two.
I disagree. You are obviously not using the right re-imaging methods or more like you aren't using any.
Businesses generally have standardized images that make using XP a little more feasible as all the updates and applications needed are generally included in the image.
Even home users can do this. I create an image CD/DVD once I do a fresh install and tweak it just the way I want so I won't have to re-install Windows, then device drivers and any applicable system updates, then 3rd party apps, customizations, restoring files and program configurations, etc. which like you said could take over 2+ hours easily.
Even with a decent base image that includes the latest service pack, security updates, device drivers, required 3rd party apps and their configuration, the re-install process can easily be reduced to under an hour so Windows 7 doesn't really have an advantage over XP imo and bare in mind that Win 7 ain't got anything but several basic, small updates.
Me and Vista were the only real failures. Other releases (such as 98SE) were minor upgrades but they still penetrated the market due to older computers being replaced by new computers with the newer OS.
Like I said, in every 3 release, at least 1 was crap (bold):
First 3: Win95, 98(se) and ME
Second 3: 2000, XP and Vista
Third 3: 7, ... (TBD)
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Before Vista, the mass downgrading of NEW systems one or two versions back wasn't common. In the past three years, almost every Vista or 7 PC in a business environment has been downgraded to XP.
Question is...why? I see no reason to upgrade older systems from XP to Windows 7, but why, even in late 2010, are most new systems in business environments being downgraded to XP?
No mystery, really. Why endure something sucky just cause it is newer when the older version was simply....better overall?
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The real area where XP is holding technology advancement back is its locking us in the 32-bit era. That means in the foreseeable future, there will be little in the way of software produced on a mass scale that fully utilizes today's hardware. Linux and Mac OS X have both already fully transitioned into the 64-bit era, but Windows will continue to be held back due to the continued dominance of XP.
Businesses, especially those that deal with the banking industry or use government systems, for example, HAVE to support whatever software they HAVE to use. Much of it isn't compatible with anything newer than XP. For instance, one of the states my company deals with uses a system built with Access 97. Until a couple of years ago, anybody that needed to use that system had to have Access 97 installed locally. Thankfully, they put it onto a terminal server, so we don't have to have A97 installed anymore, but you get the drift. Access 97 is still WIDELY used, in a lot of industries.
For most companies, though, it's about the cost. XP does everything they need it to do. If it ain't broke, why fix it? Rolling out a new O/S - even for a small company - is cost prohibitive, especially in this economy. It costs a lot to test the platform, buy the licenses, roll it out to X desktops and then have your workers lose productivity while they adjust their individual machines to suit their needs/preferences.
In our home, which is also where our business is located, we have 10 machines that get used daily or semi-regularly. Seven of them are running XP, two are running Windows 7 (one of which is a dedicated HTPC) and the last is running Linux. Upgrading the XP machines to 7 would cost over $700, plus a LOT of time to get everything tweaked to our liking. Then there's the software we would have to replace or upgrade due to incompatibility with Win7. That's a lot of time, money and work, and for what? A slicker interface? And that's just in our home... Imagine the total cost for a company with 1,000, 10,000 or 100,000 machines...
". New "must-have" software is one aspect that pushes folks to upgrade.
Agree but in my case it's lots of software (mostly for video) I paid some good money for that probably isn't going to run under Win7
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The inability to repair the old computer is another.
That's what graigslist is for. I picked up Gateway with p4 3.2 for 40 bucks to replace old reliable that finally died after 7 years. No drive but didn't need it. I took one look in the case and saw a very minimal amount of dust, it looked new inside without any obvious signs it was run constantly and I was sold. Got lucky I guess, now I'm hopefully good for another 7 years.
Plain and simple.
I am the IT Manager of a law office.
I have 45 PC's running Windows XP and Office 2003.
(Except for mine that has Win7 and Office 2010, and a conference room PC with Vista... come on now, I have to stay current at least )
Our current systems do what we need it to do. Period. It runs our office software, Word, Excel, Outlook and browses the internet just fine. That's all we need to practice law.
There is NO pressing need for me to upgrade to Win7 or new hardware.
I would love to but what reason should I do it for? What will probably finally do it is when Microsoft EOL's it ("End of life").
We do have a handful of Laptops and as the 3 year warranty expires on those we will upgrade to Win7. But we will probably still use Office2003.
That's a cost issue. We have a sitewide license for 2003.
Microsoft got rid of "upgrade pricing" so now we will have to pay full price for Office 2010. That works out to roughly $18,000.
$18,000! Previously with upgrade pricing it would be exactly half that much. $9,000.
I see that IE9 will not be available for anything but Win7. Not even Vista? That's disappointing. Way to just about admit, MS, that Vista sucked.
I am the IT Manager of a law office.
I have 45 PC's running Windows XP and Office 2003.
...
Our current systems do what we need it to do. Period. It runs our office software, Word, Excel, Outlook and browses the internet just fine. That's all we need to practice law.
Costs aside, there's still a lot of software that just doesn't run on 7 very well. If MS did a better job with its software upgrades in the first place, upgrading wouldn't be so painful to consumers and XP wouldn't still be so popular.
Costs aside, there's still a lot of software that just doesn't run on 7 very well. If MS did a better job with its software upgrades in the first place, upgrading wouldn't be so painful to consumers and XP wouldn't still be so popular.
You can't design a new OS based on what ancient software people might want to run on it, if that was the case we'd still be using a command line OS. This is hardly a Microsoft issue, it happens with many new OS's, can you run all software that was available for a Mac in 2001 on a brand new OS 10.6 machine? No you can't.
It has soooooo little driver support its all but unusable.
As NHDave said, incompatible software isn't really a Microsoft issue.
We're slowly switching over at my work. Our accounting department was about to take the plunge, but someone realized their software is not compatible with Windows 7.
Dell still offers XP downgrade with the Win 7 license. I've been using that for as many of our new systems as I can. Some systems (mine included) just came with Win 7. Since Microsoft is slowly phasing out XP support (I think in a couple days I can't buy XP through Dell anymore) Yeah: "THE LAST DATE TO ORDER SYSTEMS WITH WINDOWS XP PREINSTALLED IS OCTOBER 1ST 2010*." is an email I got a few months ago.
Honestly, Windows 7 rocks. Provided you have a system to power it. My company is upgrading computers individually. When we get a new system, we try to move that to 7 unless there is an incompatibility for that user.
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Both OSes seem like eye-candy to me, 7 being the undisputed superior one compared to Vista. Software compatibility and stability issues need to be resolved for the 64-bit version because if I upgrade from XP Pro 32-bit, it would only be to a 64-bit version of 7 otherwise like I said, even with application compatibility, it is not much more than a pretty shell to XP. With all my customizations (tweaks), XP rocks and rolls just the way I want it.
I picked up Gateway with p4 3.2 for 40 bucks to replace old reliable that finally died after 7 years. No drive but didn't need it. I took one look in the case and saw a very minimal amount of dust, it looked new inside without any obvious signs it was run constantly and I was sold. Got lucky I guess, now I'm hopefully good for another 7 years.
)
