4 ms·

Windows XP will never die

24 points by twampss 16y ago

grellas 16y ago
Our little firm just went through this issue, having had to replace aging Windows XP computers used by our staff and being told by our IT guy and our vendors for key software components that we use (Hummingbird for sophisticated document management, Lexis for time and billing, calendaring, etc., and others) that Windows 7 clients would be incompatible with our network setup for a variety of reasons. This meant either spending $10K or $20K for various small upgrades using Windows XP clients or triple or quadruple that amount (or more) for doing a global upgrade to Windows 7 for clients and attendant network components. While it is nice to consider bringing everything up to date at once, no business will do this without considering the cost/benefit aspects and, for us anyway, this meant going with the more incremental changes and deferring the more disruptive ones. The hardware aspects of these upgrades are pretty modest in cost. But the expense of paying tech people to reconfigure everything gets high pretty quickly. Thus, the point made by the article is spot on, at least from this non-tech user's perspective. I assume this will also help explain why it will be comparatively hard to dislodge Microsoft from business-related markets generally - no one wants to make radically disruptive changes on infrastructure items unless they have to.
- barnaby 16y ago
  That's a good summary. I'm going to encourage my competitors to keep thinking like that. If I'm lucky they'll be sufficiently slowed down, and kept out of touch with the market needs of most users (who will have kept upgrading) that it won't be hard for me to eat their lunch.
  - chopsueyar 16y ago
    ...or drink their milkshake.
  - carbocation 16y ago
    I suspect that this won't be a problem for grellas, whose company is his law firm.
bobbyi 16y ago
I'm still seeing 2014 for extended support http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-gb&C2=1173 http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-gb&C2=1173 Is that the wrong page? Can someone provide where Microsoft is saying it's now 2020?
- wmf 16y ago
  Maybe the dates for support and downgrade rights don't necessarily coincide. After 2014 you could downgrade to XP but it would be completely unsupported.
- swilliams 16y ago
  Sigh... http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/xp-in-2020-not-even-close-read-the-fine-print/2270 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/xp-in-2020-not-even-close-rea...
cageface 16y ago
Sounds like a defensive move to make sure nobody thinks too hard about switching to Macs or Linux machines.
- rubidium 16y ago
  Really? The cost comparison of switching to a mac or linux system vs. windows 7, infrastructure and tech support-wise, must be minimal for a large company. Or am I missing something? I think it has more to do with the fact that people are going to want to keep XP for a long time, because it works for most business use (spreadsheets, word docs, and the internet).
  - angstrom 16y ago
    It only makes sense if there's a competitive advantage to the upgrade. For the vast majority of businesses there isn't. In that scenario the cost of sticking with XP is actually a competitive advantage for those companies when the economy is weak and budgets are tight. For tech companies it's not an issue since tech is their business having the best is a competitive edge.
    - eli 16y ago
      This is exactly it. I think XP is the first desktop OS that was truly "good enough" for typical, everyday business use. Sure, Windows 7 is clearly a better OS... but is that going to make Company X produce widgets any faster? Probably not enough to justify the cost of licensing and upgrading to a new OS (and that's assuming that there are no compatibility issues with e.g. that old timecard app the intern wrote in 2001)
  - cageface 16y ago
    MS is sacrificing a potentially large revenue stream here. You have to ask why. I think it's because they realize that some businesses are going to look at Mac/Linux environment with Google Docs or Zoho and realize that it's not that much harder to switch.
sliverstorm 16y ago
It's interesting to see something we tend to think of as software winding up in the same position as firmware; left alone to it's own devices and un-upgraded, unless something is not working.
- zrail 16y ago
  I know of some ten year old machines running critical SCADA control software on top of Windows 2000. Those machines were never intended to be upgraded. They're not even connected to the Internet, so I'd be surprised if they've even been patched. They do their job with no fuss, so don't touch them. They're approaching the point where the hardware could start failing any day now, so they're on an upgrade path. This path is, not so surprisingly, very expensive and fraught with politics about how the replacements should be connected to the internet (hint: they shouldn't). These things tend to happen a lot, we just don't hear about it very often. Hell, where I work we're still running CentOS 4 on the vast majority of machines because we know it works.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
ams6110 16y ago
It's not as if XP is a particularly BAD system. If the minimal amount of UI bling bothers you, it's easy to turn it off and have something that looks like Windows 2000 Professional. It's stable, it runs all the software most businesses need, and it more or less stays out of your way otherwise. All this assumes that x86 (compatible) architectures will still be available through 2020, something I think is not certain at all (and maybe this is what MS is counting on in making this promise)
- megablast 16y ago
  First thing I do is get rid of all the bling on xp or 7, make it look like 2000. 7 almost becomes useable with this, although it still annoyes the hell out of me. When everything works, it is just fine, but when you need to go to the control panel, or do anything out of the normal, you find Microsoft has moves everything around just for the hell of it.
robryan 16y ago
I guess the root of the problem is that no windows software maker, Microsoft or otherwise, wants the initial loss of customers that would result in not making it compatible with windows xp. On my windows xp machine there hasn't been a single piece of software I've wanted to use which wouldn't work without an upgrade. If there was something key it probably would convince me to upgrade. I've used and don't mind windows 7 just there has been no compelling reason to change.
mooism2 16y ago
And therefore Internet Explorer 6 will never die. I know someone who still uses Windows ME.
known 16y ago
In my compaq laptop I'm still running Windows 98
joeycfan 16y ago
I'm sure this will catch heat, but I think MS peaked with NT 4 service pack 6. I LOVED that OS. The only thing wrong with it was that it's direct X only went up to 3 or 4, so you couldn't play modern games on it.

24 points by twampss 16y ago

Our little firm just went through this issue, having had to replace aging Windows XP computers used by our staff and being told by our IT guy and our vendors for key software components that we use (Hummingbird for sophisticated document management, Lexis for time and billing, calendaring, etc., and others) that Windows 7 clients would be incompatible with our network setup for a variety of reasons. This meant either spending $10K or $20K for various small upgrades using Windows XP clients or triple or quadruple that amount (or more) for doing a global upgrade to Windows 7 for clients and attendant network components. While it is nice to consider bringing everything up to date at once, no business will do this without considering the cost/benefit aspects and, for us anyway, this meant going with the more incremental changes and deferring the more disruptive ones. The hardware aspects of these upgrades are pretty modest in cost. But the expense of paying tech people to reconfigure everything gets high pretty quickly. Thus, the point made by the article is spot on, at least from this non-tech user's perspective. I assume this will also help explain why it will be comparatively hard to dislodge Microsoft from business-related markets generally - no one wants to make radically disruptive changes on infrastructure items unless they have to.

barnaby 16y ago
That's a good summary. I'm going to encourage my competitors to keep thinking like that. If I'm lucky they'll be sufficiently slowed down, and kept out of touch with the market needs of most users (who will have kept upgrading) that it won't be hard for me to eat their lunch.
- chopsueyar 16y ago
  ...or drink their milkshake.
- carbocation 16y ago
  I suspect that this won't be a problem for grellas, whose company is his law firm.

bobbyi 16y ago

I'm still seeing 2014 for extended support http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-gb&C2=1173 http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-gb&C2=1173 Is that the wrong page? Can someone provide where Microsoft is saying it's now 2020?

wmf 16y ago
Maybe the dates for support and downgrade rights don't necessarily coincide. After 2014 you could downgrade to XP but it would be completely unsupported.
swilliams 16y ago
Sigh... http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/xp-in-2020-not-even-close-read-the-fine-print/2270 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/xp-in-2020-not-even-close-rea...

cageface 16y ago

Sounds like a defensive move to make sure nobody thinks too hard about switching to Macs or Linux machines.

rubidium 16y ago
Really? The cost comparison of switching to a mac or linux system vs. windows 7, infrastructure and tech support-wise, must be minimal for a large company. Or am I missing something? I think it has more to do with the fact that people are going to want to keep XP for a long time, because it works for most business use (spreadsheets, word docs, and the internet).
- angstrom 16y ago
  It only makes sense if there's a competitive advantage to the upgrade. For the vast majority of businesses there isn't. In that scenario the cost of sticking with XP is actually a competitive advantage for those companies when the economy is weak and budgets are tight. For tech companies it's not an issue since tech is their business having the best is a competitive edge.
  - eli 16y ago
    This is exactly it. I think XP is the first desktop OS that was truly "good enough" for typical, everyday business use. Sure, Windows 7 is clearly a better OS... but is that going to make Company X produce widgets any faster? Probably not enough to justify the cost of licensing and upgrading to a new OS (and that's assuming that there are no compatibility issues with e.g. that old timecard app the intern wrote in 2001)
- cageface 16y ago
  MS is sacrificing a potentially large revenue stream here. You have to ask why. I think it's because they realize that some businesses are going to look at Mac/Linux environment with Google Docs or Zoho and realize that it's not that much harder to switch.

sliverstorm 16y ago

It's interesting to see something we tend to think of as software winding up in the same position as firmware; left alone to it's own devices and un-upgraded, unless something is not working.

zrail 16y ago
I know of some ten year old machines running critical SCADA control software on top of Windows 2000. Those machines were never intended to be upgraded. They're not even connected to the Internet, so I'd be surprised if they've even been patched. They do their job with no fuss, so don't touch them. They're approaching the point where the hardware could start failing any day now, so they're on an upgrade path. This path is, not so surprisingly, very expensive and fraught with politics about how the replacements should be connected to the internet (hint: they shouldn't). These things tend to happen a lot, we just don't hear about it very often. Hell, where I work we're still running CentOS 4 on the vast majority of machines because we know it works.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]

ams6110 16y ago

It's not as if XP is a particularly BAD system. If the minimal amount of UI bling bothers you, it's easy to turn it off and have something that looks like Windows 2000 Professional. It's stable, it runs all the software most businesses need, and it more or less stays out of your way otherwise. All this assumes that x86 (compatible) architectures will still be available through 2020, something I think is not certain at all (and maybe this is what MS is counting on in making this promise)

megablast 16y ago
First thing I do is get rid of all the bling on xp or 7, make it look like 2000. 7 almost becomes useable with this, although it still annoyes the hell out of me. When everything works, it is just fine, but when you need to go to the control panel, or do anything out of the normal, you find Microsoft has moves everything around just for the hell of it.

robryan 16y ago

I guess the root of the problem is that no windows software maker, Microsoft or otherwise, wants the initial loss of customers that would result in not making it compatible with windows xp. On my windows xp machine there hasn't been a single piece of software I've wanted to use which wouldn't work without an upgrade. If there was something key it probably would convince me to upgrade. I've used and don't mind windows 7 just there has been no compelling reason to change.

mooism2 16y ago

And therefore Internet Explorer 6 will never die. I know someone who still uses Windows ME.

known 16y ago

In my compaq laptop I'm still running Windows 98

joeycfan 16y ago

I'm sure this will catch heat, but I think MS peaked with NT 4 service pack 6. I LOVED that OS. The only thing wrong with it was that it's direct X only went up to 3 or 4, so you couldn't play modern games on it.