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Ex-Microsoftie here. They actually already did that with Windows 8. Steven Sinofsky even did a demo to us where he got Windows 8 up and running on an ancient
by Aaronontheweb 13y ago
Ex-Microsoftie here.
They actually already did that with Windows 8.
Steven Sinofsky even did a demo to us where he got Windows 8 up and running on an ancient laptop originally manufactured for use with Windows 95 or 98 (piece of x86 hardware that was close to 20 years old.)
Windows 8 has lower system requirements and a smaller storage requirement than Windows 7 - this was necessitated by the requirement to support ARM architecture beginning with Windows 8.
The problem is that Windows XP exists predominantly in two environments that are historically tricky for Microsoft:
1. Pirated copies, largely in Asia and
2. Deeply barnacled enterprise deployments, especially in Governments.
The reason why Microsoft's bothered supporting XP for so long is because of the amount of revenue tied up in #2.
If Microsoft dynamites support for XP and those barnacled enterprises have to reinvent their entire IT infrastructure around something new, there's a very strong possibility in some cases that a Linux-based solution might win, particularly in the public sector.
So it's a tricky issue, but Microsoft won't ultimately be able to kick the can down the road forever. What will ultimately move people off of XP is when third party developers decide to stop supporting it, which they largely still do.
- ChuckMcM 13y agoFascinating, and thanks for that factoid. I wonder why Microsoft has never really pushed that concept out to consumers.
- Aaronontheweb 13y agoI've often wondered that myself - to be honest, I can't recall Microsoft making a strong push for upgrading the OS of existing machines since Windows Vista; primarily, I think, because of the huge disaster that ensued with aforementioned push. The "Upgrade from XP to Vista" rollout backfired for a ton of reasons, but if I had to summarize it was due to these facts: 1. Microsoft did not work closely enough with device manufacturers to ensure device compatibility from Windows XP to Vista. Printers and video cards primarily. 2. Consumers now had to choose between 6 versions of Vista instead of "Pro" or "Home", which was confusing. 3. x64 architecture was introduced, which doubled the number of possible choices consumers had to make and inevitably lead to some consumers being very disappointed with their purchase. 4. Due to the introduction of Aero and some poor quality control on the part of the Windows team, Vista required vastly more resources than what many Windows XP machines were capable of delivering. Vista's minimum install footprint is something monstrous like 16-24GB, which was a stretch for Windows XP machines manufactured as long as 6 years prior. Since then, each version of Windows has required less resources than the edition before it. Sinofsky emphasized that. So in short, I think Microsoft realized that the QA burden is a lot greater than they previously thought and have left it up to their most technical consumers to decide whether or not to upgrade, relying instead on hardware refresh cycles to do most of the heavy lifting for the bulk of their consumers. Unfortunately with the advent of the "multi-device consumer," those upgrade cycles can often be much longer than three years now. Despite those concerns, Microsoft sold copies of Windows 8 for something phenomenally cheap initially, $49 IIRC, in hopes of getting people to upgrade their existing hardware. I believe they discontinued that practice 6 months after the initial release of Windows 8.
- ChuckMcM 13y ago> Despite those concerns, Microsoft sold copies of > Windows 8 for something phenomenally cheap initially, > $49 IIRC, in hopes of getting people to upgrade their > existing hardware. I would have taken them up on that deal if they had said "will work on your XP machine", my experience with Vista was that "new release" was fundamentally incompatible with old hardware.
- Aaronontheweb 13y agoWell, marketing has never really been Microsoft's strong suite :\
- yuhong 13y agofundamentally incompatible with old hardware. It is fundamentally incompatible with some very old hardware, for example ACPI is now required.
- yuhong 13y agoUnfortunately they later added the NX requirement which killed support for all pre-2003 CPUs.
- keithpeter 13y ago"Steven Sinofsky even did a demo to us where he got Windows 8 up and running on an ancient laptop originally manufactured for use with Windows 95 or 98 (piece of x86 hardware that was close to 20 years old.)" Interesting. So I could buy a retail copy of Windows 8 and install it on this X61s (Duo Core 2, 3Gb RAM, Lenovo BIOS, Intel 945 graphics, Atheros WiFi) and it would run reasonably quickly?
- Aaronontheweb 13y agoIn theory - the poster below pointed out that they added a requirement later which eliminated support for any pre-2003 CPU. The demo I referred to happened about a year before Windows 8 RTMed.