Is Windows XP too good for Microsoft’s own good?

[Carol Haynes]

LOL - Microsoft have extended the period in which OEMs can offer new machines with Windows XP (what does that say about demand for Vista - or does it reflect the number of people taking up the 'downgrade to XP' scheme MS have had to set up).

So MS plan to sell XP until 2010 - what is Vista for then? The next generation will be out then - and that will a DRMed boot system!

Here is an article about it: http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=759&tag=nl.e539 the discussion following it is quite entertaining if you like the:

"I know more than you 'cos I use Linux"
"No I know more than you because I use an iMac (and I'm richer)"
"What are you talking about Vista is wonderful and lightening fast on 5Kb of memory"
...

type of thing

[Ehtyar]

That woman writes some exceptionally good material, and she's almost always right on the money. Thanks for the link Carol.

Ehtyar.

[1101doc]

An open letter to Microsoft:

Guys.  Vista is not going to cut it, and everybody knows it.  Sure, the eye candy is great, BUT.  Anybody remember ME?  Look.  XP is really good.  Really.  I use it.  My Mom uses it.  AT&T uses it.  It can virtualize.  Do media.  Almost everything.  Almost.  And since SP2, not very buggy.  Well, there's still that Taskbar thingy with disappearing icons, and the explorer.exe crashes, but still, most of the time, for most stuff, XP is great.  Mostly.

You want me to buy a new OS from you?  Give me XPx!  Take XP and fix it up.  Integrate all the Sysinternals stuff.  Make Process Explorer the Taskmanager.  Make the Control Panel one-stop shopping for everything.  If you don't like XPSysPad or its' competitors, I'll bet Mark and his Sysinternals guys will whip you up a doozy.  I spend alot of time on the computer help forums just explaining how to navigate to the dialog box to mark the little box that needs checking!  Make it easy and straightforward and all in one place.

And make the explanations in plain English!!  Hey! View> Arrange Icons by..'Show in Groups' means Alphabetize! OK?  And who can tell what Services do from reading the descriptions?  I just came by a Win98 printed manual.  One of those would be way good!  Get some help from ordinary (not power) users.

And you want to do up some eye candy with it?  Cool!
Make it the full Monty!  Tweak it out, streamline it, integrate a 2-way firewall (Buy one if you have to, but make it Comodo strong), Rename stuff to make it intuitive,soup up the clipboard, expand right-click control...  Heck!  Do the stuff natively that Donation Coder and others have been doing for you to make XP really work up to it's potential!

Are you listening, Jeff?  Give me a reworked, bug free, self-monitoring, straight-forward XP and I will give you some big dollars.  Really.  I would buy a full tilt SP3 integrated XP with those sort of improvements- full retail- direct from you in a New York minute.

Give me XPx! 

I am standing by with credit card in hand!

[Ralf Maximus]

And leave out the soul-sucking DRM, please.

k thx bai

[Carol Haynes]

And make the explanations in plain English!!  Hey! View> Arrange Icons by..'Show in Groups' means Alphabetize! OK?

Hmmm ... nope ...you are wrong there.

You can show in groups by file type, file size, date etc.

[1101doc]

True, but the immediate default is to arrange alphabetically.

[OldElmerFudd]

IMHO MS decided to release RC3?4?5? versions of the OS just to take the heat off the delays. Never mind the 4!! versions, or the still missing add-ons to Ultimate, or the fact that Vista is a poor shadow of what Longhorn was proposed to be. XP Pro just works, day in and day out. Buy all the OEM copies you can, and settle in for a few more years.

my 2 pennies
OEF

[zridling]

No, XP is not too good; rather, Vista is that bad, as in embarrassing. Also, XP is Vista's biggest competitor. How many tens of millions — or is it hundreds? — of people are using a version of Windows? The larger the base, the harder it is to move.
________________________________________________
Person-1 has a laptop with XP on it. Laptop boots in 40 seconds, runs great; is 2+ years old. Has tons of great software available to run on XP. All its hardware only has drivers written for XP. Not enough memory to upgrade to Vista. So why should he?

Person-2 has a desktop with Vista on it. Boots in 115 seconds, runs slow; is brand new with multi-core processor. Freezes and stalls coming out of hibernation. Can't upgrade hardware without buying another copy of Vista and reinstalling everything. Gets Automatic updates whether she turns them off or not. Is subject to being locked out of their computer if their copy of Vista is not continuouly validated. Can't downgrade to XP because new desktop hardware only has a few XP drivers written for it. Also, count how many clicks it takes to get anywhere in Vista compared to XP. Start with networking.

Result?
Person-2 is bloody pissed.
Person-1 is productive.

[justice]

Person 2 is bending the truth. You get the same Automatic updates automatically applied on both XP and Vista AFAIK. Also, you it takes one phone call to get vista reactivated on hardware change, not any different from xp. WGA does not require any more activation on vista than it does on XP, microsoft changed that using an wga update, again AFAIK. I'm pretty sure.

[Carol Haynes]

I know I was critical of MS for the automatic update debacle - but having thought about it I don't think what they did was that unreasonable. There were two issues:

• updates to windows automatic update software
• turning on automatic update

AIUI the first only occured when "Notify me of updates" was enabled (not if automatic update was actually switched off). Given that you have asked to be notified of updates there are only two options available to MS: only notify that automatic update has an update and not of other updates OR update automatic update so that it can inform you of updates to Windows that are available including security patches. MS chose the latter option and since the user has specified that they want to be notified of updates it doesn't seem unreasonable in the cold light of day that MS enable your system to do what you asked. Having said that I would have preferred a message saying "Automatic Updates needs to be updated, you will not see other updates until it is done" and leave it to the user to choose.

The second situation only occurs if you install Windows Live OneCare - and personally I think anyone who installs that bunch of crap as a security suite deserves to have automatic updates enabled as they are too stupid to understand how to check for themselves.

[icekin]

After using Vista and Mac OS X, I got the feeling that Apple's increasing popularity, especially among the Web 2.0 crowd, was seen by Microsoft as a threat.

My view of the Background:

The web 2.0 startups and bloggers are increasingly starting to get the attention of casual browsers and even the media. I know people who actually rely on the PC tips in these blog posts as if it were advice from a seasoned PC magazine. These blogs start posting articles about tips for the Mac and how you can be so productive on it. Young bloggers in their teens see the Mac and are fascinated by its polished looking hardware and features.

Soon, the regular crowd of average users sees Mac and thinks maybe they should try it too. They guys at any Apple store are amazing salesmen. My friend (who later bought a Macbook) and I went to a few and they made him think that the Macbook was more reliable than a medical device compared to a poor, buggy Windows. There's the coolness factor too. Average users are easily swayed by the sales pitches.

Microsoft's Problem is they don't like losing market share. They think that eye candy is the way of the new OS and they whip up an OS with plenty of it. Average users like pretty things, so let's give them a pretty OS. Never mind the minority of seasoned computer literature users who like simple and functional approaches to getting things done.

Don't get me wrong, Vista would have been a good idea if :

- Emphasis was on productivity and not eye candy

- Applications were improved. MS Paint (see Paint.NET for what it should be) and Notepad for starters. Also Firewall, Clipboard viewer and some others.

- Microsoft had not tried to push its own file formats on people. XPS printer should be an add-on option, not there by default.

- Conventions were maintained. Correct or not, People understand the Windows 98, 2000 and XP terminology for changing desktop properties and control panel settings. Don't change it.

- And many others as previous posts have mentioned.

The increasing numbers of users downgrading to XP is because the incredibly jerky transition from XP->Vista compared to the earlier Win 95->98->2k->XP transition, where users felt like they were in familiar territory within a day of using the computer. I consider myself a fairly experienced windows user and even I had difficulty tweaking several settings in Vista.

[f0dder]

- Applications were improved. MS Paint (see Paint.NET for what it should be) and Notepad for starters. Also Firewall, Clipboard viewer and some others.

IMHO notepad does exactly what it needs to do - simple text files, extremely light-weight. Only real gripe about is is you can't have a status bar in wordwrap mode. For anything else, use a real text editor

Same goes for the built-in firewall, it blocks incoming attacks, and that's all you need. Don't waste system resources & confuse the regular end-users with something more complex. The suckers who think they need outgoing protection will bitch no matter what, anyway.

Other than that, I tend to agree with you.