Microsoft may keep XP alive after all

[stoanee]

Looks like the petitions are getting to Microsoft after all.

From Yahoo News

Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer offered a glimmer of hope on Thursday to fans of the company's Windows XP operating system, saying the company may reconsider its decision to stop selling it soon.But Ballmer was adamant that most people who buy PCs today buy them with XP's successor, Vista.
"That's the statistical truth," he told reporters at a news conference at Louvain-La-Neuve University. "If customer feedback varies, we can always wake up smarter.

Here is a link

[sswilson]

Ballmer said the customers buying PCs with XP are corporate information technology departments that are having trouble shifting old machines to newer technology.

I call bullpucky!!!!! :)

The real question should be "what percentage of folks who have a choice of what OS to install are chosing to install XP?" .

M$ likes to throw around the fact that they are selling more new PCs with VISTA than with XP, but fail to mention the fact that the great majority of consumer PC purchases are low(er) end pre-built computers which don't offer the option of chosing XP over Vista.

If they really want to measure the mood of the masses WRT Vista, they should offer a free "downgrade" to XP for everybody who's running a legit version of Vista. That kind of move would give them a true idea of adoption rates, and would also give them an idea of how many folks are currently running a hacked version of XP on machines for which they have a legit Vista license.

[Cptn Vortex]

Working at Frontier..... 95% of all the computers I sell are XP machines. Honestly, I am very very surprised whenever people ask for Vista. Then I ask them Why.... usually, they just want to try it, and they always buy Ultimate or Business so they have the option to Downgrade....

[Eldonko]

I still use XP, I own 4 copies!

[belgolas]

I use xp and haven't touched vista in a few months. M$ is making a "new" OS and releasing one soon but it will be just vista reworked. Even if Vista was fixed completely and was faster then XP most people still wouldn't buy Vista just because of the bad rep. So M$ has to get a new OS even if it isn't much of a change or else M$ will loose to much money and will be hard to recover.

[thenewguy001]

The problem with new MS OSs are twofold:

1. drivers. Allegedly, MS paid hardware makers to make new drivers for Xp. They didn't for vista. So hardware compatibility breaks, and hardware makers have no motivation to offer support because they'd rather the chumps (read: customers) buy new hardware. You end up with the whole creative driver debacle. On the other hand, even when you have a company willing to make good vista drivers, you end up with the whole nvidia incompetency class action lawsuit. they really screwed up royally here. people don't want to buy a new printer, scanner, mouse, gamepad, etc, when they upgrade their OS, and they shouldn't have to.

2. bloat. accusations have pointed to DRM as the main culprit of vista performance issues. however, there are still plenty of other bloat within it. people are not going to go through the hassle and cost of changing and learning a new OS and have their machine be less productive than their old system. this goes double for business machines. No company will invest in something to make themselves less productive.

Not sure how MS can tackle both of these with their next "new", probably rehashed OS. They can fix #2 within their own company and there are signs that they want to fix this bloat since they are making a minwin (minimal windows) kernel. But this isn't intended for your average desktop user. even with the best of intentions, I'm sure they'll screw it up somehow.

#1 is a bit harder to fix. they'd literrally have to throw money at it or strong arm hardware makers somehow; and they don't have much credibility now, so this will be difficult.

And then of course, you have the whole annoying cancel or allow crap, and software compatibility issues. Compounded with #1 and 2, vista is an epic failure.

[sswilson]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again....

DRM is my main issue...... I don't want a content producer to have the ability to turn off certain functionality of my hardware at the core of the OS.

I don't pirate content, but companies like Sony don't exactly have the best record when it comes to playing nice with this kind of access even when dealing with folks who are using content which has been bought and paid for.

[thenewguy001]

Yep. Pirates don't have to worry about DRM. The content they get is cracked already, and someone always cracks it eventually. It's only a problem, if you can call it that, for the techies who LIKE the challenge of breaking copy protection for bragging rights. The only people DRM inconveniences are the paying customers (read: suckers). Hence, if i know something has invasive crappy DRM, I often go out of my way to obtain an pirated copy of it, just out of principle, even if I have no interest in it and it's just going to sit on my drive until I want to delete it. ie. bioshock, and starforced games. Conversely, I will pay for stardock games because they don't have any DRM at all - just CD keys.

[Jmac]

Meh, I could care less about XP ...

[vinister]

I disagree hugely on this one, I was die-hard xp 64 up until a couple months ago, went to vista ult 64 and I'm not looking back. XP looks and feels so old to me now. On Vista, I get the choice to run dx9 or dx10 versions of most games, which is a confirmation of my OS choice time and time again. All these users holding on to XP... its driving me nuts, its like when old people refuse to use new technoloy. It seems to me that people who aren't upgrading just don't want to spend the money, or don't have good enough hardware. Is it such a big suprise really that a new OS is going to have more system requirements and seem big compared to the last one? This same thing happened during the dos-windows 3.1 switch, then the windows 95 switch, none of the geeks ever want to switch because the new os is bloated and insecure blah blah. In the end everyone switches eventually, so you might as well just fork over the loot and get on with it. The more users use it, and have problems with it, and report those problems, the sooner they can make a better OS for everyone. Now they have to develop and support 2 seperate OS's at the same time, and each one will suffer because of it. adapt, evolve, change is good.