You probably all know by now how much I dislike despise Windows Vista, even though I’ve been a Microsoft customer and systems integrator for years, this OS is useless for the kind of work I do and is a technical support nightmare. I only sell systems built on Windows XP for that reason.
Well now somebody is doing something to keep Windows XP alive. I run a business where I provide turn key systems. Having to supply Vista will be a technical disaster for many of the programs we rely on to do complex computer graphics work. So a vote for XP is essentially a vote to help me.
Vote here: SAVE XP
From Slashdot:
Computerworld Australia is running a story with a response from Microsoft to Infoworld’s SAVE XP petition Web site, which has gathered over 75,000 signatures so far. Apparently Microsoft is aware of the petition, but says it is “listening first and foremost to feedback we hear from partners and customers about what makes sense based on their needs, that’s what informed our decision to extend the availability of XP initially, and what will continue to guide us” — a somewhat strange response given that the vast majority of people signing the petition ARE Microsoft customers! The Save XP movement has attracted the attention of the software giant, despite its claims that Vista has sold more than 100 million copies and its adoption rate is in line with the company’s expectations. “We’re seeing positive indicators that we’re already starting to move from the early adoption phase into the mainstream and that more and more businesses are beginning their planning and deployment of Windows Vista,” the company said. Nevertheless vendors such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Fujitsu, and more recently NEC, all offer the opportunity to downgrade to XP Pro.”
OK, I did my bit and voted. I was planning to get an extra personal copy of XP Pro to have handy. I guess I’ll have to move that forward and do it soon. XP is likely the last Microsoft product I will ever buy. I am fed up with the way Microsoft abandons older software and handles updates and update documentation.
Technet, Support, Downloads, and Microsoft Update Catalog (particularly the current incarnation which is simply awful, they must be using their own database software) are a huge mess. Update documentation sometimes sends you around in circles, through intermediate, waste of time web pages, has multiple IDs for issues (where one would do just fine), or is out of date.
Here is an example, I have dozens — the MSXML 3.0 SP5 download page actually downloads MSXML 3.0 SP9, but you won’t find any mention of SP9 on the download page or in any download search results. I suppose the MSXML 3.0 SP7 download page does the same thing but I didn’t bother testing it.
Not to mention MSDN which, in my humble opinion, is a confusing, convoluted nightmare that consistently uses endless jargon to talk around issues rather than addressing them and giving practical examples. (For example, try researching how to write a file property set handler sometime and see how far you get.)
My sympathies for folks who are, out of necessity, stuck with Microsoft and having ever more problematic, insecure, bloated, resource hogging ****ware foisted on them. Microsoft could spend their time refining and improving XP or other software but I guess there is more money to be made releasing new products, forcing them down the customer’s throat, and abandoning the old.
I suppose I will have to service Vista sooner or later but to be honest, I am more interested in becoming a FreeBSD guru of sorts and deploying and supporting open source applications such as Open Office, GIMP, MySQL, et cetera. Microsoft has finally exhausted the last ounce of goodwill I had left. They make it too darn hard to like them. I probably better sell all my stock before they ruin what is left of Yahoo.
Alright, I’m off the soapbox.
Even XP is not a great OS. My home version regularly fails to shut down properly and Microsoft’s instructions on how to fix this are so tangled I don’t dare attempt them. I won’t upgrade to Vista and hope that by the time I get a new PC this all will be settled. Don’t anybody suggest a Mac; I’ve used them and find them annoying.
REPLY: I agree with you on that, my preference is Windows 2000, probably the best OS Microsoft ever made. But you can’t buy it anymore. If Microsoft dumps XP, it will force many into using pirated copies of 2000 or XP because Vista just isn’t usable for anything beyond web surfing and email…and Ubuntu can do that better.
Sheds some light on that 100 million Vista sales number
Particularly this:
Gates, in Las Vegas Sunday, boasted that Microsoft has sold more than 100 million copies of Windows Vista since the OS launched last January.
While the number at first sounds impressive, it in fact indicates that the company’s once dominant grip on the OS market is loosening. Based on Gates’ statement, Windows Vista was aboard just 39% of the PC’s that shipped in 2007.
And Vista, in terms of units shipped, only marginally outperformed first year sales of Windows XP according to Gates’ numbers — despite the fact that the PC market has almost doubled in size since XP launched in the post 9-11 gloom of late 2001.
Speaking five years ago at CES 2003, Gates said that Windows XP in its first full year on the market sold more than 89 million copies, according to a Microsoft record of the event.
We’ve banned Vista in our company and I have a stack of XP OEM disks on the shelf for future computer builds in case I need them. My kids grandparents gave them a laptop and after much pain finally got the thing rolled back to XP (kids are much happier, games play much better). That was a pain, though. I never realized how specialized laptop drivers were vs. desktop drivers.
This is beyond ridiculous on so many levels. Why don’t you stick with the climate? You are seriously damaging your credibility with this nonsense.
REPLY: Well I didn’t think of it as nonsense, because having purchase access to stable Windows OS is pretty darned important to a lot of people, including me.
If you look at my back posts you’ll see that I’ve touched on biology, astronomy, technology, human events, product issues and other things. The formation of this blog originally was not exclusively climate (see my subtitle in yellow above), but became more climate focused as I learned more and started climate research projects.
To be fair I have considered separating the two, so that we have one dedicated to climate and weather and the other to other issues that interest me and others that follow that portion. Lets hear from other readers to hear what they say.
I run Windows XP, FWIW.
This is on topic on so many levels. Why don’t you post about this topic more often? You are seriously enhancing your credibility with IT departments all over the world with comments like this.
At best, Vista represents an incremental improvement, and one that’s not worth the bother when the associated hardware, training and support costs are factored into the equation.
Might I suggest a new catchphrase, such as Leapfrog Vista?
Keep up the good work and thanks for all the climate updates.
“Why don’t you stick with the climate?”
Because he’s tired of his Windows freezing?
Sorry Anthony, but I still maintain that my Vista experience is a good one. I regularly put the OS to the test with the latest games (Played through Call Of Duty 4 several times now, all on the highest graphics settings, smooth as silk), and I do a great deal of 3d rendering with applications such as Poser 7, Vue 6 Infinite, 3DS Max, and others.
I’m also taking a Java programming course, so I’m running the JDK and Eclipse as my programming environment, no problems at all.
So I’m definitely doing more than just “email and web surfing”, and have no problems I can attribute to Vista.
As I’ve mentioned before, however, when APPLE QUICKTIME is in the systray, Vista will lose its mind over a 24 hour period. Seems like sabotage to me….
REPLY: No disputing that. Vista works fine for some folks, but for high powered work like I do in rendering computer weather graphics on the fly, it’s as useful as a TRS-80.
Maybe Micro$oft will listen to their REAL customers and extend XP, like they did with NT 4.0 when Win2K was released — BTW, I always keep at least 1 unwrapped copy of every OS. I have 2 each of 2000 Pro and Server just in case, with Service Packs. Hell, I have an unwrapped “Microsoft Bob”!
The Devil will be wearing long underwear before I put Vista on one of my machines.
Especially after my last encounter with Vista: an update in October knocked out the sound and Aero on a customer’s new Dell laptop. She was also getting frequent “Unauthorized Change” notices and verification failures. She brought it to me last month, and after much digging and swearing, I found ONE file mismatch that was causing all of her troubles.
Then there was the matter of getting her Autochk to function…
I just sold my graphic design & sign company. Entering that field was my first encounter with Microsoft products, my equipment and design software wouldn’t run on Macs. With eight computers, I ran XP home on some and Pro on the more computing intensive systems. Pro runs much better especially when running software designed under older OS’s. To even think of changing to a new OS after MicroSoft just got XP to run reasonably well is just insane. When I was doing IC manufacturing engineering for HP in the 80’s, the R&D dept. had a banner that hung for years reading, “JUST SAY NO TO DOS”. Gates never rose above developing mediocrity, and since most people think how computers run is the way they run, they don’t realise how much better they could be. Ignorance means money for MS, not to mention AWG=$ for politics.
Count me in with those who find 2K acceptable. You can also find previously owned, valid, COA, transferable or unused copies of 2K and save a few bucks.
Microsoft will abandon 2K and XP and eventually any support or updates (security or otherwise) will completely dry up. No, I am not a fan of Apple either.
There are useful, practical OS and application products in the open source community that have demonstrated long term survivability. I think it likely that a significant number of open source projects will not suffer from abandonment, and certainly not from planned obsolescence.
Re Anon (08:11:38) “This is beyond ridiculous on so many levels. Why don’t you stick with the climate? You are seriously damaging your credibility with this nonsense.”
I do not see anyone forcing you to read this blog and as for credibility damage, that is just plain silly. Nevertheless I would like to see you attempt to enumerate those many levels of “beyond ridiculous” if you can find the time.
Re: Anthony’s “I have considered [separate blogs]. Lets hear from other readers to hear what they say.”
I prefer your blog the way it is, touching on other things of interest outside of the climate and weather. But if you decided to have separate blogs I would not have a problem with that.
Anthony, keep this blog as is. The variety of topics is more enjoyable than all climate all the time. If you split it, then we both would have two to write/read. It’s more efficient this way.
Here is a suggestion you should take very seriously: switch to a Mac!
I did so three years ago and I can’t believe I waited so long and badmouthed Apple so much before doing so!
I’ve never been happier with a computer in my life, and have since purchased 9 of them, some as gifts for friends.
REPLY: I knew this comment would eventually come. The switch is not practical due to the custom hardware and software we use for weather forecasting, graphics generation, and presentation. A Mac can’t support those things (in the same way) without a complete re-engineering and rewrite. As an analogy, it would be like suggesting NASA take the computers out of the space shuttle and replace them with Macs because they are better by the opinion of many who use them. Maybe they are, but that isn’t justification enough for infrastucture upheaval.
But if all you want to do is email, websurfing, writing, art design, some MP3 listening/editing and maybe some video editing, a Mac is perfect for that. My needs (and the needs of many other system integrators) are much greater and much more specific.
Anthony, I agree with David and Gary. As an XP user I’ve enjoyed your occasional reference to the problems with VISTA as well as those occasions when you drift away from climate to other topics. I particularly liked the thread on the Tata because it reminded me of my first car.
I know this would mean extra work for you, but in threads like the recent ones on Roy Spencer’s work and a couple others that generated over 100 comments, many of the comments delved into science, physics and math that were way over my head. I imagine others felt the same way. It would be nice to have someone (and it doesn’t necessarily have to be you) summarize the scientific arguments into a layman’s perspective. I think you probably have several readers that are capable of doing this. Not only would it make it more enjoyable for me (and help me learn), I suspect, as word got around, it would attract more traffic to your blog, thus bring more attention to the SurfaceStations project. Just a thought.
Hi,
I was playing DOD Source online last night and got the blue screen of death. Lucky a restart fixed it. First time on my system after 4.5 years. MS stuff stinks but not much else out there. MAC and Linux do not have enough software written that I can use much less play DOD and COD4. LOL
Screw XP, vote Ubuntu, or any other open source OS.
REPLY: We use a minimalist Slackware for this http://www.viziframe.com We use Ubuntu for some other things, very successfully I might add. In fact I have a new Ubuntu server on the bench I’m configuring today. There’s no question we’ll continue to be able to use Ubuntu.
But when my other applications (some of which I have no control over -3rd party) are heavily tied to a Windows OS like 2000/XP and the new VistaOS breaks the applications, and you can’t get the old OS anymore, the quandary appears.
Some would say well just rewrite the old applications…well my quandary is that we push the OS out of the way and write directly to the frame buffer…but Vista won’t let us do that. In the same way, Vista hoses games.
If Ubuntu could support DirectX9 and all I need in the way of compatibility, I’d toss Windows out the door in a heartbeat.
I’ve been running some form of Linux since 2000, and I have to say, it has really come a long way. I’m typing this on my pure Debian laptop even as we speak. The only issue I have had is that one web page I visit occasionally doesn’t render exactly right due to an issue with flash. Debian based Ubuntu, or if you would like all the media codecs already installed, Mint Linux, are two of the best versions out there currently. I’m student teaching now (greatest challenged ever undertaken in my life) and since all the school’s grading software is windows-based, and my pool and spa business accounting is on Quickbooks, so I have no choice but to use Windows. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those Windows haters, 2000 and XP does things very well. But if I could, I would run only Linux. It’s more configurable, and more fun.
I have a working Commy 64 here at the house. Feel free to borrow it when you need it đŸ™‚
Which games? Not COD4, Not Battle for Middle Earth II, Not C&C Tiberium Wars, Not any game I’ve plated in the last year. Sounds more like a lackluster video card.
I like my WinXP the way it is. If they remove it from the market, I predict that Mac and Linux will know a little boost in sales and downloads. Linux is becoming more and more user friendly these days.
User friendliness is irrelevant if the software people need isn’t available.
Yes, Please do persuade Microsoft to continue support for Windows’XP!
Win’Vista is going the way of Win’Me (ie: no one will use this OS once the NEXT one comes out in 2009)…
It’s a classic case of fixing something that ain’t broken–Win’XP is a perfectly good OS…
Vista Sucks!
Windows XP!!!!!