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Software Microsoft's Windows XP Conundrum
Brandon Hill (Blog) - April 1, 2008 11:05 AM
Print E-mail del.icio.us 141 comment(s) - last by omnicronx.. on Apr 8 at 4:27 PM

Microsoft plans to end the sale of Windows XP on June 30, 2008.

Will devices like the Eee PC 900 have an XP option after June?  (Source: ASUS)

ECS G10IL  (Source: ECS)

Everex's CloudBook comes pre-installed with gOS V2, a variant of Linux.  (Source: Everex)
The looming June funeral for Windows XP could spell disaster for Microsoft in the low-end market

Windows XP has quite a few fans left despite the fact that the operating system was first launched in late 2001 and has since been replaced by the newer, more feature-packed Windows Vista operating system. Despite XP's age, many users stick to the operating system for its robustness, rock-solid driver support, and relatively bloat-free user interface (in comparison to Vista at least) which leads to better overall performance.

Microsoft, however, isn't exactly singing XP's praises anymore. While the Redmond-based company is putting the finishing touches on Service Pack 3 (SP3) for the nearly seven-year-old OS, the company announced last year that it would cease the sale of new XP licenses on June 30, 2008 -- this date itself was extended from January 31, 2008 due to incessant pressure from its customers.

Microsoft is now facing the grim possibility that it pre-planned funeral for Windows XP may leave it out of a lucrative, growing market for low-cost sub-notebooks. No one expected that the Xandros Linux-based ASUS Eee PC would be as popular as it became during late 2007; especially Microsoft.

With ASUS preparing its second generation Eee PC and a number of pretenders to the low-cost throne gearing up for production with Linux-based solutions, Microsoft needs an OS to complement these machines. The only feasible option right now is, of course, Windows XP.

Windows XP has a small enough footprint to install on machines with as little as 4GB of storage space. Granted, the default install of Windows XP Home on the newly-announced Eee PC 4G-X takes up 1.8GB of space, however, OEMs could pick and choose their installation options to duck under the 1GB barrier if they so choose. Software options like nLite already make this a possibility with end-users.

Windows Vista, on the other hand, simply isn't feasible due to its hardware requirements. Vista often struggles on even low-end Pentium Dual Core machines running with only 1GB of RAM. A Celeron-M based machine with 512MB of memory onboard wouldn't do much to provide a pleasant end-user experience in Vista.

"At the low end, Vista's hardware footprint is too large," said Intel vice president Tom Rampone to IDG News. "Even 512M bytes of RAM with [Vista] Home Basic, it's a slow machine -- underpowered and underperforming," added Everex marketing director Paul Kim.

The Windows XP problem leaves Microsoft in a sticky situation. Devices like ASUS' Eee PC 4G-X are safe until at least June 30 -- this gives it a rather short shelf life considering that it is launching on April 9.

The company can either decide to extend the sale of Windows XP to its volume customers -- yet again -- to make way for the growing crowd of sub-notebooks running on low-impact hardware like Intel's Atom processors or it can simply rollover and concede the market to the various flavors of Linux available today.

Microsoft isn't a company that will back down from a fight, hence the availability of Windows XP on the Eee PC. Hopefully for consumers, Microsoft will choose the former and extend the sale of Windows XP until it has a suitable next-gen OS to fill the gap.

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Windows 2000
By jaybuffet on 4/1/2008 11:39:49 AM , Rating: 4
Whats different now than when Windows XP came out against Windows 2000? It's the same argument. XP's drivers sucked at the time.. Windows 2000 was rock solid.. isn't history just going to repeat itself? Whats new?




RE: Windows 2000
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 4/1/2008 11:52:58 AM , Rating: 5
This time around it's been a lot longer between OS released. Before XP, Microsoft released a new OS every 2-3 years. People have become so accustomed to it they are having a hard time adapting to change once more.


RE: Windows 2000
By Aikouka on 4/1/2008 12:03:25 PM , Rating: 3
I believe the poor OEM driver support is also keeping people away. The only complaint I have about my Vista experience (note, not the OS but the overall time spent on a machine with it installed) are how bad the drivers (from nVidia) are.

There's also some incompatible software issues that some may have.


RE: Windows 2000
By darklight0tr on 4/1/2008 12:15:39 PM , Rating: 2
What NVIDIA driver issues are you referring to? Sure, the drivers were crap from Vista release (and before) until almost mid-2007, but things have significantly improved since then.

I have been using Windows Vista Ultimate x64 for almost a year and I have a 8800 GTX. The last time I had driver issues was prior to the release of the ForceWare 158.xx series, which was May of last year. Since then the ForceWare drivers have been fine for me.

I also have a 680i SLI motherboard and NVIDIA fixed the Vista issues I was having with the nForce drivers at around the same time as the 158.xx series was released.


RE: Windows 2000
By omnicronx on 4/1/2008 12:52:09 PM , Rating: 4
I cant say I have ever had issues heh (vista user since launch). Only those in SLI configuration had problems with their Nvidia cards. sure the performance was not as good as XP for the first few months, but its all but negligible now..

I would also like to note that Vista has much better hardware support for base system drivers than XP ever had. I installed it on 4 machines and only had to configure the sound card and video card drivers. I don't think i can say the same with XP. I can't say how many times i have had to open someones PC up just to find out what kind of network card they had because they forgot to write it down before formatting.. All this with machines ranging from AMD NFORCE2 to c2d systems.

So if you really want to talk driver issues, go hide your system drivers CD's, reformat a bunch of XP machines, and have fun guessing what 'unknown components' reside on your machine.


RE: Windows 2000
By 7Enigma on 4/2/2008 12:10:57 PM , Rating: 2
I dunno, I'd rather have the latest drivers for all components of the system rather than relying on included drivers on the install cd/dvd. Any reformat of my own or friends/family computers are done with a new drivers cd created with the latest drivers for the components. This has helped avoid many issues and increase stability of systems as some original drivers are from relatively new hardware that may be unstable.


RE: Windows 2000
By Hieyeck on 4/2/2008 12:21:15 PM , Rating: 3
Clearly, you have failed to realize that XP is older than your hardware. Yes, you have the right to assume a multi-billion dollar corp shouldn't be releasing crap, but you can't assume they have the technology to time travel.

Besides, that's what slipping new XP install CDs are for.


RE: Windows 2000
By omnicronx on 4/2/2008 1:18:53 PM , Rating: 2
What i realize is MS saw the blunders they made in XP by not supporting enough network chipsets in the base install. And for me thats all i need, as if you can get the internet up and running, anything else can be downloaded.

I used XP a month before it was even released(i.e my hardware existed long before xp was released), and i can tell it did not support nearly as much hardware out of the box as Vista does. Even after slipstreaming to SP2 Xp does not recognize my nforce2 network card.(installed MCE 2005 last week).

This is why I made these statements, obviously MS can not have drivers for products that were made after it was released...


RE: Windows 2000
By xxsk8er101xx on 4/1/2008 3:02:21 PM , Rating: 2
I have a workstation running windows vista ultimate and a notebook running windows vista premium. I've had no issues with either. Service pack 1 increased it's performance a bit and i've had no major issues since installing sp1 for vista.

Vista is fine and works fine and it's really nothing "new" as far as how it works and it's more secure and stable than windows xp.


RE: Windows 2000
By michael67 on 4/2/2008 4:00:42 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Vista is fine and works fine and it's really nothing "new" as far as how it works and it's more secure and stable than windows xp.

Geee, Think you have to explain to me how Vista is more stable then XP and whit me all the other 600 admins i was whit at the MS Technet seminar for the roll out of server 2008.

during the seminar they MS technet guy go's on explaining all the benefits of Win server 2008 working together whit Vista for a bout 30min then he ask how many had rolled out Vista at work ... silent for 10~20sec
Then he ask how many ware planing to roll out Vista ... silents for a other 10~20sec then the hole room start laughing because the technet guy realized that he just wasted a half our on something no one wanted to use.

Because like me the other 600 admins think Vista is just a lemon that no one wants

And private i haven't notice it on my HP Vista machine IE still crashes and that password protection for everything that makes Vista so mouths more safe was bugging me so mouths that i had to turn it of just to be able to normally work whit Vista

After 3 months working whit Vista i was so fed up whit it that i did format C: and installed XP again so that i had control over my own machine again and my drivers ware working again 100% instead basic function driver.

Yeah there are some small things i liked and miss from Vista, but over all they are not worth all hassle that that blotted Vista gives me to use it over XP


RE: Windows 2000
By Etsp on 4/8/2008 1:21:29 PM , Rating: 2
its hard to read your writing...
whit? do you mean with?
go's on explaining? you mean goes on explaining?
a bout? about...
ware planing? were planning
silents for a other 10~20secs? silence for another 10~20secs
hole? wrong form, should be whole
our? should be hour if you are referencing a unit of time...
mouths more safe was bugging me so mouths? do you mean much more safe was bugging me so much?
my drivers ware? my drivers were?
blotted? could work, but you probably mean bloated.

It's pretty obvious that english isn't your first langauge, so I don't intend to give you too much grief. The reason I did post this is because after all, if no one corrects us, we will never learn.


RE: Windows 2000
By omnicronx on 4/8/2008 4:27:10 PM , Rating: 2
If that post is the result of a second language i think you should give him a break. I would like to see you type with such proficiency in another language.

Although I do not agree with all his views, (Since when have sys admins jumped on a new OS the day it comes out, many business's did not upgrade to XP until 2003-04 let alone server03) he got his point across, and thats good enough for me.


RE: Windows 2000
By eye smite on 4/1/2008 3:21:19 PM , Rating: 3
Yeah it's been too long between releases and they've just about perfected XP over time.........if that's possible. People in general don't want to change and have to learn a new OS and all it's quirks. Since this is the first time they've gone this long without a new OS release, I think they should break another record and just keep selling XP. There's no harm at all in them selling XP and Vista til the end of time that I can see. They're still going to make plenty of money and keep happy Windows customers. What it really boils down to is MS not giving the general customer what they want. If the Eeepc's give people what they want with a flavor of linux it will take marketshare. Right now after going on a year and half, Vista has about as much popularity and as much disdain as Window ME did. The hardware resources needed alone to run Vista in a respectable manner has always left me frowning at it, and I have a Vista machine sitting here I got back in November. MS has screwed the pooch on so many things recently though, and they're not getting any better. Maybe when they start really listening to the customers and what they want, it will change.


RE: Windows 2000
By darkpaw on 4/1/2008 4:28:32 PM , Rating: 4
The main issue with contining to sell XP is that they will have to conitnue to support it as well. Currently, support will end 5 years after sales end (2014).

The longer they keep selling it, the longer that date gets pushed back. I think supporting any product for 12 years is pretty good to begin with, but no one can support that product forever.

I think MS will probably continue to sell XP just for the ultra low end laptops for now, but will probably kill that when system builder license sales end. That should give them plenty of time to put together a Vista Portable or something.


RE: Windows 2000
By Oregonian2 on 4/1/2008 9:31:43 PM , Rating: 2
Just wait until support ends and someone changes their computer in a way (perhaps reloading backups with a disk crash) and XP wants to be activated -- and Microsoft no longer does it. So the computer and all on its disks are turned into a brick. A few non-happy campers will probably not do it again with another uSoft product, I suspect.


RE: Windows 2000
By Polynikes on 4/2/2008 10:26:26 AM , Rating: 2
I could see people keeping backups of XP activation cracks for that purpose. And there will always be the great archive in the sky, the interwebs, to get that stuff from.


RE: Windows 2000
By 1078feba on 4/2/2008 2:39:18 PM , Rating: 4
I understand the natural cycle of hardware vs software growth. Growth in one spurs growth in the other. But really, why can't XP be supported indefinitely? Perhaps I am displaying more ignorance than I should be comfortable with, but I cannot think of one good reason. I say this not as a Vista basher as I have a $400 copy of Ultimate sitting on my shelf at home (tried it, liked it very much, but X-Fi drivers and an nForce4 mobo will just not play nicely with x64), but until MS manages to come up with either something truly revolutionary or the performance leap is so large it can't be ignored, every OS they put in the channel is just going to be the same tired old hag in a new dress.

Quite to the contrary, I can think of several good reasons to keep it around, but the biggest would be that it is a known evil, and the longer it is around and more security flaws are discovered, the more secure it becomes. After all, there can be only so many chinks in the armor, right?. It has gotten easier and easier for anti-malware apps to keep an XP install clean. Not only that, but collectively their footprint has gotten smaller and smaller. Take NOD32 for instance, or Threatfire. Over the years the vast majority of the dark places in the OS have been discovered and exposed to sunlight. Google any of the services running in your services.msc or task manager and a whole wealth of info is available. I guess my main point is this: for the first few years when a new MS OS hits, there is a window of expected ignorance as we all get used to it. It is this window that malware writers take advantage of to exploit the OS.

quote:
support will end 5 years after sales end (2014).


True enough, & to me this is really myopic. 4-5 years is just about the time that an OS is well and truly figured out. It's just hitting it's full stride. Perhaps the 50 lb. heads in Redmond would do well to rethink their business model with legacy OS's. The staff they have working on XP must be able to quote code line by line in their sleep by now. I, for one, would be willing to pay a pretty hefty sum for a gamer's version of XP Pro in which it is stripped down, lean and fast. That way, I don't have to spend 2 hours and 20 reboots to turn off all the extraneous services running and sucking up resources after a fresh reinstall. How many other people out there would be willing to cough up some green meanies for a very specifically tailored version of XP?


RE: Windows 2000
By bjacobson on 4/3/2008 1:55:55 AM , Rating: 2
Look into XP Embedded, you can roll your own, kinda like compiling your own kernel in Linux.

XP is fast enough for me though, I don't feel compelled to build my own.