Thoughts and Theories From Roger Andre
for the curious, and people getting to grips with computing and computers.
Wednesday 4 February 2009, 12:18 AM
Don't Forget: Business Tends To Focus On Applications
Maybe a new home and leisure OS from Microsoft will be on the cards.
PreviousComments on this post
There is a big difference between a Power Point presentation on XP, Vista or Windows 7, if the operating system crashes in the middle of your presentation, or if you aren't able to connect to a wireless network to get to the presentation, or if your display, mouse, keyboard, printer, scanner or whatever don't work properly, or at all, with the new operating system, but they did, and still do, with XP.
The majority of the objections, and rejection, of Vista has come not from people who just "didn't like it", it has come from people who were disgusted that it didn't work properly, it overloaded what had previously been perfectly capable computers, and it didn't support a large number of their peripherals.
As I have said a number of times here, there was not a single compelling "need" that Vista filled which XP wasn't capable of. The only "need" was that Microsoft decided they needed more money, and the best way to get it was to grab their customers by the throat and force them to pay for an "upgrade", which in this case didn't even qualify as a reasonable "bug fix release".
The "best thing that MS could do" is not let XP bow out at all, but continue to sell and support it. Even MS themselves have admitted this, repeatedly, first by extending the "deadline" for cutting off XP, then by allowing the continued sale of XP in the "Vista Business with XP Professional" sham, which allows them to count Vista sales while customers are still buying XP, and finally by allowing continuing XP sales on netbooks. But in fact what they have done, by forcing Vista on their customers, is provided themselves with a large infusion of money.
The information that has been posted here, and all over the web, is that Windows 7 is a huge improvement over Vista. Well, that doesn't take much - there are a lot of people who would argue that a dead computer is an improvement over Vista, but in fact it sounds like Windows 7 might turn out to be the "upgrade" that Vista was supposed to be. Hmmm. Maybe what really happened was that MS needed 10 years to develop the next Windows release, rather than 5, and foisting Vista on the world was just a way to finance the second half of the development.
jw 4/2/2009
I service a small office. The secretary required (needed) a new computer a while ago and asked for Vista. It worked fine except for her higher end Xerox scanner which had to be replaced, with an inferior product, but still at a greater cost than the computer.
I believe that, for instance, many (most) people would still be satisfied with office 2000 - myself included.
@Moley. In that kind of situation I would suggest using a virtual XP/2000 machine on the vista host. This would save a lot of money for a smaller business, That xerox scanner could still be in use now.
@J.A.Watson. I hear you on this one, the thing that concerns me at the moment is the fact that it won't be any easier to make a lot of older type hardware work when going from XP to 7.
Again I really do think that running virtual machines can ease a lot of this pain.
Perhaps I am poorly informed, or insufficiently experienced, but I would say that running a virtual machine is something that could, or even should, be far beyond the scope of what the average small office is capable of or has any interest in. Especially when the objective is simply to continue using a peripheral which was working perfectly with XP.
This whole line of discussion reminds me of something else I read recently. Early rumors have it that there will be an "upgrade" path for Vista users to Win 7, but not for users who still have XP, they will be forced to make a fresh installation, with all of the tedium and inconvenience that entails. Is this Microsoft's way of getting back at people who refused to play their game and pony up the money for Vista? If not, what is the justification for it? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe there was an upgrade path from XP to Vista, and if there is to be an upgrade path from Vista to Win7, then it should be possible to make an upgrade path from XP to Win7, no? Unless you are intentionally trying to stick it to the XP users.
jw
I've already given up with Windows 7 and concentrating on 'bullet proofing' my XP/Ubuntu dual boot Toshiba M100 Laptop.
I've been using two great tools which allows you the perfect XP installation. True Image Home 2009 and Comodo Internet Security.
These give you the two very powerful features which pretty much bullet proof your XP installation. True Image 2009 is Windows 'Imaging' software and now fully supports Linux,XP,Vista and their filing systems Ext3,FAT,FAT32,NFTS. You can backup all your partitions + extra back up externally. The best bit you can wipe the lot, restore and no more missing boot loader problems with Ubuntu on restore.
My favourite bit is you can resize the Acronis secure zone, and it will if it needs take space from Windows or unusually-the Ubuntu partition, and resize them perfectly - everything still working afterwards.
Comodo Internet Security (with Antivirus) ties down vunerable areas of your registry, windows directory such as c:\windows\system32. When you attempt to install new software, you can switch to install mode (to prevent the nags) then switch back on completion to safe mode.
Get these two tools and you really don't need so called better security of Vista/Windows 7 and I get to keep using my favourite laptop which is now long in the tooth.
The best bit for me is Comodo Internet Security makes no difference to the resources/operating speed of my laptop. It just works , sitting quietly in the background, no flash banners. Love it, oh and its free.
With these two in place - Window 7 is even more of a hard sell. XP long term patch support will be my only downfall in years to come, hopefully Comodo will manage to paper over the cracks.
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@JW...That is a good point, and further complcates the issue. Why not an XP to w7? Unless MS thinks business will somehow rush to vista. W7 is still in it's beta form though, so I would urge a rethink. If business doesn't all rush at once to W7 maybe MS will throw in the towel and bring out a business gold XP edition edition and let the home entertainment OS develop at a different pace. It could be that they don't give a hoot because they have a plan....a plan to push the cloud based azure.
@Adam Jarvis. I like your idea, robust is always good I think...if people we're going to hang on beyond 2014, then some kind of third party patching would have to be arranged.
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An XP installation is a minefield of unknowns.
The lack of upgrade path from Windows XP to Windows 7 has a lot to do with the fact it is very difficult to see 'visually' whether the machine in front of you is a well installed version of Windows XP.
Clean software from installation disks, no uninstalls, no spyware/viruses or one where there has been unclean software removals, poorly chosen drivers, system recoveries from serious errors and virus ridden. Cleaned using so called registry cleaners/spyware removal tools which also can remove valuable data from the registry. Give a XP installed Laptop to a teenager and latter is the result. XP installations are a minefield.
Microsoft probably feels part of the bad press regarding Vista was due end users finding existing Windows XP installs failed to upgrade. Customers blamed Vista, Microsoft blamed the customer's XP installations.
With Vista, certified drivers - software designed for Vista logos have helped MS tighten its grip on poor installation, such that it can probably guarantee and cover many of the details of a Vista -> Windows 7 upgrade. It didn't want the mud sticking to its shining new Windows 7 and XP upgrades would have probably meant this would have happened. Probably a sensible choice by MS.
It would be nice to think Microsoft might open source Windows XP, (well being realistic - the security issues at least) beyond a certain point to allow third parties / the open source community to maintain a 'secure' XP. It will surely happen in one form or another whether paid subscription or otherwise /third party or MS. Windows XP is such a Swiss Army knife of an operating system, the only thing that will kill it is when people tire of well, Swiss Army knives.
What is needed is an interim - Windows XP Reloaded - remove all the redundant apps - Windows Messenger etc. Bare bones with security at the heart of its revamped release. I'm glad Microsoft have taken issue with the bloated code in Vista and optimized it, its the right way to go. Just not sure that Windows 7 based on Vista code base is the right way to go.
To kill off XP, just because you can - and not because people want you to, isn't the best approach. There are revenue streams to be had from keeping XP and updating it marginally and keeping the XP code base, and these might not be at the expense of Windows 7.
Microsoft might have to accept that not everyone will go the Windows 7 route, (well they haven't gone the Vista route) and by not offering these people an olive branch to their existing XP installation they might just not budge and revenue stream opportunities are lost.
That makes sense to me, about the no XP to 7 upgrade path. Why let bad installations by less expierienced users wreck your company image?
I think we'll have Vista machines around for years and years, and to be quite honest, I think Vista has been fixed for a while now. I have one machine running Vista, just to keep my hand in, and it's a real pleasure to use. Although Windows 7 is of course much more lean, and I suppose there's no arguing against less bloat.
Hi Rog,
I have a VERY close friend who used to work for the men in black (if you know what I mean) and told me that they are currently running on XP.
No surprise I hear you say right?
Well - they upgraded to XP not so long ago.... from NT.
Upgrade paths in the real world don't seem to match the yellow brick road laid down by the vendors do they?
I'm just about to install Parallels Desktop for Mac and have been gauging popular opinion on whether to use XP or Vista and, generally, people say XP.
Food for thought do you think?
AdrianB
That's funny, because my wifes mega corp are making the jump to XP over the next few weeks!
The thing is XP is the performance operating system. It's a known quantity, it just works. However, in my experience Vista has been long fixed. It just suffers a very bad perception now.
I've found that vista flies along if you go into system and adjust for best performance. This strips down all the bells and whistles and makes it look like windows 2000. Another issue with vista in a VM is that UAC can violently jerk the machine from a placid state into an unstable one. So look out for that!
If any one is desperate to upgrade from XP to 7 and you have time on your hands, just use any old vista disk. Then run an upgrade from XP. Skip activation (you have three days grace) then pop W7 on top of that.
The one common item in this entire discussion is that once a group of people or an enterprise has trained its personnel to use a particular OS and set of tools, there is extreme inertia preventing the "upgrade".
Roger you're correct in focusing on the applications. If the OS was Linux and the applications were something compatible, the arguments against "upgrading" would be the exact same as for Windows.
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