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Thread: Windows XP forever?

  1. #1
    SonsOfLiberty's Avatar The Lonely Wanderer
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    Microsoft has a problem on its hands. Or more precisely one problem with three seemingly contradictory components:


    1. Windows XP is too good for its own good.
    2. It needs to die for the company's sake.
    3. It won't die because nothing else -- not even Windows 7 -- currently approaches it.


    We're closing in on eight years since XP first hit the market and began the long process of making us finally forget we ever used Windows 95, 98, and Windows Me. By anyone's standards, it's been one of Microsoft's most visibly successful products. It still runs on some 60% of all PCs years after it was supposed to have been retired as a front-line offering. It's sold around 800 million copies since its initial release. And if piracy is the sincerest form of flattery, hundreds of millions more illegal copies are in use across the globe. In an age where icons are in desperately short supply, this is as iconic a product as it gets.

    The problem with XP is this: The longer it sticks around and continues to tug at the heartstrings of end-users and corporate IT decision-makers alike, the bigger a drag it becomes on Microsoft's bottom line. For a company accustomed to earning triple-digit revenue from every OS it sells, Microsoft can't be pleased with the paltry $30 or so it makes from each retail sale of XP. Although Microsoft obviously recognizes that $300 netbooks and $400-to-$500 mainstream laptops mean the good old days of high margin OS sales are over, it still wants us to add Windows 7 to our wish list to continue to drive its Windows revenue stream, albeit at a reduced rate.

    Unfortunately for Microsoft, buyers don't seem to have latched on to the need to upgrade. If it ain't broke, the saying goes, don't fix it. And XP ain't broke by a longshot, so cost-sensitive consumer and enterprise buyers don't have much incentive to make the jump just yet. Like Vista before it, they'll get a new OS when they buy new hardware or refresh their client environments. But as long as they're either filing for unemployment benefits or laying off workers, new hardware won't be their top priority. Even if they're still gainfully employed, upgrading will take a back seat to keeping their heads above water.

    Increasingly, a marginally more capable new technology platform is seen as a want and not a need. As good as Windows 7 seems to be, Microsoft needs to convince the rest of the world that it offers more than a marginally better value proposition for recession-weary buyers.

    Microsoft's value proposition for Vista -- more features, more capability -- was hatched when market conditions were significantly more positive than they are now. The message has fallen largely flat in an era when consumers are increasingly questioning whether bigger really is better. The positioning of Windows 7 as a leaner and meaner alternative that plays just as nicely with low-end netbooks as it does full-on workstations is designed to make us forget about the company's missteps in positioning Vista as the heir apparent. But in doing so, Microsoft has prompted a growing realization that it already has such a lean-and-mean, all-things-to-all-people product, and it's called Windows XP.

    XP is a good enough operating system that despite early deservedly rave reviews of Windows 7 (and positive comments from Betanews), many friends and colleagues with whom I associate are quietly ignoring Windows 7, and hoping to stick with XP for as long as their current hardware holds out. If the Windows franchise has had a backbone through the somewhat stomach churning Vista era, XP has been it. It's not a product that will go quietly into the night.

    Despite XP's position at the center of Microsoft's OS universe, though, it isn't immune to long-term reality. At some point, every OS fades from the landscape. Just last week, the ancient Compaq Contura 486-based laptop with the glorious trackball that I had been using as an occasional note-taking machine finally bit the dust, and the era of DOS 6 and Windows 3.1 came to an end for me. As ancient as this OS platform was, it just worked, and it fit the relatively simple needs that surrounded its continued, if dusty, existence.

    Is XP Microsoft's saviour?

    Windows XP isn't nearly so dusty, so it's infinitely more capable than my admittedly Pre-Cambrian Windows 3.1-based machine of existing on its own in a home or office setting in the absence of anything newer. It connects to the Internet, corporate network resources, and a large enough cross-section of PCs and peripherals. With a bit of administrative oversight to ensure all the latest patches, fixes, and updates are applied, it's relatively secure, too. And unlike most versions of Vista, XP runs nicely on all that older hardware still hanging around because recession-challenged end-users and IT shops believe they're too budget-challenged to replace it.

    It's also given Microsoft critical momentum in the hardware industry's sole bright spot: netbooks. Microsoft may not enjoy sitting in the cheap seats, but XP's stopgap save in this market kept the Windows brand visible -- and relevant -- until Microsoft could come up with a longer term solution. If anything, someone owes XP a thank you.

    We're barely a couple of months away from general availability for Windows 7. Even then, it'll take months before we know how successful it is. Microsoft's betting the company on this new OS because it has no choice. If it can't keep folks buying new versions of Windows, it'll need to find a new business to replace it, and fast. But the overwhelming success of its legacy XP brand, coupled with the market's newfound focus on frugality and sensibility, could derail this plan before it even gets off the ground.

    The value proposition for Windows 7 needs to be compelling enough to get the legions of Windows XP users convinced that good enough is no longer good enough. That's easier said than done, and given XP's cockroach-like survival skills, it's anybody's guess as to whether Microsoft will be able to pull it off.

    Windows XP SP3 runs browsers 13% faster than Windows 7 RTM

    In a set of comprehensive Windows Web browser performance tests conducted by Betanews on August 7 -- our first test of browsers running on the final Windows 7 RTM Build 7600 distributed by Microsoft yesterday -- the five major families of browsers tended to run 13% faster on Windows XP Service Pack 3 than on Windows 7, and 29% faster than on Windows Vista Service Pack 2.

    That reflects a decline in the speed gap between XP and Win7 of about 1%, from tests conducted comparing XP-based browsers to those running on Windows 7 Release Candidate Build 7100. Some browsers are faster in Windows 7 RTM, although Mozilla Firefox 3.5.2 ran just a tick slower.

    Our latest complete round of tests shows Google Chrome 3 continuing to make phenomenal gains with each iteration, with developer channel build 196.2 posting another record Betanews index score of 18.96 in XP, and 16.09 in Win7. In other words, on the XP platform, Chrome 3 performs with the relative horsepower of about 19 Internet Explorer 7 browsers running on Vista SP2. There's good reason to believe Google wants Chrome 3 to run particularly well on the older XP platform, which has enjoyed a huge resurgence as a result of installations on netbooks where Vista would either under-perform or not even fit. Apple's Safari 4 build 530.19 is the next best performer on XP with a 16.16 score.

    There are a handful of trends worth pointing out in this latest round:

    * Apple Safari is also concentrating on XP, with a big performance gap between its XP score (16.16) and its Windows 7 score (12.58). On Vista, Safari 4 scores a 11.77.

    * Opera 10 Beta 2 build 1691 is a speed leader in one and only one heat: page load times. For some reason, with Windows 7, Opera 10 blazes past the others, scoring 4.29 relative to IE7 on Vista on the rendering portion of our test suite, which counts toward 25% of the overall score. Safari 4 is second fastest on Win7 with 4.09, followed by Chrome 3 at 3.86. On Vista, the gap is closer with Opera 10 scoring 3.66 on the rendering test, versus 3.29 on Safari 4 and 3.23 on Chrome 3. But in the same test, Opera 10 crashes and burns on XP, scoring only 2.60 versus 4.33 and 4.46, respectively.

    * Firefox may yet rival Chrome and Opera in the page rendering department, as speed gains that at one time were planned for version 3.5.1 now appear to be slated for version 3.6, whose development track has now been code-named "Namoroka." Were the latest preview build of the 3.6 alpha not loaded with error correction code -- if it performed as well in error tracking as does the current "Shiretoko" beta of 3.5.3 -- the 3.6 alpha would post Firefox's first solid index score over 10.0 on the Windows XP platform; as it stands, the 3.6 score is now 9.55 on XP versus 9.94 for the stable 3.5.2, and 9.96 for the beta of 3.5.2.

    * The speed gap between Windows 7 and Vista is 17.1%, with Internet Explorer 8 scoring a 2.23 in Win7, reflecting a speed jump that's right in line with our geometrical mean. If you're running IE7 on Vista now, you should see 223% better performance from your browser when you upgrade to IE8 on Win7.


    Source: The OS That Just Won't Die | Windows XP Browser Tests
    Last edited by SonsOfLiberty; 08-09-2009 at 02:48 AM.

  2. News (Archive)   -   #2
    megabyteme's Avatar RASPBERRY RIPPLE BT Rep: +19BT Rep +19BT Rep +19BT Rep +19
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    Very interesting articles, SOL. Thanks!

    For me, Windows 7 falls in the category that more and more types of media are: I look forward to trying it, but I am not interested in it enough to buy it.

    I do not have the same problems with software companies that I have with the recording and movie industries, but I don't place enough value on an OS to pay (much) for it. I cannot even say that I would place a higher value on it if I could not dl a free copy. For me, it is not an issue of availability- it is one of limited need or desire.

    I think the article is right on. Regardless of money being tighter, we are getting to a point where our needs have been met. I find that to be a bit refreshing after the past couple of decades where things became obsolete so quickly.
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    iLOVENZB's Avatar FST Crew BT Rep: +1
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    Well Microsoft's marketing has paid off since the XP days, now nobody want to convert.

    I do believe Vista's had a huge impact for people not converting. Also hardware requirements (although not as bad as Vista) might be an issue for some.
    "Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music"

  4. News (Archive)   -   #4
    Rart's Avatar Hold The Line
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    I have seen windows 7 work on all kinds of systems, its much easier on the system resources. But I think vista has left too much of a bad image for some.

  5. News (Archive)   -   #5
    SonsOfLiberty's Avatar The Lonely Wanderer
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    I didn't use Vista, so no bad taste in my mouth, 7 runs smooth as a baby's butt, but XP, from all the tests still out performs 7, yeah 7 might be faster/look pretty, but like the article says, XP still dominates.
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  6. News (Archive)   -   #6
    tesco's Avatar woowoo
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    Quote Originally Posted by SonsOfLiberty View Post
    I didn't use Vista, so no bad taste in my mouth, 7 runs smooth as a baby's butt, but XP, from all the tests still out performs 7, yeah 7 might be faster/look pretty, but like the article says, XP still dominates.
    ya and 98se outperforms XP...
    People were saying that for years after XP was released. Finally they adopted XP.

  7. News (Archive)   -   #7
    SonsOfLiberty's Avatar The Lonely Wanderer
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    Yeah I know, but I "still" don't think XP is going anywhere, hell they add XP to the Windows 7 Ultimate via VM, so something must be good enuff for Windows 7 to have to OS's
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    colbert's Avatar Poster BT Rep: +1
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    Good article on XP. I couldn't agree more.

  9. News (Archive)   -   #9
    Is it possible to keep writing drivers for xp? I mean eventually if we want to use the full potential of new hardware we will have to upgrade.
    I never had any problems with vista but after paying over 200 dollars (for one pc) for the full version I think I have donated enough money to microsoft.
    Its still windows. Looks a little different, and seems to all run about the same speed to me. I think the issues are with the inner guts being compatible with new hardware if we stay with xp.
    Last edited by Sporkk; 08-10-2009 at 02:20 AM.

  10. News (Archive)   -   #10
    rippinitup4fun's Avatar alt.binaries.*
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    Quote Originally Posted by jedispork View Post
    Is it possible to keep writing drivers for xp? I mean eventually if we want to use the full potential of new hardware we will have to upgrade.
    I never had any problems with vista but after paying over 200 dollars (for one pc) for the full version I think I have donated enough money to microsoft.
    Its still windows. Looks a little different, and seems to all run about the same speed to me. I think the issues are with the inner guts being compatible with new hardware if we stay with xp.
    That is the Jist of it. Eventually any Windows user will have to make the switch due to hardware and eventually Software compatibility.

    Whether Die hard Xp users like it or not eventually they will have to change. I am one of those, I guess, users. When it comes to fixing others PC/Laptops. I always put XP on it and highly disagree/reccomend against using Vista. I have also ran #7 myself and have put it onto a few laptops per request and find it is simply a tuned version of Vista. Not to take away from it, it runs great even on older laptops that just could not handle Vista requirements. I just think they should have changed the general GUI look to help take away from the Vista appearance/Vista mishap/This is Vista 2.0 feel that it has. Just my 2 cents worth.

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