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1110

We still want XP!!!!!!!!

1110 points posted to Operating Systems by americasarmyrocks 09/15/07

What is with this "Vista Only Option" on computers. Dell should make ALL of their products avalible with Windows Vista in all editions, Windows XP in all editions INCLUDING Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, and Ubuntu.

jdelidc 09/15/07	i'll get vista again eventually but i'm waiting for SP2 or 3. until then, the only windows i'm using is xp
jdelidc 09/15/07	i know sp1 is coming out in april ish. but i'm still waiting until sp2
jdelidc 09/15/07	coulnd't stand vista when i had it. made my computer do way too much work for a simple task (like hibernating, standby). so i just threw it away
winoffice 09/16/07	I think that it is right. If Vista was made more recently than XP, I imagine that Vista has less problems (or at least, it should not have more).
winoffice 09/16/07	This idea is a duplicate of "Don't eliminate XP just yet" -- the URL is http://www.ideastorm.com/article/show/61914/Dont_eliminate_XP_just_yet
aikiwolfie 09/16/07	If you're going to wait long enough for SP2 you might as well not bother. Microsoft have said over and over they won't be waiting 5 years ever again to release a new OS. If and I know it's a big IF, Microsoft live up to that then Vista is going to have a very short shelf life. Personally I haven't used Vista. But I support choice. I haven't upgraded my own machine to Vista because the preliminary reports about it's "enhanced" security didn't sound good. And well it seems most folks in the IT industry would agree that Vista isn't any more secure than XP. So from my perspective there's no point. The supposed "WOW" factor just wasn't enough. That of course suits the likes of Norton and McAfee who stopped Microsoft from locking down the kernel to third party applications and processes, leaving the kernel wide open to abuse.
winoffice 09/16/07	aikiwolfie, just because the next version of Windows will not appear in 5 years does not mean that SP2 will not be released in late 2008 or early 2009. Anyway, SP1 should be released in early/mid-2008 or late 2007 (which is unlikely but still possible).
mdburkey 09/17/07	winoffice - "If Vista was made more recently than XP, I imagine that Vista has less problems (or at least, it should not have more). " Think again. You are right on one thing -- it SHOULDN'T have had more. However, the reality is that it has MANY more problems than XP. Basically, they (a) changed too many things for the sake of change, (b) rushed it out the door to please their stockholders, and (c) totally FUBAR'ed the driver model with DRM to keep the media distributors happy. That is not to say that there are not improvements in Vista -- it's just that the problems tend to outweigh the improvements. Basically, WinME 2 (aka Vista) was a botch job that was rushed out in just over a year. The first 4 years were spent working on "Longhorn" technology which had a LOT of promise -- but ended up being largely scrapped (or at least indefinitely delayed) for the sake of expediency. So, about the middle of Summer 2005, Microsoft began trying to come up with something sellable and shipable. What they ended up doing was taking parts of Longhorn and parts of XP and coming up with a bunch of "supposed" security improvements and a pretty new UI and calling it Vista. It is really telling when people like John Dvorak of PC Magazine are saying IN PRINT that Microsoft botched the first release of Vista so badly that they ought to rename it and re-release it once they get all the problems sorted out and fixed! What is really scary is that Microsoft is already talking about "Windows 7" in two years -- with an ultimate goal of making a new "evolutionary" OS release every year. The reason this is scary is that Microsoft has said that this fits with their long term goal of making your OS purchase (even for home users) similar to their Software Assurance such that you basically get only a one year OS "subscription" -- this is so that they can get a continuous annualized revenue stream. Uh, yeah, right... which also explains why they are doing all they can patent-wise to stomp Linux into the ground. I tend to be of the opinion that the government should do unto Microsoft as they did unto AT&T in years past -- recognize that they have a defacto monopoly, that software interoperability and compatibility is in the public good, and REGULATE them as such (i.e. fix their prices, force them to open up their standards, etc).
mdburkey 09/17/07	5 years of which only about the last 1.5 were actually spent on what finally became Vista and the other 3.5 were spent on Longhorn technologies that have yet to ship. And, true, XP was not perfect in 2001 -- but it had MANY less driver issues than Vista does. XP, quite frankly, is very little more than the consumer version of Windows 2000 -- and that has a lot to do with why there were fewer issues with XP when it launched. It basically inherited a stable and tested driver model from Win2K -- almost all Win2K drivers worked fine on XP right from the gitgo. And as Win2K had already been around on the market for well over a year, there were already plenty of drivers available and tested. The only headaches were with people doing upgrades from Win95/98 -- specifically some of the biggest driver problems were probably with 95/98 printer drivers that expected to take total control of the system for rendering (comment specifically aimed at HP).
mdburkey 09/17/07	From your comments, I would guess that you weren't exactly all that involved in things during the XP rollout in 2001, were you? I, on the other hand, have been in on the Beta program of every Windows release since NT V3.0 -- and I've also worked with Linux since the FIRST release of Slackware (although I haven't worked with it much since the late-90's until again just recently). In 2001, the hardware scene was much MORE chaotic with many more choices than we have now and many were less well developed. The video card market was much more fragmented -- S3, 3DFx (who was in the process of bankruptcy), Nvidia, ATI, Matrox, Intel, etc. and 3D support and multi-monitor support were still quite immature. The motherboard market and drivers were even more problematic with Intel, SIS, Via, AMD, etc. all manufacturing chipsets. Sound cards manufacturers still included ESS, Yamaha, Philips, Aureal, Creative, etc. Additionally, the entire USB standard was still viewed as "new" by most people -- considering that it didn't actually work all that well in 95/98 -- yet tons of drivers and new printers, etc. were being released. Actually, over the last 6 years or so the number of hardware vendors and diversity in the PC industry has DECREASED, quite radically in fact. Prior to 2001 it had contracted even more abruptly with the "death" or transformation of major players such as Cirrus Logic, Tseng Labs, Trident, Miniscribe, Conner Peripherals, Micropolis, Permedia, Chips & Technology, UMC, Alliance Semi, etc. Yes, Smart Phones weren't that popular, but exactly what does that have to do with Vista or XP? PDA's were quite common in 2001 and they were much more varied than they are now. Ditto on Ipods -- which I still have never owned -- but MP3's were quite well established by this time frame. (I converted my entire CD library over to high quality MP3 in the 1997 time frame and I've had standalone MP3 players since 1999 -- and I hacked my DVD player to make it a better MP3 player as well!) Yes, a lot of todays choices are "high end" but so were just as many choices in 2001 -- albeit most were technologies that we now consider obsolete. You actually have to go back prior to the XP launch, to the launch of the WDM driver model itself, to see as many driver issues at one point in time as I have seen with the Vista launch. Similarly I haven't seen as many software incompatibilities show up with a new OS release since the initial transition to the NT/Win32 model (and the Win32S abortion that was part of 98). Honestly, even WinME only really broke the network layer -- most other Win98 drivers still worked with it. The point I am trying to make is that Vista had, if anything, LESS hardware issues to deal with than XP did. Many of the Vista problems have stemmed from the fact that the requirements for Vista's video card drivers and "secure path" model were not finished until shortly before Vista shipped. Additionally, the actual ship date for Vista itself was a moving target and the hardware and software manufacturers kept waiting for MS to finish something that they could actually work with (with some degree of confidence). As I said before, XP had the major benefit of inheriting a basically finished and tested driver model from Windows 2000 -- it was only tweaked for consumer use under XP. However, Microsoft had the good sense back then to have initially released Win2K to a more select group (business customers) with a much more tightly controlled hardware base -- who also could be expected to have IT people to work through the issues. This time Microsoft has dumped the entire headache squarely in the laps of the consumer without having the benefit of a couple of years of what amounted to "live debugging" with Win2K.
badblood 09/17/07	I don't want XP any more. Problem is Vista and Linux don't work properly on my computer. So I am stuck. It's a dark year in computing, dark days, a drought on quality...
jorge 09/18/07	Says the free loader, non-working, still in school, un-experienced, non-social, one.
jorge 09/19/07	Personality Disorder Syndrome = PDS
howlingmadhowie 09/19/07	let's not be nasty to he's still young and maybe will change a bit as he gets older, but being nasty to him won't help.
badblood 09/19/07	this is an open invitation to start fresh.
jorge 09/19/07	My dream : http://www.ideastorm.com/article/show/69986
mdburkey 09/19/07	Don't be too hard on -- he is still too young to know any better! ;-) His age is about what I expected it to be -- which only confirms that he does not have the experience to really make valid comments on the rollout of Vista vs the rollout of XP or earlier OS's. He is welcome to his opinions and some of what he says does have validity. That said, I have been there for every rollout of every version of Windows -- and I can honestly say I haven't seen anywhere near as many problems or as much grumbling about an OS release (with the potential exception of WinME). Vista is pretty, don't get me wrong, and it does have some really nice features -- but they just made too many UI changes without doing adequate focus group studies on them and they made too many changes to the security and driver models simply for the sake of marketing and to keep the MPAA/RIAA happy. The only "real" security enhancement to Vista that can't be done on XP is UAC -- and all it really amounts to is a legal defense on Microsoft's part in case someones data gets trashed -- i.e. their lawyers can simply say "but you agreed to it" by clicking OK.
aikiwolfie 09/19/07	Turn off all the fancy features in Vista and supposedly your left with something that rather resembles Win2K. Microsofts excuse for not releasing DirectX 10 to XP is that is would require a significant rewrite of major parts of XP. Interestingly if we strip XP back to it's bare bones it also rather resembles Win2K. I'd bet if XP was rewritten to accommodate DirectX 10 it would be virtually indistinguishable from Vista. In fact I'd bet we could replace Explorer with Aero Glass. I'm also not sure where Microsoft gets the idea yearly releases are going to work. Six monthly updates work with Linux because it is either totally free or at least affordable and you get access to all or most of the source code. I doubt many folk are going to pay the sort of prices Microsoft are asking for Vista on a yearly basis. They've already tried it and failed with Windows 95, 95 OSR2, 98, 98 SE and Millennium.
aikiwolfie 09/19/07	You don't think it would be a bad thing to basically buy the same product over and over and over again? Oh wait ... we're doing that now!!!
jorge 09/19/07	Well some of you are.
aikiwolfie 09/20/07	Hands up all the saps that buy Windows "up-grades" or Office "up-grades"! What did you get for your money. I didn't get much. In fact XP just does what 95 was supposed to do.
jdelidc 09/20/07	aikiwolfie: vista did have a "wow." "wow, this really sucked"
davmcn 09/20/07	Wow harsh dicussion guys...i do have to say again also as chris said If you haven't tried it don't go and say it's crap. just to tell you i did try Linux Before. By the way yes there are something's in vista that need to be fixed but No Os is purely Good!
jdelidc 09/20/07	chris: 1) my 10 year old machine is running fedora 2, not vista. 2) i HAVE used vista
davmcn 09/20/07	for how long i am curious about?
jdelidc 09/20/07	4 months
davmcn 09/20/07	mmhmm...jdelidc - could you explain to me what you hated about Vista? Not Just Piece of junk more detail Plz.
jdelidc 09/20/07	has chris ever used linux? i've used every os i complain about for at least a few months
davmcn 09/20/07	I've Used Linux, All Versions Of Win, Most Mac Os's.
davmcn 09/20/07	i don't think he has...
jdelidc 09/20/07	in a nutshell, 1) inefficiency 2) networking to an xp machine (worked when it wanted), even through wired 3) approvals, until i turned them off but the big one is inefficiency
davmcn 09/20/07	oh ok...
jdelidc 09/20/07	don't get me wrong though, i love windows and really love linux. i just hate vista
jorge 09/20/07	I just really hate Boated OS's, i.e. Vista.
davmcn 09/20/07	oki doki...
jdelidc 09/20/07	the only things i can't do with xp that i can with vista is look at a really pretty screen and play halo 2. kde will take care of the screen and i can wait a few years for halo 2
jorge 09/20/07	I thought it was Halo 3? What happened to Halo 3?
jdelidc 09/20/07	whichever one is vista only
jorge 09/20/07	Yea, which one?
jdelidc 09/20/07	halo 2
jorge 09/20/07	I thought you were saying 3 was the Vista bastard version?
mdburkey 09/21/07	"1. They never toched it. tritng to fit in by coping others 2. they are using it with old 10 year old hardware.and software... Sad, people blame vista, when really its their falut. not vistas nor micrsofts " Not quite -- I have used Vista a LOT and overall, yes, it is pretty -- but it just doesn't WORK right and a lot of commonly used menu items/options been obfuscated or buried for no good reason. 1. Networking with other OS's -- like XP -- is NOT reliable, which means it can't be used safely in a mixed business enviroment (which all are). 2. Driver support for many printers and all-in-ones -- even less than 2 year old models -- is sorely lacking. 3. The 3D UI, while nifty, is a power hog -- as is Vista itself. The reason Microshaft pushes "power management" and sleep mode so hard in their VIsta advertisements is because it uses MARKEDLY more power when it's not sleeping. In a business environment, like say a call center, where the PC's are in use 24/7 the extra power demands for Vista will make a noticeable difference on a power bill -- and NOT in a good way. 4. DRM -- regardless on where you stand legally, it sucks royally. One system with Vista with a 1 year old monitor goes to black screen at 1920x1200 when playing HD video because the monitor is not HDCP compliant -- as does another with a newer monitor that supposedly IS HDCP compliant. This is insane -- the odds of anyone actually attempting to copy the raw decoded digital signal at 1920x1200, 60fps and then re-encoding it are almost zero! Microsoft has put a huge burden on the video driver manufacturers and crippled their OS in an attempt to placate a perceived RIAA/MPAA security hole THAT DOES NOT EXIST. Any attempts at video piracy will be made from the other side at the player software/decoder level -- as long as it is possible to playback a title on a PC, it is 100% IMPOSSIBLE to make a system that cannot be reverse engineered and disassembled given enough time and effort. This is just the tip of the iceberg on some of the REAL problems with Vista that DO NOT EXIST in XP. I'm not saying XP is perfect -- it definitely has its problems too -- but it is a MATURE OS and works quite well. Probably the biggest problem Vista has going for it is that it basically offers almost zero REAL improvements over XP. UAC is a kludge. The security is not any better than a properly patched and updated XP system. Etc. DX10 is the only major improvement and the fact that it is limited to Vista was a completely arbitrary decision on Microsofts part. In essence, they are using DX10 as a "blunt instrument" marketing tool to force game players to move to Vista -- because they have to. Other than DX10 and the new video driver model, can someone give me even ONE major improvement in Vista that does not exist in XP? (I will grant that the Vista Media Center has a bit more polish to it -- in the rare cases you can actually get all the sundry hardware drivers to play nice with each other)
jorge 09/21/07	Yea, who uses menus! Real windows users use ball bearings.
jorge 09/22/07	Ball Bearings, its all Ball Bearings now, where have you been!
winoffice 09/22/07	mdburkey - "Think again. You are right on one thing -- it SHOULDN'T have had more. However, the reality is that it has MANY more problems than XP. Basically, they (a) changed too many things for the sake of change, (b) rushed it out the door to please their stockholders, and (c) totally FUBAR'ed the driver model with DRM to keep the media distributors happy." It does not have more problems on new PCs, becuase all of the hardware (and most of the software too) is now compatible with Vista. Now if you are talknig about an older PC, then you might have problems. But since this idea is about new PCs, then no, Vista does not have many more problems than XP. Also, you said this: "That is not to say that there are not improvements in Vista -- it's just that the problems tend to outweigh the improvements." That is generally true for all operating systems, due to the lack of drivers and service packs shortly after the release of the operating system, and Vista is no exception. I am certain that XP also had problems outweighing the improvements in the beginning, but the sevice packs came by and they took care of those problems. I therefore am certain that Vista will lose most of its problems after Service Pack 1. And then: "Basically, WinME 2 (aka Vista) was a botch job that was rushed out in just over a year." Now you should think again, mdburkey. Think about that for a minute. Windows Vista is much better than Windows ME. After all, Vista has better program support, and the new PCs support Vista completely in terms of hardware. Therefore, it is incorrect to call it "WinME 2".
spyderxs 10/13/07	XP will have a new service pack released this year and XP has more apps. that actually work
jorge 10/13/07	So much for the no more double comments bug being fixed... dell_admin1 looks like its back to the drawing board, same time too, proof is in the pudding.
americasarmyrocks 10/30/07	Hey everybody...I just think that Windows Vista really sucks!!! Windows XP is so much faster and better, with the exception of not being able to play Halo 2 and 3. But Halo 2 and 3 is not going to make me get a Vista computer for gaming My Vista is so much slower than either of my Dell XP notebooks that it is really sad :(
aikiwolfie 10/31/07	I won't be getting Vista either and I certainly wouldn't buy it just to play Halo. That's a lot of money for a games console.
jdelidc 11/03/07	i'll have vista eventually just for halo. but the machine will be multiboot so i'm not stuck with it
aikiwolfie 11/03/07	Personally I want to make the push for a single boot Ubuntu system. The trouble is I do actually fix a lot of Windows PCs. Mostly cleaning viruses from hard drives. So I do actually still need a Windows system. I think I'll buy a cheapo PC and convert my XPS.
davmcn 11/03/07	Vista isn't that bad, i know their are some mistakes in vista, but most of them have been fixed or are being fixed in SP1. i suggest aikiwolfie to try it..
aikiwolfie 11/04/07	It's actually more the cost of Vista that puts me off rather than any of it's functional problems. It's true I'm not impressed by the reports that security isn't any better than in XP and that many applications no longer work or that it is a massive resource hog. When it comes down to it I'm looking at what I get for my money and to be honest I just don't feel like paying for something that doesn't do what the the vendor say it does. When I look around at my options I see many professionally built and solid operating systems. Windows of any iteration just doesn't make the grade for me and I don't want to be weighting until Vista SP3 before everything works the way it's supposed to. Microsoft have no excuses. They have more resources than any other company in the IT sector and still they can't do something a loose nit group of volunteers can manage. Where is MS doing with it's customers money? Why pay for something we all know is broken? If they fix it then things might be different.
mniccols 11/06/07	I desperately want XP and not sure how to go about it...I am very disappointed in my recent purchase of an Inspiron 1520
aikiwolfie 11/06/07	SP1 for Vista is apparently 50MB! Some Linux distributions are less than that. Personally I think that's a shocking state of affairs. At least with Ubuntu with a download on those proportions it's a full OS upgrade and not just a cumulative patch to fix the bits that should have worked but didn't.
davmcn 11/06/07	SP1? really the beta was like from 600Mb - 1.5GB.
aikiwolfie 11/06/07	Maybe I read it wrong. 600MB I think is more than the entire Ubuntu Live CD. It just keeps getting worse. I'm dreading what SP3 for XP is going to be.
mdburkey 11/06/07	I'm with Aikiwolfie -- it is the cost of Vista that is the problem. Or, more accurately, the cost to benefit ratio. It is not that Vista is all bad -- it does have some good points and I like the overall look of the UI (which is why I run a Vista skin on XP). The issue is -- what do you actually GET for the cost of Vista. Basically, to get the same level of performance as XP, you need 2x the hardware. What feature(s) of Vista that XP cannot deliver are WORTH having 2x the overhead to do it??? I haven't seen any features that justify the overhead have you? Anyone? And DX10 ain't it! I don't play games, so it matters not one iota to me. That said, I do benchmark them occasionally just to be up to date as a hardware tech and even if you play games, DX10 seems to be pretty much anemic at this point. Even it's supposed Raison D'etre (Crysis) looks almost indistinguishable in DX9 mode if you tweak the config file correctly (and it runs FASTER like this). The problem with Vista is that just doesn't bring anything NEW to the table. Had the true Journaling File System that was promised from Longhorn actually been there (rather than the "ripped from Server 2003 at the last minute" file versioning system that Vista does have) I might be a bit more interested. Personally, 600Mb is no big deal for a service pack -- my guess is that it will actually be even bigger -- which is almost inevitable given the "imaging" system that Vista now uses for installs.
aikiwolfie 11/06/07	The truth of the matter is all of the visual effects Vista brings to the table from the new skin to the fancy 3D effects can all be done with XP. I had a Vista skin for XP but grew tired of it very quickly and went back to a OS X skin. I also had an app that give the window previews from the task bar, another app that did shadows, another widget app and Nvidia brings transparencies as a standard feature of it's driver software. 600MB to 1.5GB is a big deal. It means there was a heck of a lot of stuff wrong that should have been working by now. That's what beta testing is for. 600MB to 1.5GB is an entire OS. People who bought Vista basically paid for a broken OS. XP is now due SP3. I'll bet Vista will also run to at least SP3. I'll bet Vista SP1 won't even bring a great deal in new features to Vista. It's a big giant sticking plaster for the broken bits. Personally I think Linux is a far better OS. It's more solidly built and does what it says on the tin. The pace of development is also mind boggling. Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) is due in April! Ubuntu and Linux in general is just far better value for money.
jorge 11/15/07	More news: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2209837,00.asp
aikiwolfie 11/15/07	LOL. So sad. Even with it's monopoly position in the market they still can't shift it!
robert_p May 1	Hi Everyone, I'm Robert_P the Small Business Liaison for Dell Community. There's a post on direct2dell today that addresses this topic. Here's the link: http://direct2dell.com/smallbusiness/default.aspx Now you can chose to downgrade.
aikiwolfie May 1	You might be interested in this from the BBC folks. But then there's the XP SP3 delay as well! Maybe I'm being overly paranoid. But in the past Microsoft would have released the service pack anyway. Then fixed it with a patch. But Vista isn't going to plan. People still want XP no matter how much spin Microsoft puts is the Vista license sales. Even if I am paranoid. It doesn't mean it's not true. It's all a conspiracy. It might of course just be a poorly timed coincidence. Can't use the phrase i want to use. It's not a bad phrase. It's just banned. But either way it still looks bad for Microsoft.

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