Microsoft Extends Windows XP Downgrade to 2020

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[citation][nom]doomsdaydave11[/nom]It's a shame you have no idea what you're talking about. As a business owner that has legacy software and databases that only run on XP, transferring them to Win7 now would be nearly impossible. Just 6 years ago we upgraded for a DOS based database system, for the same reason.[/citation]

This. Its not just about Johnny B Homeuser. A business often has one or several software packages that run on older software.

I used to work for a consulting company that sold accounting software back in the 1990's. Imagine being told every 2-4 years you had to spend $50k - $200k on new accounting software depending on how complicated and big your business was? at US$10k per module for some programs (General Ledger, Order Entry, Payroll, AP, AR, Inventory management, Time and Billing) plus the cost of user licenses, maintenance, etc... this was not cheap back in 1990.

Consider this and you'll see how big a boon this is for business in America.
 
I personally have 1 XP Machine, 2 Vista Machines, and 1 new Win7 machine. All work dine for me on the hardware they are one. I actually love Vista, those two machines are work horses. At work I am stuck ordering Win XP. It not because of software or networking but because of very expensive Xerox production printers. Rather than develop new drivers for their older machines that work perfectly and a lot of times better than their new ones, they want to send us into debt for 5 years and purchase another printer. We want to upgrade to Win7 here for software and to take better advantage of the hardware. As a company it is better to use the printers we have and make positive money rather than invest into a printer sending us into debt for 5+ years just so we can upgrade the computers. Installs, setup, and networking configurations they are already paying me for, so no loss. (Yes before the comments come in that there are other printers out there, cost of investment is still the same)
 
[citation][nom]doomsdaydave11[/nom]It's a shame you have no idea what you're talking about. As a business owner that has legacy software and databases that only run on XP, transferring them to Win7 now would be nearly impossible. Just 6 years ago we upgraded for a DOS based database system, for the same reason.[/citation]
I hope the DOS ver was at least 6 :) not 3.30
 
In addition, there are quite a few obscure business applications that just do not work on Win7 and are expensive to upgrade. So you are not talking about just upgrading the OS and hardware as a cost, you are also looking at software updates. For example, we have a dept in our business that has apps that just do not work on Win7, and cost upwards of 70k to upgrade the software on the servers hosting the apps. Then add in the amount of time involved to reinstall/upgrade the users to the new software, training time to use it, downtime that will occur while performing the upgrade. This adds up to a ton of money. XP is indeed old hat but we will wear as the new hat is massively expensive.

Just my IT thoughts.
 
Oh I forgot to mention, the MS DOS program my customer uses has no direct upgrade. The company who makes it does not provide ANY conversion tools to transfer the databases to their newer programs.

This means that upgrading from the current program they use will not only cost upward of $50,000 for the new software and computers to run it, but will also take literally MONTHS of manual data input to transfer their inventory (even with a barcode scanner it will be slow, you're talking warehouses of stuff). On top of this, their invoices and business history with each of THEIR customers will be lost in the transition.

The company who produces the old MS DOS program will also NOT provide any database structure information so that a 3rd party can write a database converter for it. The information is saved in a jumbled proprietary mess that would take a programmer far too long to figure out on his own.

For them to switch to Windows XP, it's a huge big deal and NOT just a matter of "upgrading", which is why they haven't done it.

 
[citation][nom]Pei-chen[/nom]If Skynet is going to run XP, we have nothing to worry about. It can't access more than 3.5GB of RAM.[/citation]


funny... but maybe you shonuld note that im running 4 gigs on my win xp pro x64 system right now

now just wait.. everyone will say how win7's x64 is way better


 
a lot of my games simply do not run on Windows 7, so this is good news.

I do like Windows 7, but I also like to be able to play all my Windows XP/Win98/Win95 games.

I still even got some good old DOS games.
 
At my old middle school, the Advanced technology lab at the time (2007-2008) had NT4.0 on most of the machines... that or Windows 98. Even administration had nothing better than Windows 2000, and the computers in the ART room had Windows 95 until last year....
 
[citation][nom]scryer_360[/nom]Your company is run by morons. XP has been exploited and hacked to the ends. IT lacks many of the base security features of modern Operating Systems. Taking over an XP system is nothing short of easy for even a modest script-kiddie.And really, you are running ATMs on that crap? A simple Linux kernel would make operating your enterprise much more efficient and secure for such devices that do not require complex user interfaces. It would also save money on liscensing.Also, all your machines have been running since '02? Most computer hard drives last a max of 5 years, and after that motherboards, memory, and power supplies become more and more likely to fail. Heavy-use machines inside of ones business even more so.And what happens when you need new software? Or new peripherals? The cost of complacency can easily replace the cost of upgrading. You'll be sinking hundreds into each individual unit in no time, you could have kept yourself from hitting obsolescence costs. The shareholders will be displeased.[/citation]

you see what you dont understand is that though xp may lack some big fancy security feature, it has something win7 does not have, simplicity. all those new features win7 has, are full of security holes that need to be patched.

as for hard drives failing in 5 years...

we have a win98SE celeron500, 64MB ram, 10 gig HDD that we got in 99. its been running almost eversince, its been used almost everyday. and guess what? everything still works fine, the 11 year old hdd still works. *gasp*


 
But XP+SP3 support is only up to April 2014. So if you downgrade to XP, you won't get any updates after 2014? Microsoft should make up their mind exactly what they want to do with XP.
 
[citation][nom]viometrix[/nom]xp is old hat, and needs to die. companies that depend on xp because their proprietary software runs on it are not companies i want to do business with. they had to have the software rewritten to work on xp 10 yrs ago, time to evolve and do it again.i have xp mode installed just so my son and i can pretend we got stuck in the past, too bad many people really are.[/citation]
You're kidding right? There currently is no business case for upgrading when XP works just fine for what we need to do. Heck, we still use AS/400 software from the early 90s because it does exactly what it's supposed to do, manage inventory quickly and reliably, there's no reason to upgrade it other than the new version 'looks pretty'. Upgrading an OS isn't as simple as it sounds, especially when you start to consider ISO and TS standards along with government contracts and contracts with some tech firms and other OEMs. All of these supposedly easy changes can quickly result in 6 month quality studies per product to make sure the change to a new software package hasn't affected the processes. And yes, even though it seems silly to think a new OS or software package could have any real effect, that doesn't matter, in the world of quality control and quality control standards things STILL have to be proven before the official change can be made. This results in even the smallest of changes quickly escalating into many man hours of labor in addition to any capital costs for equipment/software, this makes a cost justification for changing very difficult until it absolutely has to be done. And God help you if UL gets wind of any process changes and require you to rerun RTIs, flame tests and all the other characterizations.

In addition to your own costs, your customers also tend to be resistant to any changes because any change you make may result in them having to redo their quality testing as well, especially anything involving UL. People with extremely tight tolerances and quality standards like chip manufacturers or people with loads of regulations like auto companies also will be very resistant to any of their suppliers making even the smallest of changes to an established process.

There's also the fact about equipment costs to consider. Upgrading PCs is hardly the issue, you can get Dell business boxes for 200$ that run windows 7 just fine, but when that system needs to be hooked up to an older piece of equipment that doesn't have win 7 (or even XP) drivers you start to run into issues. Replacing that piece of equipment isn't always a reasonable option, especially when its something like a $25MM coater or even a $200k rheometer.

There's also issues with backwards compatibility when dealing with customers and your suppliers. If you're an early adopter you can easily run into issues of connectivity with your customers. As a sort of related example, we upgraded to office 2007 2 or so years ago and the previously simple act of sending documents is a fairly constant minor irritant. Not everyone has the ability to open xlsx or docx files, especially for people at home or on older smartphones, so you always have to make sure to send the older format (which results in those irritating compatibility checker windows) or send as a pdf and hope that doesn't get conversion junk garbled. Sure, it's fairly minor, but that's just the difficulty a SMALL change to an office suite can impart, let alone the horrors of changing an entire OS can cause.
 
scryer_360 said: "Most computer hard drives last a max of 5 years"

I've got a 4.3gb Quantum Fireball here that has been running 24/7 in my Pentium 200 (not even P200 MMX) webserver since 1998. It also has a 13gb Fireball that has been running since 2000. It was a replacement for another 13gb fireball that died after a year. There is also a Maxtor 40gb and a Maxtor 120gb drive that have both been running for more than 5 years each.

Yes, this P200 has 4 hard drives, a CD burner and a DVD reader. Thanks to an additional IDE card. The whole thing has been running as a web server for upward of 12 years and is still going strong. It has gone through 2 power supplies though and I'm having trouble finding AT power supplies (the ones with physical power switches) to replace them with from my collection in the basement.

I think an average of 5 years is a bit low. I would place the average toward 7 years in my opinion.
 
Some of the comments absolutely amaze me - and make it blatantly obvious they don't have to support businesses, especially medium to large (though cost is still a factor for small business.)
I've run across machines still running OS/2. Because they still work and do a specific function, or run specialized software.
"Just put Linux on!" Sure, you can get the OS free - now about the cost of rewriting the software. Not to mention testing, making sure the machine works well with it - and don't forget downtime and labor to put it on.

For home use? Absolutely, grab Win7. Businesses? Do what works. You'll see XP for quite some time there, even if the rest of the organization moves to Windows 7-8-9-10. It makes a job a little more difficult for IT, yes (production/PR/etc needs to use the latest and greatest, another department needs XP, this group uses Macs or what have you) but that's what they pay you for.
 
I'm surprised MS will go that far... 2014 is when XP is supposed to die.

Its actually a nice thing for MS to do. But MS needs to work like a OS company of the past... revision OS version every 2-3 years to prevent stagnation...

GOOD: Programmers know the OS inside and out...
BAD: Programmers and innovation get lazy.

XP is still a fine OS, I'll take it over Vista any day. But I use Win7 now on my desktop and notebook... where it rocks, generally.
 
[citation][nom]cadder[/nom]I don't think this is necessary, but a couple of more years might be reasonable. 7 is a good OS and businesses should move to it. Businesses buying new computers could take this opportunity to start migrating. Sure people want to keep running what they have already but their old computers will only last so long. They can't put off the inevitable move forever, a move from XP to 7 is relatively easy.I run XP at work but we have moved some of our newest machines to 7 without any real difficulty. Right now we have 4 people running 7 and 5 people running XP.[/citation]

A small business has very little problem in the way of migrating. My company, who has no hand in software development, doesn't have an option to switch to Windows7. We're stuck with XP until the software company decides to support Win7. They openly refused to support Vista at any level. We don't have the option to run our software in "XP Mode" like some companies can. We only have 30 some odd computers...I'm sure there's a lot of other companies in the exact same or similar conditions.
 
"xp is old hat, and needs to die. companies that depend on xp because their proprietary software runs on it are not companies i want to do business with."

This gets the dumb comment award of the day. There's still big Fortune 500 companies out there (and I GUARANTEE you do business with them) that still use old software. I'll IBM's AS400 as an example. Why? Because it's virtually bulletproof. Feel free to Google yourself an education on companies and the software they use.
 
Windows is garbage. Always has been. Always will be. You know how many Microsoft desktops and servers, combined, we have at our 130 person company? Zero. You know why? Cause it's garbage software riddled with bugs and viruses. We are an exclusively Linux, AIX, and OSX shop and will be for the foreseeable future.
 
[citation][nom]ern88[/nom]Windows 7 is arguably the best Windows released. [/citation]
Who are you, Steve Ballmer? Stop regurgitating MS marketing materials. Every release of Windows is touted as "The best Windows evar!!" in the first year its released. Then everyone wakes up and realizes how it actually is. Windows 95 was the best Windows evar! Windows ME was the best Windows evar! Vista was the best Windows evar! Get a grip.
 
[citation][nom]wotan31[/nom]Who are you, Steve Ballmer? Stop regurgitating MS marketing materials. Every release of Windows is touted as "The best Windows evar!!" in the first year its released. Then everyone wakes up and realizes how it actually is. Windows 95 was the best Windows evar! Windows ME was the best Windows evar! Vista was the best Windows evar! Get a grip.[/citation]

Companies use software that fits their needs. The company I work for uses Windows because the software they're required to run, is Windows only. Also, some people realized that Windows95, ME, XP and Vista were essentially "trash" at release. Windows95 and ME were unstable at release, as was XP. Vista was more stable but was heavily hampered by performance and compatibility issues. Linux, in reality, has more compatibility issues than any Windows release. There are enough Linux "flavors" that hardware makers are getting tired of trying to support them.
 
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