Microsoft: Windows XP Users Are Missing Out

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I dont kinda blame them. Both the sides have equal facts to upgrade and valid reasons not to. 1 reason is software incomptability. Another reason as a gamer there are certain games that either win vista or 7 clearly fail to run properly tgus make me miss out on. ( ex tombraider legaacy franchises, legacy of kain or old ms dos games abandonware etc. Another would be the learning curve, some of our folks are so well versed with the xp interface they find it a steep learning curve. Another would be ram usage. Xp on just simple anti virus and firewalls utilises max of 340 or say 400 mb ram whereas vista or 7 or 8 consumes a whooping 1.5+ gb even with tweaks. Dont kid me I use windows 7 and say yes its a good robust hardware., but honeatly 8.1 was crap. Forcing customers to update just coz of direct x 11.2 without 7 support shiws the shady bz side at times. Neverthless Xp was a good run n a run worth it. Though I still have a dual boot on 1 machine , I jus can honeatly say its hard to get rid of xp which brought many memories in 14 yrs.
 

Vista drivers should work ok on Windows 7 as Vista and Win7 aren't that different in how drivers are supported. It's XP drivers on Vista/Win7/Win8 that can be more problematic.
 
I think those people still hold on motto "don't fix what ain't broken"

I'm cannot said to disagree with them since new thing/os may bring it's own problems and added cost...
 
Windows 7, absolution, windows 8... no chance in hell. Metro isn't supported well and it's a royal inconvience to keep going to desktop mode when you click the fake "start" option in windows 8.1 Windows 7 will probabyl the last MS operating system before a drastic cloud based, non microsoft solution comes down the line. Only old timers and peopel afraid of change will disagree with that.
 
We are not missing out. Only on the latest DirectX. That's all. But maybe they might just like using the simple interface of XP. Is that so hard to understand. XP is fast and efficient. Windows 7 is slow and useless.
 
Microsoft offers a yearly subscription service to companies and institutions if you want steady OS updates & upgrades, even still sometimes the tech is just too old to bother with anymore.
 
1. The security holes are essentially product defects. In a product Microsoft developed and sold. Microsoft should not be blaming its customers for problems it created. If anything, vice versa.2. Microsoft's position would be a lot more sympathetic if their recent O/S's could support the same (low) level of hardware power their earlier releases could. If they were serious about addressing that market, they'd do it. Compare to for example Linux, which will easily run on those same machines.3. There are millions of PCs in industrial settings that are not really PCs in the normal sense of that word. They run dedicated, special purpose software to perform a single task. They are not meant for web surfing, emails, office productivity, etc. They were deployed years ago and they are still working fine now and no one wants to touch either their hardware or software any more than you want to dig under your house to replace some plumbing that is working 100% fine. If MS is going to try to make people throw money away like that, they should be prepared that some IT departments are going to conclude that they must not allow themselves to be placed in that situation a 2nd time.
 
brucek,1) By that logic, police departments should be driving model T's that have been retrofitted with modern V8's, all on Ford's dime. After all, it isn't the police department's fault that faster cars came out in the last 100 years and criminals use them! Ford is a bunch of crooked bastards because they refused to provide indefinite support for perfectly good vehicles after they were paid for!2 & 3) If those specialized machines aren't on the web and only exist to monitor industrial processes, then there is no issue. If they are all set up and doing their thing, they don't need new drivers and they won't get infested with malware from the web. No need to update.All businesses exist to make money. It has to cost MS $millions annually to pay for staff and infrastructure to maintain WinXP. They do not make money from XP. Hardware has evolved a lot since the advent of XP, and so has Windows. They are not going to just give away their new product that probably cost on the order of $1B to develop (salaries, infrastructure). Honestly, are there that many people out there that think a $199 OS license means a lifetime of free support? People would flip out even more if MS turned Windows Update into a pay-per-update service.Is MS obligated to lose $millions per year supporting XP? Is there a critical mass of people using something, that once reached means a company must spend any and all amounts of money to provide for regardless of the terms of the contract agreed to at the time of purchase? Serious questions.
 
I have a XP machine that runs design and programing for CAD. I can not afford to pay $10k for new software and a computer to run it on. I will continue to use XP with out having a internet connection. I also am running linux mint on the same machine that does use the web. Will this machine still be at risk while using linux ?
 
I'll "upgrade" (more like degrade) when I have a specific reason to. No Dx11-only games yet have been worth it. Any software/hardware that I really need that still runs on XP.Move this repeat/rephrased/reworded article to Toms-IT-Pro.....paganda
 
"Yet the question is, why are customers holding on to Windows XP? Why can't they embrace newer, more secure platforms like Windows 7 or Windows 8.1?"I still use windows XP on my work laptop. It is a Toshiba Satellite S1950-1801 made in late 2002/2003.My S1950-1801 is powered by an Intel Pentium 4 Northwood@2.8 GHz, an AGP type Nvidia Geforce4 460 Go 64Mb VRAM GPU, and 2 Gigabytes DDR1 333 MHz memory. My laptop cannot, due to its hardware, run neither Vista nor 7 nor 8. Even if it could, I would never buy Windows 8 or 8.1 for it, as it is desktop/laptop user unfriendly.There's your answer, Microsoft. So many intelligent ppl in there yet you are scratching your heads like monkeys trying to figure out why we don't upgrade. Is it rocket science to figure out what I wrote above?
 
The way that things are going.... I see myself hearing the same MS song years from nowwhen I'm still using Windows 7.I always said that a computer is NOT outdated if it WORKS for your needs.That's not limited to hardware, software and OS included. Some users simply don't have (or don't see) a reason to upgrade.(I normally upgrade my components / hardware every 2 years or so) and built a new system around every 5 years +/- But do I "need to" or do I "have to", that's entirely up to each user preferences.
 

Free OS upgrade won't help people with Windows XP embedded in specialized equipment where drivers and software for the equipment do not exist for newer OSes. It also won't help people and businesses who have expensive software licenses for old versions and no real need to upgrade to newer versions of it assuming new versions even exist.

There are many lab/industrial/business cases where the $0 OS upgrade may cost over 100k$ in hardware and license upgrades or upgrading the software might not even be possible. Ex.: can't upgrade the OS on one of Agilent's Windows-based 20k$ oscilloscopes if Agilent is not providing updated drivers and software for free if at all then your "free" Windows upgrade ends up costing at least whatever Agilent charges for their end of the upgrade. It isn't uncommon to see lab equipment get used for 15-25 years (except defense departments and other places like that which often replace equipment just to burn off leftover budget) so those XP-based devices may end up sticking around for at least that long.
 
As of today, our $5000 42" HP Plotter - made in 2003 and still supported by HP today... does NOT WORK with Windows 7. YEP! HP "has" a driver... kind of... but not. So some of our computers MUST stay on XP because we are not going to spend $7~8000 for a new printer. Is this Microsoft fault... yeah, maybe... but its for sure, HP's.So for those who post "YOU are stupid for not upgrading to a newer windows!"... would you care to buy us a new 42" plotter?Also... Microsoft should offer to sell Windows7-Pro for $50... why not? Windows 8 isn't worth $1.
 
Probably because most computer users only "upgrade" their OS when they buy a new computer. Most wouldn't even think of trying to install a new OS themselves. And as long as it works they're perfectly happy with it. A lot of people couldn't care less about getting the latest bells and whistles.
 
The personal computer industry is not a static one, given the rapacious nature of Internet connectivity.Just think of the opportunity that this gives malware authors: 28% of connected PCs serving in a world-wide botnet.
 
The lovely part is that those computers that won't work great on Windows 7/8 will work just great on Linux and feel screaming fast. There is no need to pay the Microshaft tax, just switch to Linux for many years of non pressuring you to upgrade life. The only reason I still have a MS computer at all is because I have to work in their crap and my job doesn't allow Linux.
 

That depends on which distribution with what features installed. Gnome was an unwelcome resource hog back when RedHat decided to make it the default.

In any case, Linux won't help people who are running specialized applications or hardware that only work properly on XP.
 
I plan on buying as many Win7 lic. as I can. I just like it. I does what I want it to do. As far as XP goes? Business users are going to be more stubborn than MS thinks. As I posted elsewhere, a big Grocer near my home just did a massive remodel. The 6 new self-checkout machines that they installed are running Windows XP. I know because I saw one reboot.These are brand new machines. I would sure think twice about running my bank Card through them after April.
 
"That's not good news given that Microsoft is gearing up to pull life support two months from now"That's not good news, FOR MICROSOFT, given that Microsoft is gearing up to pull life support two months from now.There, Kevin, fixed it for you.You can keep an XP box going just fine and do your web surfing in a virtual machine/sandbox if security is an issue.
 
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