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Windows XP: The OS That Won't Quit

pcworld.com — Phasing out an old operating system is nothing new for Microsoft, but Windows XP is unique in that it may be too good to die.

Who dugg this? Made popular Dec 14, 2008

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  • inactive, on 12/13/2008, -13/+382They better get Windows 7 right.....
  • lynosull, on 12/13/2008, -44/+384Vista now sucks less than it used to.
  • Slashered, on 12/13/2008, -24/+266This has more to do with XP being a great product than Vista being terrible, because it isn't. it's the same reason why people still play Counter-Strike 1.6, StarCraft, and Quake 3, instead of Source, WarCraft 3 and Quake 4.
  • bigox25, on 12/13/2008, -106/+328I really never can understand the hate for Vista. Prepare to be dugg down.
  • RyeBrye, on 12/14/2008, -12/+219They should re-release it and call it "Vista Classic", and charge $50 to upgrade.

  • jasdf, on 12/14/2008, -7/+180It is sort of hard to believe that we are still using an OS that hit the stores in 2001.
  • Bauer22, on 12/14/2008, -4/+152How can it quit if there's still 4924 people seeding it?
  • PeppersGhost, on 12/14/2008, -39/+128XP is phenomenal.
  • RHollister, on 12/14/2008, -27/+97Can anyone explain why one would want to run Vista over XP? Because of the cool looking start menu? Because of the cool looking Alt-Tab? Certainly not because they really feel it is more secure? You cannot argue that XP will run better on every PC out there. Even on the high end PCs, XP still runs better if not the same. No reason to run Vista besides utilizing extra overhead. There is no value add.
  • thetechgeek, on 12/14/2008, -17/+70I still use XP at work. Vista is alright for a home PC.
  • inactive, on 12/14/2008, -7/+60Don't get rid of something that still works just fine. Until Vista becomes less resource-heavy, I'm going to run WinXP on my laptop until its dying CPU cycle.
  • Llanowar, on 12/14/2008, -10/+57The same as it was with XP.
    At first everyone hated XP as well. Mostly because it sucked big time, was a huge system resource hog and full of bugs.
    Wasn't till Service pack 2 that the complaints stopped. Now it's a fairly stable and good OS.

    I guess we'll need to wait for SP2 to be released for Vista and hope it does the same.
  • blackmesa, on 12/14/2008, -2/+41It's all financial. Why spend $ if you don't need to? Just look in the server/computer room of any medium-large organisation (~500 - ~5000 employees). You'll find all kinds of ancient hardware and software.
    A company I know just had a retirement party for their ~20 year old IBM. One I worked for still had a coax based network. Also token ring (IBM type 1 connectors). For 550+ users and ~200 printers/servers/etc. Also they had ethernet somehow hybridised with it and no routers. You should have seen the patch room: There would have been tonnes of cable in there, you had to climb on the stuff to change dead links.
  • c010rb1indusa, on 12/14/2008, -5/+42True but it's not the problem. Microsoft waited too long to release a new OS after XP. Windows XP evolved a lot over time between the release of Vista, and XP owners became way to comfortable with XP because most had being using it for a very long time. Microsoft's release of Vista, coupled with early compatibility issues of the OS just turned people off.

    However Mac has had an advantage because they release incremental updates to their OS, allowing them to 1. Optimize the base OS (OS X) to better respond to changes in the hardware market as standard hardware becomes more powerful which allows the OS's to be used on older and new computers alike because the gap in the minimum system requirements are far smaller than that of lets say XP and Vista. and 2. It allows Mac to focus on new and updated features that vastly improve user experience but don't change the overall feel of the OS. Mac OS X Panther did not seem that different from Tiger, and Tiger didn't seem that different then Leopard. But Leopard is obviously the superior OS to Panther. But if you use both, they are still instantly familiar to eachother.

    What I'm saying is, Microsoft failed to realize the proper price, and life cycle of an OS in the modern computing era. +$200 For Windows vista home premium buckled with the time between OS releases that allowed XP to become way too optimized is a weak strategy.
  • GorfTron, on 12/14/2008, -7/+43I like xp.
  • Llanowar, on 12/14/2008, -3/+38Warcraft 3 is of course a completely different game than Starcraft.
  • inactive, on 12/14/2008, -13/+47Vistax64 runs faster than XPx86 and XPx64.
  • lalalalamppost, on 12/14/2008, -5/+36Too good to die? More like: Better than the only commercial, compatible replacement.
    At this point, Windows XP is closer to unkillable undead than a legendary hero.
  • DefiniteFail, on 12/14/2008, -5/+36This could easily be because she isn't smart about computers, she downloads anything out of the blue, doesn't watch the update warning, and thinks it says remind me in 1 hour, but it says restart in 1 hour.

    Or, its just Vista.

    I won't lie, I've had my fair share of problems in Vista, but SP1 fixed most of them.
  • disgruntled, on 12/14/2008, -10/+40that person is a ***** moron and needs to learn how to configure their OS properly.
    you need to learn to form your own opinions instead of relying on morons to lead you
  • houndeyex, on 12/14/2008, -26/+55Lower frame rates and more bloatware? Why should an OS require 4 gigs of ram to run properly?
  • Technohamster, on 12/14/2008, -7/+36I hate Vista cause I have 512 ram.
  • disgruntled, on 12/14/2008, -23/+52yes. the fact that it still functions after 3 service packs, countless patches and somehow still has clingy fanbase that think its some kind of miracle in programming is phenomenal.
  • LocalScope, on 12/14/2008, -9/+37The search. Been using Vista Business at home since release and it pains me to use XP at work.
  • Wang, on 12/14/2008, -3/+29I just find it amusing that suddenly XP is "too good to die". I remember what things were said about XP all the way up until Vista was released, it's amazing how opinions change. I bet after Vista SP2 or 3 people will be saying the same thing about Vista...sigh :)
  • genericdigger, on 12/14/2008, -1/+26I like where we're going with this...
  • ingoldsby, on 12/14/2008, -2/+27I still play Warcraft 3!
  • DumbGuy4, on 12/14/2008, -12/+37I think Vista is a good example of a product that's solid and time-tested. It finally took a while for the robustness of Windows 2000 to emerge from troubled predecessors. Windows XP grew out of that and surfaced as solid and relatively evergreen.

    Moreover I think people are tired of being nudged to perpetually upgrade software. When something's good, it's worth sticking around. "If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it."

    Kreatr: Yes, Linux does indeed rock. I wish the masses would accept it.
  • jynweythek, on 12/14/2008, -10/+35looks like MS made a product too good to need for you to buy the next upgrade. oops. dont worry it wont happen again :)
  • riverrunner, on 12/13/2008, -11/+35I even keep it around on my macbook.
  • Llanowar, on 12/14/2008, -17/+41Because of DirectX 10.
  • duzytata, on 12/14/2008, -1/+25It doesn't, but the more RAM you have, the more it will use. Vista loads commonly used programs into your RAM so they load faster when you need them. When a open program, like a game, needs more RAM it frees up space to be used for that program. It's not a RAM hog, it just uses your ram efficiently. Whats the point of having 4GB of RAM when it just sits there empty?
  • vivvivtzz, on 12/14/2008, -11/+35XP is a solid, attractive, non-intrusive operating system who's real genius is restarting explorer (not Internet Explorer) when it crashes saving you from restarting your system while preserving applications in RAM. A great OS, and Microsoft's best to date.
  • zdiggler, on 12/14/2008, -3/+26Typing sudo and entering admin password is also annoying.
  • latova, on 12/14/2008, -9/+31Vista sucks less sure, however the bar is already set. They need to do Windows XP or better.
  • TimDigg, on 12/14/2008, -7/+28It's too big to fail
  • Outsid3r, on 12/14/2008, -8/+29I find it funny how everyone seems to like Windows XP when it was most hated before Vista and seemed like everyone said Windows 2000 was the best when XP came out. Are we going to say Vista is the best when Windows 7 comes out? I just don't understand what some of you people are doing that is making your software defective while using Vista. Digg me down, but I've never had any problems with Vista maybe a few crashes but I get that with any OS. Same goes with Internet Explorer I've never had a problem with it. I build and repair as well as clean infected computers on a day to day basis maybe I just know what I'm doing to keep me from having these offsets?
  • deadapostle, on 12/14/2008, -9/+30XP is great. Vista works fine after you properly upgrade your computer (much like XP when it came out).

    I use XP, Vista, and OSX on three different computers that I work on pretty much daily. They all have their advantages, but whatever I need to do can get done without any trouble because the hardware is right for the OS and for the applications.
  • ClevelandBrown, on 12/14/2008, -5/+25A lot less.
  • tama00, on 12/14/2008, -7/+26It tends to be all the gamer kids that worship Vista. Anyone who actually works in the IT industry, who doesnt care about the latest fancy graphics cards and benchmarks their computers all day, will tell you Vista doesnt offer anything more than XP for the trouble it would be worth to upgrade.
  • disgruntled, on 12/14/2008, -4/+22they sort of already did. its called 'Windows XP Home Edition for Ultra Low Cost PCs' and is used on netbooks.
  • mirunit, on 12/14/2008, -8/+26Yeah, Vista just BOGS my computer - if you say so. Question : Do you even know what it takes to support 'All Hardware'?

    Out of the box XP supports very little, including no good ethernet and video on newer machines. Sometimes you need to overhaul/rewrite code for the good of the product and the state the XP kernel was in would not make it too much further into the future. XP's handling of multiple cores is terrible and using a GPU to drive the windows UI on Vista was a great step forward, the way memory is handled is another instance of something that needed to be done (pre-caching apps and such). This is all in addition to a new set of driver models which will be more future-proof.
  • obliviousfool, on 12/14/2008, -3/+21For the price, I'd expect something really fast, really secure, and completely hassle-free. That's the main problem. Sure, you can aggressively market something, and try to push people into it, and take away their security blanket, but if it isn't worth the money people are gonna bitch.

  • Namingway, on 12/14/2008, -14/+32
    dugg for...

    "Were this Apple, you wouldn't have the option to use an old OS at all. Granted you probably wouldn't want to, which speaks to the problem here."

    that nails it right there....
    I would've loved to keep vista on my pc, the problem was that as the months went by that I had it on there I kept having to sacrifice peripherals that were incompatible. When it came to my phone's modem drivers not having vista compatibility that was the last straw.

    I went back to xp & joined the group of people that say "***** vista".
  • Sonixunite, on 12/14/2008, -1/+18Dugg for proper use of cause and effect.
  • bradleyland, on 12/14/2008, -0/+16Everyone said the same ***** when WinXP came out. XP is seven years old. *Seven* years old. That is ancient in computing terms. Hardware has had seven years to advance while XP remained largely the same. Vista comes along with a new compositing window manager, managed code, and a host of other security and feature related enhancements, and yet everyone is surprised that it takes more resources. 1 GB of memory was a LOT when XP came out, but that's what it takes to really make XP run well. In 5 years, we'll all wonder how we got by on 4 GB of memory when we expect our operating system to incorporate a whole host of features we haven't even dreamt up yet.
  • archer75, on 12/14/2008, -2/+18Most people in the IT industry think they know far more than they do.
  • inactive, on 12/14/2008, -3/+19You mean XP in that first sentence, right?
  • disgruntled, on 12/14/2008, -14/+30"You cannot argue that XP will run better on every PC out there."

    um yeah I can.
    XP looks at 2+ GB of ram, ignores it and starts dumping crap into a 4GB page file while ignoring the faster ram.

    Vista isnt bloated because it uses ram -its actually faster because it uses a pcs resources more effectively. however if your still measuring your CPU in Mhz, yeah you should prolly stick with XP.

  • brianara3, on 12/14/2008, -5/+201. Really... a dvd drive needing drivers, I don't think so. Vista has worked with EVERY drive I have ever used with it (including a 10+ year old HP external 2x CD-R drive). I think it was either bad SATA/IDE drivers or the ability to diagnose the issue correctly.

    2. That would be Motorola's fault, not Vista. Try using a Cisco VPN client on x64 Windows anything, NO support from Cisco on x64 Windows systems.

    Try configuring the ICS service on Windows Mobile rather than using the Moto crap drivers.
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