"Windows 8 Survey: Half Who Have Tried the OS Wouldn't Recommend It"

lehnerus2000 said:

Coke Robot said:

No, I'm assuming that many enterprises are still running xp, considering about 40 percent of the OS marketshare is WINDOWS XP.

That is exactly the point I was alluding to.
Businesses aren't going to swap to W8, just because you demand that they do.

Coke Robot said:

I highly doubt many of the same programs that ran in Windows 7 won't run in 8. That is a random general assumption.

I never said that W7 programs wouldn't run in W8.

I specifically mentioned ""mission critical" software, which only runs on XP & IE6".



Programs I installed in W8 all worked the same as the W7 installs (except for my sound driver).

Coke Robot said:

Even if some software doesn't work in 8 if it did in xp, Hyper-V is there. Even then, with a new OS upgrade, there is a chance to update or upgrade to different solutions. It sounds ridiculous to hinder an entire upgrade for the sake of one program.

It's ridiculous to disable equipment that literally makes millions of dollars/day (e.g. Oil rig equipment) just to play around with making it work in W8, using an XP VM.

Why spend millions of dollars upgrading computer equipment, just so that you can run XP in a VM on it, when the existing hardware already runs XP?

jimbo45 said:

Some people (not you !!) I think just have their brains and vision limited by staring all day long into small Mobile phone screens and assuming if there isn't an app around then you are an old Technophobe who's afraid of upgrading.

Loads of EXPENSIVE equipment lasts years --I'm talking about highly specialized gear that often can cost 1000's or 100,000's of Dollars / Eur etc.

There is a HUGE amount of this type of legacy gear out there designed for W2K and XP that Still works fantastically well (on XP of course).

During the life cycle of the product (some of this equipment is often used for 20 - 30 years -- inconceivable to a lot of people these days brought up in the era of the "chuck it away and buy a new one" society) the manufacturer may well have gone out of business - and even if a new model is available that works on W7 the business can't afford the upgrade - and why should they if the gear still works properly.

Please note here I'm not talking about cheap printers, scanners, etc but highly specialized industrial grade equipment -- for example Blue print drawing equipment, Computerized cutting equipment, glass working gear, Oceanography gear, Oil rig equipment etc etc).

You are 100% correct.
Businesses don't throw away their working equipment, every six months, like some consumers do.

When I worked as a telecommunications technician, I literally had to work on 80+ year old switching equipment.
It was already installed, working and generating profits, therefore it wasn't replaced.

Equipment was only replaced, when it was deemed uneconomical to repair.

Just 3 years ago I was working on some land rigs still running equiment on win2k... It was interesting how many times their office monkey tech people had to come out and reload every system (usually off of 1 disc) or bring out another, equally dated win2k system.

gregrocker said:

jorpe said:

"mission critical" software, which only runs on XP & IE6".

There is still "mission critical" software that will only run on a dead OS and browser?

IMO, the "Vista vs OEM" debacle is partially responsible.
XP's ~40% market share must be mainly business users (and poor countries).

I regularly see people complaining (on other forums) that they have some business-specific, custom program(s) that were written for (and only run properly) with IE6.
The other complaint is that some software companies refuse to update these old programs (to run on newer operating systems).

I have one game (obviously not "mission critical") which will not run on anything, except a HW install of XP.
It won't run in any version of W7 (32 or 64 bit) or an XP VM.

I have ~150 programs and games installed in my various operating systems.
If the software failure rate "at large" is equivalent to my experience, then given the enormous number of Windows programs, there must be literally thousands of programs, which won't "play nice" with anything newer than XP.

gregrocker said:

XP will not even install on most modern hardware as it lacks SATA drivers and requires floppy support to insert them. There are generations that don't even know what a floppy is.

Did you mean AHCI?
I have no problems installing XP on my machine without AHCI.
The AHCI drivers don't want to cooperate.

gregrocker said:

No security-minded business or consumer would run any except the latest browser.

Assuming they don't mind their profit-making equipment being off-line for days (or longer).

As other people have mentioned, there are still systems using W2K and earlier operating systems.
The equipment works and generates income, so they see no reason to change.

If the equipment isn't networked (LAN or Internet) these older operating systems are fairly secure.

I can't remember the last time my XP system caught a "nasty".
However, since W7 b7048 came out, I've hardly used my XP install.
I normally only turn it on to install Windows and program updates.

I have an XP VM full of games that I use regularly, though.

Of course these businesses are going to be in real trouble, when MS drops all support for XP.

@Gregrocker....there are plenty of crm apps and the like which are not often compatible with the latest browsers. Mission critical might not be the right word, but important to the functioning of the business. these types of issues can make something simple like a browser upgrade a real pain, or simply an impossibility.

Yeah, virtualizing is often the way to go. The problem in the corporate world becomes
1). Host PC's are too crappy to get decent performance running VM's
2). IT groups now have 2x as many computers to manage if everybody has a virtualized machine as well as a physical.
3). Licensing costs of running multiple OS's on tons of desktops.