What is it about XP that people just can’t live without

[darkassain]

That application that you spent thousands of dollars to develop for in house use all of the sudden doesnt work anymore. The way they see it, if its not absolutely, positively necessary to the operation of their business, LEAVE IT ALONE!

but you see if these in house devs had good programing practices (such as not use undocumented api's and such) there would not be a problem, and if there was then there is the compatibility mode that should solve it...

but of course when you are in charge of 1000's of computers, "most" (thats why they have IT for...) have to work (and at the cheapest possible price (of course balancing out quality too)...)

Can't agree more.

For a CIO it's a simple question: What does it cost and can I save that money somehow?

With Vista MS mad a huge error in marketing by focusing on Aero, Aero and Aero. The CIO saw a new Gui wich means huge costs for education and no return of investment.

they were catering to the masses with shiny things...

IF MS instead had focused on Bitlocker (no need for expensive third party cryptos), The enhanced powersaving (reduced electricity bill), The capability to run all machines on a single image (reduced costs for IS staff) and so on alot more companies would have used vista.

powersaving is one of the most important things (especially now)
the single image idea would mean pretty much automated restores/reinstalls in case of hardware failure which greatly streamlines the process of IT...

Even today i meet customers and other IT-pros that doesn't know about Vistas capabilities in theese areas since all they heard was aero......

im actually surprised that my college has vista enterprise computers and they are pretty much locked down
they are pretty much able to control everything with this enhanced security and when it happens that a computer breaks down well...
well it does take time for a new computer to get to the college but once it does its operational in less than 2 hours (including all updates, with all the necessary software )

I hope thar MS learns this leasson for Seven but so far it has been Aero,Aero and Aero again and a little about faster boot times but almost nothing about direct access. Even better powersave. The delta repliction for offline files ans so on. All of theese are prodction improvements for the users and if you can show that your users can save 1 hour a week using Vista/Seven instead of XP, any reasonable CIO will launch a case studie to see that his benefits will be and most likley issue an uppgrade.

im begining to think that the only time they talk about enterprise features (in win7) is when they are talking about server 2008 r2...

I left XP years ago when Vista was in beta. Sure it had snags but I never experienced the horror stories that others have told. I honestly believe that the worst OS MS ever made was ME. That was a total mistake.

its funny since i have never experienced these horror stories on ME that people talk about...
(maybe because i wasnt tinkering around...)
i have personally installed on 6 Machines ME which originally had Windows 98 because USB support was a must and they have and still are working with no hiccups (that was about 5 years ago)
i think only me and joan (one of our members here) are the only ones with good experiences with ME...

I remember in 1995 the same thing happening. Now the internet wasn’t the thing it is today so word about 95 didn’t get out like Vista and Win 7, but still it became a smash hit with the home computer geeks of the time. But, in the corporate world this didn’t happen. The company I worked for at the time as Director of Information Systems (IF) decided that to go to Windows 95 was not productive (and I agreed with them). At the time Win NT was going 3.5 and because it had the Win 3.xx interface there was very little training required to upgrade in that direction, hence, that was the route we took. It gave us the 32 bit OS we thought was the way of the future. Today businesses have to look hard at cost of new equipment, along with training/retraining their people. This is one reason Vista didn’t a get leg up; it just didn’t make sense to go with a new and unknown OS. By the time Vista hit the street it was already getting a bad name because of bad drivers, BSOD during installation, etc.

Window 7 is an excellent operating system, having said that as a beta tester since October I have seen a great deal of people on sites like SF finding all kinds of things they don’t like about the 7 OS. The inability to go to classic menus, the dislike of the Superbar; this list can go on and on, albeit you get the picture. If IT techs and home computer geeks are complaining about the fore mention problems then think what it is like for the secretary, clerk, sales rep, and others that use computers on a daily basis they can cause major headaches to IT Techs, and company educators. Try telling someone who is not acquainted with Win 7 Superbar how to use it, then you will be able to understand what it is like to be an IT Tech.

Win7 will replace XP, just not right away, and if Microsoft is smart they will work hard over the next year to ensure Win 7 will meets the standards that the Corporate World is looking for and wants in an OS and Server Applications.

i cant just can say anything else by agree with you...
8 years was too long for OS to be available, people got used to XP and now some wont go ( and its fine, i personally know one of my professors that will stay with XP because it just works for him) to any of the OS'es in the future (including Win 8 and so on...

 

[andy182]

the only thing keeping me back on Win XP, even tho i have tried almost every build of 7 64bit is the fact that my dual CRT (Compaq p900 + CTX EX951F) refuse to work together at high refresh rates for fast paced fps gaming(tried to make drivers with phoenix+moninfo) and also i have some other some small peripherals and games that refuse to work on 64bit OS's in general(Playstation2 controller hub for PC), so i never upgraded to vista because of this but I hope I can find a work around for 7 because i really like it.

 

[wysiwyg]

No one denies XP was a decent system AT THE TIME, that time is past, but there will always be those that hang on to it, although they know in their own mind that its becoming obsolete.

I believe that come October 22cnd XP support will start to dwindle,

I started with 98 crash-o-matic, graduated to XP, despite all the predictions of doom and disaster, but it gradually worked itself out, then when Vista arrived, again straight in at launch, compared to XP launch, Vista launch was much better, all the negativity was so much hot air it was laughable,
I found Vista much better XP, speed wise not much difference but stability and reliability much better.

Likewise Vista to 7, speed similar, again the system is much smoother,
I always self build to suit the system requirements, any other way is self-defeating, old obsolete applications that struggle are consigned to the trash, those that still work soldier on, like Windows office 2000,
I may be 81 but I still look to the future not backwards.

 

[Dave76]

Can't agree more.

For a CIO it's a simple question: What does it cost and can I save that money somehow?

With Vista MS mad a huge error in marketing by focusing on Aero, Aero and Aero. The CIO saw a new Gui wich means huge costs for education and no return of investment.

IF MS instead had focused on Bitlocker (no need for expensive third party cryptos), The enhanced powersaving (reduced electricity bill), The capability to run all machines on a single image (reduced costs for IS staff) and so on alot more companies would have used vista.
Even today i meet customers and other IT-pros that doesn't know about Vistas capabilities in theese areas since all they heard was aero......
I hope thar MS learns this leasson for Seven but so far it has been Aero,Aero and Aero again and a little about faster boot times but almost nothing about direct access. Even better powersave. The delta repliction for offline files ans so on. All of theese are prodction improvements for the users and if you can show that your users can save 1 hour a week using Vista/Seven instead of XP, any reasonable CIO will launch a case studie to see that his benefits will be and most likley issue an uppgrade.

True case: An organisation with 20K users. The can show that the powesave fetures in Vista alone is enough to finance an uppgrade to Vista, train the users and replace about 50% of their computers. Pay back time, 18 months

You should $ell this to 'MS sales', It makes too much sense!
You would think this approach would be obvious to them....
How much would a large company save in productivity from bootup/shutdown time and power savings?

 

[Robearl2x]

I remember in 1995 the same thing happening. Now the internet wasn’t the thing it is today so word about 95 didn’t get out like Vista and Win 7, but still it became a smash hit with the home computer geeks of the time. But, in the corporate world this didn’t happen. The company I worked for at the time as Director of Information Systems (IF) decided that to go to Windows 95 was not productive (and I agreed with them). At the time Win NT was going 3.5 and because it had the Win 3.xx interface there was very little training required to upgrade in that direction, hence, that was the route we took. It gave us the 32 bit OS we thought was the way of the future. Today businesses have to look hard at cost of new equipment, along with training/retraining their people. This is one reason Vista didn’t a get leg up; it just didn’t make sense to go with a new and unknown OS. By the time Vista hit the street it was already getting a bad name because of bad drivers, BSOD during installation, etc.

Window 7 is an excellent operating system, having said that as a beta tester since October I have seen a great deal of people on sites like SF finding all kinds of things they don’t like about the 7 OS. The inability to go to classic menus, the dislike of the Superbar; this list can go on and on, albeit you get the picture. If IT techs and home computer geeks are complaining about the fore mention problems then think what it is like for the secretary, clerk, sales rep, and others that use computers on a daily basis they can cause major headaches to IT Techs, and company educators. Try telling someone who is not acquainted with Win 7 Superbar how to use it, then you will be able to understand what it is like to be an IT Tech.

Win7 will replace XP, just not right away, and if Microsoft is smart they will work hard over the next year to ensure Win 7 will meets the standards that the Corporate World is looking for and wants in an OS and Server Applications.

In the business world, speed and reliability are paramount; not cartoon like interfaces. At the end of the day, it matters how productive you are, not how happy you are with your expensive cartooney GUI.
SPEED, STABILITY, and SECURITY are the most important features businesses are worried about -- period!
They had no plans to downgrade to Vista. They are, and will remain, an XP Pro shop until something truly better comes along. Windows 7 in my view is a strong step in that direction.

 

[mvierling]

I have an perspective from the business side of things. I am a director of IT. We're still running XP on our workstations for one reason and that is application compatibility. Up until a few months ago, our major applications would not run on Vista. It appears that software developers were slow to modify their applications to run on Vista. In the business world, that is like signing a death certificate. I've been running Vista at home since the beta days, but at the office we need our business apps to run. Incidentally, I'm placing my first Vista machines in service in the workplace this week; and believe it or not, Microsoft STILL does not have their act together with Vista in regards to Group Policies and Preferences. Applying SP2 breaks group polices that were fixed with a KB article that up until recently, would not run on SP2. These little quirks prevented and still prevent Vista from mainstream acceptance in the business world. Testing of Windows 7 has proved a better experience so far, at least where I work.

 

[Xander]

The reason most people who stick with XP will do so until they have to upgrade is easy. It ain't broke so don't fix it.

The reason they think this? They never use the OS other than to run their apps on it and so as the apps stay the same (mostly) from XP to Win7 they'll be ignorant of any other real changes.

Oh and as for CEOs and others... you guys must have the clever ones. The directors I work for won't buy it for one major reason... it's different and therefore should be burned as a heretical object. All that is different must DIE!

 

[datter]

A lot of people haven't migrated from XP because there has been no valid destination to migrate to. Vista had become a scary option due to all the talk of problems and Nazi-like security procedures which left Linux and Mac. The former being accurately perceived as being for only the geek-elite and the latter for the non-tech hipster crowd. The majority of people are in neither camp.

I think Win7 will be the first genuinely good alternative XP users have seen to date.

 

[Xander]

A lot of people haven't migrated from XP because there has been no valid destination to migrate to. Vista had become a scary option due to all the talk of problems and Nazi-like security procedures which left Linux and Mac. The former being accurately perceived as being for only the geek-elite and the latter for the non-tech hipster crowd. The majority of people are in neither camp.

I think Win7 will be the first genuinely good alternative XP users have seen to date.

Oh with my lot I doubt that. It still "does stuff" like on it's own!!!!

Dun dun duhhh!!!

The advent of cyberdine!!!

They'll be shouting at it for months *sigh*

 

[Antman]

A place for everything and everything in its place. I have XP on two machines because those machines are not sufficiently configured for Windows 7. One of those machines is my home voicemail and auto-attendant platform. It is a single purpose platform. My home phones do not ring and I like it like that. It ain't broke and I will not fix it.

The other PC is used for streaming video using the EdgeStream client. It is also a single purpose platform. The stream provider requires the client and there are "issues" with certain codecs under Win7. I might upgrade the hardware and install 7 when the EdgeStream client is updated, but I have no compelling reason to do so. A penny saved is a penny earned.

I have another XP license installed in a VM on my Win7 platform. I use this for professional purposes.

An operating system is an operating system and is not worthy of my emotional attachment.

 

[str4w]

Well I switched recently to win7 after 8 years of XP. Was a pretty bad decision since I cant afford win7 and the eyecandy wasnt worth it. I'm musician and the drivers for a lot of my hardware doesnt work as good as under Xp.
Some stuff doesnt work at all (actually only the scsi stuff and an old midi interface)
As soon as I can be arsed to install all the crap again on my laptop I go back to XP since seven will run out sooner or later.
A big fat minus for seven is the brush bug on photoshop cs4 (my girlfriend tried seven out as well "oh, and she was clever enough to run it on a replace HD to check how good it works on a laptop" - had the same bug so its not just my maschine and the CS4 pack is a bought one from my GF's graphic agency - all win7 drivers available were tried out.

The Performance between seven and XP is almost the same but considered that I had different profiles on XP - 1 of them for live gigs which ran only serato scratch without explorer and all that crap which made my system uncrashable, makes me prefer XP again. Dont know if that is possible on seven since I'm an OS-0.

I guess the years will pass and if seven is really that good loads of people will switch to seven or eight or whatever will deliver the best compatibility with the actuall and past software & harware. Some people will use XP as long as they can......maybe.....forever

I dont see the benefits right now so I will stick as long with XP as possible untill harware/ software issues will force me to switch or seven will be available for free (illegal) The only good thing about is that it operates with 64 bit on my laptop and that it detects all of my ram installed. That was the reason for "checking" it out (Videoproduction consumes loads of ram )

 

[Iisee]

I’m still using XP because I have yet to hear one substantial reason why I should upgrade. What are the compelling features that should make me want to upgrade? All I hear is that the UI is really cool. Gee, at 65, cool passed me by about 30 years ago. And if it is so cool, why do so many tech sites recommend turning Aero off to improve performance? There were also some claims about improved security. But why are all of the Tech sites filled with articles on how to shut off UAC?
I’ve been in the IT business for 45 years. So long, in fact, that it was called DP when I started (that stands for Data Processing for you yung’uns). The first computer I saw was an IBM 1401. I’ve had a personal computer in my house since Commodore 64 days. Today I have 4 PC’s in my house. Comparing my primary PC to that 1401 is mind boggling.
One thing I am certain about is that nobody buys a computer for the OS. Applications drive all purchasing decisions whether for the home or for business. So my point is that until application software is written that takes advantage of some new capabilities in the OS, there is no compelling reason to upgrade. :shock:

 

[masterB]

I’m still using XP because I have yet to hear one substantial reason why I should upgrade. What are the compelling features that should make me want to upgrade? All I hear is that the UI is really cool. Gee, at 65, cool passed me by about 30 years ago. And if it is so cool, why do so many tech sites recommend turning Aero off to improve performance? There were also some claims about improved security. But why are all of the Tech sites filled with articles on how to shut off UAC?
I’ve been in the IT business for 45 years. So long, in fact, that it was called DP when I started (that stands for Data Processing for you yung’uns). The first computer I saw was an IBM 1401. I’ve had a personal computer in my house since Commodore 64 days. Today I have 4 PC’s in my house. Comparing my primary PC to that 1401 is mind boggling.
One thing I am certain about is that nobody buys a computer for the OS. Applications drive all purchasing decisions whether for the home or for business. So my point is that until application software is written that takes advantage of some new capabilities in the OS, there is no compelling reason to upgrade. :shock:

Welcome to Sevenforums!
Nobody is forced to upgrade.
If you are happy with what you have, why bother.

Only thing is if you buy a new PC after 22 October it will have Windows 7 on it.

 

[Robearl2x]

Welcome to Sevenforums Iisee.
Good to here from you and your point of view.

 

[driecken]

Personally I never liked xp, for a few reasons, I switched back to 2000 almost immediately after buying xp, and gave it to my mom+dad for their future installs.

I liked vista, I don't know what bothered so many people about it, im sure there were genuine problems people had with vista, but I never experienced any I couldn't solve with either a bit of experience, or research or both.

XP was never an os i liked using, I wold have even preferred 98 if I had too.

 

[Zidane24]

Personally I never liked xp, for a few reasons, I switched back to 2000 almost immediately after buying xp, and gave it to my mom+dad for their future installs.

I liked vista, I don't know what bothered so many people about it, im sure there were genuine problems people had with vista, but I never experienced any I couldn't solve with either a bit of experience, or research or both.

XP was never an os i liked using, I wold have even preferred 98 if I had too.

I agree...I used XP for three days and then tossed the disc back for 2000...I loved Vista and would be using it with no issue if 7 wasn't here

 

[geometrikal]

my 2c

I think XP's longevity owes to a stabilisation in computer hardware, particularly with the pentium 4 processor. Therefore it wasn't necessary to upgrade the OS when new hardware came out.

Also XP was easy to use, and as it lived longer and longer, drivers became more and more stable. As we all know, drivers had to be rewritten for Vista so instability crept back again generating a lot of bad press. With Windows 7 most manufactures would have got their act together writing a drivers for Vista, which I don't think will need to be changed hardly at all for Win 7. So things will work in Win 7 straight away as the drivers are already mature = no bad press. I think that if people want to use their 8 year old hardware they should stick to their 8 year old OS. Updating one component in the system generally means updating them all.

The other thing is that the Microsoft OS design, while completely getting reworked under the hood from XP to Vista, and taken a bit further with win 7, looks and operates under fairly the same paradigm as XP, so again no compelling reason to upgrade on the surface for non-tech savvy people.

Now if only windows 7 came with WinFS...

 

[ten]

I just don't see a good enough reason to "upgrade". I just see negatives like slowing down my system and adding more bloat. I'm a minimalist and think XP is bloated too but it's not that bad

One of these days I'll have to but XP will be supported by MS until 2014 so I don't think it will be anytime soon.

Anyways, who cares? It's just software folks. This appears to be par for the course around here but there's no need to get romantic about it. Pretty soon you'll be outdoing Linux and Mac fanboys.

 

[KazeNoKoe23]

Personally I never liked xp, for a few reasons, I switched back to 2000 almost immediately after buying xp, and gave it to my mom+dad for their future installs.

I liked vista, I don't know what bothered so many people about it, im sure there were genuine problems people had with vista, but I never experienced any I couldn't solve with either a bit of experience, or research or both.

XP was never an os i liked using, I wold have even preferred 98 if I had too.

You and me both. When I bought a new machine in 2003, the first thing I did was wipe XP off it and install Windows 2000. To this day I don't get what was so great about XP. Is it because the average user went from 98/ME to XP? :sarc: Sure, maybe THAT was a worthwhile upgrade, but 2000 to XP wasn't at all IMO. I was disappointed when Microsoft decided to scrap SP5 for 2000 in favor of an update rollup.

 

[mikinho]

Well I switched recently to win7 after 8 years of XP. Was a pretty bad decision since I cant afford win7 and the eyecandy wasnt worth it. I'm musician and the drivers for a lot of my hardware doesnt work as good as under Xp.
Some stuff doesnt work at all (actually only the scsi stuff and an old midi interface)

I don't see how anyone can criticize an operating system that has not even been released yet for driver incompatiblities. I'm not trying to single anyone but what did you expect from a beta and release candidate? There is a reason RTM is released several months prior to a public release.

In addition, have you ever looked at trends in driver incompatibilities? You'll notice the same companies typically tend to have "broken" drivers at each OS release. It is not rare that driver developers use undocumented functions and\or "bugs" to get their products to work. When fixes are put in place, usually for security reasons their products break.

Does anyone not remember the release of XP? Most corporations would not touch it until SP1. Most of the people I know who swear by XP are the same people who swore by W2K until XP SP2 was released.

There were also some claims about improved security. But why are all of the Tech sites filled with articles on how to shut off UAC?

Because of lazy developers. That is the only reason to turn off UAC. At least 50% (probably a lot more) of software is developed using bad practices and by developers who do not care to learn or are used to seeing examples of bad practices.

Edit: To elaborate, how many application continue to store their configuration file, logs and even user data in their installation folder or subfolder. It wasn't until Vista that many applications were updated to use APPDATA, ALLUSERSPROFILE, ProgramData, TEMP eventhough most have been available and the proper storage location since W2K. And it isn't just smaller software products, IBM and Lotus still have Enterprise products that store configuration and logs in their install folder. The software and more specifically the lazy programmers fault yet the operating system is to blame and the developers recommend turning UAC off instead of fixing their products.