30 June 2008 - A day that will live in infamy
We have reached the end of a short, but shiny era. After tomorrow, Windows XP will no longer be available from Dell, HP, and other major computer manufacturers. The only solace is that XP Home can be installed by smaller PC builders until 31 January 2009, or June of 2010, depending on the types of PCs built by the companies. (Microsoft will continue to support XP for several more years, I hope!)
Microsoft says they have spent a great deal of time talking to their customers prior to making this decision.
Well, they didn't talk to me or any of my clients, as far as I know. (I'm sure they only hobnobbed with major corporations.) Basically, Microsoft is leaving the small company and the individual user in the muck.
I suppose it's all good - after all, they do own the OS, and they can do with it what they want, can't they??
My experience with Vista is that it doesn't play well with other operating systems, including XP. It has very intrusive features. (EVERY time I ask the OS to do something, it makes me verify that I really want to do it and that I am the one asking for it to be done. Shades of DOS, where we were, for a short time, asked "Are you sure?" whenever we wanted to delete something.) In addition, it seems to corrupt itself faster than even Windows ME did. A good 50% of my clients have had major issues with Vista, including having to wipe the disk clean and reloading Windows and all their applications. These people were running Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Outlook) and Internet Explorer, a camera vendor's software, and iTunes. Nothing much more than that.
This decision affects some people who have older machines running quite nicely, thank you, under XP. If something happens to your hard drive or XP installation, and you can't find your XP disks, you run the risk of having to "upgrade" to Vista, and that can be expensive. Vista isn't inexpensive, and requires a much more powerful computer than XP does. You may have replace your video card, add more memory, upgrade to a larger and faster hard drive, and replace some of your programs that, while running fine on XP, will not run on Vista. Ouch! You may as well replace the computer along with those applications.
With the advent of the iPod, iPhone, and Vista's problems as well as Vista's hard-to-learn interface, a fair number of my clients are going to the Mac, with good reason. Macs have their own (minor) problems, but the interface is more intuitive, it recovers nicely from faults, it constantly backs up changes you make to your files and folders without being asked (OS 10.5 and greater), and virtually anything you create in a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation manager can be read and edited by anyone who has a Windows PC running Windows 98 or greater. (By the way, that last part has been true since the early 90's, no matter what anyone else tells you.) And the issues with Macs are relatively minor compared to those of any PC running Windows.
Now, I am not advocating that everyone should go out and buy a Mac. After all, I have to be able to make a living, and I really love working with you homeowners and small businesses solving your issues and teaching you about whatever you want to learn. If you all went out and bought Macs, I'd have to go out and get another job (shudder) and maybe work for another corporation (in which case I might as well check myself into a rest home.)
Ah, well. Only another two years or so (hopefully) before Windows 7 is released to the general public. In the meantime, I may be too busy to write this blog!
Posted by Sid Plait at 6/29/2008 10:05 AM 
Categories: Technology, Windows XP, Microsoft, Computers, Windows Vista, Big Mistakes, All
Categories: Technology, Windows XP, Microsoft, Computers, Windows Vista, Big Mistakes, All
Will windows 7 be an improvement or just change we will have to deal with in the future?
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Peter -
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Hello, handsome!
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Sid, I am really enjoying your new blog. Congratulations. Keep up the good work.
ESP
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This is a great article. Gracias for the info.
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This is a great blog. Keep the great work and information.
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