Windows XP versus Vista

One of the last places to get a new computer with Windows XP installed has been Dell.

There's notations on Dell's web site that June 18, 2008 is the last day to order a computer with XP.

Tis a sad day that Microsoft is forcing everybody to switch to Vista even if they don't want to....

 

Hmm hurry....

If only it wasn't soo demanding on system specs/resources and it kept all of Xp's support it would've been that much better.

Sure there are more things wrong but those stand out to me.

Xp FTW.

 

I've got Vista and have been running it exclusively since June of 2007, and Vista SP1 since March of 2008. Seems OK to me.

I have XP (base, SP1, and SP2), 2000, 98 (base and SE), NT4, NT3, Windows (V2 and V3), and some DOS (V2, V3, V4, V5, and V6) around here somewhere's. No reason, other than hardware incompatibilities, I could not run them. I've got most of the hardware for them around here still, too.

 

The last MS software that I owned was XP pro. I paid for XP pro oem disks at a flea market and upgraded an xp home box to XP pro. I also purchased some used Dells which came with COA's for XP pro. Up until then I had suffered with frozen machines corrupting their own file systems and was happy to have everybody in the house on XP pro. Only a few months later, my kids downloaded some games and my daughter's machine caught 1300 viruses (most of them copies) and my son's machine caught a bunch more. I spent a lot of time cleaning the infections.

About every 45 days, one of the kids would come running to me saying they lost the ability to print. Just like clockwork. Early in 2008, I decided it was time to go Mac. Right now, there are zero viruses targeting Mac. This is due to 2 reasons. Small market share makes a small target. Small opportunity makes a small target. Windows has been designed with a philosophy that security is not the OS problem. Vista is the first attempt at credible security built into the OS and at such a cost. Users quickly turn off the very notification that should protect them because it is overly invasive. Meanwhile, on Mac OS X, the root account is disabled by default. The first thing I do when setting up a Mac is to create a "normal account" for the end user and never allow them to log in as the "admin account". I know where to get antivirus software for my Macs when I decide I need it but for now I don't. I have enjoyed many trouble free months and I don't regret my switch to Mac.

If I were staying with Windows, I would prefer XP pro because it is mature and it's hardware requirements are modest compared to Vista. I can only say that after 6/18/2008 a lot more Vistaphobes will be pushed across the line to Mac.

Welcome! It really is nicer over here. The thing is, that when Windows 7 finally does come out and offer us a less bloated Windows environment, it won't matter much to me. I have no reason to look back. And no, there isn't any parallels or boot camp in use on any of our Macs.

 

Back when I was running MS-DOS 2.11 machines (on less than a meg of memory), I was convinced that the introduction of Windows was a huge conspiracy to sell more hardware. The machines would escalate to accommodate the software and then the operating system would expand to fill all available hardware. Chicken and egg situation, going round and round, one trumping the other, ever increasing.

And look where we are now...

 

It is the natural order of things: Hardware loves Software; Software loves Hardware.

 

So I take it that hardware is male and software is female?

 

my response has to be: Depends

 

I would say Jim has it right, for obvious reasons...

Now, is this a chicken or an egg?

In all honesty, I've been quite pleased with my XP Pro (MCE) system. It's been utterly stable, I've had no virus attacks, and other than a couple of minor annoyances once or twice in nearly 2 years, it just works. While I know M$ OSs typically are born of much user pain, even I was surprised to see the level of frustrations with new machines that shipped with Vista. And I'm still amazed at the number of users who are wanting to back up to XP, even though they've bought a new, "Vista certified" machine with Vista preinstalled.

I suspect r0k is correct - Once XP is no longer available on new machines, additional folks will jump to Mac rather than dive into Vista. Then again, I'm one who successfully ran ME until almost 2 years ago. And I had no problems with that, either, after the initial few months and ~1,200 updates...

 

I'm sure that Microsoft OEM "Genuine" Windows XP installation CD's will be floating around, unwrapped and still agleam with their ridiculous little holograms, for a while. At least a few months.

Not through mainstreamers like Dell or Best Buy and their ilk, of course. But in all those wimpy little computer shops and eBay-ers who haven't managed to sell them off yet.

Every new Windows release reaffirms my firm belief that there's no substitute for actually going out and buying yourself a real copy of Windows. Sooner or later every PC breaks or evolves to the point where you'll be prompted for the CABs or where you'll wish you could reconfigure or reinstall ... by then it's too late to discover just how butchered and limited your collection of vendor-branded "Windows Installation and Recovery" disks really are.

Just my thoughts. I don't buy into "value" bundled preinstalled software crap. When you're talking about your OS, drivers, and core apps you gotta have the real deal.