Microsoft continues trying to kill XP

[Icedrake]

I think Mr G or who ever runs this forum should make it mandatory for mods to be up to date when it comes OS's or computers in general. Imagine going to the Mozilla forums and the mods there were still using Firefox 1. It makes no sense. If some one wants to keep using obsolete software than thats their right but when you are a mod or in some other official capacity on a tech forum it makes no sense to be resistant to progress. It's a massive conflict of interest. Computers are all about progress. They are all about the future. They are the biggest thing in human progress in history. They are in every aspect of life now. You progress or die off.

 

You mean you adapt or die off.

 

I'm using Windows XP and Windows 7 on two different computers, and really, I'm fine with using either. If Microsoft kills XP, then I'll just move on to Windows 7. As long as I have a computer that does what I need to get done, I'll be happy.

[TeeJay3800]

I've only been using Windows 7 for a couple weeks, but so far I really don't see anything wrong with it. It feels just as fast or faster than XP and has a much more attractive UI. No one can blame Microsoft for "killing off" XP at this point, considering how long it's been out. I can see why corporations would stick with XP as long as possible because of the cost and complexity of upgrading all corporate machines to 7, but for the home user, as long as you have a computer capable of running it, I see no reason not to upgrade from XP to 7.

[DennisD]

You'll have to backup all your data regularly when MS drops XP support, and have an installation disk ready, since even one flaw after the 2014 deadline means all the remaining XP computers could be infected

 

 

 

Already do that. Disk Image, File and Folder backups made more regularly than the Image, all drivers backed up.

 

Basically the stuff everybody should do as a matter of course.

 

I also surf "Sandboxed" always, have "Returnil" and "PowerShadow" which prevent anything getting on the hard drive, and in the case of PowerShadow, it can "Shadow" all drives.

 

I'm replying with a bit of detail mostly for others reading this thread. You can never overdo reminding folk to backup their stuff.

[Aethec]

NT is now DOS. Time to dump it.

 

No no no no no no no. A big "no". NT still is modern technology - in fact, some things are still the same from NT 3.1 because they're good. And rewriting for the sake of rewriting is a bad idea. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

 

Nullack >> Holy Carp. At least you'll have a nice GPU-accelerated Web with next-generation browsers (but don't all those fans make a lot of noise ?)

 

Mr Don >> Why don't you switch to Linux? Or OS X? Or BSD? Or Solaris? Or whatever you want? You seem to think MS are idiots that only want money and want their users to suffer. Sorry, that's wrong. The fact you are using WinXP means you think it is superior to the competition, or that if fits your needs better than other OSs.

[login123]

...

I also surf "Sandboxed" always, have "Returnil" and "PowerShadow" which prevent anything getting on the hard drive, and in the case of PowerShadow, it can "Shadow" all drives.

 

I'm replying with a bit of detail mostly for others reading this thread. You can never overdo reminding folk to backup their stuff.

 

A question if I may? Which version of returnil did you settle on, DennisD? I remember you had a problem w/ it. Bit off topic, but is in the spirit of details.

 

I ask because Powershadow is getting a bit buggy here, sometimes gives me a warning that some instruction could not be "written". And also because after I reformatted the HD to have 4 partitions, Powershadow got a little crazy when trying to shadow all of them.

 

To be sure, this computer is pretty well junked up with trash entries right now, might be better after reinstall.

[Winapp2.ini]

No no no no no no no. A big "no". NT still is modern technology - in fact, some things are still the same from NT 3.1 because they're good. And rewriting for the sake of rewriting is a bad idea. http://www.joelonsof...0000000069.html

 

 

It's harder to read code than to write it.

 

 

 

 

 

So true

 

Although Microsoft rebuilt the Zune Software from the ground up (the older versions were built using WMP) and it turned out to be a brilliant idea

[Aethec]

So true

 

That's only true with C/C++/other ugly languages. C#, for example, is easy to read - one of the reasons for that is its extremely long and descriptive names:)

[Winapp2.ini]

I sometimes write mSL scripts for giggles (mIRC Scripting Language)

 

I find it to be the holy mother of unreadability.

 

I liked Python, it was easy to read and learn

[Talldog9]

The longer the rewrite is put off the more it will eventually cost. Consumers will be the ones who pay.

NT has evolved so much that it is not used in the way it was designeed for anymore and this contributes to excess bloat. Maybe I don't want to run an old bloated OS.

 

First, there are architectural problems

An old design hacked endlessly to do what todays computing marked demands.

 

A second reason programmers think that their code is a mess is that it is inefficient. The rendering code in Netscape was rumored to be slow. But this only affects a small part of the project, which you can optimize or even rewrite.

 

which you can optimize or even rewrite

 

This will never occur in Windows until a major change is put through. A modern OS from a modern company like microsoft should have advanced greatly from past versions. When old technology is pushed into the mix it's not good for anything new. Would you use a piece of hardware from an original NT machine in a new machine? Not a wire but a critical component? I can turn a dog poo into cake but it's still dog poo cake.

Edited September 1, 2010 by Talldog9

[Aethec]

I sometimes write mSL scripts for giggles (mIRC Scripting Language)

 

I find it to be the holy mother of unreadability.

 

I liked Python, it was easy to read and learn

 

Indeed. I once tried to convert a mIRC script to a chatZilla one...but...the guy who made mSL must be extremely sadistic. (Look at this, too...I still can't understand how some of those work).

 

Talldog >> There will be a rewrite - but not in a compiled language. Microsoft Research has a lot of OS prototypes such as Singularity, Barrelfish, Helios, ...

[Winapp2.ini]

Hahaha, the ASCII Art one is hilarious

 

Here is a script that I wrote in mSL.

 

Its 645 lines to do the equivalent of /me gives out a random food item.

 

I actually get a lot of thank you's when it goes off

[Talldog9]

@Aethec-

My previous post wasn't really directed at you. Would have been sort of assey.

[Winapp2.ini]

I believe a Kernal rewrite is in store for Windows 7.0

[Aethec]

Windows.next IS Windows NT 7.0. They won't rewrite the good old NT unless 1) they find a way to run all previous NT programms in a VM transparently for the user and 2) they have a much better kernel. The former might happen ; the latter, unless Singularity or one of its family is finished, will not.

[Nergal]

I still think it's funny windows 7 wasn't version 7.0

[Talldog9]

They won't rewrite the good old NT unless 1) they find a way to run all previous NT programms in a VM transparently

That's it. Costs in microsoft's eyes outweigh the gains which could result in-

-waning affiliate hardware sales

-waning OS sales. assuming the current marketing scheme is still used.

-

 

 

 

Transparently is a very key word here. 'XP Mode' will never cut it with device drivers and the myriad of other support needed in a combo Cool new kernel/NT legacy enviroment.

 

 

Overall I'm not very convinced Microsoft is willing to be innovative and take the apparent risks on this scale.

Edited September 2, 2010 by Talldog9

[ishan_rulz]

I still think it's funny windows 7 wasn't version 7.0

 

That was for compatibility reasons.

[Nullack]

I still think it's funny windows 7 wasn't version 7.0

 

Windows 7 is more a point release which is why MS named it 6.XX

 

The old Vista WDM still works in 7, as does many other facets. MS actually did a windows platform update for Vista to bring in some of the windows 7 code into vista.

 

I dont see MS doing any radical changes for Windows 8 - I suspect another 6.xx point release. Too much pain associated with a full release - look at what happened with Vista from XP.

[ishan_rulz]

Windows 8 will be a major release like Windows Vista was; so I think I will wait for Windows 9

[mr don]

No no no no no no no. A big "no". NT still is modern technology - in fact, some things are still the same from NT 3.1 because they're good. And rewriting for the sake of rewriting is a bad idea. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html

 

Nullack >> Holy Carp. At least you'll have a nice GPU-accelerated Web with next-generation browsers (but don't all those fans make a lot of noise ?)

 

Mr Don >> Why don't you switch to Linux? Or OS X? Or BSD? Or Solaris? Or whatever you want? You seem to think MS are idiots that only want money and want their users to suffer. Sorry, that's wrong. The fact you are using WinXP means you think it is superior to the competition, or that if fits your needs better than other OSs.

 

I already have Ubuntu. I also have a windows 7 skin for it that someone made to make it more "windowish" to use. I will check for an "XPish" version later...

 

The problem with 7 is that XP works. 7 kills some programs off before they even have time to load because the wait to kill hung app timer is way too fast in the registry settings by default.

 

Plus, Vista had errors copying files from one drive to another that XP plowed through fine. Gave an out of space error, even though that was a lie because the destination drive was newly formatted & had more than enough (At least 50% free space left) to go.

 

Sure, it looks pretty, I understand all that.

Sure, it is relatively stable, & I understand that too.

Sure it is newer, yes, I totally agree with you.

Yes, yes, yes, but it is not faster than XP & it just doesn't work as good in many situations because of problems like this!

 

7 is just a new Win ME waiting to happen. The problems aren't readily apparent to the normal user yet. Give them a few years. You will see!

[mr don]

The longer the rewrite is put off the more it will eventually cost. Consumers will be the ones who pay.

NT has evolved so much that it is not used in the way it was designeed for anymore and this contributes to excess bloat. Maybe I don't want to run an old bloated OS.

 

 

An old design hacked endlessly to do what todays computing marked demands.

 

 

 

which you can optimize or even rewrite

 

This will never occur in Windows until a major change is put through. A modern OS from a modern company like microsoft should have advanced greatly from past versions. When old technology is pushed into the mix it's not good for anything new. Would you use a piece of hardware from an original NT machine in a new machine? Not a wire but a critical component? I can turn a dog poo into cake but it's still dog poo cake.

 

 

Oh, I still like DOOM, Heretic, Hexen, & a few other DOS games because the action is kewl! Bad graphics, awesome gore!

 

Why kill off a good thing when it works great?

[mr don]

Your right buddy, there is still lots of code in Win 7 thats old. Actually, there is over 60 million lines of code in it and some remains from NT 4

 

I run Linux, and Windows, so I'm not blind to the problems with the Windows platform. However, if people were to go and read a book like Russovich's latest Windows Internals book it would give some insight into how core Windows has changed so much since XP. It really is better in terms of security, compatability, extensibility. With performance, in some areas it is faster than XP. In other areas, XP simply does not have the features like direct compute. GPGPU is going to have a huge impact on the ecosystem. XP is the last microsoft OS that was developed prior to the Secure Development Lifecycle, and as such, is pretty crappy from a security point of compared to post SDC OS's from MS. And besides, the XP architecture is simply wrong and was changed for 2008 server / Vista for good reasons.

 

To say, "oh Im a user and I dont care about the OS" is all fine until there is an OS related problem that prevents the user from doing what they want.

 

Besides mate, with legacy OS's like XP you cant run cool hardware like my latest toy below:

 

 

Would you care to elaborate the reason why XP cannot run it?

 

- You seem to have 4 processors from what I can see. XP does support 4 processor systems.

- If you mean the amount of ram, XP 64 bit can run all your ram. RAM limits is NOT an OS issue, it is more of a 32 bit vs 64 bit issue. They DO make 64 bit XP

 

Did I miss anything?

 

Thanks!

[mr don]

I haven't read all the new replies yet(Wow!), but Microsoft should really consider marketing MinWin. Sell & distribute it with most components enabled andusers can disable any to create the perfect OS for them not what MS thinks they need.Windows 7 would sell perfectly and be adopted perfectly if it was perfectly optimized and such. Concerns of hardware power would disappear as the minimum reqs would drop to around Win95 AT LEAST. For everything new Microsoft OSs do they could and should do it with less resources than XP used. Businesses, gpovernments and schools would upgrade without a thought (excluding other issues) and old decrepid machines would still be useful if not much more.

 

Never will MS do this because affiliate hardware sales would not skyrocket.

 

Unfortunately Microsoft is a typical greedy big business who cares not about consumers but about other big businesses who give them money and about saving face. $$$ is the thing MS cares about not people who give them it.

 

Despite any sucess Win 7 has Win 8 is more likely to gain as people who didn't want to run 7 are finally forced to update. Are they going to use a then old OS? 8 will be here so soon it is not logical for a non-richie to buy a new machine or make any accomodations for 7 just to update. Wait for 8. 7 will soon be forgotten as microsoft OSs become a dime a dozen.

 

Tghat said some of my Xp machines will continue to use XP well into the forseeable future. So long as the mobos don't give up at least. Great airflow will help increase their lifetimes.

 

 

The best point you made is about why use windows 7 when windows 8 is right around the corner?

 

Won't that like, deprecate windows 7? Legacy OS?

Uh oh! Windows 7 lovers! Windows 7 will soon be the new DOS!

 

Anyway, back in the day, 300 mhz pentium machines were not good for much more than text messages, or basic gaming. Very low powered.

 

Today's processors/ram/harddisks are far more than 99% users ever need. Most people STILL do nothing other than email, occasional games, dvd ripping, etc. Why do you need Windows 7 for that?

 

Peace!

[mr don]

You'll have to backup all your data regularly when MS drops XP support, and have an installation disk ready, since even one flaw after the 2014 deadline means all the remaining XP computers could be infected

 

However, specifically asking for XP if you buy a new, modern machine is ridiculous. It's like buying a Ferrari if you hardly know how to drive.

 

Nice logic...

 

But a decent:

 

- Firewall that drops incoming packets & filters outgoing goes a long ways to prevent such infections

- Decent Antivirus helps

- Using Firefox stops 100% of Active-X based exploits (found in Internet Explorer) if you use it instead of IE

 

How can you get infected if it can't get:

 

- Get to you

- Run if it does?

 

Peace!

[ishan_rulz]

This thread should be just closed. Its pointless.