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Comments: 440 +- IT: Microsoft Responds to 'Save XP' Petition on Wednesday February 06 2008, @08:38PM
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samzenpus
on Wednesday February 06 2008, @08:38PM
from the we-like-the-old-ways dept.
from the we-like-the-old-ways dept.
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it
DaMassive writes "Computerworld Australia is running a story with a response from Microsoft to Infoworld's SAVE XP petition Web site, which has gathered over 75,000 signatures so far. Apparently Microsoft is aware of the petition, but says it is "listening first and foremost to feedback we hear from partners and customers about what makes sense based on their needs, that's what informed our decision to extend the availability of XP initially, and what will continue to guide us" — a somewhat strange response given that the vast majority of people signing the petition ARE Microsoft customers! The Save XP movement has attracted the attention of the software giant, despite its claims that Vista has sold more than 100 million copies and its adoption rate is in line with the company's expectations. "We're seeing positive indicators that we're already starting to move from the early adoption phase into the mainstream and that more and more businesses are beginning their planning and deployment of Windows Vista," the company said. Nevertheless vendors such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Fujitsu, and more recently NEC, all offer the opportunity to downgrade to XP Pro."
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Submission: Microsoft responds to 'SAVE XP' Petition by Anonymous Coward
Technology: Microsoft Extends XP For Low-Cost Laptops 388 comments
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OH GOD (Score:5, Funny)
Re:OH GOD (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:OH GOD (Score:5, Informative)
That's because Halo 2 doesn't actually need directx10. It has a 'is this vista check', and it might use a couple of minor new directx 10 direct3d calls (which can easily be captured and reimplemented in direct3d 9).
The real features of directX10 like Video memory virtualization and gpu multitasking (which allows Vista to have multiple direct3d accelerated applications (including the desktop) all running at the same time in (possibibly overlapping windows).
-That- is (amongst other reasons) why Vista has a new driver model, which in turns needs kernel support. -That- is why it hasn't been backported to XP. -That- is why its not likely to ever get backported to XP.
DirectX10 itself is a MAJOR milestone for windows, for the windows desktop, a step that brings it to parity with what linux and osx can do, in fact.
You aren't going to get a proper Compiz or Aqua class desktop for XP because XP simply can't do this stuff. Vista/DirectX10 can. But, this isn't really important 'for games' and games requiring directx10 is mostly marketing puff using minor features that can be easily redirected via a directx9 wrapper.
This is unfortunately because it undermines just how major directX10 really is, leaving gamers with the impression that its just a cheap tactic to sell Vista. (Which, to the extent of its use by current games; requiring directX10 IS a cheap tactic to sell vista.) But directX10 is quite a bit more than what these games are using. And this cheap tactic is masking that.
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Re:OH GOD (Score:5, Informative)
That is not correct, maximum pc had talked with a Microsoft developer that said there is no technical reason directx10 cannot be used with WinXP. The real reason is that Microsoft wants to use it as a dividing point separating Vista from XP.
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Re:OH GOD (Score:5, Informative)
Right, they'd just have to update the kernel, and require a bunch of manufacturers to release new drivers to support the new features. Another not-insignificant issue is the DRM stuff, which is part of directx10, and again needs kernel and driver support. Nobody wants to deal with the mess that would be. For all our MS and DRM bashing, given what the situation is it makes technical sense to use it as a dividing point, even if those technical hurdles could be overcome.
That said, there is nothing stopping MS from backporting just the new directx10 direct3d api for shaders etc back to XP and calling it directx9.2 or even really muddy the waters and call it "directx10 xp edition", and letting the games have feature parity on both platforms.
But as I've said, MS wanted to use DirectX to lure people to Vista. Although I've heard rumours that they might now release a direct9 update for XP to add the direct3d features and appease gamers.
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Re:OH GOD (Score:5, Interesting)
So? DX5/6/7 came out roughly every 1.5 years and driver developers somehow managed to write good drivers. And now they have several years to port DX10.
That was supported since late 90-s. You can create several accelerated graphical contexts and they will work along nicely. Try to run several 3D-graphical applications on XP - it just works. Now, XP heavily balances CPU/GPU power in favor of the foreground application (which makes sense), but it's a purely tuning matter. If you don't believe me - look at Linux, Compiz can work along nicely with 3D applications.
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa919937.aspx [microsoft.com]
Yep. DirectDraw Clippers were available SINCE DIRECTDRAW 2.0 IN 1996 - the earliest version of DirectX (DirectDraw 1.0 was known as Game SDK). I know, I myself wrote applications for science graphics rendering with several graphical contexts.
But, sorry, that isn't directx10.
Sorry, but what is DirectDraw/Direct3D? I somehow thought that it was a 3D API. 3D applications don't care about hotswapable graphic cards, they only care about that 'several API calls'. That API calls can certainly be ported to Windows XP, there's no great technical barriers.
Nope. New DX10 features are already present as OpenGL extensions. So these projects just build DX10 API on top of OpenGL. It's not emulation, it's translation.
Not a problem. I can run Compiz while playing Quake 3 and running a DVD player in Linux. All with current OpenGL.
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Re:OH GOD (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if they are overly optimistic, or if they have truely looked into DX10 and think they can pull it off?
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Re:OH GOD (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course they would, because it is a plot to get you to upgrade. They wrote DX10, so they could have made it work with XP, but they chose not to.
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Re:OH GOD (Score:5, Informative)
That's because Halo 2 doesn't actually need directx10. It has a 'is this vista check', and it might use a couple of minor new directx 10 direct3d calls (which can easily be captured and reimplemented in direct3d 9).
Correct. A lot of the rest, well, not so much. And I appologize in advance for tearing into you over this, but I do 3D graphics programming for a living and it just pisses me off to no end how MS's marketing statements have somehow morphed into technical truths when they are clearly not true at all.
In a nut shell, DX10's rendering features can be (and are, under OpenGL) implemented under the old driver model. Vista's shiny 3D desktop and ridiculous DRM (which are separate from Direct3D 10), however, cannot. Microsoft consistently choses to confuse the two, but they are distinct technologies that shouldn't probably don't rely on each other to any significant degree. Details follow.
The real features of directX10 like Video memory virtualization and gpu multitasking (which allows Vista to have multiple direct3d accelerated applications (including the desktop) all running at the same time in (possibibly overlapping windows).
This is all possible on XP with both OpenGL and Direct3D 9. Seriously, get a couple of 3D programs that run in windowed mode and drag them around your monitor. Overlap them. It works fine on XP. Managing the GPU resources is simply done inside the driver. All Vista's model does is move some functionality that used to be common to all drivers up into the kernel, because refactoring things this way allowed them to remove some of the overhead from most D3D API entry points - overhead that exists in D3D 9 (which is obviously not crippled or useless because of it).
The D3D10 feature set could be implemented in XP without rewriting the kernel. There might be more overhead when calling rendering functions, but it probably wouldn't be worse than calling D3D9 functions (and D3D9's API is a lot chattier than D3D10's). There is no D3D10 feature that requires the Vista kernel rewrite.
If you don't believe me then go put a GeForce 8 series card in a XP machine, install the latest driver, and then download GLEW [sourceforge.net]. Get it to dump out a list of available OpenGL extensions (visualinfo.exe in the bin directory, assuming you downloaded the Win32 binaries). Note these extensions in particular: GL_EXT_geometry_shader4, GL_EXT_texture_array, GL_NV_transform_feedback, as well as a few others I don't care to list. Those are all the OpenGL equivalents to the new D3D10 feature set. If NVIDIA can expose D3D10 generation features through OpenGL on an XP driver running on the old XP kernel, Microsoft can do the same thing through Direct3D 10. They simply choose not to.
The only thing the old driver model can't actually do is share graphics resources among multiple processes, something that pretty much no 3D graphics application would ever really do in the first place (because launching processes and getting them to talk to each other is really expensive on Windows), and something which is not required for useful D3D 10 support. Read on to find out why they stuck in a useless feature.
You aren't going to get a proper Compiz or Aqua class desktop for XP because XP simply can't do this stuff. Vista/DirectX10 can.
The shiny 3D desktop thing in Vista is the only thing that really requires the new driver model, as it is what actually makes use of the ability to share D3D resources among multiple processes (it basically shares any 3D app's render surface into its own texture set). And note that the shiny desktop doesn't even use D3D10. It just uses D3D9 plus the extensions to D3D9 that are only available under the new driver model - extensions which only serve to notify applications that their device will (almost) never be lost (mundane window/D3D device setup thing, has nothing to do with actually rendering) and expose th
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Re:OH GOD (Score:4, Insightful)
"We at M$ will never admit openly that Vista was a vast failure and are still hoping that our market share will eventually force users to adopt the new system and pay us 300 bucks."
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Re:OH GOD (Score:5, Funny)
To quote a Monty Python episode
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Give 'em time (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Give 'em time (Score:5, Insightful)
"...listening first and foremost to feedback we hear from partners and customers about what makes sense based on their needs..."
Hearing Microsoft use the term partners and customers always strikes me as resellers and vendors not consumers of Microsoft products.
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Downgrade??? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry, did I see the word downgrade there? I'd consider Vista to XP an upgrade myself. Anyhow, kudos to the OEM's for providing XP as an option. It would be nice if more of them also offered linux as an option when selecting the OS. At least Dell does. (Thanks.)
It would be nice if Microsoft would at least extend the System Builder and OEM licenses for a while longer; there's really no reason not to people like XP, and they get money whether people buy Vista or XP. If they stop offering XP, then people may choose to use Linux or macs, and in the end MS may end up losing money.
Re:Downgrade??? (Score:5, Funny)
Everyone should be running the newest of Windows, which is Windows Vista! People who still get by with XP are uncool and stick-in-the-muds. Windows Vista on a Wacom-enabled Tablet PC is the way to go! And Windows Vista to me seems much faster with the new wallpapers! I love Microsoft and everything they do. Products like Vista, silverlight.NET and OOXML powered Office 2007 are brilliant. Going forward vista will be the only way to get the latest version of
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Re:Downgrade??? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Downgrade??? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Downgrade??? (Score:5, Insightful)
So in other words, they are providing what the customers want... instead of providing what the customers want? I see...
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Re:Downgrade??? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Downgrade??? (Score:5, Insightful)
That they're offering it mainstream like this indicates to me that you have double digit percentages of customers requesting sticking with XP.
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Definition of business partners and customers (Score:5, Insightful)
if (isBusinessPartner(user))
return TRUE;
if (isCustomer(user) && accountSize(customer) > TenMillion)
return TRUE;
return FALSE;
}
Compiler Error: (Score:5, Funny)
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No Thanks, Microsoft. I'll Run Linux (Score:5, Funny)
Vista marketing strategy: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Vista marketing strategy: (Score:5, Funny)
Funny. I read it as "We can year you. You're just unimportant".
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Funny,,, (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Funny,,, (Score:5, Funny)
I always thought the progression was something along the lines of:
X(
XP
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Re:Funny,,, (Score:5, Funny)
(This being slashdot, that is purely hypothetical, of course...)
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Wow. (Score:5, Funny)
Then again, these days, Nixon would be considered a step up from the current state of affairs, so...
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Interesting)
And since XP is getting pretty old, the recommended specs to run it fairly well is still just about 256-512 MB RAM or so on a 300+ MHz CPU.
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customer = serf; (Score:4, Interesting)
Instead of plowing a field, we're moving bits and bytes.
Microsoft listens to the lords and barons, not to the serfs (barring a massive uprising and the occasional symbolic act of obligatory good faith).
Incompetence hangs in the air like... (Score:5, Interesting)
So much of what comes from Microsoft seems depersonalized, as though employees just go through the motions, realizing that nothing they do will change the basic nature of the fundamental failures in the company.
Incompetence hangs in the air like the cold stench of death. [dilbert.com]
Funny. (Score:5, Interesting)
It is a strange world.
Re:Funny. (Score:4, Insightful)
To be fair, back in 2001 WinXP was a steaming pile of donkey poo, perhaps almost as bad as Vista is now. With service packs it improved. In a not entirely dissimilar fashion, think back to the difference between Win98 and Win98SE. Basically, for Microsoft new OS releases are downgrades; only the service packs are upgrades. They're very consistent about this.
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Gullible fools... (Score:5, Insightful)
Evil corporations cannot change. Well, they could change, but they WON'T. Terefore, they must be defeated. I wonder what would happen if all of the 75,000 people signing for XP would have donated 20 dollars to the ReactOS project [reactos.org]. $1,500,000 bucks doesn't sound any bad at all.
On the other hand, this democratic exercise can help to open the eyes of the ignorant masses so they can realize that Microsoft won't change.
Same shit, different date (Score:5, Insightful)
Except back then people were bitching about the upgrade from 2000 to XP.
The end result is Microsoft will fix some of the most annoying things in Vista (or offer alternatives), but 95% of their customers will swallow Vista within the next 2 years, and only the anal-i-will-die-proving-my-point types will still run XP... err excuse me, Windows 2000.
Re:Same shit, different date (Score:4, Interesting)
Same old same old.
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Windows 7? (Score:5, Interesting)
If only Microsoft can make Windows 7 blazing fast again, I have no doubt it will be a huge success. Imagine the millions of users out there who switch from Vista to Windows 7 to notice that things are running fast like hell now. That's what we need. Linus was right.
Run your old XP in a window on a Unix OS (Score:5, Insightful)
A Mac plus Parallels plus the XP you already own keeps all your old stuff working (XP apps on XP) while also opening up new stuff like iLife and Unix and uptime and 64-bit RAM access. XP needs to be frozen in time like a compatibility library, not improved or changed. If you can get by with a non-Mac Unix then that is an excellent solution for running your virtualized XP also.
Vista is different from XP, but not improved enough to make the switch worthwhile. If Vista had Win64 and a XP-in-a-window then that would be worth considering. No matter how much Microsoft wants to ignore it, the fact is you have to upgrade an old application platform to be compatible with a modern system. Win32 was created to run standalone or hooked onto a LAN where you trust everybody, and in 32-bits. Investing more money and time in that at this point is ridiculous.
Go ahead, buy those XP Licences.. (Score:5, Insightful)
So from Microsoft's standpoint, people buying XP is great for them - they get paid once for their old OS, and then they get paid again when you buy a boxed copy of Vista down the line.
Vista isn't actually selling well (Score:5, Interesting)
Vista's sales are high for one reason.
Every Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc that you purchase with XP is actually sold as a computer with a Vista license and a XP downgrade license.
Classic Microsoft.
Enough already. (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft posts record performance in its Windows client division.
In office products. In servers. In console gaming...
15-20% growth in the first and second quarters of fiscal 2008. The U.S. economy is weak. The tech sector is down. But Microsoft is on a roll.
The Slashdot response is denial.
In a crapflood of posts that put a increasingly desperate spin on news that - more realistically viewed - would silence a Twitter.
Vista rocks - my 10 favorite Vista improvements (Score:5, Informative)
Now if I could get all my key bindings working and have my Vista on one facet of my cube, a VMware OS X on another, and 6 more for terminals and Linux programs I think I'd be happy.
Why wait a coupla years (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:what about small businesses! (Score:5, Informative)
Try again, grasshopper.
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Re:what about small businesses! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:what about small businesses! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Cock (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:The difference between XP and Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
Vista is only marginally better than XP
XP was also a 0.1 upgrade to windows 2000; it wasn't that different at all. It used the same drivers and so forth. Businesses had relatively few troubles migrating because it was essentially the same platform.
Consumers on the other hand got a windfall:
1) XP was leaps and bounds better than 98/ME
2) XP by virtue of its close 2k/NT heritage was already effectively several years old when it launched. So by the time joe home consumers got their grubby little hands on it the drivers were largely mature and stable, and supported much of the hardware they already had... even a lot of the 'older stuff', because if there were 2k drivers, you were set.
Vista in contrast to XP is a major upgrade as far as businesses are concerned, and so its more work. And its new, really new, with a new driver model and everything so hardware even 6 months old is largely unsupported, or "coming soon". On top of all that its biggest feature is enhanced security -- which doesn't wow consumers and in fact annoys them.
Me, I've had Vista now for about 8 months, and frankly I'm very happy with it. I put it on new well supported hardware so issues of it being a resource hog, or driver issues
The UAC stuff really doesn't get in my way. Fortunately I don't have a lot of programs that need to be 'run as administrator' in order to function. (And programs that DO need this were defective all along IMO; it only took Vista's forcing the issue for us to notice... and then so many blogging idiots blame vista. I mean seriously, not naming any particular software, but why should your personal accounting software need to run as root anyway?! If your annoyed that your software is constantly needing elevation, blame the vendor.)
Vista really doesn't ask for elevation much more than OSX[Unix] or Linux. Its just that the latter two OSes have a long history of security so there isn't 20 years worth of crud out there that thinks it should be running as root. The only complaint I have about UAC, is that I should be allowed into Device Manager and other places without elevation; I should only need elevation if I want to change things... they really should have copied the 'lock' metaphor from OSX. But that's a pretty minor issue. I don't go into device manager THAT much, and even then I go in a lot more than most people. My inlaws bought a new Vista laptop... I doubt they've seen more than 5 UAC elevation prompts since they got it.
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Re:Upgrading because we have to! (Score:5, Informative)
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