Microsoft Urges Businesses To Get Off XP 727
An anonymous reader writes "It's approximately 11 years since Windows XP was unveiled, and this week Microsoft was still at it trying to convince users that it's time to upgrade. A post on the Windows For Your Business Blog calls on businesses to start XP migrations now. Microsoft cites the main reason as being that support for XP ends in April 2014, and 'most new hardware options will likely not support the Windows XP operating system.' If you run Windows Vista, Microsoft argues that it's time to 'start planning' the move to Windows 8. As this article points out, it's not uncommon to hear about people still running XP at work."
$500,00 equipment with WinXP (Score:5, Informative)
We have a few expensive microscopes with WinXP on the corresponding machine, an expired service contract and in reality cannot upgrade without buying a new microscope (an newer drivers), so what do you do, other than put it behind a firewall and hope for the best.
Re:$500,00 equipment with WinXP (Score:5, Informative)
A local library has the same problem. Checkout hardware has drives for XP and Win2k. The service contract to upgrade these machines is far beyond the available tech budget. So this particular library will be running off XP until the hardware dies and replacements can no longer be found; my guess would be another 10 years.
Re:Nicely done, PR. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why is a microscope online in the first place? (Score:5, Informative)
When the equipment is providing frequent readings or results, it becomes a really expensive boat anchor if it's disconnected and those readings can't get to the people who need them.
Few businesses today want to pay someone to use sneakernet every 15 minutes to transfer new results to the network.
Re:Farewell XP (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Pry XP from cold, stiff fingers (Score:5, Informative)
I'm testing Windows 8 on a 2008 core2duo and it runs fine, it normally runs 7. I do have it on a more modern hard drive. The problem for Microsoft is computers got 'fast enough' for average users at lest 4 years back if not longer. If 2008 hardware is acting touch and go on XP it's either bad hardware or a beyond average use case. Even XP itself got fat over the years. After the service packs and browser updates, XP wanted a whole lot more RAM to get the job done. As for Win8, I hate it's interface, but the resource requirements seem the same as 7.
Re:Pry XP from cold, stiff fingers (Score:3, Informative)
> Lazy ass IT.
Sorry, that's a stupid ass comment. We went through the upgrade at work (major bank) from XP to W7 last year, and it was VERY VERY EXPENSIVE. Over 4000 apps had to be validated, 60K users. Whole thing took months and months, in waves, to ensure up-time and maintain support capacity.
To think that reluctance to do this more often than absolutely necessary is due to "lazy ass IT" demonstrates a butt-clenching level of naivety.
Re:Farewell XP (Score:4, Informative)
Tried it; Took over 20 minutes to boot the installer in a VM with 2 cores and 2 GB of RAM. Once I finally managed to get the behemoth installed, (and after another 10 minutes of booting), I get presented with the ugliest, most useless interface I've ever seen on a desktop machine. Not interested.
If it took you 20 minutes to load WinPE 4, which the installer is built from, then I'd go so far as to say you've got bigger problems than not liking the interface. I can't say I've tried it, but I'm pretty sure you can flat-boot (no RAM Disk) WinPE 4 with less than 100 MB of RAM. You can count the services that start up on your fingers.
Metro apps aren't very good with a keyboard and mouse. Try them with a touchscreen. For everything else it facilitates, like find-as-you-type, command execution, and so on, it's close enough to the functionality of its predecessors' Start menus that you shouldn't have a problem using it. Yes, everything is in a totally different spot on the screen, but it's not exactly difficult to figure out. For everything else, just stick to the desktop.
...and? (Score:5, Informative)
It is the same deal with any OS. Ubutnu supports a LTS release for 5 years from the date it comes out, not the date you install it, not the date you get a system with it.
MS makes no secret of their support cycle. They promise 10 years of support from the date of release. Sometimes they extend it, as they did with XP, and they then make the new date known. So when you bought a system in 2010 with XP, you bought it knowing that there was only 3 years left on support for that OS.
Support lifecycles really aren't a hard concept, and MS is actually really good with them. Whining about it is rather silly.
Re:Pry XP from cold, stiff fingers (Score:5, Informative)
My father managed a moderate sized law office. Part of the issue in upgrading was support from 3rd party software which was integral to their business. The main issue was soft costs. As an example, they upgraded from Office 2003 to 2007, the cost of the software was ~$10,000. Not a big deal at all. However, each employee had to be trained on the new software, new procedures drawn up & training for those, then the productivity loss was huge. Overtime costs went up, additional staff needed to be brought on to keep things up to speed during the adjustment period. 3 months in the actual cost of the upgrade was over $100,000 and they were still not back to the level of productivity they were at before. End result: they downgraded back to 2003 and repeated the process once 2010 came around. 2010 stuck but $100,000+ down the drain is not an easy cost to absorb - even if it did work out.
In the end it's probably cheaper to keep XP, toss on Deep Freeze and just keep a document server up to date until you have no choice but to upgrade.
Office 2003 can read .docx just fine (Score:5, Informative)
You might not be aware of this, but Microsoft provides a compatibility pack [microsoft.com] for Office 2003 that allows reading and writing .docx and other 2007+ formats. With the pack, we can all keep the last good MS Office interface for as long as we like. Death to the ribbon!