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Message started by Oldfeller on 01/15/14 at 19:26:55

Title: Microsoft extends XP's life for another year
Post by Oldfeller on 01/15/14 at 19:26:55

http://liliputing.com/2014/01/windows-xp-support-dies-in-april-no-more-security-updates.html

read it for the info and the 1 extra year update

Weeee .... and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why MS is doing this third major XP extension on the termination time.

30% or slightly more of the PCs out there are still XP machines and when MS kills XP off these old PCs will all go either into the trash can or will all become Ubuntu Linux machines.

In ether case, MS's overall market share would take it in the neck as the replacement machine will likely be a large tablet format (and not a MS product).

Microsoft needs to crank a reduced requirements version of Win 7 back up for these old XP generation machines as Win 7 would run on the old hardware (slowly) but fairly well.

With some tuning, the Win 7 retro edition would bring in some dollars and keep folks on the blood bowl system for another few years.

Or else MS can just take it in the neck and get nothing back out of it.

MS has got to stall until Threshold can save their arses.

Title: Re: Microsoft extends XP's life for another year
Post by verslagen1 on 01/15/14 at 22:11:41

what they'll also loose is any support fees.
by continuing the xp's, at least they'll have some income (most likely corporate)

Title: Re: Microsoft extends XP's life for another year
Post by Oldfeller on 01/16/14 at 06:34:32

There are so many supporting PC makers and supporting systems makers (Novell) and all of the anti-virus software guys who totally depend on the Windows blood bowl system for their existence.

If Windows becomes a legacy system all of these guys lose it all.

Some will be smart enough to reinvent themselves doing something useful, worthwhile and relevant to the new world of computing.

Some have NO PLACE in that new world, because their only purpose in life was to patch some of the holes in MS's OS products.

Example, anti-virus guys.

No matter what the new system is, it is all based in Linux. Aberrant people (of which there have been less than 100 in total) have written exploits on old Linux versions, all of which were patched as soon as the exploit was found and the 'opportunity" was totally removed in the next Linux revision.

People don't hate Linux and try to attack it like they hated and attacked Microsoft.

I predict that the anti-virus guys will try the same thing they did with MS, pump up alarm and FUD over whatever little thing they can find and try to sell AV products to "protect" your Linux system from what they pumped up in the first place.

What I think will happen is that if something significant comes up the existing open source AV products will be able to stop it for free.

They exist, you know -- Clam AV has been around for Linux for a long time, mainly to stop a Linux machine from being a carrier of MS virus items. These were items that couldn't get a toe hold on the Linux OS but could be transmitted to other MS machines through removable media and e-mails, etc.

So, the AV guys have a slim chance of a relevant survival .....

..... but the defrag guys have no hope at all.

As folks make the change they will begin to understand just how badly written the Win OS's really were. And how hideously expensive to own.

Title: Re: Microsoft extends XP's life for another year
Post by Oldfeller on 01/16/14 at 08:01:25

Speaking of Win 9, the FreeBSD folks have reported that a lot of new users are showing up in their forums all of a sudden.

They are asking all sorts of questions about boot loaders and stacks and such like gut deep stuff.

When asked who they work for, they refuse to answer.

===================

Free BSD has a license that allows MS to loot their stuff and not disclose it ever to anyone, not even to the Free BSD folks.

A review of Win 7 and Win 8 code shows this has been done before, repeatedly.

Apple does the same thing to Free BSD, so this is not news to anyone associated with these very old Unix distributions.

;D

The Linux FOSS open source license however, requires that:

1) you acknowledge the source of the code you took.

2) that you give back the code you took along with whatever modifications you did to it and whatever code you attached it to. Once you do this, the code you returned becomes open source under the Linux FOSS License as well.

The FreeDSB folks are grinning, because it is only a question of time until MS gets caught with some Linux FOSS code and has to geek over the entire enchilada.

Title: Re: Microsoft extends XP's life for another year
Post by Serowbot on 01/16/14 at 09:18:25

Ahhhhh...
I'm safe for another year... :-?...

Title: Re: Microsoft extends XP's life for another year
Post by Yonuh Adisi FSO on 01/16/14 at 13:44:04

So that's why I suddenly got an update after so long without one? ;)

I was beginning to wonder if they had stopped the auto updates for XP because they were gonna shutdown support in Feb. Then suddenly the dino-laptop got an update yesterday.

So XP has had a temporary stay of execution huh?

When they finally decide to kill it, I will be putting linux on this thing and try to figure out how to use it.

Title: Re: Microsoft extends XP's life for another year
Post by terpfan1980 on 01/19/14 at 13:10:15

I heard a report on the news (radio) that mentioned that a very, very large percentage of ATM machines that are in use in the U.S.A. are XP based systems. Apparently the banking industry has been horribly slow in upgrading those systems. Uh, yeah, the thought that XP might be missing any future security updates makes me feel wonderful. :o

Of course the reason those machines may be stuck running XP rather than Windows 7 (or Windows 8) is likely driver issues and Microsoft is probably pointing at the hardware manufacturers to get that fixed (while they point back at Microsoft over stricter requirements for driver certification, etc.)

It does crack me up that XP is just so entrenched. I like Windows 7, but have been frustrated by driver issues on older systems myself. I gave away at least two laptops that were given to me with both of them basically stuck with XP because there was no video driver support for Windows 7 on those devices. If MS had included at least a decent generic driver for those old video cards/chipsets, those boxes would still be very, very useful. Instead they are useful as XP machines only :(

(Sadly, I tried to put Linux on them and didn't have much more success on the video driver issues either, so just gave in and left them running XP with the warning to the new owners that they really should think about replacing them by April)

Title: Re: Microsoft extends XP's life for another year
Post by Oldfeller on 01/20/14 at 07:25:39

Linux Video Drivers have taken great strides forward since STEAM got full driver support from ATI/AMD and from NVIDIA.

Best Linux for great driver support is Linux Mint -- packages full driver support (auto-detected) into all their LTS distros.

Sadly, very old off brand video cards (long since out of business) pose the biggest issue with old XP hardware.

Driver issues with Linux in general have evaporated over the years. Yes, you can still find one occasionally with a "no fix possible" because the OEM simply won't cooperate. The biggest one of these was NVIDIA, but they changed their tune about a year ago and geeked over.

If you want a flavor recommendation, Linux Mint14.04 Mate Edition looks the most like XP and it has the longest supported history behind it (Gnome 2.0). I use it because it has just worked for over 5 years now.

Title: Re: Microsoft extends XP's life for another year
Post by old_rider on 01/20/14 at 07:28:02

I received an email from dell, that had refurbished tablets and laptops with windows 7 on them.... go figure.

Title: Re: Microsoft extends XP's life for another year
Post by Oldfeller on 01/20/14 at 11:39:12

Dell 760s sell with XP

Dell 780s sell with Vista

Dell 790s sell with Win 7

All of the machines sell with the OS they were shipped with. There is a sticker on the machine that gives the serial number of the software that is on it -- if a hard drive dies on you, you give MS Customer Service the serial number and they will allow you to download 1 copy of that OS to that machine.

Title: Re: Microsoft extends XP's life for another year
Post by old_rider on 01/20/14 at 14:25:43

LOL, I loved win 7, was easy for me to understand... now I'll have to relearn it if I buy a "back-up" machine.
I really think I'll just use my old laptop for a security machine, there have been a lot of break-ins in the local area and I am going to install about four cameras and will need a "dedicated" machine to hide for the monitoring system.
I will make the cameras visable and hard to remove, the laptop I will be hiding in a fold-out in a wall somewhere (like behind a big picture, or in a closet) so that the hard drive will be directly unavailable to thieves.
Most of the break-ins have been occurring in broad daylight but i'm still going to purchase cameras that work well in low light.

Title: Re: Microsoft extends XP's life for another year
Post by mpescatori on 01/20/14 at 23:58:42

70535B595A53535A4D3F0 wrote:

IIRC, when Atom-powered netbooks were first introduced, they ran WinXP and did just fine.
Then, the same netbooks got a RAM boost and were told to run on MSVista and wouldn't run properly.
Back in Sept.2010 I bought one such netbook in Norfolk, Va., because of a number of benefits compared to the EU versions (more RAM, bigger HDD, US keyboard, cheaper price)

IIRC when Win7 came out MS also had a "Win7N" version made specifically for Atom.powered netbooks. Pity I didn't jump the opportunity, I now run WinXP on one and Win7 on the other, and only the older machine runs reliably.

IMHO, what MS should do is reengineer a stripped-down version of WinXP in order to make it compatible to all older machines, but also make it possible to save it on an SD-card and run it on Tablets as well.

Title: Re: Microsoft extends XP's life for another year
Post by Oldfeller on 01/21/14 at 08:06:14

Folks always forget this about Win XP, but it was one of the reasons the OS ran so well and so reliably for so long -- all the while being so very light on resources, etc.

Win XP started out as a 32 bit operating system that didn't even get all the 64 bit memory adaptations until service p
ack 1. All the rest of it continued to operate at 32 bits.

All of the rest of ALL of Microsoft's more modern OS still run legacy 32 bit software inside them.

And if Microsoft were smart, they would trim up either Win 7 or XP and start offering it as a "retro pack" for a VERY LOW price.

But hey, they are doing this already .....

Saying that suddenly all the HP machines have Win 7 available on them all of a sudden at $150 discount IS offering Win 7 at a very low price.

Tag on the latest news,

Microsoft started selling windows 7 again. $79 at Newegg with a coupon code.
.