Microsoft bows to pressure on XP
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Customer demand forces Microsoft to keep Windows XP on shop shelves for months longer than intended.
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Microsoft has issued a formal fix for a problem in Windows XP Service Pack 2 that appeared almost immediately after the update&#39;s release.
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Microsoft this week quietly fixed a security weakness in the configuration of the built-in firewall component of Windows XP. The firewall - turned on by default by XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) - can leave files
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The clock is ticking: Microsoft will end OEM and shrink-wrapped sales of Windows XP on June 30, 2008, forcing users to shift to Vista. (System builders, meaning those who do white-box PCs, can sell XP through December 31.) Don't let that happen!                                                      Millions of us have grown comfortable with XP and don't see a need to change to Vista. It's like having a comfortable apartment that you've enjoyed coming home to for years, only to get an eviction notice. The thought of moving to a new place -- even with the stainless steel appliances, granite countertops, and maple cabinets (or is cherry in this year?) -- just doesn't sit right. Maybe it'll be more modern, but it will also cost more and likely not be as good a fit. And you don't have any other reason to move. That's exactly the conclusion people have come to with Vista. For most of us, there's really no reason to move to it -- yet we don't have a choice. When that strong desire to stick with XP became obvious in spring 2007, major computer makers such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard quietly reintroduced new XP-based systems (but just to business customers, so as not to offend Microsoft).But come June 30, even that option goes away. (See InfoWorld's live XP countdown clock. To use this clock on your own Web site, please e-mail Executive Editor Galen Gruman for the code snippet.)So what to do? Let Microsoft decide where your personal and enterprise software "lives"? Or send a loud and clear message that you don't want to move?We're going for the loud-and-clear option. Join us, and tell Microsoft that you want to keep XP available indefinitely. Not for another six months or a year, but indefinitely. Sign InfoWorld's petition today. And consider submitting a "Save XP" video to our site to help spread the word.And ask your friends and colleagues to join in, too. Just point them to SaveXP.com.Don't think Microsoft will listen? Consider this: Although Microsoft denies that anything is wrong with Vista or that most people don't want it, the company has already postponed XP's demise by six months. That's a start, but it's not good enough.Microsoft doesn't have to admit failure; it can just say it will keep XP available indefinitely due to customer demand. It can take that opportunity to try again with a better Vista, or just move on to the next version that maybe this time we'll all actually want.There is a precedent for that, too: In many respects, Vista is like the Windows Millennium Edition that was meant to replace Windows 98 in 2000 but caused more trouble than it was worth. At that time, Windows 2000 was promising but didn't support a lot of hardware, so users were stuck between two bad choices. Without admitting Millennium's failure, Microsoft quietly put Windows 98 back on the market until the fixed version of Windows 2000 (SP1) was available. Microsoft needs to do something like that again today.Make your voice heard to Microsoft. Sign our petition to save XP today. We will present it to Microsoft.For more on why Vista isn't the right replacement for XP, check out InfoWorld's analyses: The (post-SP1) Vista verdict: Wait for Windows 7 Randall Kennedy's assessment is that for the vast majority of enterprise IT shops, Vista is not -- and likely never will be -- the right choice for their immediate desktop computing needs.Service pack vs. service pack: XP SP3 beats Vista SP1 According to tests by Devil Mountain Software comparing the release candidates for the last Windows XP service pack and the first Vista service pack, XP SP3 performs twice as fast as Vista SP1 on the same machine -- and slower than the initial release of the Vista OS as well.Businesses having second thoughts about Vista Fewer businesses are now planning to move to Windows Vista than seven months ago, according to a survey by patch management vendor PatchLink.Forrester: Businesses still saying no to Vista An anticipated rush by businesses to adopt Windows Vista hasn't materialized as IT managers stick with familiar systems and wait for the release of Vista Service Pack 1.Microsoft: Vista follow-up likely in 2009 With Vista just out the door, Microsoft is now drawing up plans to deliver its follow-up client operating system by the end of 2009.Farewell Vista, hello XP From PCWorld.com: How to make the switch back and deal with the gnarly problem of transferring your Vista e-mail, contacts, and user data back to the old standby operating system.HP CEO: Vista never had its moment in 2007 From CIO.com: Wondering what's happened to momentum for Microsoft's Vista operating system in corporate America? Fact is, enterprise IT has continued to decline the Vista plate like it's an undercooked holiday casserole. Listen to what Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd said: HP never saw a "Vista moment at any time over the past year."UK government report: Don?t upgrade to Vista Report warns British schools not to upgrade to Microsoft's Vista OS and Office 2007 suite, and to avoid Microsoft's OOXML document format because of compatibility concerns.
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Businesses preparing to implement Windows XP SP2 should brace themselves for problems impacting a significant number of their Windows XP machines, according to research conducted by I.T. infrastructure management firm AssetMetrix.
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The key security update for Windows XP looks set to cause trouble for thousands of firms reveals a survey.
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Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) has taken steps to help enterprise developers who want to test their applications against Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2).
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com December 22, 2004, 3:47 PM PT. Microsoft seemed to put that message right into the name of its latest Windows version: Windows XP Reduced Media Edition.
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Microsoft announces end of support for the upgrade, urges move to SP2.
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Microsoft Corp. on Friday said it will sacrifice some key advances it had planned for Longhorn so it can deliver the successor to Windows XP in 2006.
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Microsoft did a turnabout late yesterday, admitting that enterprise customers' PCs were indeed being force-fed the Windows XP desktop search tool. Users were not amused, nor were they in a forgiving mood.
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The software giant&#39;s much anticipated security-laden upgrade for the Windows XP operating system is finally available for installation.
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Microsoft today denied that its enterprise update service has been forcing all Windows XP systems to install a new edition of Windows Desktop.
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Microsoft has offered up yet another way for businesses to block the automatic update of Windows XP to the big-deal Service Pack 2 (SP2) upgrade.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft Corp. is recommending that all customers still running Windows XP SP1 immediately upgrade to Windows XP SP2, as the company's support for SP1 will end next week. The Microsoft Support Lifecycle Policy for Windows XP SP1 ends on Tuesday according toÂ a company Web page. Microsoft initially planned to end support for Windows XP SP1 on Sept. 17, 2006, two years after Windows XP SP2 was released. However, earlier this year, Microsoft shifted the final support date for XP SP1 to Oct. 10. Microsoft typically provides 12 months of support for service packs, but will extend that support period for products it thinks customers need extra help and time to install. For typical consumer products, Microsoft provides five years of mainstream support. Business customers and developers typically get 10 years of support -- five of mainstream support and five of what is called "extended" support. Microsoft expects to releaseÂ the next major upgrade to the Windows client OS, Windows Vista, to business customers next month, and to consumers in January 2007. Though the release has been delayed several times, the general consensus among analysts is that Microsoft will hit its latest release target for Vista.
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More than 75,000 people have signed InfoWorld?s ?Save XP? petition in the three weeks since it was launched ? many with passionate, often emotional pleas to not be forced to make a change. On June 30, Microsoft plans to stop making new licenses to Windows XP available through most outlets, though business users and some consumers will be able to ?downgrade? to XP after that date under certain circumstances. InfoWorld expects to present the petition to Microsoft when it has collected 100,000 signatures.[ Follow all the coverage of and reader reaction to the ?Save XP? campaign. ]Although InfoWorld?s campaign has given a voice to users who prefer to keep the familiar XP, concerns over Vista had been bubbling since its release a year ago. That has been evident not only anecdotally in comments that InfoWorld editors have heard from IT staff and users alike, but also in the slow adoption of Vista in the marketplace.While millions of people have gotten Vista with a new PC, most did not have a choice of what OS was loaded on it, since retailers stopped selling new XP computers in spring 2007 and online sellers (with the recent exception of Dell) made XP available only to business customers.Where people have had a choice, Vista has not been it. Microsoft has reported that it sold 100 million Vista licenses in 2007, which means that roughly four out of 10 new machines shipped with Vista on them. By comparison, nearly 70 percent of PCs shipped with XP in its first year. According to NetApplications, about 11 percent of installed machines use Vista, compared to 75 percent running XP.IT consultant Dimension Data Americas has yet to have any of its midsize business customers convert to Vista, said Jeff Dimock, its vice president of Microsoft solutions ? though he noted that several are working on plans to do so. ?The mid-market has not been upgrading to Vista,? said Karen Hayward, executive vice president at IT outsourcing firm CenterBeam, which provisions OS and other apps to midsize businesses.Compatibility issues and lack of perceived value are the major reasons that businesses and users have avoided Vista. Research firm Gartner advises its clients not to switch to Vista until early 2009, after the first service pack has been released, third-party compatibility is improved, and more Vista-ready hardware is in the hardware purchase cycle, says Michael Silver, a research vice president at Gartner.
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With Microsoft spending most of its upgrade development time on Windows XP, it was only time before they announced plans to stop updating Windows 2000.