Microsoft extends support for Windows XP Home / MCE

If you thought Microsoft was just going to bail out on all the Windows XP Home and Media Center Edition users now that copies of Vista are flying off online shelves worldwide, here comes that assurance you've been yearning for. Although most of the folks in Redmond seem to be preoccupied with ironing out the forecasted Fiji service pack, the firm has announced that as of today, it will be extending the support phase for Windows XP Home / MCE users to match that already given to XP Professional owners. With the addition of the "Extended Support," the aid life cycle for the two operating systems will include "a total of five years of mainstream support (until April 2009), as well as five years of extended support." Of course, we highly doubt you're seriously planning on using an old-news OS for another couple years, but hey, Gates' crew is there if you need 'em.

[Matt @ Jan 24th 2007 4:41PM]

LMAO!! Where can i get that Ctrl Alt Delete thing?

[itlnstln @ Jan 25th 2007 7:46AM]

I can't even RTFA. I am mezmerized by the simple, yet infinitely functional device in the picture...

[RTHICKS @ Jan 24th 2007 4:48PM]

Actually, I will probably keep XP on my home PC for a couple of more years. I'm not entirely sold on Vista gaming, considering that it drags down more resources. I'm also not a fan of dealing with another problematic SP2 update. I'll let it sit on the market for a while before I grab it. Maybe I'll even let it sit there long enough for the hackers to...

[Blake @ Jan 24th 2007 5:32PM]

I sure will be using xp until 2009.
Bloat == notfun

[chris @ Jan 24th 2007 5:33PM]

Err... I have no intention of upgrading to Vista. Unlike the stupid Mac commercials making claim that people upgrading to OSX didn't have to upgrade their hardware, M$ isn't pretending.

I'm happy with XP, as most users are, and Vista doesn't ACTUALLY offer the typical user anything more they need other than an excuse to NEED to upgrade their hardware.

No, if XP really heads to the graveyard, chances are I'll just convert the rest of my machines to Linux boxes (like two in the house already) and hope that by then Adobe gets its head out of its butt and releases Linux versions of its software.

[blahblah @ Jan 24th 2007 5:38PM]

Microsoft isn't seriously considering deprecating XP when Vista is dead in the water and universally panned critically?

I installed a pirated copy, on my year-old high-end gaming machine, and was so disgusted I formatted the harddrive and put my licensed copy of XP back on there.

People aren't buying PCs anymore. Industry sales have been in the tank for over a year, and new systems will be the only way MS is going to get the bloated Vista on people's desktops. So, are they going to withdraw support for the OS that everyone - from business to home customers - will be using for the next 5-10 years? Isn't it illegal to use their market dominance to force Vista down everyone's throats in this way?

[chris @ Jan 24th 2007 6:17PM]

I think they continued 95 support longer than they should have, but that alone is likely evidence that they cannot end support for XP any time soon, especially when they realize that for the most part, the only people getting Vista are getting OEM installs, or corps that are trying to "keep up".

Is there a sunset on OS8 or OS9 support?

[Lee Gibson @ Jan 24th 2007 6:13PM]

"Unlike the stupid Mac commercials making claim that people upgrading to OSX didn't have to upgrade their hardware"

Not quite sure what you're talking about, as each version of OS X seems to get a little more performance out of old hardware (with the conspicuous exception of Spotlight, which can be disabled if you'd rather have that speed back).

But, hey, don't let facts get in the way of a good rant.

[par @ Jan 24th 2007 6:17PM]

Is that keyboard bundled with Windows Vista?

[BatteryAcid @ Jan 24th 2007 7:30PM]

Nice, lukily I use linux so all i have to worry about is complicated hardware instalation/driver issues and capatability problems.

[Oddmanout @ Jan 24th 2007 6:26PM]

"...we highly doubt you're seriously planning on using an old-news OS for another couple years..."

Well, I for one still use (and in many ways prefer) Win2k...and it's pushing 7 years old. I've got XP on my laptop, and while there are few features in has that 2k doesn't that I like, overall it's just too much of a resource hog. And it wants to hold your hand through every litle change you want to make.

And really, as far as hanging onto older OSs once their replacements have debued goes, I think most everyone who stuck with Win98(se) after WinME came out was ultimately pretty happy they did...

[chaser24 @ Jan 24th 2007 6:38PM]

"...doubt you're seriously planning on using an old-news OS for another couple years..." never doubt what I may do out of spite.

[Mike @ Jan 24th 2007 7:06PM]

What about the Tablet PC Edition 2005?

[Silent @ Jan 24th 2007 7:44PM]

"...we highly doubt you're seriously planning on using an old-news OS for another couple years.."

haha :D im still on a windows 98 box.. and it doesnt lock up too often unless i go fuck around and use too much memory or something...

[Dan @ Jan 25th 2007 4:28PM]

Same here, using my 733MHZ box for years now. Since I don't play modern PC games, don't have much of an incentive to upgrade. Though some newer web stuff like Google is implementing is locks IE up. If you're on W98 and use IE, try new.google.com , bet it locks.

[Dave @ Jan 24th 2007 8:00PM]

I'm fine with Windows XP for the time being. And you know what? Chances are I'm going to switch to Linux once I feel that XP is too old. Vista will suck.

[Christian Martin @ Jan 24th 2007 11:11PM]

Only hardware upgrading I'm doing is buying a new motherboard and video card (to match the one I already have) in order to finally make the jump to SLI and SATA 3.0 Gb/s RAID 0. Then again, I do that kind of thing because I -enjoy- it. The Windows System Performance Rating tool, running Vista Business, rates my machine at a 6.3. Lowest score is due to still running IDE drives; everything else approaches or exceeds 8.0. I'll dual-boot Vista and XP until the initial bugs are worked out of Vista.

I'm also still running a Win98SE box as a secondary machine, with legacy parts to match. I get a hankering for a game of Carmageddon 2 and some original 3dfx goodness on occasion. FYI, for the security-conscious, that box has absolutely no online capability, on purpose.

[Tracy in Cary @ Jan 25th 2007 11:22AM]

Did you actually mean to say 'RAID 0' ? I hope you realize that RAID 0 is not RAID. By writing it, it makes it look like you just wanted to cram as many geek words into your machine description as you could.

I too know people running win98 on some machines. They feel they are "under the radar" when it comes to viruses and trojans because they're so old. (Same logic that saved BSG during the attack.)

Also I do miss Carmageddon and wish somebody would make a new high-res version of the game.

[Christian Martin @ Jan 25th 2007 3:13PM]

Oof, where'd I get those scores?! Ignore the numbers; I don't know what figures I was looking at...

[ck @ Jan 25th 2007 4:13AM]

No way - I'm avoiding Vista like the plague. There's way too much DRM, broken stuff and just generally crap implementation of stupid ideas in there to even consider it. I'm switching to OSX, although Ubuntu with Beryl is looking mighty shiny...

[Uranium @ Jan 25th 2007 5:33AM]

Despite all the comments against it I installed Vista x64 and it seems to be an excellent OS so far. The only minor issues I've encountered are slightly buggy opengl support and the lack of a compatible bluetooth stack which supports A2DP (Bluetooth Stereo Audio). Other than that, Vista seems to be an excellent OS which shows some promise for Microsoft. I never liked XP very much and until recently I was a die hard Windows 2000 fan, mainly due to the solid stability of Win2k.

[Hammer @ Jan 25th 2007 7:39AM]

I think that what will hurt MS sales of Vista most is that the economy isn't booming. People don't have the money to spend on new hardware, let alone a new OS. If it ain't broke.......... I'm gonna feed my family this week!
I have a new core duo machine that comes with a free "upgrade". Vista is supposedly optimized for dual core. At least compared to XP I will dual boot for awhile and check it out. I waited it out for 95, 89 and XP but will more than likely migrate sooner to Vista if it appears that the OS and my prime Apps are stable.

[Mark @ Jan 25th 2007 7:53AM]

On my first new PC, I have WinXP Home Edition and the trauma of how often it would lock up and plain just not work is still searingly fresh in my brain. So hell yes I'm going to keep using WinXP for as long as I can because finally it works. You think I want to inherit a new batch of issues from a new OS because I need a new hobby?

[Christian Martin @ Jan 25th 2007 1:06PM]

Actually, I meant 0+1 if I can swing it but that's neither here nor there. Since the generally-accepted and most recognized term (among consumers anyway) for drive striping is RAID 0, and that's the terminology used by the motherboard manufacturer in question.

I see your point, though, and I understand the difference. I realize that it's by definition not a true RAID setup; on that point I agree. If you and I were having a conversation I would simply say "striping" or something, but if Joe Schmo decides to go look up what motherboards support RAID 0 to see wtf it is they'll probably have better luck.

I shake my head in dismay at the "this machine's too old to get viruses" attitude. It makes no sense. This is why there is no way in hell I'm exposing my 98 box to even inside traffic. Go pop culture for reinforcing asinine thinking.

Carmageddon 3 runs on XP; however, I don't find it nearly as enjoyable.

[hello @ Jan 25th 2007 12:00PM]

nice control alt delete "keyboard". Where can i get one?

[Christian Martin @ Jan 25th 2007 2:00PM]

Oops. Forgot to finish a sentence there...

[Chris @ Jan 26th 2007 12:59AM]

first, why use IE?

second, new.google.com doens't exist.

lastly, if you aren't playing games, and I'd guess you aren't doing video editing and DVD authoring on win98 on

[Chris @ Jan 26th 2007 12:49AM]

at home I'm all linux now, even the wife and kids pc's, except the laptop still dual boots XP for the rare windows only task (it defaults to boot to linux).

however, at work i still have about 20 Win2k pc's and they do every bit as well as the XP ones I have. Not only that, I also have about 15 win9x PC's running a custom web broswer ("embeded" IE control in a VB app) locked down with policy files and working hard as kiosks for the intranet, on P166 and P200's no less. eventualy these will be replaced with diskless linux systems but they do the task just fine as is. security? private lan with no internet access and locked cases on the kiosks, and users can't even browse the HD so forget about running unautorized apps. last worm/virus on the whole lan was almost 2 years ago. security isn't about what OS's are on your lan, it's how you manage them. Oh, almost forgot the 2 DOS 6.22 pc's as well, one a 386, and neither can be upgraded due to software from companies that are out of buisness and no drop in replacements are available. you wanna spend $200,000 plus user training just to get rid of a 386 that works? yeah me neither.

MS can keep vista for a while, I'll wait till I can't get a windows pc without it or my boss says we need an app that requires it.

[h. mcgullen @ Jan 27th 2007 2:12PM]

I guess from previous comments we can clearly perceive how "unbiased" and "impartial" MAC users can be.

Microsoft gave away 250 license keys of Vista Business several weeks ago in my college and I was luckily enough to get one. So far I am very satisfied with it.

About mac "I-am-an-obese-bill-gates-looking-pc and I-am-a-savvy-mac" commercials:

What irritates me the most is that Apple sometime lies in the ad campaign.

Examples:

1. In-built camera is a defining feature MAC(iSight) and PCs need to attach an external one. Well...as far as I know In-built camera is hardly a MAC idea. Sony has that ages ago.

2. My roomate uses a MAC. And his MAC does crash sometime (Last time it was because of FinalCut)

[tbone @ Apr 3rd 2007 3:46PM]

HA! no DRM-infested OS on my machines...I'll live with Linux before I submit to the shackles of Vista.