How-to get Windows XP past the June 30th cutoff (or not)

While it looked like Mac users couldn't wait to get their hands on the latest version of Apple's operating system, their Windows counterparts seem to have been a little more reticent about picking up Microsoft's oft-delayed Vista upgrade -- so much so that Redmond decided to both extend XP's shelf life by six months as well as offer an unprecedented "downgrade" service on select SKUs. Well with the June 30th cutoff fast approaching, PC World decided to take a look at your options for procuring an XP license after that date, but unfortunately, the picture isn't too pretty. Basically, personal users looking to purchase less than 25 licenses but not a new machine have almost no recourse; your only surefire move is to buy a new box pre-installed with Vista Business or Ultimate from an OEM opting to continue with that downgrade service. Still, caveat emptor: support for consumer versions of XP ends on April 14, 2009, and with it, the end of your Patch Tuesday celebrations.

[jakem @ Jan 29th 2008 9:35AM]

Yet more unbiased Windows posts from Engadget. How lucky we all are to have you guys looking out for our best interests.

Remind me, how happy are all those Leopard early-adopters?

[Alee @ Jan 29th 2008 9:39AM]

What the hell is this? You guys are ridiculous. No jounalistic integrity. Apple fanboys.

[noimjosh @ Jan 29th 2008 9:42AM]

I cannot comment on the Leopard adopters, but I can comment on always wanting to have Microsoft's latest and greatest - until Vista (and never-you-mind the whole ME flop). I used it for a solid three months before its quirks and annoyances got the best of me, and I down(up?)graded to XP...

[Nick Catalano @ Jan 29th 2008 9:43AM]

I haven't had any problems with Leopard... Nor Vista for that matter... but I would get XP at the moment for any machine that wasn't mine

[Kizorblade @ Jan 29th 2008 9:45AM]

Leopard is running fine, and everything is running well.

And go somewhere else if you want an unbiased news source. Mkay?

[Evan Blass @ Jan 29th 2008 9:52AM]

I "hate" Windows so much that I'm currently using Vista, XP, and Mobile 6 devices -- and no Apple products, though I've owned quite a few in the past.

-Evan

[Jeremy @ Jan 29th 2008 10:03AM]

Doing great! love it. what? were there issues? i must have missed them. Now Vista on the other hand, is a different story. Starting running that a week before consumer release, and thought how cool it would be. Well, i've stuck with it til now, but finally have decided to go back to XP. Its too bloated, has too many issues in games, cad, file transfers, etc. for me. I'm hoping maybe SP1 and giving it a little bit more time to mature before I load it back up will make it usable.

[tadghostal @ Jan 29th 2008 10:26AM]

to quote: While it looked like Mac users couldn't wait to get their hands on the latest version of Apple's operating system, their Windows counterparts seem to have been a little more reticent about picking up Microsoft's oft-delayed Vista upgrade...

Considering both Vista and Leopard have problems, the above statement doesn't mean Apple is better, it just means that Apple users are more gullible.

You might wanna think about what you're fanboying about before you do it, otherwise folks might not understand you, what with your foot in your mouth and all.

[Steffen Jobbs @ Jan 29th 2008 10:28AM]

You think Engadget people are just making this stuff up. I've seen other articles that many users are going to wait until Windows 7 to upgrade. Just remember Windows ME. That didn't go over well at all. Sure Leopard has it's problems, but all those IT users are concerned about upgrading to Vista for legacy reasons and they're having second thoughts about spending time and money for not much of a gain. Many places are concerned about having to upgrade computers to run Vista. If this country is going into a recession, then many businesses need to cut back.

I've used Vista Ultimate and I just didn't care for the way it ate up system resources. Other than that it was fine. However, Windows XP Pro is still really useful to me and probably to many businesses so why bother to upgrade.

Why jump on Engadget as being Apple fanboys when you can find this information on any number of sites. Check sites that cover IT and you'll see that they're holding back on using Vista.

Skip Vista and go to Windows 7 when available.

[Yours Smugly @ Jan 29th 2008 10:34AM]

I'm an early adopter of Leopard, and very happy. Have had no problems, nada, zilch. Remember that those who don't have any problems aren't nearly as noisy as those who do, although I do think that Leopard wasn't complete when it was released. The imminent 10.5.2 update (which is a Windows Service Pack grade hayuuuge fix) seems to add the finishing polish to Leopard.

I have also used Vista. For the most part it's an abomination. And having used Win XP for several years I find it superior to Vista, visual aspects excluded.

[nd @ Jan 29th 2008 10:40AM]

I'm a Vista Home Premium and Leopard early adopter. Actually, I went Vista and was very frustrated by it so I shelved a screamin fast laptop and bought a copy of Leopard for my MacBook. I literally have had no issues with Leopard (not sayng they don't exist, I just don't have them?). With recent updates, my Vista machine is much better, but now I'm completely hooked on my MacBook and I don't tough the PC except for a little web browsing.

I'm really not a fanboy either way, but I think the moral of the story is this: my Leopard upgrade experience was great, Vista not so much and now I'm hooked and my next computer will surely be another mac.

[John Doe. @ Jan 29th 2008 11:44PM]

On Vista: use sp1... Night & day.
On XP support... Good luck discontinuing that MS.
On Leopard. . .worst Apple OS since the launch of Tiger. I haven't sworn this much with an OS since win 9x. WIFI sacks my right ass cheek. Enough that I nuked OSX off the system and have been running vista /w Sp1 since Dec 20th.

[midiwall @ Jan 29th 2008 10:53AM]

@jakem: "Yet more unbiased Windows posts from Engadget. How lucky we all are to have you guys looking out for our best interests."

Ummm, Engadget is a BLOG at it's core - authors are "allowed" to have opinions. And further, they may even differ from yours! heavens!

[Jason Blosser @ Jan 29th 2008 11:22AM]

We early Leopard adopters are happy as hell. No crashes. No talking back from Vista. Life is good.

[mrblack @ Jan 29th 2008 12:01PM]

What are you guys talking about!? I own a MBP as my primary lappy and a windows box as my home machine... I upgraded to Vista the day it came out, yet I still haven't upgraded to leopard.

In my opinion Vista and Tiger are the two best OS's out there, I don't know why anyone would want to up/down grade to anything else, and yet this review is claiming just the opposite??

[OneLove @ Jan 29th 2008 1:04PM]

windows 7 is vista!! soylent green is people!!

[Shiftlock @ Jan 29th 2008 1:16PM]

Steffen - Skipping Vista and waiting for Windows 7 isn't exactly an attractive option, considering XP support ends in April 2009 and Windows 7 is currently planned for a 2011 release. Two years without proper support/patches? That's just asking for trouble.

[RyanTV @ Jan 29th 2008 1:47PM]

My company has around 30,000 windows based computers... all but around 20 of them are running XP. A few of us in the IT department are using Vista to test how it works on our hardware and on our network environment, but honestly, we can't justify the switch.

You just don't get much of anything in return for the huge impact on performance going from XP to Vista.

On the other hand, i have installed and used 10.5.1 on several Macs that were a few years old and they all seemed to handle the OS without a huge hit on performance. Pretty impressive, unfortunately we dont have as many modern Mac machines.

[SIC TR4NSIT @ Jan 29th 2008 3:47PM]

Like, hate or indifferent... I think we all know that the wording of your article was un-called for.

[ZeroCorpse @ Jan 29th 2008 3:54PM]

I love Leopard. It's running great, and my system is quite stable. I get a lot done with Spaces and I actually like Stacks. Time Machine has saved my butt at least once. Notes and To Do in Mail have been very handy. I get a lot of use out of Leopard's new features. I'm really digging the ability to preview things in finder without having to open a program to do so.

I've only had one problem, and that is that DVD Player (the application, not the drive) has been finicky. I suspect a fix is coming, but I'm fine running other DVD playing software in the meantime. VLC or MPlayer are decent. It's a minor glitch compared to the benefits I've reaped in upgrading to Leopard (actually, my upgrade was free as I just bought a new Mac).

Oh, and Windows XP is running just as I'd expect it to in my Boot Camp partition. It's nothing special, but it sure looks a lot better now that I've installed flyakiteOSX to make it look like OS X. It still wants to do "security updates" every other day, though. Man, that's annoying.

[Mike10010100 @ Jan 29th 2008 4:42PM]

Did you know that it's physically impossible to get a completely unbiased account of anything?

It's true! The only way to have a COMPLETELY unbiased blog or news source is if the person writing it had no experience at all.

Just letting you guys know so that we can end this conversation once and for all.

Follow the read link and make your own judgments.

[mushrooshi @ Jan 29th 2008 6:22PM]

Vista is eye-candy, but it is spoiling my dinner, Mac OS X.

Really, though, I haven't adopted leopard yet, but I am very happy with Tiger. Its not that I don't like leopard. I would upgrade in a heartbeat if I got a copy. Its just that I would rather spend $130 on a DS, or a RAM upgrade. I don't have a huge need to switch.

Oh, and ever since Vista was released, pirating of XP doubled!

[eliot1785 @ Jan 31st 2008 10:00AM]

Engadget notes that Mainstream Support ends on April 14, 2009, and says that Patch Tuesday will end for XP at that time. However, in reality, Extended Support will continue for XP through 2014. Extended Support includes security patches.

See:
http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifepolicy
http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-us&x=15&y=10&p1=3223

I feel that this post by engadget may have therefore been misleading.

[kal326 @ Jan 29th 2008 9:40AM]

For better or worse M$ sure is making Vista cheap. OEM copies can be had for $50 for Home Basic to $150 for Ultimate. The drop to $50 for Basic is a recent change, Home Premium has been around $100 for a few months now.

Its not like Microsoft is trying to "push" Vista on you or anything. Now if only I could be another XP Pro for that price.

[roach @ Jan 29th 2008 2:03PM]

I been running 2 Vista license and happy, and looking for a third one license. Can you give me a link where I can get 50 dollar OEM license?

If you don't use Vista or used Vista without any upgrade or proper driver (try not doing this with original XP), then you have no business dissing Vista. Please don't pass bias secondary news. I tried Leopard at a local store, and didn't like it, but I have no business saying its a crap OS from my limited experience.

[magpulse @ Jan 29th 2008 3:55PM]

OEM Vista licenses are scary.. once they decide you made enough hardware changes to turn it in to a "new computer", your license is invalid. With retail Vista, you can move the license to any computer you want.

[kal326 @ Jan 29th 2008 3:55PM]

Microcenter has them on sale, it was in there latest add. Its stock# 804971. I could not find it on their website though. Website is www.microcenter.com
http://www.microcenter.com/specials/catalogs/broadsheet.html
Home Basic and Ultimate pricing is on Page 4

[m @ Jan 29th 2008 7:10PM]

how can you say they're not pushing us? it says right there that we won't be getting any security updates after june! i'd definitely call that a not-so-subtle push. it means they're leaving us wide-open to the russian mafia, the chinese hackers, and whoever else finds a new XP exploit. in fact, in some circles, they call it a protection racket. pay up or else.

[roach @ Jan 29th 2008 6:44PM]

I actually used OEM Vista on my old tablet PC and works fine. And I also used the same OEM disk to install on my gf's Asus laptop (I wanted to over write Chinese Vista version) using license key that came with laptop. During installation, Vista noticed LK (Chinese) and installation disk (English) are different, I had to call MS to give me access key. It was pretty easy.

[roach @ Jan 29th 2008 6:47PM]

Karl326
thanks for the link

[kal326 @ Jan 30th 2008 2:59PM]

@m
Evidently you missed the sarcasm. Microsoft is trying to push Vista and they are doing so by predatory pricing of Vista vs WinXP licensing. I was simply showing how if you wanted to pickup Vista how M$ was making it a lot cheaper then XP. Face it, WinXP is on its way out any way you look at it. If Microsoft wants to discount the new product to try to get it out in the market then so be it.

Also as far as the security update dropping out in June that is a big miss statement by Engadget as many people have already commented. Security related updates will be done out through some time in 2013 or so. Microsoft is just dropping phone in support for issues and other non security related fixes through autoupdate.

I work in IT for a midsized college and even we are not looking at transitioning to Vista within the year, mostly due to hardware constraints. But we are still looking into Vista because we have students with machines that run it that we need to help.

I run Win2k, WinXP, Vista, and OSX at my house. My main box I run Vista because of better driver support then 64bit WinXP. I use a lot of ram for VM boxes and testing.

[Derka @ Jan 29th 2008 9:44AM]

Support/Updates end April 14, 2009?

What the hell? They really expect the millions and millions of XP users around the world to all upgrade or replace their machines in order to use Vista otherwise they are on their own?

Even though some people may find it hard to believe, many users are perfectly happy with using an older computer with XP on it and do not have a need for anything more powerful.

Plus considering how horrible Vista is, only thing I can say is this is crap. Way to go Microsoft.

[makishima @ Jan 29th 2008 10:03AM]

And please tell me, what part of this means people cant use their old copy of XP? Are the Microsoft brute squad going to beat down their down, rip $50 out of their wallets and put Vista on their computer? Overreacting much?

[makishima @ Jan 29th 2008 10:13AM]

Sorry meant to say beat down their door. Its still early for me :P

[derka @ Jan 29th 2008 11:42AM]

I was talking about them ceasing to offer security updates you dumb shit.

[shawnmos @ Jan 29th 2008 12:10PM]

they will continue to release patched for XP for several more years. ending support just means tech support.

[matthew @ Jan 29th 2008 2:26PM]

does anyone know for how much longer they will process activations? i'm fine with support ending, what i'd like to know, definitively, if i'd still be able to activate new installs into the distant future...

[172pilot @ Feb 5th 2008 2:27PM]

@makishima:

Cool! $50 and they'll come install Vista for me?! That's the BEST migration plan I've had yet.. I can sell the heck out of that! ;-)

[Crass @ Jan 29th 2008 9:45AM]

Clarification... That's mainstream support ending in 2009. Critical security patches will continue until 2014. So Patch Tuesday celebrations for Windows XP will continue until 2014...

http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=3223

[jbs @ Jan 29th 2008 10:50AM]

imagine that... engadget getting something wrong (again)!
Love this site simply for the idiocy behind it.

[CosterMonger @ Jan 29th 2008 10:55AM]

good, someone corrected engadget

why I threw XP on my Brother's new compy {last Saturday} so he can enjoy games, now I have to restore his old compy with Linux {copy all the files off}

I tried Vista and I just don't like it {personal preference}.

[Kris @ Jan 29th 2008 9:45AM]

$100 more for prettier GUI? No thanks. I even use XP in classic mode. I'd rather have a fast, stable OS. I must say that XP is decent in those ways.

[Kunikos @ Jan 29th 2008 10:12AM]

Let me know how that works out for you when all games require DX10 in the next year or two.

[Kris @ Jan 29th 2008 10:22AM]

I don't really play computer games. I don't have time for k-rad online graphics games that you need to play in shifts with your partner in malaysia to be the best. No thanks. The last online game I played was Major Mud and even THEN it was good because I could just script and not play most of the time! I don't have time for such things. If I did have the time, I still wouldn't do it. Anyone who spends more than 2 hours per day playing online games has way different priorities than I do. I hardly even spend 2 waking hours home per weekday.

[CosterMonger @ Jan 29th 2008 5:02PM]

@Kunikos

don't you think developers are going to support the majority of computer users? a lot of gamers like XP for the tiny speed gain, because tiny speed gains cost hundreds of dollars.

when I see a game that lives up to all those rendered tech demos then I'll change my mind

[Silverfrog @ Jan 29th 2008 1:04PM]

If you have time to be surfing and posting things on Engadget comments, you have enough time to play a computer game. By the way, they just invented these cool things...called laptop computers. You can take your games with you!

[Kris Burbidge @ Jan 29th 2008 1:06PM]

The problem with games these days is you can't take 2 minutes out at work to play them unless they're called Minesweeper.

[Harry Wagstaff @ Jan 29th 2008 1:18PM]

Kunikos:
>Let me know how that works out for you when all games require DX10 in the next year or two.

Like Crysis, you mean?

[Josh* @ Jan 29th 2008 9:46AM]

HOMG U MENSHUN APLE EVERYWHERE I CANT ESCAPE

[Tangston @ Jan 29th 2008 9:53AM]

Man you're not texting someone. Use your keyboard properly.