Microsoft says XP is definitely dead in June, Dell says it'll keep installing it

Steve Ballmer kicked up a little dirt last week when he said that Microsoft could "wake up smarter" and keep selling XP after the June 30 cutoff date if customer feedback demanded it, but as you'd expect, the company is busily trying to "clarify" that statement by saying that while it always listens to customers, XP is definitely going to die on the 30th. Well, apart from the ultraportable exception that'll last until 2012 or so. And the backlog of licenses still in reseller's hands. Oh, and a little company called Dell, which, as rumored, is going to take advantage of a Vista licensing loophole that allows it to sell a copy of Vista but preload XP instead. Yep, that's the plan -- Dell's going to report a Vista sale to Microsoft, but deliver an XP box with Vista upgrade DVD to customers. (That sound you just heard was a million accountants sighing in appreciation.) The program will be available for Latitude, OptiPlex, Precision, Vostro, and XPS systems (some with a minor fee), and Dell says it'll keep going as long as Microsoft supports the "downgrade" license option, which could be forever. Looks like June 30 just got a lot less scary for XP fans, no?

Read - Microsoft clarification of Ballmer's comments
Read - Dell to keep selling XP

[Idlemind @ Apr 28th 2008 12:50PM]

I thought it was dead a few years ago....


>chuckle

[Johan S @ Apr 28th 2008 1:12PM]

I would like to second what Flashpoint said and go further slightly.

Dell should switch to Vista and quit selling any laptop with under 3GB of RAM.

By selling underperforming PCs dell is screwing over their brand and causing people to switch to Mac, since people who buy the underpowered PC think it's something inherent in PC/windows causing the performance issues (though that's prolly right too but it's mainly cause they bought an underpowered PC).

[Justin42 @ Apr 28th 2008 1:28PM]

@Johan S: Dell sells what the customers are demanding. Customers are demanding XP boxes. If Dell doesn't provide it then some other business will. If you WANT a Vista desktop/laptop then Dell will sell you one of those too.

[Johan S @ Apr 28th 2008 1:49PM]

@Justin42

Right, and I'm saying they shouldn't bother selling to them, because it hurts the brand and the company in the long run. People *think* they would be OK with a low end Vista or even XP machine but after a while it gets so annoying and they switch to Mac. Even Asus has realized this and that is why they want to spin off the Eee PC division (which btw, is a great laptop -- it doesn't hide the fact that it's budget).

Apple has a good brand because they only sell quality products.

There are some peopole who would buy a $20K car from Ferrari, but Ferrari would never make one.

[dramamoose @ Apr 28th 2008 2:14PM]

@Jonathan:

Thanks. I mean, you're obviously a great source. I assume you have a business degree, right? And you have some sort of influence within Dell? Then go ahead an use it. For now, though, here are the facts.
1. Dell is a company, and will therefore sell what people want to buy.
2. XP machines still make sense for a lot of people. For example, myself. I need a machine that won't bog me down with 'features', play system-intensive games, and let me do word processing for work.
3. Vista machines are good for some people, and Dell recommends using at least 2 gigs of ram in a Vista config.

PS. How does dell selling underpowered computers negatively affect any of us?

[dramamoose @ Apr 28th 2008 2:15PM]

Sorry. Make that @Johan S

[Mobile Phone Diva @ Apr 29th 2008 1:34AM]

It would have been if Vista was really worth the hype and upgrade. But XP apparently runs better for quite a lot of people. I would like to upgrade but not to a slower OS. That's not an upgrade to me. XP is indeed really old by software standards, but who wants a slower OS, even if it is newer and prettier?

[Johan S @ Apr 29th 2008 3:16AM]

@dramamoose

People who own Dell stock or mutual funds/401k plans that own Dell stock are affected. And people who have an interest in Microsoft doing well long term.

Furthermore if the PC industry stagnates or suffers everyone is affected by lack of competition and other economic stuff.

[Kip HT @ Apr 28th 2008 12:52PM]

[...but deliver an XP box with Vista upgrade DVD...]

Sneaky bastards! :D

Really, if you are buying new hardware, there is very little holding you back from Vista. Yes, there is a learning curve, but you get that with every OS.

When XP came out, people were complaining just the same.

[Backwards People @ Apr 28th 2008 2:08PM]

One problem with your argument: Vista is bloated. If I bought a brand new, ultra-fast PC today, I would not want to waste time waiting for it to boot up with Vista. I would want the performance of XP.

If I wanted a fancy OS, I could install WindowBlinds. Vista is not Green. Get over it. Vista is the Windows ME of our times. If you want an unmodified version of Vista, XP fits perfectly.

I know the underlying OS for Vista is quite similar to XP. There's no reason to upgrade. You have 2 months to buy a 'real OS' and not the Vista problem.

[Jeff @ Apr 28th 2008 2:13PM]

i have to agree with "Backwards People" (above comment)

Vista is the WindowsME of this generation.

[lizaoreo @ Apr 28th 2008 2:35PM]

I'd have to disagree with Backwards People, I have 3 computers running vista that I use regularly (one at work, my personal desktop, and my tablet). Of the three, my home desktop works great, fast to boot, fast to go down, I don't know what your issue is there. I have apps start up and everything with no issues, it's no slower/faster than my XP load was. My tablet is underpowered and does suffer some, though I'm soon to reload Vista without the Toshiba bloat on it. My desktop at work is so-so, but that's mostly to do with some domain issues that also effect XP machines.

So my experience is that if you have what you need to run it, it runs fine, note that my desktop at home isn't anything special, 2gigs of RAM and a slower proc, non-core2.

[Kris @ Apr 28th 2008 2:36PM]

@Backwards People: Actually, Vista is a lot less bloated than you think. Many core components that were bloated in XP were re-written to be much more flexible so in many ways, Vista has lost quite a bit of bloat when compared to XP..The problem, however, is that Vista has new capabilities that will obviously take more CPU and GPU power.

To be honest, I did several benchmarking tests and Vista performed mostly on par with XP. When I disabled some of its advanced features I didn't notice any performance differences.

I think the whole "Vista is the new Windows ME" is just a bunch of FUD. I've used it on many machines, newer and older hardware, and it operates just as fast and has been much more stable than XP has been for me (which would make since because Vista has its drivers in User mode rather than Kernel mode).

[John @ Apr 28th 2008 2:53PM]

Vista runs fine on my 2.2gHz dual core tablet with 2 gigs of RAM. With all my normal apps running (AIM, FFox, iTunes, PuTTY), my RAM use hovers around 50%, going up slowly thanks to Firefox, and both cores around 40%, down to 15-25 or so if I turn off iTunes. I haven't had a single crash yet, or any reason to go back to XP.

[johnzilla @ Apr 28th 2008 4:15PM]

Very little holding me back from Vista? I guess you forgot about the real cost of Vista content protection, and the invasion of privacy and trying to control my desktop:

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

[Ayrkain @ Apr 28th 2008 8:04PM]

I seriously dislike MS in certain arenas, but that Gutmann article is bunk.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=673

[Kip HT @ Apr 29th 2008 8:06AM]

Have a read of this: http://digg.com/tech_news/Remembering_Windows_XP_s_early_days_2

Everyone hated XP when it came out.

[TheAssailant6661 @ Apr 30th 2008 3:27PM]

@ Kip, lizaoreo, & John: Word.

[Flashpoint @ Apr 28th 2008 12:53PM]

getting Windows VISTA to work on most older - or low spec computers is like trying to run Crysis.

I've never had trouble running VISTA on newer laptops or desktops - problem is, the majority of its detractors tried to upgrade older Pentium 4's and Celerons.

Get yourself a Dual Core CPU with 3GB ~ 4GB of RAM and your Vista problems disappear.

[Matthew Fleigle @ Apr 28th 2008 12:56PM]

My thoughts exactly

[fanman @ Apr 28th 2008 1:00PM]

You win.

[Rob @ Apr 28th 2008 1:20PM]

I'm typing this on a five year old Dell Dimension 8200, running P4 2.2GHz, 1 GB ram and an NVidia Ti4200, with Vista Home Premium 32bit.

Is it slow? Somewhat but not noticeably slower than XP. In fact applications generally launch much faster in Vista.

It's been great. The only issue is sometimes I lose sound when woken up from Sleep mode but that's only because Creative, god bless them, decided not to release a SB Live driver for vista, so instead I'm using the XP drivers.

If Vista is running this well on this POS, then I can only imagine how good it is on new hardware.

[jisilva @ Apr 28th 2008 3:39PM]

I've been running Vista on a P4 3.0GHZ - 2GB RAM since the RC1 release with no problems or performance issues. I don't see what the deal is here.

[Mike P @ Apr 28th 2008 1:46PM]

This whole "just buy a faster machine" argument is the root of the problem. Moore's Law has been absolutely devastating to the quality of software written today. Rather than focus on optimization on existing hardware, programmers simply upgrade to faster machines and raise the minimum specs.

Frankly, most business users need very little when it comes to computing power. Email, word processing, spreadsheet, and a browser would be enough for the majority of business users out there.

We used to be able to do all of those things on P133 systems with 16MB of RAM. The absolute laziness of software development these days disgusts me. How can I have a machine that is 20 times faster than the machines a decade ago, but it still takes 2-3 minutes to reboot or 15-20 seconds to open a browser window?

I suppose if f you're a home user with a single machine, it's no big deal to buy a new machine every couple of years. But if you're a company, even a small company with 8-10 employees, it's a much bigger proposition.

Why should I trash "old" hardware if it's currently meeting my needs and the needs of my employees? I need a compelling reason to upgrade. XP offered superior network integration and security for business users (though I would argure that Windows 2000 Professional was just as good). The only thing Vista brings to the table is a "prettier" visual interface (and the need for much faster hardware and incompatibility for lots of older printers and other peripherals), which I (nor my employees) need for my business.

Thankfully it sounds like the "low-end" version of XP will be around until at least 2012, which means there will still be support patches for XP for at least 4 years. Perhaps by then there will be some compelling reasons to upgrade to a new OS, but for the foreseeable future, there's just no reason I can see to even think about "upgrading".

[Zak @ Apr 28th 2008 1:46PM]

I run Vista 64 on an 8-core 2.8 GHz machine with 10 GB RAM, and it runs fine. The problems start when people run Vista on underpowered machines. Vista isn't perfect obviously, but it's not as bad as people like to think it is. The combination of more and more powerful machines becoming available all the time and SP updates for Vista will pretty much eliminate a lot of the issues people have with it.

That being said, I still think it's stupid for MS to stop selling XP entirely. I just don't see Vista as being as horrible as people make it out to be either.

[Craig B. @ Apr 28th 2008 2:32PM]

...and two extra steps if you got Vista pre-loaded from Lenovo:
1. Format the HD
2. Re-install Vista

*Then* Vista works properly.

[Matt @ Apr 28th 2008 4:33PM]

Mike P: You shouldn't trash your old hardware, nobody is making you upgrade to Vista. The problem is people are trying to upgrade their old hardware to Vista and are having troubles, then they go screaming to high heavens that Vista sucks, and then everyone starts to believe that, and then everyone wants XP on their new computers even though Vista will work beautifully on it.

[johnzilla @ Apr 28th 2008 4:17PM]

"Oh, you want the software to run well? Just buy lots and lots of new hardware!"

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Not.

[Matt @ Apr 28th 2008 4:46PM]

Craig: Those steps apply for any version of Windows.

[Mobile Phone Diva @ Apr 29th 2008 2:08AM]

One problem is many manufacturers don't inform people they need specs like these to run Vista. Nor do they provide them, at least not in the price ranges they keep advertising to the general public. You get Vista on a machine underpowered for it, for the most part. I partly agree with the poster above, Dell and all other manufacturers need to quit selling so many underpowered machines.

Of course that means we may have to pay more and that could be one reason for all these underpowered Vista machines. Most don't WANT to pay more. To keep the costs down, they probably have to sell underpowered machines. The recommended specs for Vista are actually what used to be recommended for gaming systems, and those can get expensive.

[Mobile Phone Diva @ Apr 29th 2008 2:28AM]

I have to ask one thing of those recommending a souped up system. Since Vista needs so much power to run, can you really consider that a GOOD thing? I'm not so sure about that. It seems like that would mean it's a resource hog to me.

At the people running Vista on 1GB and say it's fine, are you running anti-virus and a firewall too?

[dan2600 @ Apr 28th 2008 12:53PM]

Its the windows 98 to ME switch all over again.



ahhh memories.


How is apple keeping the problems with 10.5 and the new quick time so quiet?? M$ needs to hire apple's media relations guy

[dan2600 @ Apr 28th 2008 12:56PM]

ahh scratch that, its the 98 to XP switch all over again, cuz Vista isn't that bad.


XP had ALL of these same issues as Vista, and people were just as hesitant to switch, you can deny it all you want, but thats how it went down.

Microsoft is actually handling the Vista issues MUCH better then the issues with XP.

[Allan @ Apr 28th 2008 1:29PM]

Because of the market share...a LOT more people upgraded to vista than you find mac users upgrading to leopard. In fact, you can probably find that even with a very low percentage of people disliking vista, the actual number is probably higher than mac users.

[toxicpiano @ Apr 28th 2008 1:44PM]

Problems? I haven't had any. I've had vista since the day it came out and have had no problems with that as well.

[VineGuy @ Apr 28th 2008 12:54PM]

This downgraded sales option allows the dilusion to continue. MS gets to report a huge adoption rate because those will be recorded as Vista users.

I work for an entity with 16000 employees, and we have no plans to move to Vista.

[iambored8907 @ Apr 28th 2008 12:54PM]

I dont understand why people are so hesitant to go to Vista. I have been using it for the past year, and I think it is a lot better than XP. It was a bit troublesome the first couple of months since it was a new operating system and programs had not been properly upgraded. I dont recall there being 100% compatiblity with previous windows programs when XP came out, and it took Developers awhile to get used to it. Dell just seems like a little baby pouting about the successor.

[Craig @ Apr 28th 2008 1:20PM]

Because a lot of people still (need to or want to) use hardware or software that is either incapable of supporting Vista or such that Vista would make for an awful experience.

[friendlyner @ Apr 28th 2008 1:36PM]

Because, in my case, what does a legal secretary who is creating documents, adding calendar entries, and emailing people need with Vista?

I know, I know....she should have a dual core box with 3GB of ram, right?

The question is why do they need a dual-core 3GB word processor?

Vista just doesn't make sense for most businesses at this point.

[happy_penguin @ Apr 28th 2008 2:32PM]

Because most of us are perfectly happy with our XP setups and we aren't interested in upgrading yet when there is no advantage to us. The requirements for Vista are far and above what my machine is capable of yet my machine runs very well so I don't need to waste money on new hardware.

The company I work for (huge corporation) just upgraded to XP from 2000 in 06/07. It will probably cost them billions to do this all over again and there is zero benefit.

[Ty @ Apr 28th 2008 6:15PM]

Maybe the secretary should run DOS.

[webon @ Apr 28th 2008 12:55PM]

XP FOREVA!


...k maybe not foreva,Foreva but for a looong time

[Jeff @ Apr 28th 2008 2:17PM]

fo eva eva?

[mahmud @ Apr 28th 2008 2:47PM]

for eva never seems that long until you're grown.

[Duffin @ Apr 28th 2008 12:56PM]

I completely understand that if Microsoft wants to make more money (as any respectable business wants to do), getting rid of XP is key because it will force people to buy the more expensive software that will likely require them to buy new PCs since what XP could run on, Vista can not. However, I think this is a bad move on Microsoft's part due to the fact that Windows 7 is set to come out within a few years. I don't see the point in ending the sale of XP and making everyone buy Vista at least until 7 comes out. What is their rush? There are obviously lots of people who want to still buy XP. You can look in any PC forum and find a ratio of 10 to 1 against using Vista (except maybe a Vista-lovers forum). So, unless they aren't looking, there's no way they have missed how many people want to keep using XP until at least Windows 7 comes out to see what they've done.

[dan2600 @ Apr 28th 2008 12:58PM]

Dude...every company does this

the new iPods don't support OSX 10.3 and most new apple software doesn't either, its only a matter of time before 10.4 support ends as well

welcome to capitalism

[Jon @ Apr 28th 2008 12:57PM]

Kill it .. Then they will have to move on SP2

[Steve @ Apr 28th 2008 12:57PM]

Vista works fine on any PC that can handle . The problem is people want to use out of date PC's to run brand new software. I have had Vista since release date no issues yet!

[Jeff @ Apr 28th 2008 2:23PM]

the problem is that people still want to BUY brand-new, out of date computers.

Dell is talking about XP on NEW machines (that have what you'd call "outdated" components) because they need to sell millions of crappy $450 boxes.

The idea that a good, modern, new computer can be had for $450 is the problem here. (and here Apple has a leg-up, they ONLY sell machines they believe to be capable and this-generation, and while that makes people think Apple is expensive, it's actually a much more modern concept.)

Dell can't really just stop producing outdated low-end crap, that's basically their market, but they also don't want to ship hardware that can't run the software that's preinstalled (Vista) ...so they're in a bit of a conundrum.

[ZeroCorpse @ Apr 28th 2008 3:37PM]

That's why I stopped using (and building) PCs. The very idea that you have to upgrade every year is ridiculous. We have a CRT iMac from the late 1990s that runs OS X Tiger and manages to handle Photoshop and most Universal programs just fine. It may be a little slower, but the person who uses it stands by it and won't upgrade because it's still doing the job without a hitch, crash, or problem.

I have no interest in Vista myself, because I run Windows in virtualization on a MacBook, and every benchmark I've seen says that XP runs great in Parallels or Fusion, but Vista drags horribly under the same conditions.

There's no reason to use Vista, anyway. I don't give a damn about DirectX 10. Why would I need it when I'm playing the newest, best games on my Xbox 360 (GTA IV tonight!) while "Games for Windows" consists of MMORPGs (which I hate), FPS games with lots of eye candy, and RTS games that are all basically rip-offs of Warcraft..? All those genres are represented on consoles. I'd argue that if you want an eye candy game like Crysis, then you're not playing it for gameplay (reviews were mediocre) but because you just want bragging rights for being able to get it to run on your rig.

There's not a single thing in Vista that makes me want it. I run XP in coherence mode, so it basically looks like OS X to me. I rarely use it, anyway, because most functions are better in OS X. I pull up IE to play Netflix movies, sometimes.

If you got Vista on your computer when you bought it, then it's obviously the best choice for you. Your computer is optimized for it. Most people, however, don't gain anything from using Vista, and in fact end up losing speed.

I'll go Vista when they sort it out a bit more and make it less sluggish. I already suffered at the user-end of Windows ME. I'm not making that sort of mistake again.