Yup, Xp was released to the masses 10 years ago on that date. It will be supported til 2014
My last two new laptops have been reburbished ones bought from overstock.com, because they have XP.
Michael, I honestly would say switch to Vista or 7...XP's days are numbered now. I expect to see less and less stuff to be written for it between late 2011 and 2014.
I used Vista briefly and didn't like it. And it was "brief" because the laptop crashed, although I suppose that's not the operating system's fault.
We still have XP at work as well.
Don't know what you mean by "stuff written for it."
Vista SP1 and SP2 really fixed the OS, and SP3 (win 7) tweaked it even more. I have had very little issues in regards to either of those two operating systems.
But the problem is, Xp is slowly becoming less and less supported, Some technology cannot be backported to XP with drivers for example. One problem is hard drives with 4k sector sizes. Xp cannot handle it.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2888 For example.
It's impressive that XP has remained viable for as long as it has. In fact, I'm typing this to you now on a older HP laptop running XP. Works fine.
That being said, XP days are numbered, and not just because Microsoft will stop supporting it in 2014. Modern software requires far more RAM, hard drive space, and processing power than XP is able to handle.
We are to the point now that software authors are creating new software that XP is unable to run, because the software relies on features not available in XP.
Once upon a time, 512MB of RAM was quite generous for a system running XP; that was plenty enough to multitask smoothly. Now 512MB is simply unusable even with just one program open, and XP running modern software really needs 2GB.
From a security standpoint, 64-bit Windows 7 is as secure as it gets in Windows. It's been designed with security in mind from the beginning, whereas XP had security measures added to it (for Service Pack 2) only after it was glaringly obvious how insecure it was. Even now, Microsoft is spending an inordinate amount of effort shoring up XP security holes compared to Vista or Windows 7.
Honestly, there's a bit of a learning curve going from XP to 7. Same deal with going from Office 2003 to Office 2010 - there are considerable changes that take a couple weeks to get used to. But Windows 7 is solid, reliable, and performs as well as XP on modern hardware.
It might've made sense to stick with XP when the alternative was Vista. It doesn't make sense now.
So, what will the average XP user looking at paying to upgrade to Win 7? I haven't really had a chance to sit down and price-compare all that yet, but it would be nice to see what $$$ is needed.
I have seen the death knell rung for XP before and it is still around, so I am not going to take this latest announcement seriously. I got a brand-new laptop a month ago (Asus G73SW-XA1 with Core i7 and 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium), but my old XP laptop still works fine and I still have plenty of stuff on it that I haven't ported to the new laptop because it is still difficult to find 64-bit versions of common software that will run under Windows 7 without qualification (no "*32" in Task Manager process listing, no need to use compatibility mode or XP Mode, etc.).
Some of Windows 7's usability improvements have been offset by pruning of backward compatibility, the defeaturing of the Windows Explorer file manager (for example, it no longer remembers selections when you change folders, and it won't preserve selections when you re-sort the file listing), and by misbehavior on the part of the application developers, such as withdrawing certain functionalities and making others hard to access. (Acrobat MDI versus SDI is a classic example, but there are many, many others. For example, I now have to use batch files to process TxDOT construction plans sets because the latest versions of WinZip break self-extracting archives.) Moreover, in some respects Windows 7 steps backward; for example, XP will clean up crashed applications without fuss 95% of the time while about one-third of the time, Windows 7 will attempt to close the program, fail, and leave the program icon and window on the screen but grayed out; also, it is much harder to force "details view" in Windows Explorer in 7 than in XP.
I still use the old laptop on a more or less daily basis as a movies and TV laptop. It is also the only laptop I currently own which has working copies of Photoshop (version 6, not supposed to be compatible with Windows 7), AutoCAD (2004 release, not supposed to be compatible with Windows 7), Microsoft Office Professional 2000 SR-1 (supposed to work under Windows 7 except for some issues with print drivers; successfully installed but then wouldn't run on my laptop), plus several viewing plugins which I use for highway construction plans, such as AutoDesk (needed for *.dwf files) and an Internet Explorer ActiveX plugin for Bentley Interplot (needed for *.dpr files, which was how Utah DOT published construction plan sheets before they finally saw the light and started using PDF instead). I do have full-version Acrobat (X) on the new Asus but I haven't even tried printing anything with the Distiller printer--first I need to check whether my job options files will transfer from Acrobat version 7 on the XP laptop (doubtful) and also what I need to do to force compatibility with PDF 1.4 and suppress raster image resampling. There isn't even a 64-bit version of Firefox on general release yet and I had to use compatibility mode to get the 32-bit version for Windows 7 to work on my laptop. Not having a working copy of Firefox was not an option because it is my preferred browser (by far) and has my saved passwords and ad- and Flash-blocking plugins.
The Aero "user experience" is kind of cute, but there is little that can be done in XP that is genuinely easier to do in 7 (fewer keystrokes or mouse clicks) and feature churn in applications has so far failed to expand the end user's ability to do anything useful. Although I now have effective email search with the latest version of Thunderbird, I have not realized anything like the gains in my ability to do things on the new Asus laptop that I did when I bought the XP laptop five years ago and transitioned from Windows 98 SE to XP. XP and the applications written for it are just too good.
I am happy with my new Asus laptop but frankly I got it to take care of problems with the old laptop which had nothing to do with the OS or applications. It had so little CPU power that I had to manipulate process priorities to maintain responsiveness, it had a cold-cathode screen backlight which had already failed once and is headed for another replacement (the new laptop has a LED backlight, which should be more durable), and with only a 100-GB hard disk with 50-GB data partition, data churn was starting to reach unacceptable levels.
I use 7 exclusively now at home as of 10/19/2011 when I replaced my dying Vista laptop that lasted *gasp* about three years. I still use XP on my work computers - one of them carrying Office 2003, the other Office 2007 (I have 07 at home). I just got the notification for one being replaced with a new one that - If I don't use certain programs - will have Win 7. The other was replaced a year ago - so that one will be a Win 7 when it's replaced as well. Though I will be getting Office 2010 on it by the end of the 1st Q of 2012.
I got a then-state-of-the-art laptop with XP in early. 2005, and used it all the way until 2010 when I got a new laptop with 7. The XP laptop had a couple of major crashes but nothing like Vista, which I'm glad I skipped entirely. The main reason I got the new one was that space on the old one was severely limited, even with putting older files on external drives. Even now, the space on my newer laptop seems insignificant to new ones today (slightly off-topic, yes, but I wanted to point out it wasn't XP vs. 7 that got me to switch. In fact, I now have a netbook that runs XP)
When I was shopping for a new laptop back in September, I looked at hard-disk sizes and realized that it is pretty easy to go up to 1.5 TB on a new laptop without breaking into a sweat, and all the way up to 2 TB with a bit of effort. In the end I picked a laptop with 750 GB.
I estimate that I produce about 1.5-2 GB worth of data each day that requires archiving (my last external USB disk had 1 TB and took 18 months to fill). This means that I need somewhere between 45 and 60 GB of "float" space in one hard drive partition in order not to be forced to archive data to DVD and external disk more frequently than once a month. I also have about 25 GB worth of sign design sheets which I like to keep permanently available on my local HD, and about 10 GB worth of "working" files (mainly bid listings as well as the cyber equivalent of a junk drawer), plus up to 50 GB worth of files being prepared for archiving, so anything beyond about 150 GB in a single partition is gravy. Since I have 394 GB in the data partition on the Asus, the constraint on what I can keep in it is not local disk space so much as free disk space for backups on a 1-TB external ultraportable which also has to back up ~60 GB on the old laptop and a separate 500-GB external ultraportable which I use mainly for movies, articles, and my research document archive.
I settled for far less than I could have gotten in terms of HD space largely because I wanted to increase the speed while still buying off the rack. The default spin speed for laptop HDs is 5400 RPM, with 7200 RPM also being available but significantly harder to find in sizes of 1 TB and up. On the old laptop CPU speed was the main constraint on my CPU hogs, but I sensed that disk speed was a significant factor whenever the files being worked on were large. 750 GB with 7200 RPM was pretty much the largest HD I could find without custom-ordering and also without accepting compromises in terms of screen quality and CPU speed.
My first priority after I got the new Asus was moving the CPU hogs over from the old laptop. I still haven't gotten any of them to break through 45% CPU usage (on the old laptop they routinely went up to 100%, which meant that if I wanted the system to remain responsive, I had to set them to launch at lower-than-normal priority--start /wait /belownormal and all that). I think the main performance constraint is now disk speed rather than CPU speed or memory.
I refuse to use newer Windows until the interface for Windows is improved. Vista and 7 are too Mac-like for me to handle. (I 99.9% of the time use XPs. My college until recently had 95s, 98s, 2000s and MEs running around. Most of the campus is XP, some Vistas. No 7s.
Adam, It isn't going to get any better.
I get arguments from friends when I say this, but I wish XP had never been superceded. I just don't like Vista and 7. I can't really put my finger on why; maybe it's what Roadgeek Adam said.
I use XP on an older computer and Vista on my newer one, and will soon have to get used to 7 at work. My reason for disliking Vista is that I can't get older games to even start on it, even in the various compatibility modes, but they run just fine on XP (which is a problem because the newer computer can better handle games than the older one). Given that there are few new PC games that interest me these days, I will try and keep the older XP computer running as long as possible.
I use 7 and XP fairly interchangeably (probably 60/40 in favor of 7), and honestly except in really technical circumstances (like trying to start old games!) I can't really even tell the difference anymore.
I remember seeing talk somewhere on a Microsoft website of restoring much-liked Windows XP features "when the architecture and security model permit"--both the premise and its qualification are very telling about how Windows 7 compares with XP.
I don't think, though, that Windows 7 is like Macworld. Yes, the desktop is broken out as a separate entity in both versions of the task switcher, single-document interfaces are the norm rather than the exception (though Firefox manages to hold on to a multiple-tab interface), and directory navigation in the Windows Explorer file chooser and in file save/open dialog boxes has been made more Mac-like, but it is still recognizable as Windows and nearly all of the standard keystroke shortcuts and "tricks" for selecting items still work.
Many of the annoyances people associate with Windows 7, such as one document per window and no window reuse, have as much to do with cross-platform application development as they do with Microsoft's efforts to influence application look and feel for Windows 7. For example, Adobe claims the reason it introduced the single-document interface as an option for Acrobat in version 8, and made it the default and only option in version 9, was to have Acrobat work exactly the same way for Windows and Macs so that features could be developed in a common stream for both OSes with savings in development and testing. (Of course, Adobe's CEO has to be paid . . .)
There's no reason not to use XP in a virtual machine or on a separate computer for tasks that you can't do in Windows 7. Given it's long lifespan and the numerous ways to use it, it'll live on long past 2014, particularly for things like gaming that won't require internet access.
Quote from: txstateends on October 23, 2011, 03:30:07 PM
So, what will the average XP user looking at paying to upgrade to Win 7? I haven't really had a chance to sit down and price-compare all that yet, but it would be nice to see what $$$ is needed.
Assuming said person has a computer that has driver support for Windows 7, you can get a OEM or upgrade copy for around $100 from a number of online vendors. Frankly, you're probably better off getting a new computer with the new OS.
Quote from: Roadgeek Adam on October 23, 2011, 04:46:05 PM
I refuse to use newer Windows until the interface for Windows is improved. Vista and 7 are too Mac-like for me to handle. (I 99.9% of the time use XPs. My college until recently had 95s, 98s, 2000s and MEs running around. Most of the campus is XP, some Vistas. No 7s.
Then you are just going to hate Windows 8. ;)
At work, where we image and deploy workstations for many Fortune 500 clients and small-medium businesses, we still do quite a bit of XP imaging. One client made a big investment in Vista and is using it on all their systems. Most are starting to move to 7 - pretty much forced by the lack of XP driver support on newer systems.
Those that still need XP for old program compatibility reasons use either the "Windows XP Mode" in Win7 - which is just a virtual machine - or use something like VirtualBox (free) or VMware (not free) - a modern Win7 desktop with 4GB of RAM will run a 1GB XP virtual machine quite easily.
I've got Win7 running on some pretty old hardware - it's not happy doing it, and really you want 2GB minimum RAM to keep it happy even if you turn off all the "Fisher-Price" interface stuff. But it works.
Point is I can't do anything on a 7. The interface is way too confusing.
Quote from: J N Winkler on October 23, 2011, 03:35:30 PM
There isn't even a 64-bit version of Firefox on general release yet and I had to use compatibility mode to get the 32-bit version for Windows 7 to work on my laptop. Not having a working copy of Firefox was not an option because it is my preferred browser (by far) and has my saved passwords and ad- and Flash-blocking plugins.
I'm running FF8 Beta with no problems on my W7 x64 system with no need to use the compatibility mode. Don't know why you're having such a problem getting it to run on your system.
Quote from: Roadgeek Adam on October 23, 2011, 11:34:06 PM
Point is I can't do anything on a 7. The interface is way too confusing.
Confusing? Man, I mastered 7 in less than a week. Of course, it did help that I did test the W7 Beta before it came out officially, but I didn't use it that much during that Beta period.
Virginia Commonwealth University used Windows XP on a majority of its machines from late 2003 through early this year. It has finally begun upgrading all upgradable computers to Windows 7, and replacing those that can't run Windows 7 with newer ones. Before XP, it used Windows 2000 and Windows Me (yes...) for a while after Windows XP came out.
Quote from: rickmastfan67 on October 23, 2011, 11:36:57 PMI'm running FF8 Beta with no problems on my W7 x64 system with no need to use the compatibility mode. Don't know why you're having such a problem getting it to run on your system.
I haven't even tried to run it--right now I'm running Firefox 7.0.1 (32-bit). It is what I was offered when I navigated to the "Download Firefox" page soon after I got the new laptop running. I did know that Firefox 8 (64-bit) is under development and had already reached the beta phase at that point, but Google turns up a lot of palaver about "get it from the Nightly site" and "won't interfere with your stable install," all of which sounds a bit too close to the bleeding edge for my taste.
QuoteConfusing? Man, I mastered 7 in less than a week. Of course, it did help that I did test the W7 Beta before it came out officially, but I didn't use it that much during that Beta period.
I had basically zero learning curve with Windows 7. I did read a few Wikipedia articles about how the user interface had changed after I ordered the new computer, and I tried out the new task switcher on a borrowed Windows 7 laptop. The biggest problems I have had getting used to Windows 7 are Windows Explorer file chooser "gotchas." In file and folder view in XP, for example, the thing (whether file or folder) that is selected and is deleted when you hit Delete is in dark blue, so there is no ambiguity and you can feel confident about using Shift+Delete to bypass Recycle Bin. In the same view in Windows 7, both the file and the folder it is in are highlighted in pale blue
unless you click on the file or hit Tab to move the focus to the file. Otherwise, if you hit Delete, Windows 7 attempts to delete the whole folder, not just the file that is highlighted. I deleted (Shift+Delete) a number of very large folders (one of which had about 14 GB in it) before I wised up--luckily I was able to restore pretty much everything from the backup disk.
On the other hand, with Windows 7 there is less reason to bypass Recycle Bin because it handles complex tree deletes more efficiently. Move operations are also less likely to be disturbed by active handles, and when a move cannot be completed because a file involved in the move has a file-in-use handle open, Windows 7 suspends the move operation instead of cancelling it altogether so you can just click "Try Again" once you have closed the files that are open. Batch files with command sequences of the form "rd /s /q X & md X" are occasionally problematic, however--run one of them and about one-third of the time you get an "Access denied" message when you click on or try to open X (which should always be empty after such a command sequence executes).
Unlocker Assistant is not as vital in Windows 7 as it is with XP but it is still necessary.
Quote from: J N Winkler on October 24, 2011, 01:01:39 AM
Quote from: rickmastfan67 on October 23, 2011, 11:36:57 PMI'm running FF8 Beta with no problems on my W7 x64 system with no need to use the compatibility mode. Don't know why you're having such a problem getting it to run on your system.
I haven't even tried to run it--right now I'm running Firefox 7.0.1 (32-bit). It is what I was offered when I navigated to the "Download Firefox" page soon after I got the new laptop running. I did know that Firefox 8 (64-bit) is under development and had already reached the beta phase at that point, but Google turns up a lot of palaver about "get it from the Nightly site" and "won't interfere with your stable install," all of which sounds a bit too close to the bleeding edge for my taste.
Well, I have both FF 7.0.1 and FF 8beta install on my system. It's true you can't run both at the same time (example, if you have 8 running and then want to start 7.0.1, it will just open a new tab in 8). Also, you could always run different profiles for each version.
firefox.exe -PRun that in the "Run" command (or in the search bar in the Start Menu) and you can switch between profiles with ease (you have to first shut down FF to change profiles).
And here's where to get the "Beta": http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/channel/
I've been pretty much running the "Beta" builds since 7 came out in it.
And yes, I'm running the 32bit FF in W7 x64 with no problems what so ever. :nod:
Quote from: Revive 755 on October 23, 2011, 08:21:41 PM
I use XP on an older computer and Vista on my newer one, and will soon have to get used to 7 at work. My reason for disliking Vista is that I can't get older games to even start on it, even in the various compatibility modes, but they run just fine on XP (which is a problem because the newer computer can better handle games than the older one). Given that there are few new PC games that interest me these days, I will try and keep the older XP computer running as long as possible.
DOS games? Use DosBox: http://www.dosbox.com/
Quote from: Roadgeek Adam on October 23, 2011, 11:34:06 PM
Point is I can't do anything on a 7. The interface is way too confusing.
How so? It's essentially the same as XP only dressed up with pretty transparent effects.
You described it as Mac-like. I use both OSX and Win7 at home regularly, and XP at work. Win7 and XP work pretty much the same while there is a huge UI difference going to OSX (other than the fancy visuals on OSX and Win7).
Vista's problem was mainly lack of application/driver development at release (caused by delays... nobody believed that Vista would ever be released until they could hold a copy in their hands), vindictive tech bloggers (also caused by delays and cut features), and hardware manufacturers attempting to sell low-end machines with Vista even though it should have been obvious that those machines should have stuck with XP (or not been made at all, in many cases). By the time all this was fixed, 7 was practically out.
Incidentally XP and 8 are far more fisher-price than Vista and 7 are. Vista and 7 look modern and professional. XP and 8 look like toys for toddlers.
Didn't notice those explorer changes because I've never used that functionality. I don't like how Vista and 7 removed the ability to manage file types, though.
Microsoft did make some bona fide mistakes with Vista--for starters, the implementation of UAC was highly user-unfriendly; in Windows 7 it is easier to customize. I would also turn around the point about drivers. How can anyone intelligibly claim that developing the drivers as a single point of failure (which is essentially what Microsoft did with Vista) is good software engineering?
I sort of look at the whole XP thing with a bit of shock and horror. The world of October 2011 is a much different place from that of October 2001 and we use our computers for pretty different things nowadays. Think about it: when XP came out, Wikipedia was only 10 months old, nobody had heard of YouTube, talking about roads meant using MTR, nobody really had digital cameras, nobody had 64-bit processors...
Of course a lot of this is probably just me being accustomed to Linux release cycles. Fedora Core 1 was released in November 2003, and Fedora 16 is scheduled for release next month.
QuoteI sort of look at the whole XP thing with a bit of shock and horror. The world of October 2011 is a much different place from that of October 2001 and we use our computers for pretty different things nowadays. Think about it: when XP came out, Wikipedia was only 10 months old, nobody had heard of YouTube, talking about roads meant using MTR, nobody really had digital cameras, nobody had 64-bit processors...
Same- when XP came out, I would have laughed at you and called you an idiot if you told me it would still be this popular in 2011.
I blame enterprises for having ridiculously complicated OS upgrade rollout policies that make it take forever to upgrade the OS (we still live in a world where certain large corporations, one of which I may work for, are buying new Windows 7 machines and downgrading them to XP because at this point the cost to upgrade everything, especially their in-house software, to 7 would be astronomical- and a lot of places are against having multiple images, preventing them from being upgraded as computers are replaced), preserving the deprecated OS on the market. I'm reasonably sure there wouldn't still be so many home users of XP if those folks were all using 7 on their work machines.
Quote from: corco on October 24, 2011, 08:09:48 PMSame- when XP came out, I would have laughed at you and called you an idiot if you told me it would still be this popular in 2011.
I wouldn't have laughed. I remember people sticking to Windows 98 SE because Windows ME was such a turkey. (In fact I kept using Windows 98 SE right up to October 2006.) I also used to share a house with someone who had to get a RMA on a brand-new laptop with Windows XP (then only recently released) because the operating system had crashed so badly the computer was unusable. Given that experience by proxy, the real surprise for me would have been not that Windows XP has lasted as long as it has, but rather that it did not turn into another Windows ME. Microsoft has been so hit-and-miss with operating systems over the past 16 years (Windows 95 was a bomb, Windows 98 was a success, Windows ME was a bomb, Windows 2000 and Windows XP were successes, Vista was a bomb . . .) that it does not surprise me at all that people continue to use "good" versions of Windows for as long as they possibly can.
QuoteI blame enterprises for having ridiculously complicated OS upgrade rollout policies that make it take forever to upgrade the OS (we still live in a world where certain large corporations, one of which I may work for, are buying new Windows 7 machines and downgrading them to XP because at this point the cost to upgrade everything, especially their in-house software, to 7 would be astronomical- and a lot of places are against having multiple images, preventing them from being upgraded as computers are replaced), preserving the deprecated OS on the market. I'm reasonably sure there wouldn't still be so many home users of XP if those folks were all using 7 on their work machines.
I don't know that "blame" is the word I would use in connection with those upgrade rollout policies. Businesses have to turn a profit and are perfectly entitled to ask what a regime of software upgrades will do for the bottom line. The software industry in general (not just Microsoft but also the major application developers) does such a poor job of preserving commercially important functionality across version releases that businesses tend to upgrade only when blackmailed into doing so by the threat of obsolescence.
Case in point:
Acrobat MDI versus SDI. SDI is now the default and sole option in
Acrobat as of version 9. Before that, MDI (i.e., the ability to have multiple documents open in a single window) was the default and sole option in
Acrobat up to and including version 7. Version 8 was the only release where the two options co-existed.
When Adobe announced on one of its corporate blogs that SDI would henceforth rule in
Acrobat, the response was overwhelmingly critical. Many of the negative comments came from workers in architectural and engineering firms who used dual-screen monitors and were accustomed to parking the
Acrobat window in one screen and having a production application (such as a CAD program) running in the other screen. Since this is no longer possible with SDI, many commenters said, "We will revert to
Acrobat version 7." This has knock-on effects on OS upgrade planning because
Acrobat version 7 won't run on Windows 7. (Windows 7 is the main reason I am currently running
Acrobat X on my new laptop even though I think version 7 was better designed and more intuitive.)
My own feeling is that, in the absence of genuine technological change, the relationship between the software industry and software-using enterprises tends to settle into an adversarial one. In the case of
Acrobat, for example, there has been no addition of functionality between version 7 and version X that is meaningful or even visible to 99% of users. (Indeed there was not that much change between version 5 and 7, and IMV the biggest--PDF layers--was actually an economically regressive white elephant.) This means the software industry has to blackmail the enterprises into, effectively, buying the same product multiple times, just to keep the profits coming in. Since the software industry does not get direct profit participation from the enterprises, they have little incentive to listen to them on user interface issues, and usually don't. It is an attritive stalemate that doesn't get broken unless and until a paradigm-changer comes along.
XP->Win7 (or, really, NT4->Win7 because on XP I had always kept the "classic" skin) wasn't nearly as much of an interface shock to me as Office 2003 to Office 2007. when I first used Office 2007, it took me a half-hour to figure out that that butterfly-like thing at upper left was the file menu!
my only major pet peeve with the Win7 interface is that there is too much functionality associated with mouse hovering, and dragging without dropping. I like to rest the mouse cursor while thinking and assume that it is being inert. This is extra annoying in Photoshop, when I am attempting to very carefully fine-tune a slider, and after 10 seconds of mouse-down, Win7 assumes I want to hide Photoshop and see the desktop. Why no, that is approximately the last thing I want!
I think that companies are also much too dependent on specific programs in a lot of cases. In the Acrobat 7/Acrobat X fiasco described above, my inkling would not be to hold off on OS upgrades just to preserve an old version of Acrobat, but to see about dropping Acrobat and finding a PDF viewer that does what I need it to if at all possible.
I am planning on starting a company at some point and I think I will attempt to make a go of using as much open source software as possible, so that, among other reasons, if the devs ever do make some sort of bonehead move that makes the software unsuitable for continued use by the business, it could be forked if necessary.
There are businesses out there that believe that open source software is a cardinal sin. I cannot say which of course.
Quote from: Scott5114 on October 24, 2011, 10:38:24 PMI think that companies are also much too dependent on specific programs in a lot of cases. In the Acrobat 7/Acrobat X fiasco described above, my inkling would not be to hold off on OS upgrades just to preserve an old version of Acrobat, but to see about dropping Acrobat and finding a PDF viewer that does what I need it to if at all possible.
My own view is that the enterprises need to be aware of moral hazard in the software industry and have to avoid developing profit centers around particularities in a piece of software which disappear when a new version of that software is released. But profit is profit and enterprises are just as capable of myopic choice as individuals. (My God, look at all the organizations that try to use CAD drawings as archival records of finished construction!)
In the case of
Acrobat, part of the problem is that it is actually a comprehensive PDF authoring solution, not just a PDF viewer. (This is not to say that the free PDF viewers are better than
Acrobat, by the way--
FoxIt has trouble with raster data,
Nuance PDF Reader throws up compatibility errors for PDFs
Acrobat handles just fine, etc.) There are also complementarities.
Acrobat is the generally accepted standard for PDF authoring, so employees experienced in using
Acrobat are easier to find than employees who can get something out of
Acrobat's competitors. I don't actually know of a true "
Acrobat killer" (replicating all of
Acrobat's functionality) for any platform, let alone Windows, although certain commonly used tasks can be automated using command-line tools which are widely available cross-platform. (For example, these days I use 'pdftk' instead of
Acrobat directly to slice and dice the sign design sheets out of highway construction plan PDFs.) More is possible with 'pdflib' but a license costs about as much as full-version
Acrobat.
QuoteI am planning on starting a company at some point and I think I will attempt to make a go of using as much open source software as possible, so that, among other reasons, if the devs ever do make some sort of bonehead move that makes the software unsuitable for continued use by the business, it could be forked if necessary.
I think that makes sense primarily as insurance against the "bonehead move" being made in the first place, since developers of open-source software tend to be more responsive to the end users and less dogmatic in user-interface matters. (This is true only to a point, however--look at all the unresolved bugs on five-year tickets in Mozilla's issue tracker. Newsgroup content filtering in
Thunderbird, anyone?) I see forking as a method of last resort for getting around the problem of withdrawn functionality since that makes you the developer, so you lose the economic benefits of specialization (having someone else develop the software while you concentrate on the end uses).
I don't mean to say either that the situation is hopeless or that there are easy solutions to any of these problems. Where computers are concerned I have basically settled into an attitude of cheerful cynicism.
Quote from: deanej on October 24, 2011, 12:12:05 PM
Vista's problem was mainly lack of application/driver development at release (caused by delays... nobody believed that Vista would ever be released until they could hold a copy in their hands), vindictive tech bloggers (also caused by delays and cut features), and hardware manufacturers attempting to sell low-end machines with Vista even though it should have been obvious that those machines should have stuck with XP (or not been made at all, in many cases).
Personally, I think along with driver issues, that this was one of the biggest reasons why Vista flopped. If you wanted it to run smoothly when it came out, you needed to shell out $$$ for a top-end system. Sure, you could get it to run on more affordable systems, but it would run like shit.
Thankfully, they didn't do the same thing with Win 7. Win 7 isn't any more of a system hog than Vista (if not better), but what was a costly top-end system when Vista was released would be a much more affordable PC when 7 was released.
Quote from: Mr_Northside on October 25, 2011, 01:26:58 PM
Quote from: deanej on October 24, 2011, 12:12:05 PM
Vista's problem was mainly lack of application/driver development at release (caused by delays... nobody believed that Vista would ever be released until they could hold a copy in their hands), vindictive tech bloggers (also caused by delays and cut features), and hardware manufacturers attempting to sell low-end machines with Vista even though it should have been obvious that those machines should have stuck with XP (or not been made at all, in many cases).
Personally, I think along with driver issues, that this was one of the biggest reasons why Vista flopped. If you wanted it to run smoothly when it came out, you needed to shell out $$$ for a top-end system. Sure, you could get it to run on more affordable systems, but it would run like shit.
Thankfully, they didn't do the same thing with Win 7. Win 7 isn't any more of a system hog than Vista (if not better), but what was a costly top-end system when Vista was released would be a much more affordable PC when 7 was released.
With SP2, and drivers for the GMA950 which are tweaked compared to the intel offical drivers (it allows more games to run on it and increases aero performance) 1.83 Core Duo 3gb DDR2 667 ram and a 60gb 5400RPM drive...it runs about as good as Xp does
An interesting retrospective from Ars Technica:
Ten years of Windows XP: how longevity became a curse
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2011/10/ten-years-of-windows-xp-how-longevity-became-a-curse.ars
It is indeed an interesting article. I am not sure though that I agree with the premise that it is "bad" that a particular PC operating system has lasted for more than ten years in the marketplace. How old is Unix now? 42 years? And is Microsoft's preferred approach (new OS every three years, taking majority market share within a year or two of release) likely to be any better? Certainly OSes need to change and adapt in order to accommodate the affordances of new technology, but what Microsoft wants to do sounds like a bid to get us to pay more without any commensurate increase in useful functionality. There is also the fact that computing in general is structured around paradigms which are far more durable than any particular operating system and are potentially imperiled by OS changes. (One example of such a paradigm is the concept of division of data into files which can be grouped into tree-like directory structures.)
In general I tend to see Windows XP's longevity as a positive factor. It was a known quantity, so businesses could plan their activities around it, and develop value in data without worrying about particularities of OS support. Its permanency in the marketplace (and absence, until the advent of Windows 7, of viable successors) mitigated the fact that the risks associated with OS development are shared unequally between the OS developer and the users. I would have to see a lot more evidence of returns foregone from sticking to Windows XP before I believe that it is the latter-day equivalent of the old British bobtailed coal wagon.
I really worry about what will happen with Windows 8 and successor OSes, which I see as being hugely affected by an ongoing "iPadification" of technology. Will we have to buy special computer tables so we can interact with the OS by laying fingers on a horizontal screen, and if so, what will the implications be for activities like converting old paper records (such as construction plans) into electronic form?
QuoteI really worry about what will happen with Windows 8 and successor OSes, which I see as being hugely affected by an ongoing "iPadification" of technology. Will we have to buy special computer tables so we can interact with the OS by laying fingers on a horizontal screen, and if so, what will the implications be for activities like converting old paper records (such as construction plans) into electronic form?
I don't think that's something to worry about for a while. There are far, far too many power users for whom a touch screen is impractical- GIS users, architects, surveyors, graphic designers- pretty much anybody that does anything relative to drawing won't be able to use a touch screen unless the technology really changes. Touch screens may become the norm, but I'd be stunned if mice weren't still compatible with computers for a really long time to come.
Finger-based touch screens might be impractical - stylus-based screens might work better for certain apps. But I'll agree - the majority of PC users will still be using the traditional keyboard/mouse.
Where I work, we are still deploying desktops and laptops for corporations with XP - it's still used on 50% of the systems we do today.
Quote from: J N Winkler on October 26, 2011, 02:30:38 PM
It is indeed an interesting article. I am not sure though that I agree with the premise that it is "bad" that a particular PC operating system has lasted for more than ten years in the marketplace. How old is Unix now? 42 years? And is Microsoft's preferred approach (new OS every three years, taking majority market share within a year or two of release) likely to be any better?
I don't agree with your UNIX example. UNIX may have been around since the 60's, but its various releases are updated as often or more often than Microsoft updates Windows. Go look up a release schedule for Solaris for example, or any of the BSD operating systems, or even Mac OSX. A more correct comparison would be to compare the age of UNIX to the age of Windows NT (the ancestor to XP, Vista, and 7) which was released in 1993.
I think the big driver for corporations to upgrade to Windows 7, 8, or higher - other than Microsoft ending support for XP - will be the need for a 64-bit OS. Windows 7 was the first Windows release where the 64 bit version was ready for regular use in my opinion.
I agree with your concern about the iPadification of technology. I love my iPad, but there are a large number of tasks that simply require a mouse and keyboard. I couldn't imagine having to do any software development by touch for instance, or put together a complex spreadsheet, or anything else like that.
Quote from: J N Winkler on October 25, 2011, 12:01:34 AM
Quote from: Scott5114 on October 24, 2011, 10:38:24 PMI think that companies are also much too dependent on specific programs in a lot of cases. In the Acrobat 7/Acrobat X fiasco described above, my inkling would not be to hold off on OS upgrades just to preserve an old version of Acrobat, but to see about dropping Acrobat and finding a PDF viewer that does what I need it to if at all possible.
My own view is that the enterprises need to be aware of moral hazard in the software industry and have to avoid developing profit centers around particularities in a piece of software which disappear when a new version of that software is released. But profit is profit and enterprises are just as capable of myopic choice as individuals. (My God, look at all the organizations that try to use CAD drawings as archival records of finished construction!)
In the case of Acrobat, part of the problem is that it is actually a comprehensive PDF authoring solution, not just a PDF viewer. (This is not to say that the free PDF viewers are better than Acrobat, by the way--FoxIt has trouble with raster data, Nuance PDF Reader throws up compatibility errors for PDFs Acrobat handles just fine, etc.) There are also complementarities. Acrobat is the generally accepted standard for PDF authoring, so employees experienced in using Acrobat are easier to find than employees who can get something out of Acrobat's competitors. I don't actually know of a true "Acrobat killer" (replicating all of Acrobat's functionality) for any platform, let alone Windows, although certain commonly used tasks can be automated using command-line tools which are widely available cross-platform. (For example, these days I use 'pdftk' instead of Acrobat directly to slice and dice the sign design sheets out of highway construction plan PDFs.) More is possible with 'pdflib' but a license costs about as much as full-version Acrobat.
With regards to PDF viewing I find that the KDE project's
Okular does most PDF viewing tasks effectively, even supporting some surprising facets of PDF like forms. Okular is designed as a general document viewer and can also handle many sorts of other documents like PostScript, DVI, ODF, and most image formats. I'm not so sure about how easy it is to get running on Windows but I think it is technically possible.
As for PDF editing, I don't really do so much of that so I'm not really up on the options for that. I generally just use LibreOffice or Inkscape to generate a PDF and leave it at that.
Quote from: Scott5114 on October 24, 2011, 08:03:27 PM
I sort of look at the whole XP thing with a bit of shock and horror. The world of October 2011 is a much different place from that of October 2001 and we use our computers for pretty different things nowadays. Think about it: when XP came out, Wikipedia was only 10 months old, nobody had heard of YouTube, talking about roads meant using MTR, nobody really had digital cameras, nobody had 64-bit processors...
+1, DVD was still a novelty, there was hosting websites like Geocities, Yahoo was the big engine search and they got their mailing lists, Google just arrived on the scene. Excite beginned to be a shadow of its former self.
Quote from: Stephane Dumas on November 01, 2011, 10:30:56 AM
Quote from: Scott5114 on October 24, 2011, 08:03:27 PM
I sort of look at the whole XP thing with a bit of shock and horror. The world of October 2011 is a much different place from that of October 2001 and we use our computers for pretty different things nowadays. Think about it: when XP came out, Wikipedia was only 10 months old, nobody had heard of YouTube, talking about roads meant using MTR, nobody really had digital cameras, nobody had 64-bit processors...
+1, DVD was still a novelty, there was hosting websites like Geocities, Yahoo was the big engine search and they got their mailing lists, Google just arrived on the scene. Excite beginned to be a shadow of its former self.
Comcast Cable internet was a branded version of Excite @home
Gateway had its own stores (we bought a PC there may 2001)
The sega dreamcast was towards the end of its short life as well.
USB was taking over everything, before then it was mostly serial and paraell port based products, as well as PS/2.
VHS was still selling like crazy, DVD was in mid takeover.
Nobody had DVD burners, too crazily expensive, a lot of pcs lacked DVD dries due to cost as well, CD burners were starting to become extremely easy to buy.
IE6 was just released and it was the standard browser.
Intel just laid the crap bomb known as the pentium 4, cursing us all with crappy performance until the Pentium M, Core DUo and Core 2 family came out.
USB sticks were really expensive and rare, if even available at that time.
Digital 8 and Mini DV were the king for digital video, but failing that Hi8 was decent.
Real player was still cursing computers....later quicktime would take over the role of really annoying media player.
Social networking meant chatrooms.
Arcview 3.1 was the top of the line for GIS.
Parkway cost 35 cents at a toll booth.
Gas was about 1.40-1.70 a gal (i forget the exact ammount)
Everybody had credit
the Palm PDA system was the king
EZ Pass was new
XP SP3 up until three weeks ago. It served me well for many many years. Only reason I really got Win 7 was I wanted to do some graphics programming with DirectX 10/11 and you need Vista minimum (and Vista blows). I had been using 7 at work since it came out so I was used to it but it's kind of amazing I had no real reason to upgrade on my home machine(s) after 9+ years.