[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Windows XP Departs: Good Riddance or Sad Farewell? here

[MarioJP]

I just retired xp so what a timing this might have been. I been using vista for 3 weeks and i love it. Who cares about not having the greatest special effects. But at least i can play all my 30+ PC games and all went smoothly from xp to vista. So gaming is what going to give me the best effects. Not a dam os. As long as it works and it does what i need/want it to do then i am all set. Goodbye XP It was a os that served me well. I will keep xp on virtualization to use my older hardware such as my scanner. But other than that no big deal. And now with sp1 and using vista 64 i am surprised all my games works with no tricks what so ever. Plus all my applications too.

For those running on legacy hardware then stick with xp. Only use vista if you have a good moderate pc such as a dual core with atleast 4gb of ram.

[mariebermudez]

I have using Window Vista since February of this year. I Was using XP OS for a lot of years and the transition was very hard for me. Window Vista was giving so much trouble I decided to call Microsoft. My D drive became over loaded and I had to uninstall many programs. It was a disaster. Now I am use to it. At first it was very hard to manage, now I am a pro. I feel bad for all the XP users, but it is time for new technology. After a while and many hours of finding my way through Vista I am still not impress at least not until all problems with it are resolved. Good luck to all that have to let go....the transition is not that bad!
Marie Bermudez

[magicdash]

Sad to hear the XP is going to say goodbye.It is shocking to XP users and I could not belive that there is a deadline to it.If only XP can be forever to stay...

[zeth006]

My XP order for my sister's comp just arrived. It'll probably be the last copy I ever buy (for anyone). The reason I chose XP over Vista was NOT the cost. There was a minute

$2 difference between the two OSes. Because my sister isn't very tech saavy, I was afraid of going to far and giving her something that's too new. So far, so good. Now she

can download and listen to her college broadcasts just fine.



Now for Vista. I have been using it and have had just one problem that has NOT to do directly with the OS, but with Redmond's Nazi licensing scheme. I created my own Vista

anytime upgrade CD...but found it was useless since my laptop's vista key can only be entered on the laptop's Vista OEM version. Other than that, after disabling hard drive

indexing, UAC, and AERO, I'm running the system just snappy. No driver incompatibilities since my manufacturer has the drivers available on its website. Also, I do NOT need

4gb of RAM to run it fine. Vista just needs 2gb minimum. Everything's smooth with my processor, my graphics card, and 2.5gb of RAM.



Overall, the consensus seems to be this: If you're complaining and whining that you can't find Vista drivers for your 15 year-old printer, then I

wonder whether you're able to even find ink cartridges for it in the first place! Vista like XP has higher hardware requirements and was perhaps

released a bit prematurely. Rather than trying to create tons of hype through Operation Longhorn and trying to meet a bad deadline, I think a

release date of mid 2008 (perhaps about now) would've beenmroe timely...as well as a warning that the hardware requirements would be higher.

Honestly, I think the "optimized for Vista" marketing from Microsoft/Intel was a sham.











Farewell, XP. You served my family and me well while you were around.

[Yert]

Before the editorial even broke in, I had the displeasure of seeing this biased comment: "Microsoft has agreed to offer Windows XP updates and security patches until April 2014."
No. Microsoft never "agreed" to do this, it was the plan all along, as per their support cycle, which is clearly set out on their website.
Yes, I'm all for an editorial, but be clear about what is the editorial and what isn't.

[lovelac7]

Why discontinue a product that people are clamoring for? The whole idea of business is to find a demand and fill it with a supply. If people demand Windows XP, why not supply it? The money is still going to Microsoft.

This just seems like a good way to drive people to Mac, Linux and black-market XP.

[gr8audioguy]

Ed wins by several lengths (points).
Redmond has developed similarities to Washington, DC.
They are both fueled by (our) cash and have lots and lots of paychecks to write.
Hence, A new OS that we don't need at a time of least need.
Ubuntu to all!

[rtfire1]

xp was stale. for the new software and hardware we need a better os. vista is better in many ways. as it is the jump to vista is like the jump to xp hve the hard ware and do it or stay on your old os.

[piyushsingh]

This isnt that big issue as it is being called. The support for xp will continue , only new sales from msft will be stopped. I m sure xp fans , who really want this OS in future also must have purchased an additional copy beforehand.

[Moritori]

The editorial is nicely written. I appreciate the Vista viewpoint and the need for a upgrade to an operating system. There is merit to upgrading to the "new" hardware that is being made available. What concerns me is release of a product that lacks a true depth of change. Change where there is an evident benifit to the customer is not present. Did they change to a new hard disk drive format? Did they incorperate any new coding to increase speed and reduce code bloat? There are many others factors that were a disappointing no show from vista that as a consumer we should have the right to just say no an not be forced into this "half-way" upgrade. I have worked with vista both pesonally and support and the system has not impressed me on any level, whether it is for driver installation or performance even on new systems. More people are bringing there systems in to have them switch back to xp than any other OS upgrade that I have ever experienced. Vista is a move in the right direction, they just needed to release it at a later date with all the functionality to show a clear definition of benifit and gain to both public and business. XP will be missed, but this may have the unfortunate consequence of damaging Microsoft in the long run as people/manufacturers move to other platforms to avoid these forced moves.



Moritori

[rtfire1]

are there any numbers to back this up i remember in 2001 - 2003 working as a software "down grader" moving systems off xp and to the older os being windows 2000 or wm because of issues and system problems one of those a school system just jumper over xp right to vista and are having no issues on there now pc roll outs going on for the past 6 months. i will say it did help that we did a vista class and the kids all know what there doing

[coastie65]

It'll be around until the retailers' inventory is gone as they can still sell what they have on hand. coastie65

[ursaminor]

Why retire XP? It seems XP could use a few tweaks and remain a reliable product a few years more. People in Linux OS are always looking for a new gadget or product that I see problems in Ubuntu's 8.04 LTS. This new version is buggy. Windows is trying too hard to please a few with glitzy apps or products. I think reliability should be their hallmark. Quality was always better than quantity.

[mpheadley]

My answer to this headline: NEITHER! It's certainly not good riddance, and XP is certainly not going away. Many Many people will continue to use XP until the next one or two MS operating systems come out. If MS is so ambitious in retiring XP, then they should offer it at an extreme discount!

[DoctorDoom]

C'mon people, XP is almost a decade old and getting very long in the tooth. If you really want XP that bad, go buy a copy now, or get one off ebay and use it until 2014.

Me, personally, I've been sick of looking at XP for a lonnnnnnnngggggg time now, and I enthusiastically bought Vista on release day. Glad I did, never looked back. Vista is very stable and is leaps and bounds technologically versus XP. The Vista kernel will be the basis for the next 1-3 iterations of Windows, so I think everybody should accept that now.

Change is constant. We can't keep XP forever, and Vista is definitely a step up on the technology ladder.

Unfortuntely for OS-X and Linux, they just don't cut ut when it comes to gaming or business apps.

Don't kill the messenger, I only speak the truth...

[ward29800]

I won't be getting rid of my perfectly good printer, slide scanner, flat scanner, modem, HDTV USB tuner simply because they don't have Vista drivers. Now or in the future. Apparently Microsoft is urging me to use a pirated version of Windows XP.

[cubbage]

Since I really like XP and hate Vista (& yes I have and still are using Vista) with a passion. Several items about vista irk me:

1. Why in hell does MS want to change the menu system. Example: Properties in XP has meaning, what in blazes does personalize mean in vista.

2. I do have a very new PC with a Quad 2.93 processor an 8 GB of ram, yet vista runs slower then XP doing the same tasks. New OS's are supposed to bring value to you and steps backwards in operation.

3. Has anyone figuered out why there are so many versions of vista. XP has two, Home & Pro, a nice easy way to figure out what you should be using (I will admit that I really like Pro version over the home version).

4. Vista is way overpriced for what you get, I refuse to pay the price to play in this sandbox. I run vista on a trial basis and know how to keep extending it trial period up to 1 year. After that will happen I will install a new trial version an go on computing.

5. I work in IT at a university and yes we have legacy applications that will not run on vista, so we cannot convert to vista very easily.

6. Contrary to what MS says, DOS is still alive and healthy on all windows OS's, even vista.

7. The eye candy of vista is pretty but does not add one thing to our user experience. I never have the fancy wallpaper or photos on my desktop. I set my desktop to have the Windows Legacy desktop on all of my windows computers so that I get as much computing power to my applications and os. How much of the fancy wallpapers do you see & use anyway, the applications cover it so what a waste of computing resources to support it.

8. MS had better get their act together or they will loose the desktop wars. Linux/MAC's are quickly catching up and could very well bypass MS as it slowly sinks into the sunset.

9. Microsoft seems to think that the public will keep buying their products even when they spit in our faces with their arrogance. Since when does a producer of products dictate to the buying public what they should or should not do with their hard earned money.

10. The best OS to date that I have ever used is Windows Server 2008 configured as a workstation (read user PC). It is extremely fast, easy to use and yes it runs all of my applications and can use all of the memory you give it. This is what vista should have been instead of the dog it is. Google this subject if you are interested in a real up to date with all the bells & whistles Windows Desktop.

Well enough of my rants.

Hope everyone has a nice day and enjoy the weekend.

[mpheadley]

That's great if you can buy new computers all the time. Myself and I'm sure many other people are running computers that are a few years old. I personally have a 2.0 ghz P4 with like 833 MB of ram. Think vista will run on that?! I'm satisfied with my computer. It does everything I need it to at an acceptable rate of speed. Now, if I had the money to go and buy a brand new computer or laptop that was totally up to date, I would probably choose Vista.

So when today's totally up to date comptuers are five years old and much cheaper, I'll naturally get Vista or even the next MS OS. I wish people would remember that the situation is often about affordabiility for individuals and businesses, and not always about upgrading all the time right away as soon as something comes out. I do think people don't understand the situation, that when vista came out only the newest computers could run it well. And I think people may be making excuses rather than admitting they just can't afford the most current computer at the time.

So, I do think that MS jumped the gun and came out with Vista at least a year too early. It's a question of who wants to push who. Apparently MS is trying to push everyone else (computer manufacturers and customers) when they aren't ready to upgrade yet. I think MS will sell a lot more copies of their next OS instead of Vista mainly because by then more people will be willing to upgrade their comptuters.

[DoctorDoom]

Well said. If you're happy with your PC and the way it's running, why go and cause yourself headaches by installing a new OS, whether is be Vista, OS-X, or Linux??

BUT, to go out and scour the earth for a new machine with XP installed because you have some media-induced aversion to Vista is equally counterproductive.