You people still clinging to XP crack me up.

I doubt most of you poeple use your PC for anything other than web surfing, playing MP3's and checking emails. My moronic friend just got talked into buying a $2400 notebook from Dell over the phone. He is one of those idiots who listened to his his equally retarded brother who told him to get it with XP instead of Vista. Out of the box, this thing takes about 5-8 minutes to boot up.

Perhaps he should have called a person who knows more than he does and gotten Vista instead of the dinosoar O/S known as XP. At least it would have warned him twice before he installed Smiley Central and Animated Cursor.

What an idiotic load of BS. Not everyone has a computer capable of running Vista, nor does everyone feel the need to upgrade. That doesn't make them stupid, but that post sure makes you sound like a moron.

He was referring to purchasing a new PC...or actually a notebook to be more specific. Not existing machines.

Pretty much all new computers are capable of running Vista, and the reasons not to have Vista on a new computer are rapidly decreasing.

His implication that those who specifically choose XP over Vista are 'idiots' and 'retards' I will not defend, however.

Depends on the PC. Many of these "budget" systems appear to be completely incapable of running Vista at all well.

I'm sorry, but there is just no excuse for shipping any PC *now* with less that 2GB of RAM. Notebook, desktop or otherwise.

Towards the comments regarding XP's support lifecycle:

Consider that full XP support will end no sooner than 2010, name me one vendor who has officially supported a single version of a software product for 8 years. Okay, I can name one: IBM supported OS/2 up until the end of 2006--although they likely didn't have one one-hundredth the amount of support requests in the last year of support that XP will have in its last year, I'll wager.

Any other examples?

IMO hardware suppliers have the last say at killing any OS, and they may kill XP the way they successfully killed Win98. In that case they simply stopped shipping compatible USB2 pendrives, motherboards etc. or made unavailable the download of existing drivers any more, even when Microsoft keeps open Windows Update for those who must keep using the "oldie" for any reason, a gentle gesture from a trustworthy corporation.

Be a Black Day if XP service and support is scrapped and an expensive time for peeps who need to purchase Vista and upgrade there box to get it working

Not sure what the big deal is. If you have been keeping your install of XP up to date then SP3 is not going to make any difference to the average user. It's mostly a rollup along with compatability with modern networking tech and policies (to be appreciated by admins, maybe).

So why are so many wound up over it? We already have slipstreamed XP installs covering the critical stuff.

Because many users here do XP installs daily. Having to do years of updates on each of these installs can be time consuming and expensive.

So why dont you slipstream the updates to your installation CD/network share ?

Wouldn't it be nice not to have to?

I remember when Windows XP was released and people were saying that windows 2000 was the best operating system ever and they would not switch to XP because it was bloated and full of eye candy. I wonder what happened to those people?

They switched to XP Pro and streamlined their OS as I did.

And voilà, Win2000 Refreshed.

They waited for the first Vista release candidate. Duh.

They tried to play games, and realised quite a few don't work on XP.

I get a funny feeling when a DX10-only game is released, I'll make the same move to Vista. :p

Bear in mind though, most people were coming from 9x code - to which XP was a MASSIVE upgrade, even with all the SP0 bugs.

"I remember when Windows XP was released and people were saying that windows 2000 was the best operating system ever and they would not switch to XP because it was bloated and full of eye candy. I wonder what happened to those people?"

They switched the theme to classic, turned off all the eye candy everywhere else, and never looked back. More responsive OS here we... er , came. But at least XP had some other improvements on 2K other than the teletubbies look. Vista has bugger all that isn't covered by installing a few bits of freeware on top of XP. Dead duck.

Vista has bugger all that isn't covered by installing a few bits of freeware on top of XP.

You couldn't *be* more clueless. :)

As an admin, what is in Vista that I need today? Since no reasonable company will be moving to Server 2008 before 2009, all of the special Vista/2008 features are useless to me, so what does Vista offer over XP?

Depends greatly on your setup. I won't upgrade existing systems, but as new one's come in, with the horsepower to handle it, I will definitely be bringing it in once our testing is complete.

More security, more reliability, less work for our IT support team.

Once we get it deployed and the apps installed, UAC will be enabled, and with the kernel changes, memory handling, user mode drivers, etc, We'll have much less to worry about.

But again, I would never suggest upgrading existing systems unless you're a gamer and already *have* a top of the line system.

Our systems are already locked down (via NTFS and GPO) so users can't do anything that UAC would affect. I haven't seen a reliability issue on our machines in months, that wasn't caused by a user doing something stupid (like disconnecting a USB drive during a read/write).

On the other hand, as a financial services firm, we use websites for alot of different custodians, some of which don't work in IE7, and about half of our applications don't yet work in Vista. Getting all of these to work will involve such a huge amount of effort and manhours, that it might be worth it for us to purchase 15-20 machines now with XP, and just deploy them as needed.

Since no reasonable company will be moving to Server 2008 before 2009

I know of several companies that are moving or have already moved. They are reasonable companies.

The first question (regarding Vista) is actually the better one, as there is no need to move to Vista yet. Sure it has better security, eye candy, DirectX 10, etc., but not any super reason to move existing machines to it. This is especially true given its much higher system requirements list compared to XP (it did come out 6 years after XP came out, so drastically higher system requirements really shouldn't shock us that much).

The other side is that when you buy a new PC, there are less and less reasons not to use Vista as opposed to XP. We finally have that service pack that everyone was saying they were waiting for, the problems finding drivers for certain hardware are getting fewer and fewer as most hardware manufacturers are finally releasing Vista drivers for their existing hardware.

Sounds like you should stick with XP. At least until your apps get updated and you hit your next round of system replacements.

A lot of people seem to be getting the wrong impression here. I am not saying everyone *needs* Vista *right now*. I've said in the past that "upgrade" should never have been a Vista SKU.

What we're looking at is 8 year old hardware trying to run a new OS. It's not going to happen. If MSFT had stuck to their 2-3 year release cycle, we would have seem smaller steps in the system reqs, which most folks can handle. Having to buy an entirely new machine to "upgrade" is ridiculous, and that's where Vista fails miserably.

Vista is a great OS on a new machine built to run it, with apps designed for it. It is absolutely horrible on systems built for Windows XP (an 8 year old OS designed to run on 8 year old hardware).

it might be worth it for us to purchase 15-20 machines now with XP, and just deploy them as needed.

Unless you can get decent machines, go for it. If your budget can handle new, up-to-date hardware, there's really no reason *not* to go with Vista. ...once your apps are compatible (That'd be priority #1, right?)

"but not any super reason to move existing machines to it. "

QFT

This is especially true given its much higher system requirements list compared to XP (it did come out 6 years after XP came out, so drastically higher system requirements really shouldn't shock us that much).

Hit the nail on the head. It's just a big jump in sys reqs. Bigger than their usual (2-3 year release schedule).

Couple problems:
1) That "Overview" document is not new. It was first released last year. MS continues to re-release it periodically, presumably with minor edits. That it appeared again is not meaningful.
2) The "Last review" date on the Support Lifecycle page is May 4, 2005, as in almost three years ago.

XP SP3 is the best 32-bit Desktop Operating system Microsoft has made.

I think Vista 64-bit is better than that, however. Grumpily, because there's a lot I don't like about Vista.

If anything, id say MS needs XP alive then dead. With so many people negative about Vista, more people would try linux and this is something MS is eager to not encourage.

I have XP on 3 computers at home, with 2 Vista Laptops and although Vista is growing on me I still prefer XP for now. SP3 is defiantly well due, but im prepared to wait until its fully ready.

See,

Galway gets it. He is one of the rare people who actually owns Vista and had tried it compared to XP unlike you apes.

XP performs like a dinosoar after you use Vista for a week. You are all a bunch of DaveBG's bashing something you don't even own or can't afford.

XP on P4 2.8Ghz vs Vista on 1.8 Ghz AMD Quad core and sill no contest. Both have 2 GB of RAM and 7200 RPM HD's. XP blows.

Some of the Vista features are great, I recently had to delete a partition and simply expanded the boot partition to take the space. Didnt have to reboot, and it performed perfectly. Alot of people simply cant get their head around Vista, rather than anything else and so stick with XP.

My main machine is actually server 2003, but I use it like XP and to be honest think of it as XP server. If there was a choice id be using Vista server ATM.

I wish MS would just release it already. We all know that Vista is not getting adopted at the rate MS wants, and that's just tough.

I'm sick of having to install a couple hundred megs of downloaded patches to new installs! It's been 4 years since the last SP for XP, it's about time it got released!

The last paragraph of ^This^.