Time to kill
There is a time in life when you know the time has come. I have been a non XP user for over two years and can never imagine going back to what I just accepted but never liked.
Microsoft should have never allowed downgrades for Windows Vista after one year and should be selective in the downgrades for companies while working with the companies towards a seamless upgrade to Windows Vista and Windows 7.
Microsoft is not to blame but the PC users that should start to upgrade their hardware instead of trying to cram Windows Vista or Windows 7 into an old machine since they are in the belief that it will function; it’s just a computer. It is not just a computer; it is a piece of hardware that evolves and requires upgrades or replacement to function with even the latest browsers and plug-ins.
Abysmal PC users around the world has become so attached to XP just because they read a user post on a forum that Vista is an unstable operating system with limited driver support and they never gave Vista a try.
Time to cut extended support for Windows XP and instead consult the license holders for a seamless upgrade path instead of holding the rest of the world back. I am tired of XP holding everyone back!
Comments
Well I kind of disagree with your opinion that it isn't Microsoft's fault. It is. Microsoft is the largest software company in the world. If they make a decision about software, thats just the way it'll be. So if microsoft were to say this is Vista, and you will have no choices for XP after its end of life cycle. There will be no downgrade options, and Vista will be 64bit only... People would have adapted. Sure... some would have tried to go to linux, and some would have tried to buy expensive macs... but the majority of people would conform... Not only would the people conform, but hardware manufacturers would have been forced to not only go all 64bit, but they would have been forced to make their hardware fully vista compatible instead of just slapping a Vista Capable sticker on machines that barely fit the specs. SOME of the problem with people experiencing bad performance from Vista is because of that. So over all, everything would have been better. We need to move in to the modern age of computing and that means modern OSes, and modern 64bit computing for both gaming, and productivity. Microsoft could have lead the way on that but they kind of caved in to what stupid moron people demanded.
The whole Vista thing has been a fiasco.
I can understand upgrading equipment and software, systems software and/or applications software to stay current, but moving from XP to Vista for millions of people would have meant to start over from nearly zero.
If Vista wasn't going to be compatible with most of the PC hardware current in use, they should have published the fact. They didn't; not at first. I had purchased two NEW systems (I had made the mistake of NOT buying Dell systems; I caved in and bought stuff right out of an electronics store) and they were supposed to be Vista capable. Neither of them would function properly with Vista. They dragged along; it was as slow as going back to Windows 95. It was a painful 22 months of abuse from Microsoft. I couldn't multitask; I couldn't do anything normally with these machines. I used Vista for so long because I had waited for SP1. Yes, SP1 was a little better, but it was still like going back in time. EVERY machine that I've worked on (my own machines, my friends' machines, and my co-workers' machines) have ALL performed much better with XP than with Vista. I was the guy who my friends and co-workers came to for their PC problems. They wanted me to speed up their Vista machines... I couldn't help them.
One guy I worked with bought a notebook just like mine, same model. There were only two differences in our machines. His had Vista Home Premium SP1 with 1GB RAM and mine had XP Pro SP2 with 2GB RAM. I lowered my RAM to 1GB.
We put them side by side. My machine would copy files to an external USB hard drive more than twice as fast as his. (using the exact same drive, etc). My machine would start up faster; my machine would run applications faster. I could actually start and operate multiple applications and browsers while his would drag along like a broken down old Volvo.
Two of my neighbors had purchased machines with Vista. They were lower-end, cheap machines. One was a Compaq, the other was an HP since that's what Best Buy and Circuit City mostly sold. They were HORRIBLE!
I could have powered up a Pentium 133 Packard Bell with Windows 98SE and done anything at the same speed as using either of these Vista machines. Actually, this is not a guess; this is what we actually tested.
All but ONE Vista machine that I've actually used would hesitate and drag along and the slightest operation that you tried to perform with it. Also, I've seen video of Bill's machine working very well with Vista -- since I haven't been to Sweden yet.
Expecting everyone to toss out their current equipment, even if it is just a few months old, would be like Apple expecting everyone to throw out their two and three thousand dollar Macs and buy a new one at another two or three thousand dollars just so they could use the newest, latest-and-greatest operating system from Apple. OS XX Jackass or whatever they would call it.
Don't misunderstand what I'm saying, I looked forward so much to Vista, and I was extremely disappointed in its failure. Just hoping Vista will function great because it is has a lot of things that 'look' cool doesn't make it so.
I hope that Windows 7 is a success; I would not hesitate to purchase and install it.
Well Tom, thats what I was getting at in my post. The Vista CAPABLE thing didn't mean much. Systems with 512MB RAM were being rolled out and people were expeceting those to be blazing fast because they were slapping those stickers on the case. It was false advertising.
Vista does require more RAM And things but most new OSes do. XP will always run faster because XP Is older and requires less CPU power and RAM to operate. Vista is multimedia enriched. And you also have to remember that Vista was initially rushed in to production by impatient people. So any early on bugs in it were, in my opinion, because of that fact.
In my original comment above, I was stating that I felt Microsoft should have done more to force people in to a newer age of computing. And I still stand by that. Especially with 64bit computing. Truthfully, I think people who had machine that couldnt run Vista fast enough should have stayed with XP, and people who had machines that were capable of running Vista should have switched. My system that you spoke about is not that high end of a system. It was an AMD Athlon 6400+ with initially 2GB RAM. It had a 512MB ATI Video adapter and slower SATA drives. But it performed well and HP did a fantastic job pushing the hardware makers in to producing Vista drivers both for 64bit and 32bit versions.
What I wanted to see was Microsoft stop supporting XP as in stop offering downgrades on new machines with it. New machines with OBVIOUSLY good CPUs and RAM. I was seeing Dell offering big systems and offering that stupid downgrade. XP isnt even capable of taking full advantage of some CPUs today. Quad core for example. So selling a system that is a quad core system and putting XP on it is counter productive just like buying a 64bit capable machine and running the entire thing at 32bit. Which is also why I was saying I think Microsoft should have forced people to 64bit with their newer Vista and Windows 7 OSes.
And in doing so would have forced a lot of people to begin recompiling for 64bit... drivers... applications...games...
But I don't think Vista was a fiasco. I don't think it was the utter failure everyone tries to pin on it. I do think that some aspects of marketing it were bad, and I think that a LOT Of people expect Vista to run on their older hardware. And it wont. And I think Computer manufacturers tend to lie about what is truly vista capable... meaning what will truly make it run fast.
My opinion is that Vista needs at least a good dual core system (Intel or AMD), and it needs a minimum of 4GB of RAM and a really good Video card. Video cards are really cheap and make a big difference in how Vista performs. The RAM does too. I saw a HUGE improvement in speed jumping from 2 to 4GB.