Rubbish

Listening to it's customers? Utter claptrap. Previously Microsoft wanted to get everyone off XP and onto Vista so there was no reason not to EOL XP and the customer be damned.

However, now they need to compete on UMPC's there's a very good reason to keep XP fully supported and patched. So, they're still supporting XP for those devices and desktop customers be damned.

However, as XP is still going to be fully supported, why not just roll that out to everyone? It's a PR win at little cost so why not?

What it's not though is listening to customers. Microsoft knew well ahead of time that adoption of Vista would be slow but they made the mistake of EOL'ing XP before realising the significance of the UMPC market - this is their getout.

So nice, let's do it twice!

You see, I know, probably from your perceptive estimation, that I am, indeed, an arrogant, irritating “yank”. Of course, I am, as we say here, “small potatoes” when compared to these guy’s.

That said, it seems even they can be knocked down a peg or two, even by your lofty standards. And perhaps, once in a while, I can unbelievably be, both in agreement with you, AND get it right! GOD, save the QUEEN!

Do you remember when I wrote this, and you had the insightful perception to post it?:



“What the hell is Microsoft thinking? What are/were they expecting? Are we all supposed to jump and throw our money at them because Vista is new and improved? This is not a new Hollywood Block Buster. It is not show time, there are no stars. And, I am not waiting for the outcome in the series. Not with my apps, hardware and software you don’t. Not for 400 balloons.

Then there is the ‘XP Factor’. Sure, they spent enough money in Vista development to put a man on the moon. But, didn’t some of those ‘rocket scientists’ at the top figure out they were competing against a truly great OS, their own? Hello.

XP literally blows away everything MS has PUSHED in the past

OLD GAMES PLAYED
OLD HARDWARE WORKED
NETWORKING IS GOOD
NEW HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE IS A BREEZE
THE MORE SILICON YOU THROW AT IT, THE BETTER IT RUNS.
OVERCLOCKING SCALES UP (to a point)
STABLE!!

HEY, Billyboy and Stevie, ya did real good last time out. What da ya want? Ya put lipstick on that fat pig VISTA and shoved it out the door, up against a real natural beauty.

There are NO conspiracy theories. There are NO pirates. You have NO real competition.

WHAT YOU HAVE IS A GREAT OS.

IT’S CALLED XP PRO”

2/19/07

SPARKS

Hope..?

This is good news!

What about WIndows 2000? NT 4.0?

Jesus criminy-- XP SUCKS

Why don't they bring back Windows 2000-- that is a real mans OS.

I'm dead serious.

Screw XP; the only one that works decently is XP x64.

-Aaron

Who the hell really cares?

For anyone who actually knows how to use a computer, Vista is no worse than Windows XP. I've been running Vista since RC1 and have gone through all different kinds of scenarios, problems and workarounds, but all in all I have absolutely no problems with Vista. No problems that weren't easily fixed. Vista is still fairly new. XP was junk until SP2 was released, and look how long it took them to get that out. After 7 years of patches, updates and tweaking the OS better damnwell be good. Vista will/would be 10 times the OS of XP after 7 years of updates too I'm sure. Sure Vista is a resource hog, but hey, XP was too back when computers were running less than 512mb of ram and 1Ghz CPU's. You've upgraded your machine with the times, you should do the same with your software. If you're running old software, buy new software. Or just stop complaining about MS killing off XP. They killed off 98 forever ago, and I don't hear anyone complaining about that. And people still use it. Same with 2000. If you know what you're doing Vista can work great for you. Disable what you don't like and keep what you do. It's that simple. If MS hadn't kept XP around for 7 years we wouldn't have this problem. But for those of you who are afraid of change, get a life, and stop living in the past.

XP / Vista are but reflections of the soul of Microsoft

XP is a clunky mess because MS is a behemoth and it cannot listen to feedback nor handle criticism constructively so it cannot understand customers' priorities and translate that into product.

Consequently Vista is a bigger mess because Microsoft is itself a mess. Microsoft desperately needs to sort itself out and we need it to do that as much as it needs to do it. If it was a government its current management would have long since been voted out. The response to VIsta can be seen as a plebiscite on MS.

Microsoft is much bigger than one man and while Ballmer might mean well, he is in the position of having helped create this situation rather than offering a solution to it IMHO.

Don't make me...

Keep XP!

Don't make me go... LINUX!

Microsoft

Microsoft has only one problem. They need to come up wit ha good reason to pay for an expensive fix for something thta works.

Once the well paid spinners find that reason, everyone will run ME...err...Vista.

As for customers, does microsoft listen to private consumers or to corporate customers?

Most people get Vista shoved down their throat. Kind like a trip to the doctor...
They go to the doc, say whats the problem & the doc gives them the meds...do they know what these meds are? not really.

So go to your dell or HP & but your "faster" computer...you get your meds...Vista.

Does microsoft have your best interest at heart?

Well, I hope that at least your GP does.

Forcing me back to linux

If MS kills XP I will not be running a MS OS. They will force me back to Linux fulltime. If fact the only reason I use Windows at all is DirectX.

How Many....

People who bought laptops or Desktops with VISTA on it formatted it and put XP on instead arrrr ya see I know 3 people. They bought there PC's from PC Worst and instantly formated it with XP Pro SP2 the moment they got the disc home.

I would too but I never will buy another pre-built machine ever again I build my own.

No chance

There is only one major flaw in this argument; for most of potential customers, MICROSOFT ALREADY HAS YOUR MONEY. They want more money. Therefore, they want to force that money out of you by EOL'ing XP and forcing Vista down your throat, as otherwise the huge install base of XP will just continue on-and-on, costing them support $. So, this will not happen, except on the ultraportable market, where they have no choice.

This is similar to what they are doing to their customers who made the mistake of buying DRM'ed music from them; they are turning off the activation servers (Aug 31), rendering the purchased music worthless. Again, they already have your money, which is the only thing that is important to this company.

You do not have to remain a victim stuck in MS's foodchain; you can download an excellent, FREE Windows-like Linux OS called Kubuntu 8.04 from www.kubuntu.org. If you just want to try it out, it has a utility called *Wubi* which will install it to a folder in Windows. Just drop the CD into an operating Windows machine, and tell it to create a 6 GB folder in Windows (no other changes are made to your computer. Reboot, and select Kubuntu from the menu and try it out. If you find you want to remove it after a week or so for some reason, just uninstall it like any other program from Windows.

The *Wubi* option uses Window's file system (NTFS), and so will eventually fragment and slow down (just like Windows!), so it is better to do a full install using the Linux file system (and still enable booting into Windows if you like). If you install Wine, you can run many of your old Windows programs in Linux. And of course, you have instant access to tens of thousands of FREE open-source programs that do everything that MS programs can do, and more (especially because, they are secure and safe to use; office, email, photo editors, music, CD burning, IM, games, DVD and media center – all free). And, you will no longer be stuck in the MS foodchain.

listening to the customers money?

By listening to the customers, you really mean being forced to do something for financial reasons, namely loss of income from Vista which is not selling as strongly as they would like.

Really that is completely different to actually listening to the customers in the sense of really caring about them as human beings.

It will be a cold day in hell before Microsoft ever did anything noble or moral. Ill never live to see it.

This is getting rediculous......

the only people that want XP to remain are the ones that are using hacked versions of the operating system or are simply uneducated, or do not have the hardware to run Vista. I have been repairing computers for consumers for 6 years now, and the majority of problems are OS related (XP). I am also no longer amazed that 90% of the systems had illegit versions of the XP operating system. Vista is a good OS which actually exceeds XP in stability and reliability, however, a successful hack is extremely difficult and THAT is why there has been this negativity with Vista. I have been using Vista since it came out and the stability is still flawless from day one. Gaming is improved and better, stability is better, the UI is better and the overall experience is better. I literally feel handicaped when I am on my XP system at work which is going to wait a bit until it migrates over to Vista. I HATE Microsofts activation system where I have to justify and call them to reactivate every time I upgrade any of my hardware, but I will take the advantages that Vista has to offer any day over a cracked version of XP.

I don't believe in Microsoft or Apple

I use Ubuntu Linux and here is why...

Problem: "I want a basic OS that can get email, play some old games...is more secure and can stream music and video.....and do my work"

Choices:

Choice A)

Windows or MAC OS X, where in each generation, the software you install will be bloated up and linked to proprietary OS features to create a dependency. In WIndows its DirectX and the Windows Registry, in Mac OS X, its hardware compatabilities between programs and different versions of Mac OS X.

Worse yet, APPLE and MICROSOFT believe that everyone is a pirate, so they bloat up the OS to represent their war on piracy. The result is a lot of algorithms to slow things down...and PUNISHING non-pirates who have their systems slowed down for the sake of "catching pirates" or "making it harder to pirate."

The only things common to MAC OS X and Windows Vista is the 2GB of RAM people buy to run an OS who's creators care more about your wallet and less about your privacy.


Choice B)

Linux, like Ubuntu (Desktop Edition) [FREE Download]

The entire OS and all programs it comes preinstalled are Open Source and the OS is easier to use than MAC OS X or Windows. The security and reliability of Unix (where Linux is derived from) is there.

What you get is a breath of fresh air. The open source programs are updated regularly and always will be free. You have no one who programs the OS and most of its programs trying to take your money from you. In other words...You get people who are on the side of performance and reliability, and not on the side of maximizing profits.

So pick your choice....

All I know is that XP/Vista and MAC want you to use multiple cores for different "basic" programs now, while on Linux you can use 1 core to run a program faster than the programs that take 2 cores on XP/Vista and Mac OS X to run.

So now on Windows and MAC, a Quad Core runs as many programs a Dual Core used in the previous generation, while a Dual Core runs as many programs as a Single Core did in the generation before that....On Linux, you can truly see a Quad Core shine :)

Get Real

All these people moaning about Vista and XP, the best operating system was BBC Basic run on an Acorn BBC B, when it needed upgrading you just unplugged the chips and plugged in new ones and it was instantly installed, it booted instantly as well.

anyway I run three systems with Vista and have used Vista since RC1 and find it very stable, I have used many operating systems from DOS 6 and even dabbled in Linux, I still think Vista is the best although there are still some drivers that are not supported, my memory card reader in my HP 64 bit laptop for example.

If you don't want all the bells and whistles of Vista Ultimate then get Vista Basic, which incidently is fast.

Why do people take a pop at Microsoft so much when they have brought computing to the masses and the internet would not be the World Wide information store that it is today.

So to all of you moaners out there get a life and get real!