This is a good place to drop general and weird news, entertainment, and general show prep material that might be interesting to air talent or producers. Hot dog threads ALWAYS welcome.
Posted by kdawson on Monday March 24, @09:53PM
from the alas-poor-yorick dept.
bsk_cw writes "Although many Windows users intend to hold onto their copies of XP until it is pried from their cold, dead fingers, Microsoft fully intends to phase out the OS in favor of Vista. If you're unwilling to move to one of the alternatives, and really don't like Vista, the least you can do is be aware of what's in store. David DeJean offers a rundown on Microsoft's timeline for Windows XP, why the company does things that way, and what you can do about it."
June 30, 2008
PC manufacturers stop selling computers with XP installed.
Jan. 31, 2009
Microsoft stops selling XP altogether.
April 14, 2009
Mainstream support (free live support and warranty support) ends. Free maintenance is limited to security fixes.
I have had similar success with HP. Though I never really considered buying a Dell. My company is Dell crazy and with the exception of their LCDs, Dell is shit.
Vista is a mixed bag for me. I like the overall look and feel of Vista but Vista with 2 Gigs of high-performance memory is like XP with 256Mb of PC-133. I just don't get why Vista's performance is sooooo incredibly lacking compared to XP.
I doubt you'll find many pc users excited about Win-7 until it is a proven winner. They hyped the hell out of Vista and it blows.
I worked on a Vista laptop this weekend, with "only" 1 gig of RAM. It's a good thing it had dual core processors, because it was constantly outrunning the memory. Also, I think that anyone who bought into the "increased security" promises of Vista is probably very disappointed. A whole bunch of extra pop up windows second-guessing every other move is NOT security. Most people won't understand why it's anxious for approval all the time, and just click through the Windows anyway.
To defend Dell, they replaced my entire computer when it was hit with the Blue Screen of Death last year at no cost to me, and actually provided me with an upgraded machine.
I've been reliably informed by two IT guys that fifteen minutes of disabling a load of Vista's pointless add-ons makes it a decent OS. Decent, as far as Windows can be, of course.
/Ubuntu, FTW!!
So sayeth His Royal Highness King Spike; greatest broadcasting talent of his generation.
I would go with a Vista laptop, providing it had at least 2GB of RAM. I would like to learn it anyway.
I believe you can "downgrade" to XP for free if it sucks...
My desktop has XP Media Center, and it will have it until it gives up the ghost. The only concern I would have is setting it up to network with a Vista laptop.
My friend bought a Dell Vista laptop a few months ago. She spends more time talking to some guy in India than she does me nowdays. Actually, she's on a first name basis with half the tech support people in India, and they're starting to share recipes. After all that, her laptop still wont do wireless.
"I know I've got a lot against me: I'm White, I'm Protestant, I'm hard working. Don't you have an Amendment to protect me"? Archie Bunker
Dave Loudin wrote:True dat, much like the transition from 98 to XP. I had a 333 MHz laptop that would absolutely fly on 98.
DOS still runs faster than any of today's Windows offerings. However, XP wasn't built on top of any Windows 98 technology. Vista was. They should have moved forward, not back.
When did the common thought with software companies become so fixated on "Computers move faster, so our software can now run slower"? I mean, that was an actual EXCUSE provided by MS regarding Vista... once newer hardware hits the street, it will be as fast as XP (but not as fast as XP on that same platform!)
Micro$haft did a number of things in the last two years which appear to be designed to help the computer manufacturers. Windows Genuine Advantage, for one thing. If you let your neighborhood computer guy cure your problems by reloading the os from his oem copy you just lost your computer.
Here's a question for the experts: When Vista was first being tested there were claims that the built in DRM would make it pretty much useless for any kind of intensive audio file manipulations. Such as what Simian is now doing behind me for two different stations. Or Sound Forge for audio editing.
I know BSI warns that Simian may not run on a Vista machine. Anyone run into problems like this trying to use Vista in a broadcast environment.
Vista can be a pain. For example, to record audio from the aux in cable in Cool Edit Pro, I have to open Audacity, start to record, put it in pause, then open CEP and use it from there. I'd prefer to have Windows XP over Vista, but when Dell sent me the replacement computer when my old one died, it came with Vista :-/
Tom Taggart wrote:Here's a question for the experts: When Vista was first being tested there were claims that the built in DRM would make it pretty much useless for any kind of intensive audio file manipulations. Such as what Simian is now doing behind me for two different stations. Or Sound Forge for audio editing.
I know BSI warns that Simian may not run on a Vista machine. Anyone run into problems like this trying to use Vista in a broadcast environment.
From what I have seen, the DRM built into Vista is actually a bit more intelligent than the crap that was slapped on XP in various patches applied by Microsoft. I have not had any issues with Video and I never had an issue with audio that was not laced with a DRM. Note that all of my music is non-DRMed MP3s.
As far as the rest of this article, it is pretty much total crap. I have not seen any acceleration of the EOL of XP beyond the standard 5 year window. In fact, I watched a Microsoft developer last week demonstrate some new technology on a new Lenovo Thinkpad T61 running XP and Office 2007. My boss (sitting beside me) turned what as a ghost and then asked if I could accelerate the research into training and migration alternatives for Office 2007. My response (several hours later) is that the company is 16 months from the roll out is we started working on the project immediately due to the number of Excel and Access applications that would have to be tested and validated they would work. In my division alone, I have over a 1000 spreadsheets with ODBC hooks and/or VBA code. I also have 25 (prox) Access databases that have to be tested and 12 are mission critical.
I don;t have time for the testing so it waould have to be up to someone like an intern under one our our teams guidance.
So, this is not gonna happen.com until after I get the ERP upgrade underway.
Edit: Just read the article linked through Slashdot and compared it to my MS Partner information and it still appears that I will have about a year to sell XP. Support and EOL will be 2014 as anticipated.
The first step in a successful revolution is to defeat all competing revolutionaries.
