01/18/2008, 9:05am, EST
Friday, January 18th30,000 petition MS to "save Windows XP"
An online petition conducted by InfoWorld has managed to collect over 30,000 signatures asking Microsoft to keep Windows XP available, the magazine has revealed today. Called just Save XP, the petition argues that Microsoft's already extended June 30th cutoff point for sales of the 2001 operating system is still too short and that it should continue to sell "indefinitely," according to the organizers. The publication points to a lack of clear benefits to upgrading to its Windows Vista successor as well as problems with the new OS, such as slower performance in Microsoft Office tests as well as the expense of upgrading established business networks to the updated software. Regardless of where the computers are used, the limitation to Vista-only sales by July will be arbitrary, the petition maker says.
"It's like having a comfortable apartment that you've enjoyed coming home to for years, only to get an eviction notice," the site adds. "For most of us, there's really no reason to move to [Vista] -- yet we don't have a choice."
Vista is further likened to the often criticized Windows Millennium Edition, which was released as a stopgap update between Windows 98 and XP but which is widely accepted as having provided little advantage over 98, prompting Microsoft to temporarily return the earlier software to market until conditions had improved.
Microsoft in 2007 is generally believed to have quickly lost momentum for its new version of Windows after its late January debut. Growth slowed after customer demand forced PC vendors such as Dell to restore an option for Windows XP to some systems. Vista was touted as having reached the 100 million-copy mark by the end of the year but ultimately accounted for just 37 percent of all PC sales in the year, indicating that XP continued to outsell its replacement.
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Also not sure why they say they 'don't have a choice'. People in the mac world will tell you, yes you do. Don't upgrade. No one's forcing you. Is that computer you're running all of a sudden unuable because Vista came out? (sure, you could argue it's unusable because it has XP on it, but that's not the argument!).
Oh, and since when did MS say that businesses had to upgrade? They, with their business accounts, usually have no problem running the ol' reliable years after the new version is released (something you can't do in the Mac world, since Apple won't update drivers to get the new hardware to work with the old OS). Hell, they probably just converted to Windows XP a couple of years ago from 2000.
I'm not saying Apple is any better in this regard (can you still buy Tiger?). But Apple as a very different customer base than MS does, and that should be taken into account. Upgrading your computer at home is a far cry different from upgrading 5000 computers in a business.
To address testudo's (usually) stupid question about no one being forced to upgrade - when you buy a new PC, you usually get Vista on it, with very little choice. This is people wanting to not be forced to that - and likewise, if MS stops support of XP in June, no more fixes or security patches are to be released (which may actually be an improvement, considering MS' track record with security)
Lastly, what a sad, desperate result of cognitive dissonance - if MS doesn't want to, switch to a Mac (though I suspect these are the kind of folks that can't stand the Mac).
Then again, there'll always be the kind of IT managers who believe "Vista is the Future", and will ride their company's infrastructure off that cliff...
Clearly users are not happy with Vista. Over 50% of the PC's in 2007 were sold with XP (according to MS Exec).
Personally, I like Vista. It is a slow, and had some issues with Visual Studio, but overall it is a step up...just not on older systems.
Vista is the best advertising for OS X Apple could have hoped for.
Yeah, smart moves, Sprint -- only Sprint service I use is their data card, but I may be replacing that sooner, than later, as I found a cheaper offering. Sprint's customer service is decidedly staffed by morons.