I love Xp and have been a fan for the whole ride. Vista has its shortfalls but on a new PC, it runs flawlessly. To believe that Microsoft would even entertain the thought of 'saving xp' is ridiculous!
In more ways, I am sorry to see the end of XP and still have a number of PCs (business class) that will exist this way for a long time.

I dont see much sense or traction in trying to start a grassroots effort to save XP. Vista is the proper evolution where the OS needs to go, whether we like it or not.

I don't think it should be obsoleted either. My company just went to it late 2006, so we will be using it for years, and we are one of the largest companies in the World.

The bad thing about XP, all Microsoft has to do is turn off the Activation server, and then make Windows Genuine Advantage ask for validation. Your toast after that, you will have to upgrade.

It stinks, but Microsoft could make XP obsolete overnight, as it can Vista as well. That's probably the plan, obsolete the operating system every 7 years or less, forced upgrade.

Feh.

It sounds like the author is looking back through rose colored glasses. The same issues existed with XP that are coming up with Vista. Older hardware wouldn't work with XP. Older software had compatibility problems (either acting oddly or not working at all). Unless you had a fast processor and a lot of memory (for that time anyway), XP was slow. Eventually, they moved away from Win9x.

Most companies did the same thing then as they are doing now: not upgrading the PCs but, when it comes time to get a new machine, have the new OS on it.

Even so, there were good reasons to make the jump to XP. There were several security and stability benefits. In Vista, what is the problem? Too much flash, not enough features. The major gulp of the processing power is to make things look prettier. (That's not to say that Vista doesn't have benefits. It does. But the question remains as to whether the benefits are worth doing the upgrades from XP.) Now if they had put in the features that they "promised" to put in...

The functions of the Microsoft operating system have not changed significantly since Windows NT / OS/2.

What is frustrating is the Wintel alliance of faster and faster hardware bogged down by fatter and fatter software.

The result is no response time improvements in 20 years, even though the chips and memory are thousands of times faster.

Why do we need to pay more (for Vista) when the net result is slower response times?

It should be about our productivity and what is needed to improve it is blinding fast PC speeds. The easiest way to achieve it is running 5 year old software on today's computers.

The option to be or not to be productive should not be the vendors decision, but ours.

IBM should open source / common license OS/2 and allow today's productivity tools to run at super productive speeds.

Keep XP alive

Microsoft does not need to save xp just simply release a developer OS, so that business folks who need an OS with only the framework can still use windows software, without all the extra services, so the CG industry can have machines focus all the processing power where it needs to go not to a dozen services and clients running in the background. I'm sure there are others who would love to have an OS where the only thing bundled is the OS not all the other programs that get built in and can not be removed without hacking the OS apart to get it to run faster. One of vistas biggests problems is that Microsoft made changes to how components talk to each other for the sole reason of adding DRM which is not needed. They had a version that was stripped down and running great, but someone nixed it.

for DRM which makes your data speaking from the perspective of the studio as beloning to someone else.

Last Nov my 5 y.o. Dell crashed .. I bought a laptop thinking I was 'upgrading'. ... .. Then discovered that no only did the Compaq Presario not recognize my existing hardware: printer, network hub, palm - but neither did it recognize the backups I religiously made under XP!!!! Why would Gates make a new OS that can't restore the last version!!! - I'll quit, this will turn into rant for the next 30 minutes.....and don't even get me into Compaq/HP tech suppt ... (that is, lack of)

Vista reminds me greatly of Microsoft's last real fiasco -- Windows ME, which gave us a little flash, but no real substance .. . Vista is fine, with a new machine and new peripheral hardware made for it; and if you don't like a simple fax program on your computer (like WinFax which decided not to support Vista for some ungodly reason that Symantec won't explain) unless you get Ultimate version, anyway. Why no built in or add-on fax program for Premium? Or business?

I am not against Vista so much as I don't see any real reason to upgrade to it. I don't care about 3-D icons. What else are we getting for all that money? I have 2 new machines with Vista on them. They are great (if I had a fax program they would be perfect) for what I need them for at work, but they are not very useful for much else because none of my old software programs seem to play well with Vista. And new drivers are still hard to find. OK, I said my peace.

I can only echo most of the sentiments already posted. A new PC w/Vista that broke 2/3 of my most expensive applications (XP went back on after a week of multifaceted frustration), pitiful performance w/incredibly sophisticated hardware, useless services, reflections of ME, and then there is the UAC and DRM (I will not go down that road).

But what bothers me the most is that this smells like a greedy "unfunded mandate" for a company that is really in a monopolistic position. They could do the IT world (and themselves) so much more if they placed the customers first and delivered what the customers want and need. Sure some users need the PC to tell the owner what to do, but most of us, who use a computer to do computing (not just email and internet browsing) want a rock solid OS that is scalable based on the application and our needs. We do not want a pretty GUI that saves us from ourselves and protects big money (oops, I said I wouldn't go there - sorry;-)

Regardless, XP is stable and useful. Dumping your most mature product would be suicide for any company that has real competition.

I took a year to jump "down" to WinME, loved it, then MS stopped support in the middle of a virul hack attack. Installed, or tried to, install the upgrade to XPHome - lost everything. Installer crashed in the middle of the reboot. All my hardware was on the MS "its ok" list. BUT the reboot crashed with about 100 virus attachs and my firewall had not been allowed to start. XP's firewall? missing in action. Thank the Lord above for my new 3rd HDD with everything on it, except windows.

So all I had left was 5 years of data and downloaded programs on it. Bought a new box with a SATA capability and XP PRO SP2 loaded. got it home and two months later MS announces XP's demise vis-a-vis vista.

So far all my new HW is on the list. ASUS Mobo AMD 64 athlon X2, corsair 1GB pair, 400 GB SATA, ATI pci-e video, and much more and all on the list or qual's by mfg. (1.5 yrs so far)

Now XP has been given a reprieve for 6 months BUT BGates is quiting ...

Will there be stability in an operating system for the masses? I doubt it! In fact the masses are who made MS. So much for my thoughts.

Will there be a single user free opsys? Or a discount. More likely a charge for the updates to keep XP safe. By the way I believe there is a way to continue using the single user XP Pro SP3 after it has been "Activated" once.
Lawyers watching?
Class action?
I may not own the code but I own a none cancelable right to use it legally. I, after all, paid the charged price to do so.

Why do I keep seeing people say "XP had all kinds of problems at roll-out"? I distinctly remember upgrading every machine I owned to XP as soon as possible. After all of the systems in our office were upgraded, my support work fell off significantly. (not having to reboot twice a day made users very happy)

I've upgraded 3 machines to Vista and after 2 or three weeks downgraded back to XP. I've also used 2 machines with Vista pre-installed, I'm not impressed. Vista isn't any faster, and made a fair amount of the software I need to use crash regularly.

I needed to get a new laptop back in Oct 2007. I'd heard lots of horror stories abt Vista, so decided to see if I could still buy one w/XP. I was having a problem finding stores that still offered Win XP, & I ended up placing an order for a laptop from Dell, cause they did hv it available. I love XP and thank DEll that for no additional charge, I got XP.
If You need a new computer you might want to check into Dell to see if you can still get XP from them.

As an industry professional, I'd been pondering the switch to Vista, but I just heard one complaint after another from those that had.

I'm looking at upgrading hardware later in the year and am horrified at the thought of having Vista forced upon me.

I think that it's kind of like a reverse "Emperor's New Clothes" - In this case the clothes do exist and they are beautiful, but it is the substance, the Emperor himself who is missing.

Who really cares anyway - I use Ubuntu Linux at home and have no need for any Microsoft products there. There is nothing I can't do in Linux that I could do in Windows as of now (finally!)

In the corporate world, the Capatalist pigs will support whatever their nooseholders tell them to - and when I venture there, if I am forced to use Vista - so what? It's not my PC and it's not my personal work.

Simple.

So, if they choose a new OS and it's exponential costs over a pay raise - well, then I'll just find another employer.

And just how long do you want to hold on to the fondly-remembered past?
Can you answer that in years, please?

Vista is, as they say in Texas, "All Hat, No Cattle". It's not even a very good hat. It's slow, Macintosh does the UI thing better. XP was fine. It got reasonably stable reasonably quickly, and is now stable enough to warrant serious use. If Microsoft is releasing a Service Pack 3 for XP, how can they sunset it on 12/31/08??? That's nutty. I'd sooner start telling people to switch to Mac or Linux than to be forced into a bad upgrade...Or, I'll buy the OS from e-bay as long as possible, and start ordering systems without an OS. or not..I'm not sure..but PLEASE, Microsoft, stop being SO cash-centric for once. You put out a bad product. You admitted it with Windows ME. Admit this one too. ME was long enough ago that we can forgive you. But...PLEASE stop this Vista foolishness. For those who can deal with it, great..but...NO OS needs more than 2 versions. You goofed on marketing, product release, stability...just chalk it up to experience keep XP on the shelves till the next version of Windows is ready and stable..Hey, even 2000 didn't last all THAT long. Let's get past this Vista, go back to XP, and we'll wait patiently for a good version that doesn't require a brand new computer. Thanks.

If they do away with XP I will be looking to some other company for OS.

.... Who needs VISTA? - Gamer?

This is just the kind of crap Microsoft loses people over. If XP goes, I go. I'll be looking at apple after this, screw Microsoft. I like XP damn-it!

I fully agree with Jim Fetter. Neither my company nor I will change to Vista. If XP goes, I go. I'll be looking at apple after this, sheding a tear!!

Habe meine Erfahrungen mit Vista gemacht und bin sehr enttäuscht. Nach meiner Meinung ist Vista für den professionellen Einsatz noch nicht tauglich! Windows XP kann vernünftig administriert werden und ist auch sehr performant!

Meine Bitte: lasst XP leben!!

meme en Europe..on veut que XP..continue a exister..tant que Vista sera pas au point...

My version of Windows XP Works Fine for me and the computer is very fast, and so the so the statemnt I would make is if it is not broken why pay for more hardware in order to upgrade to Vista? Microsoft have made a great deal of money and have returned nothing to their faithful users!

If Microsoft expects us to go through the expense, pain and agony of an upgrade like Vista demands, there is going to have to be more reason to do so. XP was a significant evolutionary step past Win9x, and after the initial problems were overcome, more than worth the trouble. XP wasn't even all that much slower than Win9x, and could even run on perhaps 50% of the hardware in place.

However, almost every relevant evolutionary feature was stripped from Vista. Worse than that, instead of 2 "flavors", there are now 6, with little more purpose in mind than extorting more money out of consumers and thoroughly confusing them at the same time. We're left with a bloated mess that is less stable than XP and not even half as fast. Oh, and it's designed all around a DRM scheme that is all about everyone else's interest instead of the end-user's. And for this the IT world is expected to pay up, replace and reinvent everything?

Not going to do it. If I am going to be forced to go to that kind of trouble and expense, I might as well make the leap to Linux. I doubt I will be alone.

If Microsoft wants me to replace everything, the next OS is going to have to: Perform better than the previous one (or at least comparably on the same hardware); be more manageable, more stable; No more than 2 versions; implement the revolutionary technologies that were originally promised for Vista. And that's just from the top of my head.

Come on Microsoft. You're a marketing company. You should have known better than this, especially after the "ME" fiasco!

xp is good

The key question is simple: How does a PC user's typical work day go with Vista vs. XP?

For our company, the answer was: horrible.

I expected Windows Vista to be an improvement, so bought two Lenovo ThinkPads and one HP desktop with Vista. VISTA PCS TURNED OUT TO BE VIRTUALLY WORTHLESS. Users couldn't do normal tasks with normal software, and soon switched back to their 5-year-old XP machines.

So, I spent more money and quite a bit of time to convert the ThinkPads to XP, which Lenovo supports by selling an XP image CD set for $50. The HP can't be switched because HP doesn't provide XP drivers, so it now sits unused, and HP is no longer an acceptable PC supplier.

In history books, Vista is going to be lumped with New Coke, IBM PCjr, Windows Bob and Windows Me, dBASE IV, and all the other failures to improve upon success.

Evidence: In a recent USAToday interview, when asked about Vista, Bill Gates answered by saying (paraphrasing) Microsoft has learned much from the Vista experience that will be reflected in the next version of Windows. I can't read this as anything but an admission that Microsoft knows Vista is already a market failure.

It is just good business. If you are the only market in town and your rotten fruit that you make gobs of money on (Vista) is not selling, and your nice, fresh fruit that you don't have as large a mark-up on (XP) is stealing all the sales from the rotten fruit that you really want to sell, just pull all the nice fresh fruit from the shelves and people will then have to buy your rotten fruit. Microsoft doesn't have much programming savvy, but they have the best marketing savvy of perhaps any corporation in the world. Discontinuing the sale of XP would just be a stragety to boost Vista sales.

Save xp please...BehindBlueEyes...

Why should we? Vista is a better OS in every way imaginable.

Stay in the past if you want. I'll just use the better system, thank you.

I from Poland, and i love XP. This system is really great. WE MUST SAVE WINDOWS XP !!!! PEOPLE ON THE WORLD SAVE THE XP!!!

Same old same old! We hear this refrain with almost every new OS release. "Gives me nothing". "Who needs it?". "Incompatible with what I HAVE to have."

The parallels run far deeper than anyone has commented upon. For many years after Windows 95 was released, huge proportions of the install base was using one of the 3.x versions.

I actually had one allegedly "with-it" application programmer tell me that, not only did he not have any Windows version of his DOS program, but that he had no plans to make one, no customer would buy one, and Windows could not do what he did in DOS!! This was back in the early 1990's, when the end was clearly in sight for DOS.

I expect that he either got a radical attitude shift, or his market share dwindled into irrelevance and unprofitability.

OK, maybe the adoption of Vista is a little anemic. Some organizations may simply choose to skip a generation. There's nothing exactly earth-shaking about any of this, and it's all been going on for as many years as there have been computers.

However don't claim that Microsoft doesn't listen to their customer. That isn't fair. The marketplace was screaming for enhanced security, and Vista delivers on that. The UAC that everyone loves to carp about? A security feature. Memory randomization? Security. 2-way firewall? Security.

The fact that WinFS didn't make the cut is disappointing, I'll give you that. However global search tools are actually useful. That's a feature everyone will use, and pays close attention to how people actually use the Internet today.

Save XP
Vista is dreadful, bloated software that slows down any PC.
If XP is "axed" I will move to Linux or Mac

YES!!! We must Save XP !!!

We must Save XP !!!
Mi dolzhny sohranit' XP !!!

Ok, so far I have seen a lot of redundancies and generalizations but some valid arguments. There is nothing wrong with upgrading and moving to a more advance processing module. But vista is not it. Way too many issues, but I have come to expect this from any role out of new software. Service releases will always be necessary. Well to installed Vista on two machines and after 3 months I was back to XP. Software issues..YES, Hardware... YES, but I was able to resolve them all. But then there was network problems.. with constant disconnects from network drives, interface cards stop working and requires reboot. Also many stalls when using graphic intensive software applications and not to mention online gaming. Well the most frustrating issues for me was file transfer. Even after MS email the fix, which helped a little, stills it was a no go for moving large files across my network. After my last attempt to move a 1.5gb file from a CPU to another on the network I had had enough. Also that problems moving large files from internal to internal drive on the same PC. When copied or moved in dos it worked normally. So that was it Vista will not get another opportunity. Maybe the next OS release.

My upbringing has given me some understanding of the power of Prayer - maybe if we join together in reciting the following, which I put together this morning... (get it to Bill maybe) ...it would help?? I hope no one is offended, 'cause I'm really trying to do my part here. Peace!

Hail XP
(Version 1.0)

Hail XP,
Full of grace,
MIS Departments are with thee;
Blessed are thou among Operating Systems,
And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Productivity.

Holy XP,
Mother of all Operating Systems,
Pray for our users,
Now and at the hour of Vista.
Amen.

save xp,my dear xp

Personally, I think All the comments on vista are biased. Drivers are extremely easy to find, just goto pcpitstop.com and goto drivers section. As for speed theres like a major difference... in that vista is FASTER!!!! I use a q6600 CPU with 8800GTX and VISTA IS THE BEST!!!!! Xp is the past, face it, its going to die.

XP Professional SP2 is the best OS I have ever used. Keep that in mind Microsoft. Please don't retire it.

As an 'Old Dog' user of Windows XP I found thru my learning curve of Vista that XP should be around for some years to come as Vista is not as good a MS would have us believe. But if XP does die then i reckon an awfull lot of x XP users will probs go to linux as that is a much better and cheaper proposition than Vista will ever be. This could even escalate into the demise of Microsft also fueled by the lack of user's of microsoft-yahoo team up if it ever happens.

Tried VISTA, went back to XP. Thank heavens, I had an XP downgrade agreement in place. VISTA DVD's are on the shelf for now. Maybe System 7?

Had lunch with 6 executives Friday and they were all asking me how to remove VISTA from their new PC's and install XP. Hmmm.

Actually, I recommended that they either buy a MAC with Leopard or buy a PC running Linux.

I just bought a new PC that is shipping with Vista only per the Mfr. The price was too good to pass up this machine. What is the difference between an OEM version of XP Pro and a regular edition. There is a tremendous price difference. Microsoft's license price without a new CD package is outrageous! Also not being allowed to transfer the license to the new machine really sucks! If XP is so bad and has to be retired, why is MS charging $299.00 for it? They seem to think it's still valuable!

KEEP XP
Vista is a horrible & bloated software that slows down any PC.
I NEVER again want to be FORCED to buy a new pc just so it can handle the new OS being thrust down our throats.
If XP is "Killed Off" I will move to Linux or Mac & to hell with Microsoft and its shoddy, buggy systems.
Their management is also BUGGY & money grabbing at best.
If I post my "at worst" I will be deleted.
I am fed up with this forced upgrade system Microsoft uses.
FED UP!!~!!
And I ain't gonna take it anymore!!~!!

I didn't want to make the move from 98SE, but the laptop I now own runs great and fast and have gotten used to XP now. I am not interested in paying to upgrade to a new OS when the one I got now works. Microsoft quit supporting all other versions of windows. I think they should back their products and XP is a popular and decent OS.

如果微软一定要强奸大家的思想 我们以后永远不买微软的产品了！

Xp of course better than Vista la , but in business side of MircoSoft , Vista's extrusion is the necessary , we r consumers , MS's monopolization is clear .