Hear that sound? It's the Windows XP PC bubble popping The XP bubble has well and truly burst, leaving the UK channel awash with unwanted commercial PCs and vendors facing a costly write-down to clear a mountain of misery. Microsoft ending support for the creaking operating system last April revived the industry in 2014, but it seems vendors forgot the sales cycle and that their …
Well, that's the thing.
Looking at my slightly ageing PC, with its maxed memory (for32 bit Win 7) and an adequate CPU to do all I need, with the second HDD and DVD writers I popped in , and I would only want to replace it if the new machine was a good price for a much better spec.
Many of the boxes I see in my local store don't have such a great spec. But they also aren't cheap for what they do have. So, PC world have a HP Envy with the sort of spec I would want. In their sale they've knocked a massive £70 of their £1000 price tag. I'm just off to put the champers on ice.
"PC world have a HP Envy with the sort of spec I would want"
Sir, if you go to PC world, and, AND enjoy a thought of actually BUYING rather than building a machine for a fraction of the cost - you're unworthy of membership in our merry fraternity of el reg commentardos!
Fair point, 'cept I'm not really using this as a price comparison for myself, though I would buy a box if it was cheap enough. Building one takes time and effort. And the price of parts on the retail market don't make it a great saving. Especially when I buy over-specced stuff, because I can.
But, most domestic and small biz computers are bought by Joe Public. Off the shelf.
>Looking at my slightly ageing PC
Well if you are up to it, my recommendation is look at the price of SSD's, which have come down a lot in price and gone up in capacity etc. Simply taking an image of your existing HDD using tools such as Macrium Reflect Free and putting it onto an SSD will breathe new life into your system, and leave money for taking the family on holiday. Champers on ice or a holiday? don't really need to engage brain...
I guess it should have meant some attempts to excite sales, but with what do these pent up sales pushes come loaded? We know that MS tried to damp down demand for Windows 8 with such as their kiddie brick screen insistence and other road blocks. Windows 10 discussions suggest that silliness is still pervading MS thinking. Even if the machines are really knocked down in price, unless their specification meets what people really think they want, sales are going to be hard to generate. (Note I said 'think they want' FUD is stalking the market place. Though It may be based on poor understanding, that understanding is the one some potential buyers have.)
I am well aware that many are very happy with their new style machines. However, those who have heard the horror stories may be less willing to dip their wallet into what is getting the feeling of a poisoned well. Even Windows 7 is now on limited life. Frankly is it the time to buy a known end of line machine or is it better to hang onto whatever you can still use, while hoping that your belief that there could still be a future might still come true?
I will continue to hold my breath and nose for the time being and 'might' continue to experiment with Linux on a few older machines where it runs much faster than their windows version(s).
"'might' continue to experiment with Linux on a few older machines where it runs much faster than their windows version(s)."
For Windows 7 and 8 supported hardware, Windows generally runs faster for basic functions (for instance 3D graphics, large file copies) than a Linux release of similar maturity. So I assume you mean really old kit that only runs Vista or similar?
I think it's more that the market expected there to be a gold-rush style sale of new gear (running Windows 7 / 8.1 or similar) to replace old unsupported XP kit, so they filled their warehouses with lots of lovely stock to try and push on businesses and customers that were upgrading.
The upgrade-rush didn't have the scale they apparently hoped for, and now the vendors are staring forlornly at all this gear they didn't sell.
Can we knock this 'lack of support' fable on its head for once and for all.
Let's say you find a bug or a problem with Windows $THIS_WEEK'S_VERSION and you contact Microsoft. Do you seriously expect them to support you with a fix?
I've been contacting them with bugs in Windows 7 and, guess what, not even an acknowledgement let alone a fix.
So, back to XP. What support would you expect to have that's missing? I've a number of XP machines running here and my life isn't any less for it. In fact in a lot of cases XP is a lot better than later versions of Windows.
As I say, let's knock this on the head for once and for all, can we?
@BongoJoe: Contacting them how? Their support policy is pretty clear.
Microsoft will consider hotfixes and Design Change Requests for products within the Mainstream Support phase of their lifecycle, if you raise a case with Product Support Services. That means paying, using a free support incident that came with your product purchase (if bought as a retail product), or through Software Assurance or a Premier Support Plan.
If you obtained the product with your computer (which is how most people get Windows), your first port of call is your OEM - the reduced price of the OEM Windows edition doesn't include support, it's outsourced to the OEM. If you bought an OEM version of Windows on the open market and installed it yourself, congratulations! You don't get any support.
If the product has moved on to the Extended Support phase, which Windows 7 did on 13 January, you need to have bought an Extended Support Hotfix Agreement within the first 90 days after it did so. You can then get hotfixes by contacting support. They won't consider any Design Change Requests, though.
If you contact the product group through blogs, email, connect.microsoft.com or User Voice, they might consider your issue for a fix in the next version of the product. They're unlikely to develop a patch for existing versions unless there is some wider issue that you're highlighting. Generally patches for released versions are developed by the Windows Customer eXperience Engineering team, not the people working on the next release.
If you think it's a security issue, email secure@microsoft.com. (security@microsoft.com is *building* security.)
I would expect to see this start to change if Microsoft are really going to treat Windows 10 as an 'evergreen' release in the way that Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox are 'evergreen' browsers. The way it works now is based on the principles of stability - no changes unless strictly necessary - and that someone has to pay for the fix to be developed. If you're not paying (or haven't pre-paid) they're just not interested.
The support you're not getting for Windows XP is that you're not getting security updates. No-one is checking whether Windows XP is vulnerable to any of the issues that have been reported, and if it is, there is no commitment to developing fixes.
@Mike Dimmick
I think you've just confirmed that for the majority of users, there is no 'support', even for that PC you've just purchased from PC World running Win8. What 'support' you are getting is MS's website and updates (security fixes and features that MS considers to be important) via WUP. So BongoJoe is right, we can knock this 'lack of support' fable on it's head.
But then much of what we use everyday in our homes is out of support - or do you get a new washing machine every year just because the old one has gone out of support? hence to many people using stuff that is "out-of-support" is life as usual...
"No-one is checking whether Windows XP is vulnerable to any of the issues that have been reported, and if it is, there is no commitment to developing fixes."
I don't know why this meme persists. Microsoft have been developing fixes for XP since support supposedly ended in early 2014 and shipping them to those organizations who stumped up the readies last year. Does everyone suddenly have amnesia?
The buy-in to the exclusive club was out of reach for ordinary individuals and small businesses who had no choice but to continue with XP, but for institutions and companies who could meet the minimum requirements (having umpteen thousand machines running XP and coughing up - what was it? $150 per installation?) Microsoft pledged to keep pushing out XP patches until at least April this year, and there's reason to believe they'll extend beyond that for the right incentive.
The UK's CCS forked out UKP5.5 million for the NHS and other gummint depts to download fixes for not only XP but also Office 2003 and Exchange 2003. The Netherlands negotiated a separate agreement. I don't know how many commercial enterprises have done likewise.
For "Windows Embedded Industry" XP the support continues until 2019 (which is why I suspect the current April 2015 deadline for all others will likely be moved).
So, let's get the facts straight. XP continues to be supported, but only for those with deep pockets. I had hoped someone might break ranks and help the rest of us poor sods but I've seen nothing so far. I live in hope...
If you have 'umpteen thousand' machines running XP and you can't afford to upgrade them to a newer OS (be it a hardware or just OS upgrade), then your organization definitely has bigger problems than those machines:
- failing;
- being broken into;
- suddenly becoming unsupported platforms for critical software.
If your organization could afford 'umpteen thousand' machines some 10 years ago and it cannot afford new ones now, you definitely have bigger problems than just IT.
@toughluck - There are large companies and organizations who cannot just simply upgrade to the next OS. They also can't just stump up the cash when some new piece of software or hardware comes along - most organizations that were doing well a decade ago have been struggling financially for the last five years and are unlikely to see the brakes being taken off for some years yet.
Some of those organizations are constrained by legacy hardware for which the manufacturers have not or will not (due to cost) create drivers and other software for Windows 7/8/8.1 because they've moved on with their hardware and don't want to support older kit.
Others are constrained by regulations that demand full regression testing of all related applications (for one of my clients, that meant 4,000+ applications had to be tested before they could move to Win7, and that took years).
Yet others have custom apps that for a variety of reasons don't take kindly to a change in OS (it's taken me months of testing in VMs to determine that most of my apps won't run cleanly in Windows 8.1 or 10, for example, but do under Win 7 - another OS that's at the end of its life, supposedly - and the newer OS require that I buy new hardware, something I can't afford to do).
(As an aside, I'm puzzled that VMware can write a VM player that runs Win7/8.1/10Preview on XP with elderly kit that Microsoft are adamant they can't support. What? MS can't write a VM for their own OS but a third party can?)
If you're awash with cash and money is no object for anything you choose to buy, good for you. The rest of us are not in such an enviable position.
"Let's say you find a bug or a problem with Windows $THIS_WEEK'S_VERSION and you contact Microsoft. Do you seriously expect them to support you with a fix?"
Yep, do it all the time.
"I've been contacting them with bugs in Windows 7 and, guess what, not even an acknowledgement let alone a fix."
You get an incident number as part of the call to log the bug. Premier Support is on 0844 800 8338
"Can we knock this 'lack of support' fable on its head for once and for all.
Let's say you find a bug or a problem with Windows $THIS_WEEK'S_VERSION and you contact Microsoft. Do you seriously expect them to support you with a fix?!"
Do you not get a bunch of people offering advice, support and bug fixes?
I do...
But then I use Linux
All depends on the purpose you use your computer for, the big bogey man was XP would no longer recieve updates for IE. The was back pedalled upon within a month and in any case the majority of users would rather pull the long hairs from their noses than use IE. A lot of soho users will have a better than adequate XP box running their legacy software until it croaks - if it aint bust dont fix it - is the paradigm. The trigger will come with computer death or when a critical programme (think accounting package) will no longer run after an essential update.
I've got one piece of software - Bernina's embroidery module driver - that insists on Win XP (at the latest, it was written for Win95) running on bare metal. I've tried virtualising it under SLES, OSX and Win Server 2008 but no dice - it won't talk to the hardware unless the OS is natively installed. So that's one person who wants a computer with XP on it.
I could upgrade the sewing machine, but for all bar one use case it does exactly what I need, does it well and the modern Bernina's don't have die-cast alloy chassis.
Ok, cool, there's a use case.
- Did your PC stop working when XP support was discontinued?
- Did your software stop working when XP support was discontinued?
No? So what's the problem? Disconnect the PC from the network, or at least from the Internet and put a separate PC running a newer OS as proxy for the embroidery jobs.
Why did you want to virtualize it? How would it help your use case? If you put it in a VM on a secure OS, it doesn't suddenly become secure (if the VM is connected to any network).
Besides, even if you were virtualizing, you were probably doing it wrong. Did you use IOMMU (any sort) to virtualize the hardware that actually connects to the machine?
The XP box died of natural causes. Rather than build a new one I used what was to hand, largely out of interest as I don't do that for a living. I tried hard enough to work out that it was easier running XP standalone as a separate boot, but it's still an XP box at the end of the day.
Your suggestion is constructive, however, thank you.
Seems to me the future lays in Intel's NUC. Yeah The PC Musterd Rice will game, on Beige Boxes for the time being. For me its about being more green. And, by that I mean keeping more of the folding greens, instead of giving it away to the Electric Board. Since gaming is NOT my thing. A 500w Beige Box, just for typing some sh-- like this onto a Message Board, seem to me like a bad joke now when we have Phablets, that can do this task better and cheaper. The faster the PC as we knew it dies the better!
Down votes? And, there we go!
First off M U S T A R D was spelt correctly, and secondly I used the word R I C E, as in something that's been supped up to impress other ignorent fools uuch as adding in a Two Grand Graphic Card, just 'cause the can, and so add to their ePenus length in some meaningless Benchmark.
Really would your Nan really give less then Two about doing what ever it was on a PC or a Phablet? PCs are indeed wonderful things. But the 90s are over Guys. 90% of the PCs raise d'etre has been striped away by Tablets, and Phones, and other such IoTs like the Google TV Box. Which just knocked my HTPC into a crocked Hat. Since last October. The joke their being I could pretty much use that Box to do 99% of everything I do now, plus Videogame Emulations. All the while for just a fraction of the Thermal Watt Displacement of any Beige Box I ever had.
Assuming that Windows has a life beyond Seven. I may yet consider the Intel NUC, otherwise I'd be looking for an even cheaper Chinese Box that was able to run a Desktop Linux. For that ~1% thats missing.
As to Gaming, or CAD/CAM I have no stake or interest in either. I suspect that most of the PC buying Public have no interest in that either. And only needed something to get on the Gravy Train to free Music. Which is also a thing of the long past. Though I'm hardly implying that you still can't pirate Music in this day, and age. Just that Napster itself is gone, as is the 90s, and the Beige Box.
I wish I could give you 100 downvotes, but I'm limited to just one.
"Really would your Nan really give less then Two about doing what ever it was on a PC or a Phablet?"
Yes. But she's a touch-typist. But for my great-grandma, the screen would probably go blank before she found the next letter on the on-screen keyboard. And she'd have to squint quite a lot to make out some of the letters, be it on a phablet (strange of you to even mention a phablet as a viable choice), or even a large-screen tablet. But then again, a large, 12-inch, tablet costs as much as a basic PC with a 24-inch screen attached.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who was puzzled by your post. You did spell it "musterd" - why do you claim otherwise? - and you clearly have missing words and some other oddities (spelt? spelled, surely? less then? less than! crocked hat? cocked hat! raise d'etre? raison d'etre (we'll leave aside the circumflex). and on and on).
Phablets and phones have their place, but to do real multitasking work you still need a desktop (right now I have over 30 tabs open in my browser as I do research - good luck trying to do that on the pretenders to the throne :))
This post has been deleted by its author
Yes, I got one (dual quad-core 3GHz with 8GB RAM for £185) and very nice it is too. However, there is a strange problem with many T5400 motherbords (which happened in mine after three months regular use) in that they can develop a fault where on restart, but before booting from the HD, they hang up with just a flashing cursor showing for 5 minutes before proceeding to start up as normal. After trying three replacement motherboards from a local PC-recycler-seller, I found that this was a common problem. I won't go into details but I think it's caused by repeated mains power cycling, which is the sort of thing you do when you get a second hand machine and start fitting bits to it and generally messing around with it. In 'normal' use in a commercial environment, this doesn't happen to them.
I've seen reports of problems with an identical description on various forums.
Broken OS? soon fix that with a little bit of lipstick...
Aside: before people jump up and down about all the security enhancements etc etc, just remember the latest domain exploit affects all currently shipping versions of Windows and versions back to at least WS2k3 and probably also NT3.51... So all that added security is some respects just lipstick on NT...
The equipment is fine. It's the broken OS that needs to be replaced.
Ain't that the truth. My old C2D @ 2.13Ghz still does everything I need it too. I feel no great pain in needing to update what has become a simple Terminal to the IoTs. On the occasions I really need a PC to do some actual work, I fire up my Linux Drive instead.
I'm sure that we can't be the only place that found for a lot of users, a bit more RAM was all that was needed to breath enough life into their existing machines to support an XP -> 7 upgrade. Hence, anyone planning on selling us a load of new pc's to cover that upgrade would have missed out.
There's a reason I can still recall no less than two different Windows 95 OEM keys off-by-heart.
Windows ≥ 2000 is an improvement here, but I've seen even Windows 7 crash more times than Linux has on me in recent times.
I have a Windows 7 laptop that I use on the rare occassions there's a bit of software that only runs on Windows. I regularly get BSODs on it. If I'm running it all day I'll get a couple or three. The rest of the time I run Lnux (probably about 98% 0f the time these days) and have no issues. I know a lot of people praise later versions of Windows for additional stability, but I honestly don't see it.
I'm not trying to be inflammatory, this is just my genuine experience.
On the tube in London you will be delighted and surprised by the brand new shiny video displays on the escalators advertising all sorts of exciting activities and investments.
Imagine my surprise when it broke down last week and "Powered by Windows XP" plastered over every screen. Surely there are other OS's capable of flicking through a few image files:-)
At work, we use a RPi, connected via HDMI to an LED TV. When the power comes on in the morning the RPi boots up, runs a start up script that starts to run through a folder full of images, displaying each one at 15s spacing. It even checks our router is turned on pings an known fixed IP on the other side of our firewall - and if it finds - it sends a little email out to let my boss know it's up and running.
The ticket machine for the Metrolink in Manchester threw a wobbler the other day and I was amazed to see it was running what looked exactly like Win 2k! It looked older than XP. I thought it was NT, but my geeky friend said because it was looking for a file in C:\Documents and Settings it had to be Win 2k or later!
Recommended flavours ? Or should we save this for another thread? Tried many times to replace XP with different flavours of Linux - the trouble was there were just too many incomplete libraries and drivers.
This year (For the more reserved home user): I have finally moved all critical small business and home functionality that was running on windows XP (SP2) installed on a 2007 HP ES6336 (originally came with Win 7 Home)
> Storage onto FreeNAS (BSD) with ZFS - and owncloud
> Scanning and printing over the network via netgear powerlines (turns out to be quite reliable [for the price])
> Productivity with OS X (well - it just works! - lets remember - the wife won't be convinced to switch)
> General email and browsing : Android tablets.
Really - is there anything else to consider?
So good was XP and its support in its day - I dread to think just how long it will be before it really disappears - just look at Windows 3.11 - still hanging in there on embedded applications and even some EPOS systems.
I would entertain another Linux switch attempt - if I had time
If you want the most logical, and dare I say it... Windows like Linux... Try Cinnamon Mint. Would you still be Hell bent on MS Office then install Wine, and enjoy! If there is only One thing I actually hate about Linux its that Notepad++ still hasn't been ported over to it yet. lol
I really think a KDE distribution is better for a Windows user as the UI is much more familiar. Mageia works an absolute treat. The printer set-up there is so easy. It'll find your NAS by browsing through the file explorer (Dolphin). Stuff just works these days and the install time is very short.
Anti virus support for XP will still be available so why worry? The trouble of course with upgrading is that paid-for software products which were a LOT of money will often no longer work. Office 97 for example. The last time that I used Office 97 was to print some business cards for a man who tries to make a living from mowing lawns. My newer computer would not do it because the OS was a cut-down Windows HOME version but presumably they think that printing a dozen business cards for free for a friend is business?
There is of course Abiword which can be used in place of a Microsoft WP package and Mozilla Thunderbird is a good alternative to Outlook Express. After all what is the point of getting mugged every few years? A few years ago I bought Red Hat but never got around to using it. I also bought a Chromebook but was never really impressed with it. In short being lazy and sticking with Windows costs money a lot of money. Take the case of a used Netbook that I bought that was running Windows 7. This had got an upgrade on it to Premium which is a £70 upgrade. Owing to a faux-pas that I made in using "restore my computer to an earlier time" the computer locked-up. A message appeared "Enter password, hint Woof" Several names of dogs were entered but none worked but I then discovered a menu with "Restore my computer to its out of the box condition." This did get the machine running again but the £70 Premium Upgrade was lost as was my data. Later I was prompted to pay the £70 to upgrade to what I had before but hell will freeze over before I do that as I am a Senior Citizen on a small pension. Of course now we are living in these Play-Station times robbing pensioners is the new big thing.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
