So how much do businesses love Windows XP? Enough to pay up front for license packs and have them stored away by their solution provider partners, that's how much. Robert Gregory, president of Ocean State Computers Ltd., a Providence, RI based solution provider, says he's stockpiling Windows XP license packs that have been bought and paid for by his customers. Those customers want to be sure they can get their hands on the operating system well into the future, even after the arrival of Windows 7 on October 22. "The entire bottom shelf of my vault has eight 30 packs of XP Pro that are sold and paid for," he says. Gregory, who was among the solution providers that recently attended D&H Distributing's New England Show, has asked his rep to ship him an 30-pack of XP licenses every two weeks, whether he orders it or not. The fact that Gregory and many other partners are buying licenses in advance for clients that want to stick with XP flies in the face of Microsoft's efforts to let XP fade into the rearview mirror. With Windows 7, Microsoft is offering XP Mode, which uses virtualization to run legacy XP apps within Windows 7. But the shaky performance of XP Mode test builds, combined with the security and management implications, are giving customers even more reason to stay on XP. What's more, Microsoft is going to have to grapple with lingering anti-Vista sentiment, even though Windows 7 is being 'praised' within the Microsoft channel as a back-to-basics OS that is everything Vista should have been. "Corporate America and the general public got burnt and screwed with Vista," said one solution provider. "And they are not going to let that happen again." Microsoft is trying to counteract the Vista loathing by portraying Windows 7 as a kinder, gentler OS that offer a simpler and more pleasing experience, claiming it requires "less waiting, less clicks, less hassles connecting to things…just less complex." With that in mind, it is important to remember that Windows 7's biggest competition is not Vista or the Mac OS X. It's Windows XP, an 8 year old OS that remains the de facto standard for a large swath of the IT industry. XP works just fine for vertical market customers like nursing homes and police departments that run specialized, custom-built applications, and these organizations don't even have Windows 7 on their radar as yet. This isn't to suggest that Windows 7 doesn’t offer advantages. Gregory says he has tested Windows 7 on a high end PC found that it runs superbly. However, the cost of that PC was $2,700. "Who is going to pay that kind of money to have performance?" he asks. "I think there will be a wait and see attitude on Windows 7. It will definitely cost more to deploy." Microsoft insists that Windows 7 will run well on smaller devices, which wasn't the case with Vista. But Microsoft isn't offering an upgrade path from XP to Windows, and its expectation is that customers will migrate to the new OS on new hardware. Given the continued economic uncertainty, companies aren’t exactly champing at the bit to make that type of capital expenditure. The last chance for distributors to order Windows XP is August 31. With that in mind, distributors are stockpiling licenses, and so are solution providers. Will that be enough? Given the rabid and faithful following behind Windows XP, the answer is likely no. What do you think of the Windows 7 vs. XP battle? Are you stockpiling Windows XP?
Why Windows XP Will Never Die
xzvf-cw
says:
This is another perfect time to break the cycle of desktop OS upgrades. For all but a small subset of applications, a Linux based desktop is a viable option. Combine that with a migration of applications away from running local on the desktop it'll avoid vendor lockin and provide client flexibility. A virtual desktop solution can keep your remaining XP apps useable until replaced. Thin clients can save money by lowering provisioning and management costs. Doesn't matter what type of solution you pick, but being caught in a fat client desktop upgrade cycle every few years has proven to be expensive and fraught with risk. Many of the applications that work with XP won't work with 7 and will have to be upgraded anyway. You may still decide that upgrading to 7 is your best option, but lay the groundwork so you have more than one option with the cycle starts again in 3-4 years.
Robert Williams
says
in response to BobP:
Don't forget about Windows 3.11 that was suppose to be a "big improvement" and was a big bust. And we can never forget MS Bob. Now, I am not bad mouthing MS, but I say cut them some slack as well as realize every OS has some good and bad reviews. I mean, who can forget the horrible software OS/2 Warp.
BobP
says
in response to xzvf-cw:
I have and do indeed use linux (Ubuntu) and statements like yours come up quite often. As much as I like and enjoy working with Linux and long for the day when it has sufficiently matured so that average users can use it, it is still not there for the average user. Major functionality does not work pnp like it does with WIndows... Before you jump down my throat, let me give you one very clear example that I would consider a show stopper if I weren't fluent enough in Linux to fix the "problem"... Try setting up a Dual Monitor Display. I had a laptop with a Quadro FX 1400 video card (NVidia) and a 2nd monitor to increase the screen real estate. Try getting the values right in the xorg.conf so that both screens are used as expected - it's not as easy as it sounds, but it is part of what I consider base functionality that ANY OS that wants to be considered main stream should (easily) be able to perform (automatically) without huge amounts of manual intervention and configration requiring the knowledge of a computer systems engineer.
Of course, the open office application, which is probably the one single app that people would absolutely need to give them equivalence to a PC, is close, but, again, "not quite" ready for prime time. There are simply too many options available in Microsoft's Office that do not work at all or do no display correctly in OO.
No, one way to keep my XP apps around will be to run them in a virtal machine using something like VMWare. My only concern would be how much overhead this creates and how fast the apps run. Let's take a deep breathe and step back for a minute. Look at what we are doing. We have a computer that has a CPU. Today's CPU is running (assume i7 920) at over 2.6 gigahertz and inside this CPU there are actually 4 physical CPUs and each of those has hyperthreading so it appears as 2 (for a total of 8 CPUs). Even if we forget about the hyperthreading, we have the equivalent of a single CPU running at 10 gigahertz - that's 10,000,000,000 . Let's compare that to the first IBM PC running 4 mHz or 4,000,000 - that's 2500 times faster - TWO THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED times faster. Many instructions are far more powerful, raising that number even higher (don't even consider the bus size issues). Memory - Vista recommended something like 4 gigabytes. XP could only use 3 gb, but what a gigabyte among friends :^) Again - let's compare that - 4 gigabytes - that's 4,000,000,000 bytes versus 1,000,000 (1 megabyte, which really should be 640 k for the first PCs) - that's a factor of 4,000 (amazing how close that ratio is to the one on CPU power, isn't it!).
BUT!!! If you ask anyone that was around when the first PC shipped if they feel things have sped up by a factor of 2500 or more I doubt that any of them would agree. In fact, many "standard" operations feel like they take longer now. I know I regularly curse at my favorite computer at home. I would love to wipe it clean and do a fresh install, but a lot of the installed programs could not easily be reinstalled and so I let the system lumber along. Periodically I run spybot and other utilities to get rid of the spyware, adware, etc, but the system has never returned to it's original speed.
I have a new laptop - Dell Vostro 1720 - 2.6 gig Core 2 Duo - it's lighting. I wonder how long it will take before it slows down to the same speed as my (favorite) desktop. The sad thing is I still have most of my computers - all the way back to a Pentium 133, Pentium Pro 200, Pentium II 400, Pentium III 1.5 gig, P4 2.6 gig, laptops at 1.8/2.0/2.6 gig etc and you know what - for all practical purposes they all run myessential apps at the same speed, with the main exception that the systems that have spent the most time connected to the web run slower :^(
Anyhow - I am building a new desktop - I7 920 - Asus Rampage II, 6 gb, raid 0 (2 drives at least 1 tb each), Nvidia 265... I think the thing to do is to install VMWare and run virtual machines - that way when a virtual machine gets slow you just delete and reinstall - or - I can just save the virtual machine after the initial install and just keep spawning off machines from that state.
Bob
A look at the trials and tribulations of solution providers and vendor channel personnel. What works? What doesn't? And what do solution providers and vendors need to do to succeed.
XP was met with trepidation. Microsoft had just come off their biggest and most botched introduction in history. Fortunately, few people actually installed it on already running systems and beyond the few systems that shipped with it it (fortunately) never gained any traction. If you aren't aware which OS I'm talking about, then for your edification, I'm talking about the Windows ME, which stood for Millenum Edition, but was often referred to as Moron Edition - not for the users, but for the Morons at Microsoft that had the gall to attempt to pass this off as an operating system that was actually tested by anyone that hadn't had a frontal lobotomy.
in any case, XP had some issues, but Microsoft dealt with them in their usual way. Slowly, service packs evolved. SP2 caused some major upheavals the details of which I won't go into, but they were dealt with and things settled down again. Eventually, SP3 was shipped and, outside the fact that Microsoft still has forgotten what's really important in an operating system, XP was the best of their operating systems in recent memory.
If I were a betting man, I'd bet that the same team that worked on ME was the team that "perfected" (humor intended) Vista, the second worst operating system Microsoft ever shipped (behind, of course, ME). In any normal company, two big blunders like this would be enough to cause sweeping changes in the management levels, perhaps even put the company out of business. Primarily due to it's size, this did not occur at Microsoft, it just moved on as it always had in the past. Fortunately (for Microsoft), it's highly likely that the same team that brought forth XP is also the team that created V7. Unfortunatley, it's going to be difficult to get people to switch after such a godawful introduction as Vista had. In addition, it has taken literally years for companies to create, tune, and develop their networks and infrastructure that they aren't likely to want to revisit that entire investment (yet again) just for a new operating system - especially for something that has no compelling reason or added incentive for them. Sure, a few companies may see some advantages, and they will no doubt make the switch, but there are a whole lot more small and mid-sized companies out there that just don't want to put the investment into IT in this economy that I don't see most of them moving away from XP.
On the personal front, V7 looks like it adds some frosting onto an already well decorated cake. It has features that people out on the fringe might like to try, but for the average worker, using their computer for email, spreadsheets to submit timesheets or travel reimbursements, a new operating system means nothing to them.
So, the biggest nut to crack is coming up with a truly unique platform. One that works - ALL THE TIME. Doesn't slow to a creeping halt when you start up many processes - in fact - the user shouldn't even HAVE to KNOW what a process is - and just keeps on moving. Reboot - I was going to say, "How many times do you have to reboot your TV", but, indeed, I have seen problems on my new Sony Bravia that a reboot solves. But at least for that a reboot involves me pushing the "Off" button following by the "On" button - something most people can figure out - and something that doesn't happen after they've been typing for an hour writing their thesis on.