The deadline for Window’s XP is just around the corner, with June 30 being the final deadline before XP goes “off market.” Since there are still so many people who want XP to stay on, many people got a brief surge of hope, when Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer hinted at a possible extension past that deadline back in April, depending on what users wanted. As the clock keeps ticking, with Microsoft having yet to make any official budge on the deadline, it looks like they will really stop selling XP on brand new computers after June 30.
In case you wonder why nobody’s crazy about Vista, here’s a list of the complaints so far:
- Many redundant processes (usually close to 100) that always run in the background and consume tons of RAM.
- Firefox crashing on Vista at times – inexplicably.
- Incompatible with many games and programs like Halo.
- Mouse Drag and Drop problems.
- Windows Media Player crashes (a long list).
- User Account Control prompts (too many).
- Suck up wireless bandwidth, and drain battery life on laptops.
- The SP1 is still buggy.
Since its release over 1.5 years ago, there have been precious few good things being said about Vista. I think three of them would be better looks, increased security, and Direct X10+ capability coupled with quad core compatibility. The latter helps with the latest quad chips, of which XP doesn’t run as well on. Nonetheless these have not really swayed people over to Vista, and it looks like XP will remain strong until Windows 7 comes out, possibly by 2010.
So, what options do you have after June 30? You can legally downgrade to XP, and that is the best concession Microsoft has given so far. I don’t think Microsoft is going to pull Vista off the shelves and replace them back with XP, but all the same, you can still cast a vote for XP at a number of Save XP campaigns, like at Infoworld. Microsoft is probably keeping tabs on the XP movement (link expired) right now, as it is.
It looks like I’ll still be Vista-less until Windows 7 is out.