I bought win 8.1 last month, full version, put it on a new hard drive.
I have no idea what they were thinking with this.
No, I really don’t have ANY IDEA what they were thinking with this.
Wheres the button that makes it all better? 
I’ve wondered about this. The worry is that patches to Win7/8 will be reverse engineered and redeployed as malware against the 31% of computers using XP. But perhaps sound practices could make this issue a wet squib. And if the malware is particularly virulent, I expect MS will cave and make a special patch available. At any rate we will know a year from now - it won’t be apparent during the first month I’d guess.
Methinks this is a lot of rigamarole to put 500 million PCs through, especially because people use this OS largely because everyone else uses it.
Silophant - The problem is that Vista was a downgrade and it’s sound practice to wait a year before buying a new OS. That places the earliest purchase date for Win7 in October 2010. Asking for 6-7 years of anti-malware support for an OS isn’t unreasonable in my view. And there is a public interest in denying a botnet to the bad guys. If US corporations were better at critical thinking in these matters, MS would be forced to offer security patches pretty much indefinitely for a $30-$50 annual fee per machine. I’ll add that those represent monopoly-level profits.
Besides, calling this a 12 year old piece of software is silly. The first version of XP had all manner of problems: it didn’t really find its groove until SP2, released in 2004. And SP3 was released in 2008: XP isn’t that old. Sure, you got a good deal if you bought the program in 2004. But I still say that you should have the option of receiving security patches if you’re willing to pay a industry-standard annual fee for anti-viral packages. Norton Internet Security 2014 costs about $40 by way of comparison.
Stimulus!
Finally, landfilling 500 million perfectly workable computers seems a tad wasteful, ya? After all, smart users typically sidestep OS upgrades when their hardware can’t comfortably handle the strain and/or reconfiguration is a dubious endeavor.
I bet most people are barely aware of such stuff, and are totally unaware of the implications. When I bought an Acer netbook with XP in late 2008 (which is still going strong), every computer I used, at home and at work, had XP. What was there to think about? I was vaguely aware that Vista was out and that it was getting an iffy reception, but that might as well have been happening in Australia.
A strong case can certainly be made that XP was best version of windows. No argument there.
The paragraph above implies that MS is somehow unique amongst software developers in bringing out continuous new versions of its software, that contain few real (however defined) improvements over previous versions, and discontinuing support for older versions. I don’t think that you believe that, but that is what is being strongly implied.
I know this is IMHO but I would appreciate a cite. What I read right now on the MS site, is that “after April 8, 2014, there will be no new security updates, non-security hotfixes, free or paid assisted support options or online technical content updates.” Nothing about $200 for any extended legacy support.
I’m curious to know what you would consider to be a reasonable period of time for XP to be supported.
Missed edit window
I see there was a link posted upthread by **Dewey Finn ** that I missed.
From the link itself:
Legacy support is clearly not for home users. It is unclear whether $200 is a decent price for what large corporates receive in return.
Probably here. If you install this program, you’ll get the start menu back, and be able to easily skip the Start screen on bootup, and disable the hot corners (the pop-ups when you move the mouse to the corners of the screen).
There’s other software to do the same thing, and all but the start menu is possible in 8.1 anyway, but this way is easy, free, and works.
I agree that I enjoy doing this sort of stuff, but I recognise that many people don’t. That’s one reason I’ve tried to point out how to do it as quickly and easily as possible in this thread and the other one, as some people don’t want to spend the time to figure it out.
However, your mistake is thinking of a computer as an appliance. It’s not, it’s not like a washing machine or whatever that should constantly do the same few things, and do them consistently. It’s an extremely complex machine, that you interact with in a variety of ways for long periods of time. It makes sense that different people will want to interact with it in different ways, and it should be customisable to allow this.
To me, not installing a couple of programs and tweaking a couple of settings is the equivalent of buying a car and not moving the seat to a comfortable position because it should just be where I want it, damnit! Do you buy or rent a house and assume that it should be exactly how you want without having to change anything?
For what it’s worth, the amount of tinkering I’ve had to do with my Vista and 7 computers has been negligible. I didn’t find them to be nearly that difficult to navigate and manipulate like some people did.
I didn’t intend to imply that at all, it’s just that we happen to be discussing a MS product. And that product isn’t merlely a program, it’s an OS. Continuing with the labored car comparisons, this isn’t buying new tires - it’s changing out the engine.
In fact, I think this is a problem in a number of areas among many companies. Computers, software, cameras, cars, phones… Largely marketed on gimmicky features. Then they update those features we didn’t really need in the first place and sell the new model. When it’s a phone or a camera, fine, I just won’t buy it. But this is the guts of my computer and it causes a lot of hassle.
I don’t know how long MS should support this kind of product. Best answer I can give: longer than this.
I always need to tweak the OS settings. Until Windows 8 I never needed to download a third party program to render a current OS usable (Start Menu 8)
And that program is currently #28 on download.com most downloaded software for the past week and has been in the Top 50 for months.
When masses of users feel the need to download a third party program to restore a feature present in Windows for the past 18 years, its a sign that MS fucked up.
And can anyone tell me, why MS thinks no one works on laptops and desktops?
But your computer wont cease working on 8 April 2014; it will still work just as well, there will be simply be no more updates or support. I’m inclined to believe you don’t require customer support and as for updates - are there likely to be critical security flaws still remaining to be discovered on 13 year old piece of software? couldn’t lesser security flaws be compensated for by basic security software such as ZoneAlarm, Malwarebytes and/orAvast? (I have no idea - answers sought from more tech-savvy users)
Your XP machine must suck. The file indexing service is turned on by default; in all this time of using XP, you never turned it off?
Also:
[ul]
[li]the animated search character[/li][li]the balloon popups telling you about the Desktop Cleanup Wizard[/li][li]visibility of hidden files and folders[/li][li]Start menu personalisation[/li][li]Sticky/toggle/filterkeys[/li][li]The Language Bar[/li][/ul]
-All these are still in their annoying, out-of-box state on your XP machine?
But, but, XP was perfect and never needed anything doing to it…
I realize that, and so do others in this thread. It’s MS’ intentions and practices here that annoy me.
And Steophn, it’s not that XP was perfect. It’s that it works well and didn’t need many of the “improvements” of later Windows versions. And it’s what some of us have now and it’s a nuisance to be hurried and shoved along in a certain sense to a newer OS.
You say that as if there’s nothing wrong with Windows XP. For one thing, the lack of support for USB printers is annoying. Currently, you have to insert the installation CD, run the software and wait for the prompt before connecting a USB printer. In my experience if you just connect a USB printer, it’s very messy. Also Windows XP is basically just a 32-bit OS (there is a 64-bit version but driver support is limited). So anything more than four gigabytes of memory is inaccessible. I’m sire others can point out other flaws in Windows XP.
8 April is still some six months away. In six months time, XP is still likely to power over a quarter of the worlds computers. Its entirely possible that MS may change its stance.
Of course, if MS was responsive to customer feedback, they would never have inflicted the Metro UI interface on us. I’m willing to make the argument that the Metro UI on desktops and laptops is the most poorly conceived piece of MS software since Microsoft Bob.
It’s possible. My experience with people though is that it’s just as, if not more likely, that most of them just hate change.
Llama Logophile is perfectly capable of speaking for himself, but I would venture that he (and many others) would say that XP does what he wants it to, any limitations are insufficient to justify an upgrade and that he sees no reason to upgrade, other than possibly discontinuation of support.
The fact that XP is the second most popular OS in the world, after Windows 7, strongly supports this position.
No, it wasn’t. But I’ll point out what I’ve written before - there was no huge backlash against Windows XP. Nor were there any huge backlashes against Windows 7 or Windows 2000. But there were backlashes against Windows Me and Vista and now 8. This is evidence that people are reacting to real problems and not just instinctively rejecting new products.
So there may be some people who just hate every new version and complain about it. And there may be some people who love every new version and never complain. Both of these groups should be ignored as they lack the ability to distinguish between good and bad.