Dell Will Offer XP Past Cutoff Date

Dionysius, God of Wine and Leaf, brings news that Dell will be offering Windows XP pre-installed on their computers past the June 30 cut-off date. Computers purchased with Vista Business or Vista Ultimate past June 30 will come with a copy of XP Pro. Dell plans to simply install that copy upon request to save users a step. Perhaps this will help Microsoft officials make up their minds about another extension.

Ubuntu Instead?

If Dell is in the business of installing unsupported operating systems, why not instead redirect the customers to their Ubuntu offerings [dell.com] instead?

Selling a computer with XP past the Microsoft cutoff date is pretty irresponsible. At least Ubuntu has community support, whereas XP will have no support? Is it really Dell's place to oversee microsoft's business decisions?

Re:Ubuntu Instead?

Selling a computer with XP past the Microsoft cutoff date is pretty irresponsible. At least Ubuntu has community support, whereas XP will have no support? Is it really Dell's place to oversee microsoft's business decisions?

Why, because that is what the customer wants? We have already moved our purchasing to used retailers in expectance of this day. We have no plans on installing Vista, and as much as I would love it, Linux is not a viable option at this time.

I applaude this decision and will do my best to support them if they continue selling XP.

Re:Ubuntu Instead?

Selling a computer with XP past the Microsoft cutoff date is pretty irresponsible. At least Ubuntu has community support, whereas XP will have no support? Is it really Dell's place to oversee microsoft's business decisions?

Why, because that is what the customer wants? We have already moved our purchasing to used retailers in expectance of this day. We have no plans on installing Vista, and as much as I would love it, Linux is not a viable option at this time.

I applaude this decision and will do my best to support them if they continue selling XP.

Microsoft has stated XP will be technically supported until 2014.

Microsoft is software's Dr. Death.

"Microsoft has stated XP will be technically supported until 2014."

I've always thought that somewhat misses the point.

The fact is, solely to make more money, Microsoft has claimed that its earlier product will die. The death is completely independent of customer demand.

Who would want to partner with such a company? Because that's what you are doing when you buy an operating system, you are partnering with the OS supplier. You are betting that the supplier will be a true partner and will care about your needs, and not choose to be adversarial.

Even though Vista is just Windows XP with new features, Microsoft expects to be paid as though it is an entirely new product, with no relevance to the earlier version.

It seems to me that Microsoft is the Chief of Grief, software's Dr. Death. Other deaths:

Declared dead: FoxPro database programming language

Dead soon: PlaysForSure [slashdot.org] was corporate-speak for "we will kill it and destroy access to your music any time we want". Apparently the reason Microsoft executives wanted to reassure buyers by saying "Plays for Sure" is that they knew it was not sure.

This is connected with the rise of 3-year-old thinking: "I can do anything I want. You have no power."

The U.S. government is worse: "We can take your money and give it to weapons and war suppliers. You have no power. All laws we don't like are invalid."

Re:Ubuntu Instead?

I applaude this decision and will do my best to support them if they continue selling XP.

This is more of a win for Microsoft than it is for Dell:

1. Microsoft gets to "sell" a Vista license with all of these new computers.
2. Dell gets a bundled Windows XP "downgrade" license and just installs XP on the computer instead of Vista.
3. Microsoft gets to brag about how many millions of people have bought Vista and how successful it is.
4. Profit?

This is all a shell game for Microsoft. They can't polish the turd that is Vista so they'll just continue to sell XP but make it look like Vista on the books, so that Wall Street is none the wiser.

And before you think I'm an anti-Microsoft, I just bought a copy of Vista Home Premium SP1 64-bit so I can run a few games in DX10. It runs slower and crashes more often (even with nothing installed I get regular MS error reports) than XP on the same hardware. Right now I find I'd rather boot back into XP SP2 and run most of my games, even though I can only use 3.2GB of memory, than reboot into Vista and endure slower framerates and random shit popping up and crashing all the time...

Re:Ubuntu Instead?

There is no XP community support?

Re:Ubuntu Instead?

1) Dell already offers ubuntu under certain conditions, it's not like offering or not XP is linked, to the people affected by this(I keep referring people to the dell website, and people come back with the impression they can only get a pc with vista now, despite the fact that its still sold.
2) WinXP will have "support" long past the cut off date. The end of support date for Windows XP was announced before the end of sale date, I can't rememnber what it is right now, but I believe its in 2010 sometime.
3) Even if they didn't have "support" from microsoft, Dell was already handling some of the support for their XP machines, so it's not fair to say it's unsupported, just "unsupported by vendor"

On the other hand, why not just reverse engineer the cut off date from the end of support date Microsoft? if you're going to stop supporting XP by Jan 2011, the only cut off date that makes sense to me to stop selling is is June 2010, not something in 2008.

OK OK... I know, I'm on slashdot, and expecting Microsoft to make sense, when will I ever learn?

Re:Ubuntu Instead?

2012!
When Microsoft stops supporting Win XP, the world will crash!
It was predicted: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012 [wikipedia.org]

Re:Ubuntu Instead?

Microsoft Action: Set a date to stop selling a product years before you intend to stop supporting it.
Slashdot Answer: Why the hell would you stop selling it if you are still supporting it? Stupid Microsoft. I would sell it until the same year as I stopped supporting it, this is just a ploy to get more Vista sales by scaring people.

Microsoft Action: Stop selling a product only a few months before you intend to stop supporting it.
Slashdot Answer: Its so irresponsible of Microsoft to be selling a product they don't plan on supporting! This is just a way to milk more money out of the consumer and force upgrades when their OS becomes suddenly outdated next month.

Microsoft Action: Donate $1m to "Save the Kittens" foundation.
Slashdot Answer: What about the mice? Microsoft is subverting the poor mouse by an illegal and monopolistic process of buying out a 'charity' that directly kills mice.

Re:Ubuntu Instead?

It's what they're customers want. I can't roll out Ubuntu where I am because it doesn't support Outlook, at least in a fashion that I would consider stable. It's that simple. I don't want Vista when I get new machines, I want the operating system that I know is proven reliable.

Step out of your Linux bubble for a second and accept that XP is still in demand by a lot of businesses.

Re:Ubuntu Instead?

Good luck with that. Companies like to have someone to blame when the software stops working. With Linux you have no one to blame becuase (for most cases) you aren't paying anything for it, so you don't really have much leverage.

Re:Ubuntu Instead?

Are you really that stupid? Try blaming MSFT when exchange crashes. you can't. The most you might get if you pay for it is help restoring the old data, and reinstalling the system.

Not only do you have to pay MSFT for software, you have to pay extra for the privilege of getting help when it fails.

Save your self some money, and only Pay Novell, Red Hat, Mandriva, etc for help when the software fails and get the software for free.

Re:Ubuntu Instead?

So pay for it then. Plenty of companies out there will take money off you for supporting linux.

In fact, if you pay for linux support, you're in a better position than if you pay for Microsoft support, as you have the resiliance of choice in the market. You don't like what Oracle are doing, pay Redhat instead. You don't like what Microsoft are doing? Tough.

I have always loved this argument

I have always loved this argument for one simple reason. If you name and itemize the last 20 times something went wrong at your company, how many of them were something the vendor did wrong, or something the vendor had to fix for you? How many were end user issues, networking configuration nightmares of your own creation, configuration management that someone at your company messed up? Misapplied patches or patches you 'forgot' to apply?

In truth, support from the vendor does little for you UNLESS the system they supply is so fscking locked up that you can't do anything with it in the first place, and are FORCED to call for help because you can't do anything with it.

Where I work, we are slowly writing code to work around 'no longer supported' binary processes. If there is no 'community support' we just learn how to do it ourselves or write code we can understand to take its place.

When you want to point that finger of blame it still will take 4hours minimum to get the pointing done. In that time I will generally have already fixed the problem and be working the code to avoid any such occurance in the future.

Re:Ubuntu Instead?

Businesses don't run based on ideals, they run based on productivity. If applications like Open Office fail to open an Office document even 1% of the time then they're useless if that document is really something you need to open. Gimp still isn't a satisfactory replacement for Photoshop. Sound in flash still doesn't work correctly out of the box on Ubuntu systems, there's no mp3 support by default, nor does Quicktime really work. There's still not a decent movie player.

This doesn't even begin to take into account that most businesses I've come across use some kind of custom industry application. CAD applications, specialized accounting applications, lending an loan applications, guess what they're all written for? Windows. Linux still doesn't work for those customers.

If the Linux community wants to advance they're going to have to give up on some of their ideals and actually provide what people are looking for, which is a stable operating systems that run applications people actually want to use with a consistent look and feel everywhere. I ran Ubuntu for over a year and reverted to XP because I couldn't deal with the slowdowns for no reason, application crashes, incompatibilities, mystery feature additions and removals based on the whims of the developers (what's pigeon going to include or disable this week!), and decisions that were made purely for philosophical reasons (no mp3 support by default? please.)

Most of my machines still run some kind of Unix (mostly FreeBSD and OSX) but when I need Windows, I really need Windows and nothing else will do.

Besides, Outlook is still the best email/productivity/calendaring application out there. Nothing I've seen on UNIX even comes close, especially when I need to share data with others.

And just because XP will be end of lifed, the security updates for it will continue for a few years, which is all anyone really needs. If 75% of the market is still on XP, developers aren't going to move to being Vista only any time soon because it'd kill their sales.

Re:Ubuntu Instead?

Look, I'm not a Microsoft fanboi, and don't introduce me to one unless you're prepared to deal with intense gamma radiation.

That being said, let's look at it from a business point of view.

I don't know how much of a large business's revenue goes to computers and related things; does 5% sound reasonable? It doesn't really matter if it's way off, so let's use it. Heck, go with 10%.

Now, how much is going to be saved by leaving Microsoft products and going open source? Licenses aren't the only IT cost; there's also hardware, people, networking, and so on. Suppose that half the computer cost goes to Microsoft and other proprietary software companies. Suppose, then, that converting to free software will cut the computer-related costs in half.

That's a maximum of 5% savings on the upside, and I think I'm being optimistic here. That's a good chunk of money, and most businesses would like a chance to save money like that. It isn't enough to force a change; businesses that aren't in particularly competitive fields often have worse inefficiencies than that.

The downside, of course, is that the free software doesn't work for some reason, and revenues drop off the cliff until the old Microsoft stuff can be re-installed. It may not be likely, but managers will worry about it. Or it may not work well enough for an organization's needs, and introduce inefficiencies that overcome the savings.

Therefore, Microsoft is insurance. For a stream of money the organization can afford, Microsoft provides more or less reliable business functionality. The opinion that Microsoft somehow stands behind their software, or will take responsibility for it, is naive, but the opinion that Microsoft software will usually work well enough is justified. Microsoft cannot do otherwise and stay in business for long. Microsoft is the safe choice, at an acceptable price. As far as internal business politics goes, a CIO who goes with Microsoft is unlikely to lose his job for it, while one who introduces free software on a large scale is endangering his or her career. If something goes wrong, the CIO going with "best industry practices" (i.e., mediocrity) will be largely immune from blame, whereas one going with something innovative is going to be out on his or her ear.

Yes, this is stodgy, unimaginative thinking that likely costs the enterprise a good chunk of change. That's the way large businesses work. They don't want to change a support function that works well enough. It's far better to put creativity and energy into a business's core functionality, the stuff that sets the business apart from the competition. Innovative product design, marketing, and sales will pay off more, and aren't as risky. It makes sense to pay insurance to Microsoft.

This doesn't mean that businesses will use Microsoft forever. It does mean that Microsoft is firmly entrenched, and is not likely to be dislodged by people who don't realize why. It will be dislodged by people who are able to explain to suits why what they've got is better in terms the suits will understand, and with assurances the suits feel they can rely on, and who have software with capabilities the suits like.

As a geek, I don't have to like this situation, and I don't. I do have to live in this world, though, and pretending it's something it isn't is not going to help me in the long run.

Re:Ubuntu Instead?

Yep.
People think that Office is the ultimate lock in tool. They are so clueless.
VisualBasic is the best lock in tool ever. Just about every company on the face of the earth has some silly but vital piece of software written in VisualBasic.
If FOSS just created the perfect VB clone you might see many companies migrate to Linux.

Re:Ubuntu Instead?

Umm, because Outlook (especially calendaring) is *the* critical app for many businesses?

Sure, I'll replace the most important app for 1000 people with " couple of Linux projects which at least claim to support that."

You'll pick up my mortgage and other expenses when I get canned, right? Please be slightly realistic in the Linux fanaticism.

Re:Ubuntu Instead?

At least Ubuntu has community support, whereas XP will have no support? Is it really Dell's place to oversee microsoft's business decisions?

?
XP has support into 2014. Wiki. [wikipedia.org]

Submitter diversity

I couldn't help but notice that the submitter, a commercial entity, currently has four articles on the front page.

Re:Submitter diversity

Don't worry, it's just Roland, he forgot he was logged in under his boyfriend's account.

Activation?

One of the things I'm wondering about is whether a freshly-installed XP can be activated after the cut-off date.

XP MCE Anyone

For the home user XP MCE is a far better deal cost-wise. It gives the most important feature of multi-processor support, while dropping the ability to join an Active Directory domain. A very fair trade-off for the home user.

So is Dell offering MCE as well still?

Re:Which Scares M$ the Most?

I'm going to go with the hidden 4th option - people who post on Slashdot with that clever little "M$" thing.

I know it gives me the willies just thinking about them.

Re:Why do people still want this OS?

What are the reasons people want to stay with XP?

Performance is a big reason. You basically need new hardware to run it. Even then it is slower than XP on the same hardware. Consistency is another reason. Admins don't really want to support more OS's than they have to, and they don't have the budget to upgrade all of them, so XP on all makes sense. Then there are issues getting old hardware peripherals to work with it. There are issues with older applications that won't run or won't run stably on Vista. Some you can upgrade (another cost) others you cannot so it is a hard block. Finally, there are migration costs and user training (many of whom obstinately don't want Vista for whatever reason).

From an enterprise perspective, looking at a Vista migration means considering alternatives, like Linux which is a real possibility in many ways and a long term cost saver. A lot of companies are just holding off and waiting for it to stabilize and most of the problems I listed to go away. Others see holding off as a necessary step now, since Vista includes even more data and protocol lock-ins that will make migrating away from it even more expensive than migrating away from WinXP. I have nothing against Vista and recognize some of the real improvements, but I would not recommend a large scale migration to anyone for a while yet. A year ago I said, at least wait a year and see how it goes. It's been a year, and I'd still wait a while.