Hi Dennis,
right. I think what is hard for people who are not in business, who are not programmers, etc to understand is that older products like XP are no longer making Microsoft money. They released it in 2001 and was selling it up until 2010 or so. After a certain point they sold as many copies of XP as they could, and now they have to make money by creating newer operating systems like Vista, Win 7, and Win 8. The only way to sell those newer operating systems is to add new features, make changes to the user interface, etc that are not available in prior products. What Dark and others fail to realize is simply this. How does Microsoft continue to maintain Windows XP if the operating system is no longer making them money? How do they compete with Linux and Mac OS if they never change and build new interfaces etc similar to their competition?
Plus as you said even though change doesn't seem very beneficial there usually are advantages to upgrading. They might not be obvious at first, but they are there if a person looks for them.
For example, one feature in Win 7 I really like is the ability to pin apps to the taskbar. I can press win+1 through win+0 to open the apps from the taskbar directly and if the app is already open, say window 1, I can press win+1 to jump immediately to that window without having to alt+tab through all the open windows. Its nice and handy and once I got use to it I find older versions of Windows like XP lacking in features I've come to expect to have.
Its easy to say "I don't need this or that feature" but once a user comes to use them a lot, to rely on them being there, XP doesn't seem that fantastic in the final analysis. At least that's been my experience. Of course, I'm looking at this from the point of a convert rather than someone who is happy and satisfied with the status quo.
Cheers! On 3/13/2012 5:24 PM, Dennis Towne wrote:
As a programmer and developer, I understand completely why Microsoft (or any developer for that matter) would want to discontinue an older product. Maintenance is expensive and irritating. Keep in mind that if they simply try to "continue" XP (and every other product that some minority group prefers), they will lose money. If they go broke, there are no more products. How do you think MS pays for XP maintenance right now? They do it with sales of products that make money. XP doesn't make money anymore, and they couldn't make it pay for itself if they tried. I've had similar complaints come up on Alter Aeon - why don't I just make ltypes 0 and 1 optional, why don't I just make PPK optional, why don't I bring up separate servers that allow multiplaying, etc. If I tried to do even a fraction of these things, AA would never progress because I'd be spending all my time maintaining crap that doesn't actually make the game any better. All developers have to pick and choose their battles. Microsoft is no different. I know it may be irritating to have to change your ways or learn new things, but the fact of the matter is that we can't all be expecting windows 3.1 (or whatever your favorite version is) to work the same way for the next 20 years. Change happens. It may not seem like it, but usually, it actually is for the better. Dennis Towne Alter Aeon MUD http://www.alteraeon.com
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