I agree. It cosst a *lot* of time and money to move to a new OS. On the corporate side, you can be talking hundreds or thousands of computers, requiring major rollout/upgrade projects. I know 'cause I spent ten years doing it for my last permanent job, from NT 4.0 and OS/2 to Win2003 and XP. There's a lot of software testing that must take place in the corporate world to ensure that critical software functions on new OS's. There's often a major expense in upgrading hardware to accommodate the new OS' greater needs for RAM, CPU power, and hard drive space. For the home user, there's the money to buy a new OS, the always scary prospect of upgrading a machine's OS --somethign I never do, preferring a wipe/new install--and the time and effort needed to learn about using and troubleshooting a new OS at home. And again, if the home user has a PC that's as relatively young as five years old, it may be fine for the old OS, but must be upgraded or replaced to give the most robust experience on the new OS. I've been in IT for over a decade, and learning this stuff is what I have to do, but I admit even my eyes glaze over and my head throbs sometimes at trying to learn the intricacies of a new OS. There are people who'd be perfectly happy using XP five years from now. I say let 'em, 'cause at least they're still sticking with Microsoft instead of bolting to Apple or Linux.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Adrianne Brennan" <adrianne.bren...@gmail.com> To: scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2010 3:48:16 PM Subject: Re: [scifinoir2] Microsoft's Not-So-Secret Plan to Cripple Windows XP Then they need to stop putting out computers with it. I bought my netbook from Verizon last fall and it has XP on it. They have to realize that if they have a large customer base that uses it, they MUST support it. Period. Or give us a better alternative. ~ "Where love and magic meet" ~ http://www.adriannebrennan.com Experience the magic of the Dark Moon series: http://www.adriannebrennan.com/books.html#darkmoon Dare to take The Oath in this erotic fantasy series: http://www.adriannebrennan.com/books.html#the_oath The future of psychic sex - Dawn of the Seraphs (m/m): http://www.adriannebrennan.com/dawnoftheseraphs.html On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 3:45 PM, Keith Johnson < keithbjohn...@comcast.net > wrote: No, it's B.S. I've spent the last week fixing a lady's PC that was lousy with infections, so bad they'd turned off Windows Firewall. I had to roll it back from SP3 to SP2, then re-install SP3. I was amazed at how sparse and hard to find the SP2 resources were on Microsoft's site. Also, while XP data abounds at their site, there were obvious links all over the place trying to direct one to Windows 7. I have Windows 7 on the PC I'm using now, and it's great. But XP is the best OS they put out since Windows 2000--better, even--and I see no reason to push people toward it. For those of us who have to watch our money, for people for whom an upgrade to Windows 7 represents a real financial struggle, XP is a godsend. I find it appalling at what they're trying to do here. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Martin Baxter" < martinbaxt...@gmail.com > To: "SciFiNoir2" < scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com > Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2010 2:58:45 PM Subject: [scifinoir2] Microsoft's Not-So-Secret Plan to Cripple Windows XP Microsoft isn't particularly pleased about the continuing success of Windows XP, which has more than twice the installed base of Windows Vista and 7 put together. So it's trying its hardest to kill the operating system that won't die, including refusing to issue security patches for XP SP2, putting many XP users at risk. Is that the right way to get people to upgrade? More at: http://www.pcworld.com/article/202612/microsofts_notsosecret_plan_to_cripple_windows_xp.html?tk=nl_wbx_h_crawl1 -- "If all the world's a stage and we are merely players, who the bloody hell wrote the script?" -- Charles E Grant http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQUxw9aUVik
