That AMAZING Windows comeback: Wow – 0.5% growth in 2015 With new Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella keen to cram Windows into ever more devices, the operating system behemoth is now forecast to swell by no less than HALF a percentage point. Folks at Gartner told us Windows accounted for 13.96 per cent of the 2.33 billion devices shipped globally in 2013, and that they expect a dip this …
I liked Microsoft in the past. Once, I was one of their most ardent supporters. There are still many things I like about the technology Microsoft provides, and I respect a great many of the people that work there.
That said, on balance, I feel the star has faded. They have not kept the faith with their customers and there is no reason to trust them about anything.
Once, Microsoft was a company I wouldn't have hesitated to by my business and that of my clients on. Today, I use them only when no viable alternative exists. It's a shame, too...because in many areas Microsoft has some of the best technologies on the planet. Ah, well...
>>"It seems to me that everything people liked about Microsoft is in their past."
Stupid statement. How can people prefer the poor-security, slower and less manageable XP to modern 7/8? Or IE 6/7 to versions 10 or 11? Office 2013 is far more capable than older Office versions and the interface is cleaner too and it supports open standards unlike the older proprietary only versions. You get sleek ultrabooks and work-focused tablets, none of which you had in the past. They've built proper scripting into the OS at a fundamental level and you have management capabilities on Server 2012 that older versions never came close to. Not to mention that it's superbly adapted to be virtualized. Microsoft products are far better (more capable, more manageable, better hardware usage) than they used to be.
What you've written is rubbish.
You obviously have experience with MS-Windows. I don't. However, I hear lots of people griping that they loved XP and don't wish to change. I also notice that the price of Win7 went way up recently, as did Office2010. I figured that was an indication of what was going on.
Okay, then I apologise for the rather strong wording of "stupid". Misinformed would be a better and less confrontational term. Things get a bit heated here with a lot of very aggressive comments, not infrequently easily disprovable as well.
I don't know about the price of Windows 7 relative to general inflation - I'd have to check. I wouldn't read too much into small price rises, however. That's what prices do. And yes, you do find some people griping about how XP still works for them. They're entitled to use it if it suits their needs but it's far less secure and far less capable than Windows 7 or 8 and that's objectively provable. The security model in XP and before was extremely limiting. From Vista onwards, it's very good. MS have improved things in many areas. Go back ten years and I was pretty anti-MS. These days I really like their products.
> MS have improved things in many areas.
I still dislike them quite a lot but I have to give you that. They recently fixed quite a lot of the most inacceptable shortcomings in their products. I still regret 2000's footprint, but 7 is rather glaringly better than any other of the previous incarnations (other as in not 2000, obviously). I couldn't comment on 8.x.
"I wouldn't read too much into small price rises, however. That's what prices do."
Not in high-tech, they don't. Not as the super-dooper-expensive high-tech becomes a commodity, at which point, they plummet like a stone. Compare, f'rinstance, the price of a gigabit switch today with 10 years ago.
There is, of course, one glaring exception.
Proprietary software
Led by Microsoft.
>>"Compare, f'rinstance, the price of a gigabit switch today with 10 years ago."
Three problems with your analogy. Firstly, this product hasn't changed in ten years. A Gb switch is still a Gb switch. There is no active development, no research costs to recoup - any changes are trivial and unnecessary. Secondly, ten years ago it was modern technology whereas today we're now seeing 10Gb switches! I could buy a laptop with specs from ten years ago and expect the price to be massively lower - commoditized as you say. But I don't because I want something that has kept pace with the rest of the world. Thirdly, it requires no care or updates.
Saying that something which hasn't changed in ten years and needs no support is a good analogy for OSs is badly mistaken. Unless you're arguing that modern OSs are pretty much the same as they were ten years ago. In which case I invite you to have a quick read here (n.b. it may take you a while).
A Gb switch is still a Gb switch
Compare what's on the PCB of a current Gb switch with one manufactured 10 years ago. That will give the lie to your assertion that "There is no active development....". Of course, the goal of all that development was driving the manufacturing cost down (you know, commoditisation) rather than putting (mostly) all sorts of nice new shiny in so that Marketing can claim all sorts of new functionality.
Really, the software business model is completely out of kilter with every other product category in the industrialised world, and badly needs some serious disruption. The cloudy rental model isn't it. And I don't believe the problem is technological (software development models and all that)
>>Of course, the goal of all that development was driving the manufacturing cost down (you know, commoditisation) rather than putting (mostly) all sorts of nice new shiny in
Which supports my point. It's not analogous to an Operating System which does have new features added. I already linked you to the GIT source of the Linux kernel and invited you to take a look through. It beggars belief that you think all those developers have been putting in all those hours over all those years yet the OS hasn't grown in significant ways. In fact, it's pretty insulting.
>>rather than putting (mostly) all sorts of nice new shiny in so that Marketing can claim all sorts of new functionality.
Yeah, you call it "new shiny" for "Marketing". You're simply telling us how little you know about the improvements in OSs. Virtualization, better RAID, vastly improved security models, modern hardware support, new APIs, hibernation, support for new filesystems, networking protocols, graphics handling. Again, go and read the link I posted to the Linux kernel source. LOOK at all those changes. Then come back and tell is it's just "new Shiny" for Marketing and that comparing an OS to a switch that hasn't changed its technical specifications in a decade is a good analogy.
"Okay, then I apologise for the rather strong wording of "stupid". Misinformed would be a better and less confrontational term."
Which still presumes you have an exclusive on how best to configure our company IT. As you know nothing about it may I say that may be both presumptuous and even wrong?
We were a mixed XP/Linux environment. The Linux bit arose from the disaster that was Vista. The XP bit was helpful in maintaining legacy applications. The security aspect was containable and we would have preferred to continue as is until the legacy apps died naturally of old age.
Removing XP support threatened to take XP over our risk threshold. Win 7 & 8 had issues with legacy apps and some of our hardware. It was just easier, cheaper and faster to take the hit on legacy apps (which we had been ducking) and go all-Linux.
So there you are - one unfortunate outcome of Microsoft's decision to 'roll their base'. It also means that we are unlikely to trust Microsoft again. We were Microsoft Partners and evangelists for something like 10 years. Yet we moved in the opposite direction to you.
You might have made the right decision for yourselves but please do not blow your credibility by presuming to know what is best for every other old XP shop.
>>"Which still presumes you have an exclusive on how best to configure our company IT. As you know nothing about it may I say that may be both presumptuous and even wrong?"
You may not. Anything you can do on XP can be done as easily or more easily on Windows 7 / 8. Or shouldn't be done at all. I fully invite you to find a counter-example. For that simple reason I don't need to know anything about your own company's configuration to make my statement. I'd say that anything you find an advantage of XP over Windows 7 / 8 is actually just legacy software. And indeed your later paragraphs confirm that. The existence of legacy software says nothing about which OS is superior. (It only says that the legacy software writers haven't written it well as software which uses the documented XP APIs is pretty forward compatible as I understand it).
Such an argument indicates nothing about which OS is better any more than if I tried to argue that Win7 was a better OS than GNU/Linux because software X was written only for Windows. I wrote that Win 7 / 8 was better than XP and I even defined better - superior security model, more capabilities, better use of hardware.
That some are trapped in the past doesn't contradict anything that I wrote. And seriously - XP was replaced seven years ago this year. Lack of investment by some companies in their IT is not an argument I will accept to support "people prefer XP". Being trapped is not preferring.
>>"Yet we moved in the opposite direction to you."
You've made an assumption there. Outside of home use, I mostly work with organizations with CentOS (and occasional Debian). I never said anything about organizations moving OSs. I was just talking about what I know - technical and usability comparisons between OSs.
>>It also means that we are unlikely to trust Microsoft again
Because an OS released in 2001 thirteen years ago has finally been retired after twice extending the deadline for cutting off patches finally, seven years after they stopped selling it?
How many software and OS providers do you know that offer support seven years after their product's end of life? You don't even have to pay for that support - the patches are openly distributed? I just don't get this "unlikely to trust Microsoft again" line.
@h4rm0ny: I have bad news for you. The car you bought 3 years ago uses an engine that is in production since 15 years now. We would like to provide you spare parts, of course, but our production line is ageing and we can't be arsed to invest in such old rubbish that hardly gives any return. You understand our situation, do you?
So you better throw it out and buy a new up to date model. It also has lots of new features, like an integrated dashboard camera. That one we also use for our licencing model, btw. - just to be sure no one else than you drives it. Also you are not allowed to transport more than 2 passengers. I'm sure you understand. Oh - don't lose the internet connection. Your car won't start anymore otherwise. And don't be late on your monthly licence fees, too.
What? You want to keep your old car, that "just works"? Of course we can't stop you from using it, but there are all these fuel leaks suddenly... And the brakes tend to fail in that model nowadays. Also the passenger doors might suddenly open. You would really be so much safer in the new model. And look at all these new beautiful, shiny cockpit instruments!
>>"@h4rm0ny: I have bad news for you. The car you bought 3 years ago uses an engine that is in production since 15 years now. We would like to provide you spare parts, of course, but our production line is ageing and we can't be arsed to invest in such old rubbish that hardly gives any return. You understand our situation, do you?"
I understand that when people have to switch to poorly thought out car analogies in order to argue against something that it's best to dispense with the entire flawed response. You are aware that is not sufficient to simply start talking about cars and expect that to carry any logical weight without showing that cars are actually analogous to operating systems? For example you ramble about "there are all these fuel leaks suddenly" which suggests you think that MS have suddenly introduced bugs into existing XP systems. Or that a new car wont start without an Internet connection! Something that applies to neither 7 or 8 which I was talking about.
TL;DR: Making a bad analogy isn't argument.
You are aware that is not sufficient to simply start talking about cars and expect that to carry any logical weight without showing that cars are actually analogous to operating systems?
There are quite a lot of similarities between providing service for vehicles and service for software. Both are complex technological systems, difficult to create and to maintain. Both have interface problems and might be mission critical. Both can be significant investments for a company.
And most important, both need maintenance during their complete lifetime.
Car suppliers are required by law to provide parts for a minimum time after end of vehicle production and sales. This is a basic requirement to allow product maintenance.
Analogous the availability to fix bugs and security holes is a basic requirement to allow maintenance of computers. If the producer of the software abandons it, while it is still used in a productive environment, it is nothing else than gross negligence.
As a fact, end of sales of PCs pre-installed with Windows XP was October 22, 2010. Microsoft could not be arsed to provide support for even 4 years. PCs have a lifetime of between 3 to 8 years, so I would say, they cut it short. That also fits to the number of 25% of WinXP usage in the internet.
If Microsoft doesn't want to give away patches for free, I'm completely OK with it. But they have to make them available for a reasonable fee for the expected lifetime of the product. 10 years seem to be fair for end user products. As for company products that are used in productive environments, I think 20 years would be reasonable. Again, for a reasonable fee, of course. Alternatively they might open the source, to allow servicing by 3rd parties.
People are traditionally accepting a lot of abuse from software vendors. Far more than they would from any other supplier. As software is now becoming a commodity, it is time software companies take their responsibility serious. Otherwise they WILL be regulated. Just as car companies were.
>>"There are quite a lot of similarities between providing service for vehicles and service for software."
And quite a lot of differences. But if you actually read my post rather than shifting topic, I wrote that Windows 7/8 were significantly better than XP and said nothing about services. Well I did say something about services - I wrote that legacy inertia said nothing about the quality of the OSs. If you don't disagree with that, then don't try and find different misinterpretations of what I wrote so that you can disagree with my post. OP said that what "people" liked about MS was mostly in the past. I don't see an argument that someone still has legacy apps they can't get rid of - which is what you're previous post which I replied to disputed - does anything to prove that.
In short, you're writing paragraph after paragraph attacking your own strawman. Well, that and the odd swipe at MS based on nothing I wrote:
>>"As a fact, end of sales of PCs pre-installed with Windows XP was October 22, 2010. Microsoft could not be arsed to provide support for even 4 years"
End of Life for XP was known long before that and XPs replacement was out three years before that cut off date. If MS immediately cut off availability of XP the moment Vista came out, they would be doing a disservice to their enterprise customers who had large XP deployments and just needed to add in replacement PCs from time to time. And I strongly suspect you would be quick to condemn that if they did. But any IT department buying in an explicitly legacy OS in bulk when its replacement had already been out for three years and that replacement's replacement had already been released to manufacturing (7 was released to OEMs in July 2009) should be strung up. There's no way you can cast that as negligence on MS's part.
Using your reasoning in your post any cut off point for support for XP would be negligence. But there comes a point in any software lifecycle where the update is no longer a patch, but a new version. There's only so many updates you can release before you have to put a new number on it.
But again, this is just picking out parts from a rant that has little to do with the post that you are actually replying to and undermines what I actually wrote not at all.
The post I was actually replying to originally was your answer to Stuart 22's post. He made the following point:
Removing XP support threatened to take XP over our risk threshold. Win 7 & 8 had issues with legacy apps and some of our hardware. It was just easier, cheaper and faster to take the hit on legacy apps (which we had been ducking) and go all-Linux.
You wrote a lenthy reply that can be put into 3 sentences:
1) Win 7 and 8 are technically superior to XP (Obviously they are)
2) Legacy apps should be moved over, instead of dragged along infinitely (That is one solution, but not forcibly the best - it depends on the business case)
3) It is OK for Microsoft to stop patches for XP, as they supported it for seven years after end of sales. (Wrong - they supported just 3 1/2 years).
The analogy I used was intended to show you that it is not OK to stop support for perfectly running hardware after just ~3 years end of sales. Even if the technology behind is already older. Microsoft is trying to force their customers to upgrade. IMHO that is not OK. Your argument, that Win7 and 8 are technically far superiour to Win XP is true, but that is only one aspect of point 2).
Oh, this one:
Using your reasoning in your post any cut off point for support for XP would be negligence. But there comes a point in any software lifecycle where the update is no longer a patch, but a new version. There's only so many updates you can release before you have to put a new number on it.
You realize that's BS, right? As long as you only plug holes and don't add new features, code can stay remarkably stable for a very long time. And no, not any cut off point for XP would be negligence. I proposed 10 years for workstations and perhaps 20 for servers.
Anyway - here it is already past beer o'clock. Cheers!
>>"3) It is OK for Microsoft to stop patches for XP, as they supported it for seven years after end of sales. (Wrong - they supported just 3 1/2 years)."
Ah, you're right - I mispoke. I meant to write seven years after it had been end of life'd. I.e. MS were now selling the replacement version. Yes, MS do keep selling it after the new version is released. As they should. But I worded things incorrectly - thanks. I stand by my point though. The end point for patches was known long ago and two replacement versions had been released by the time that actually happened. I think it reasonable to start placing blame on the IT department if at that point they are still buying in XP in any major way so the 3 1/2 years after they stopped selling it isn't a good marker, imo. We'll obviously differ on this, but that's my position and I feel it is supportable.
Anyway, we agree on #1 which is the important one to me. Obviously there is *always* more that can be done in terms of support, whether that means longer support or cheaper. In MS's case, the continued patches are free, but they don't last as long as some people would like. So logically there will always be someone who disagrees on #2 and #3 for as long as the OS is in use. #1 was the point I was really making and if it seems obvious, consider that it was a simple response to the OP who argued that what people liked from MS was behind them. That cannot logically be reconciled with the newer OSs being better than the older OSs. And you agree that they are better.
Of course several people then took issue with my original post. Mostly by changing the argument.
>>"You realize that's BS, right? As long as you only plug holes and don't add new features, code can stay remarkably stable for a very long time"
In principle I agree. However, you have to keep in mind what a mess XP actually is. A horrible mess imo, coming from a UNIX/Linux background. If after seven years of no new features and weekly patches it still needs more, that's really just testament to its shitness (pardon the vernacular). After seven years of patches, it should BE at the point you talk about. So either it is, in which case those who use have vastly diminished need for continued support. Or it's irredeemable. I kind of lean toward the latter, but remember that anti-virus companies still offer support for it and that's the main thing that is needed by this point, no?
>>"Anyway - here it is already past beer o'clock. Cheers!"
No problem - see icon. I'm glad we came to a better point in our discussion. For context, there is a lot of reflexive modding down of anything good about MS in these parts by some. Even purely factual posts will get heavily modded down, sadly.
---- Which still presumes you have an exclusive on how best to configure our company IT. As you know nothing about it may I say that may be both presumptuous and even wrong? ----
If you look at her other posts you'll see she has makes a habit out of doing that.
>>"If you look at her other posts you'll see she has makes a habit out of doing that."
I supported how my statement was not dependent on their particular set-up. Supporting one's statements is all that matters.
And with regards to the other poster, I'm not a Microsoft fan, I'm a technology fan. I happily defend any good technology from partisan attacks and have done so. If you've read enough of my posts you'll have seen that. The MS defences are just more common because MS comes in for a greater amount of unsupportable attacks.
The OP wrote that the things "people" liked about MS were mostly in the past. I highlighted that Windows 7 / 8 were technically superior to XP and that this was logically incompatible with old stuff being preferred (unless you wish to argue that people prefer technologically inferior products). Everything I've posted in this thread has been a direct response to people attacking that perfectly reasonable position.
Oh god.. OS bickering - in this day and age?
It really doesn't matter, any more. There is only one platform for the future: The Web. It doesn't matter what you use to connect to it, it's all roughly the same. It doesn't matter what you use to provide to it - nobody sees it, and nobody cares.
Get with the times. Look at what the kids are using now - that's the future. Just like us on our personal computers - but we've had our time now.
My kids really couldn't give a shit about their OS - I put Mint on an old XP laptop for them... didn't bat an eye lid, as long as they had a browser.
Microsoft are slowly realising this, why can't their cheerleaders?
Get with the times. Look at what the kids are using now - that's the future. Just like us on our personal computers - but we've had our time now.
There's a slight difference, between the arts of production, and consumption.... LEARN IT.
Phablets are never gonna replace things, like the Netbook, Notebook or Desktops for the production side of things, that your "Kids" are consuming today. And they're not gonna be for a very VERY LONG TIME YET.... If ever...
In my experience as a local IT Guy, once you move those people who love XP over to 7 or 8.1 then they don't want to go back after a week or two. I moved a lot of baby boomers and older over to 7 or 8 back in March/April and none of them have gone back to their old XP machine nor would they want to.
It's the usual "I'm comfy/secure where I am" syndrome, thats all. Once you put a faster more capable machine in front of them then they realise things have moved on.
As for Windows 7 going up in price. I'm still paying the same price if not less than I was a few months ago. No change there as far as I can tell.
jason 7,
When you moved those people did you just upgrade their existing machine from XP to 7/8 or did you supply a totally new machine?
If it was a new machine then I think there is the reason that non of them has gone back. If you used the old machine did you make it dual boot so they could change back if they wanted to?
@Ivan4
New machine.
Why would you get someone to pay for a new OS and to install it on a 6+ year old machine with parts that will likely fall over in a year or so.
Why would I make someone continue to suffer running a old Athlon PC with 512MB of ram and a less than stellar 160GB HDD?
Dual booting an old wreck doesn't make financial sense. Nor good use of my time.
They get a new machine fully setup with all their data and email migrated plus a training session on how to use it.
Sometimes you just have to move on.
>>>>"How can people prefer the poor-security, slower and less manageable XP to modern 7/8?"
>>"Me for one, since you asked so nicely."
The question was "how" not "if". Go ahead - the forum is yours. I said XP had poorer security, was slower and was less manageable than Windows 7 and 8. Explain to me how you prefer XP over 7 or 8 in these regards.
>>"Did I say nicely? My mistake."
It was rubbish to say 'what people liked about MS is in the past'. Most people hated MS back in the day for a start! Its products are much more respectable these days. You saying you like XP doesn't make a sweeping statement about what "people like" any better. Now I'll be interested to see you justify XP as a better OS than 7 / 8. A preference based on "get off my lawn" tendencies is no good argument, imo.
"How can people prefer the poor-security, slower and less manageable XP to modern 7/8? Or IE 6/7 to versions 10 or 11?"
I actually agree with this bit (but I tend not to call people names as that just provokes a negative response).
I currently use a well designed and maintained system at work with Windows 7 like clients (we log into a server), roaming profiles, lots of software, and it is reliable and reasonable to use on core-duo/2Gb class desktop boxes. Secure RDP sessions mean I can keep the employer's data on the employer's system and work at home now and again when needed. Classroom kit just works. On the occasions when it doesn't, a quick call to support initiates a remote session (students always find that funny) and usually the problem is sorted without wasting too much of the lesson.
I can't help contrasting that with a previous employer. 50:50 the classroom kit would actually boot and when it did it took 10 minutes. Support was summoned by messages in a bottle. You had to take your data in on a stick as the classroom kit logged into a different domain from the staffroom clients and the staff domain was purposefully blocked in classrooms.
It should be said: no plans at all that I am aware of at current employer to go near Win8.
"Office 2013 is far more capable than older Office versions and the interface is cleaner too and it supports open standards unlike the older proprietary only versions."
Now that is where I have to start disagreeing. Microsoft's definition of 'support' for open standards is like Putin's definition of 'democracy'. I have plenty of words to describe recent MS Office interfaces but 'cleaner' isn't one of those.
>>"Office 2013 is far more capable than older Office versions
>Now that is where I have to start disagreeing.
I don't get why MSOffice now insists in hiding your document whenever you want to do something with it, like save or print; that's completely idiotic and serves no purpose that I can fathom (appart from "annoying the user for the heck of it", à la Clippy).
But MSExcel can now draw graphs that don't look like the dabblings of a 3-yo with a box of coloured crayons (still not a great graphing tool, but at least semi-usable now). So there's progress.
"Office 2013 is far more capable than older Office versions and the interface is cleaner too and it supports open standards unlike the older proprietary only versions."
Office 2003 still does everything I want. I have yet to find a single feature in the later versions that I personally or any of my clients give a damn about. Office 2013 has a rubbish interface design by lobotomised slugs and fawned over only by insects with compound eyes. Open standards should always have been a part of support for every version.
Also: 2003 never crashed even remotely as much as 2013 does. I hate the damned thing, and hope it gets consigned to a vista-like oblivion very, very soon.
Ribbons might look cute,but they are anightmare to deal with for Joe Sixpack.
You can't find what you want to. Therefore more calls to the help desk. Therefore increased cost of operation.
It's a help desk nightmare. Stuff moves around so it is almost impossible to lead someone through actions over the phone. Result, longer and more frustrating calls, more helpdesk people needed, more stress, less productivity.
In the 1960s, Boeing designed the 747 in 16 months. a tiny fraction of what it took to design any other 7x7 since then. But then they didn't get slowed down by productivity tools.
> In the 1960s, Boeing designed the 747 in 16 months. a tiny fraction of what it took to design any other 7x7 since then. But then they didn't get slowed down by productivity tools.
I used to work for Boeing. Productivity tools have nothing to do with how long it takes to design an airplane, since they are designed on CAD/CAM software like CATIA. Instead, what has happened is the complexity of the airplane and the factory has drastically increased. Aluminum is a uniform material, while the graphite composites have directional weaves that have to be specified. A 1960's airplane effectively had no digital electronics. Today's planes are stuffed full of computers everywhere.
Another factor in recent decades is the demand of other countries for a piece of the production, in return for their national airlines placing orders. Spreading the work across different countries with different languages and time zones complicates and slows down the design and production coordination.
XP machines were competitively priced. Wiping of XP and installing Debian is easy. Show me a modern Windows box for under £100 (excluding monitor, keyboard and mouse) that I can conveniently wipe and install Debian on.
Microsoft's insistence on 'secure' boot convinced me to keep old X86 hardware going until low priced ARM became fast enough. My last ex-XP machine will be retired next week and replaced by a faster 4 core 1GHz (Fanless!) A9 ARM (That is were the £100 price point came from).
> My last ex-XP machine will be retired next week and replaced by a faster 4 core 1GHz (Fanless!) A9 ARM (That is were the £100 price point came from).
Care to share the vendor name? I used to build my own boxen but at that price point I may give in to laziness...
>>"Microsoft's insistence on 'secure' boot convinced me to keep old X86 hardware going until low priced ARM became fast enough."
Secure Boot isn't Microsoft's technology - it's a product of the UEFI consortium which is about thirteen big hardware players such as Samsung, Lenovo and others. MS have one seat on the consortium and if you think they're pushing companies like Samsung around you have some weird ideas. The only thing that MS "insisted" on is that Secure Boot could be turned OFF by a physically present user. It's one of the requirements for Windows 8 certification. I can link you to the requirements document if you really don't believe that.
All that aside, Ican't understand why you would stay on old hardware because of something that is as easily turned on or off as it is to change which drive you boot from. (Seriously, enter the UEFI on boot, just as you would an old BIOS, and select "Secure Boot: Off").
I especially don't understand why you held off in favour of ARM when you state Secure Boot is your worry as the MS "insistence" that Secure Boot can be turned off only applies to x86. On ARM the manufacturer can lock it to on if they wish and MS can't stop them. You have it precisely backwards!
Stupid statement. How can people prefer the poor-security, slower and less manageable XP to modern 7/8?
I have a number of machiens here in my home office. Some run XP and some run Windows 7.
I do my nightly database runs for my business on the XP machines as these involve lots of tens of thousands of SQL statements each day and even on ancient equipment the code runs faster on the XP machines than they do on the new faster machines running Windows 7. By about a factor of five or six.
I can set off my run at about 6pm on the XP machines and then by about nine or ten in the evening the XP machines are finished with the run. By breakfast the Win7 machines are still chewing it over. That is, if they haven't died due to their somewhat strange implmenentation of ADO (no, I am not rewring tens of thousands of line of code to match this week's version of the Microsoft Database of the Week).
Furthermore, starting up the XP machines takes no longer than the W7 machines. And didn't I read somewhere that that shutdown/startup on Windows 8 was nothing more than a clever hibernation rather than a boot from the metal?
Windows XP may have its flaws but when you compare it to Windows 7 speed is certainly not one of them. I made the mistake of 'upgrading' to Windows 7 because Adobe Lightroom wouldn't work on XP any more and that was one application which I needed the update for.
As for Office? Well, one can't beat the flexiblity of the old menu system. If one doesn't want certain things on the menu then a few lines of VBA will sort that out. Want other things in? Again,. a few lines of code would sort that. Office 2013 may be better and cleaner if and only if you wish to share Microsoft's idea of cleaner.
And speaking as a developer who sometimes maintains some of the many billions lines of VS6 code that's out there; I can tell you that Windows 7 and Visual Studio 6 are a match made in hell and for any decent sized project won't even load, let along compile, under Windows 7.
Faster? No chance. Better? Not if one is developing or, worse, if one has many thousand files in a folder that's pointed to by a library pointer such as 'My Music'. More secure? not sure about that; they have to get past my firewall,my scripts, my add-ons and the third party software. Since I don't go to dodgy pr0n or download sites I can't tell the difference.
One of my clients is moving to w7 on all of their machines. I would love to see how they get on with their required 3rd Party Active-X plug ins for IE6.
>>"I can tell you that Windows 7 and Visual Studio 6 are a match made in hell and for any decent sized project won't even load, let along compile, under Windows 7."
I honestly find it hard to believe that projects cannot be compiled on Windows 7 or that Windows 7 cannot run any "decent sized project". I also find your comments that Windows 7 takes six or more times as long to run the same process. IF that is true in your case, and it contradicts my own experiences of performance and reputable published metrics, then it must be down to something else.
If Windows 7 is six or seven times slower than XP that must explain all the gamers I see rushing out to install XP to keep their framerates up. /sarcasm. Think this through - do you really think it wouldn't have been noticed when Windows 7 came out that it was massively slower at the same tasks than XP? That IF this is true, then it's something very peculiar to your set up?
>>As for Office? Well, one can't beat the flexiblity of the old menu system. If one doesn't want certain things on the menu then a few lines of VBA will sort that out.
Or for the majority of the world, they can right-click on the ribbon / icon they want and remove the icon. The only reason you like your commands buried in a nested menu system is because that's what you're used to. Which might be an argument for you to carry on using the old system personally, but is not an argument that the old is better than the new. The horizontal ribbon layout allows one to get away with a lot less nesting and therefore searching around than the old menus - objective fact. And the fact that the icons are still grouped into sections within that ribbon preserves the virtue of organization from menus.
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