Bye, Bye Bill Gates... Oh and Windows XP

Lots of people are focused on the retirement of Microsoft Founder Bill Gates this weekend. I mean, yes, the man that created the world's most popular computing platform had his "final day" on Friday, June 27. But, are we forgetting that Microsoft is also saying goodbye to one of its all time favorite operating systems next week and replacing it with Vista, one of the most criticized tech products in its history? Is it a coincidence that Gates retires the Friday before Windows XP gets put on life support?

Press ploy or not, Monday, June 30 marks the end of an era as Windows XP heads for the sunset. It is the last day that Microsoft will be selling the software and sending it to computer manufacturers and stores, though the deadline has been extended in certain select cases. For instance, computer manufacturers like Dell and HP will continue to allow individuals buying computers with Vista Business or Ultimate to "downgrade" to Windows XP at least until January 2009. Also, small laptops -- like the ASUS Eee PC -- can still be sold with Windows XP.

Why the slow and painful death of Windows XP? Well, because Microsoft Vista is just too bulky for some including Intel, who revealed this week that the corporation will not roll out the Vista operating system to its employees. In fact, Microsoft extended the deadline to halt the sales by six months because its initial XP death sentence was not well-received.

That is not to say that Vista is all bad. In fact, I am a Vista user; I am writing this post, listening to my Slacker Internet Radio station and checking my Facebook profile all on a Lenovo x300 laptop running Vista. So why don't I think Vista is that bad? Because the operating system I run doesn't mean all that much to me.

Call me a child of the future, but I can do virtually anything online and in my browser these days -- edit pictures using Picnik, listen to music, write long documents and create spreadsheets in Google Docs. Few people will argue with me when I say that the future of personal computing isn't in the OS; it is in the browser or Cloud. And Microsoft will learn that heavy operating systems, which its next 2010 to-be-released Windows 7 also looks to be, are irrelevant and why many are holding on to Windows XP. The future is where Google and Yahoo are - in the Cloud.

So is it a coincidence that Gates and XP are exiting in chorus? Probably not. Both represent an earlier era in computing, a time when the desktop was in total control. I think we will see both their legacies resting in the Clouds.

Comments

[GBartrem]

Oh Boy! this looks like a great conversati­on.......I gotta tell ya, when Windows was young, it was easy to fix a problem within the OS. Now days with all the darn DLL files, Malware, viruses, worms and other ilk, you really can't pull off a fresh copy of a clean file off the install disk to replace a corrupt one like we used to. Now days one has to wipe the hard drive.. and do a fresh re-install in order to fix a virus problem or worse.
I used to be opposed to "Central Computing" (Using Apps like word processors from internet servers like Google). Now that software applications are so darn expensive to own, using apps delivered from "the cloud" seem to be a better idea.
I'm so glad that Linux has become more user friendly.

[Dunnage]

There will always be standardized OS. Otherwise all you have is 1&0. While you write about the cloud, kids are being required to know Powerpoint for college entrance.

My favorite was the demise of paper usage -- of course, an increase was the result.

[dadw5boys]

Hey Bill before you go, Would you sell the Windows XP outright??????

If email me.

[timm0]

Good lord.

This sort of column is a symptom of the larger problem we have in this nation - laziness. We’re too lazy to fact check the "media" and politicians. We're too lazy to realize that someone acquiring massive wealth isn't congruent with "goodness.­" We're too lazy to do a little accounting to realize how much money we spend paying a tax to microsoft virtually every time we buy a computer..­. then pay the tax to the police-ware vendors for anti-virus, adware, and other "security" tools. We're too lazy to learn something new. We're too lazy to learn how these things work so we will stop being gouged for unnecessary "upgrades.­" We're just lazy....

We're also too envious of the obscenely wealthy to ask ourselves, "Can any human being ever really be worth $100 Billion?" Isn't there really something wrong when a red flag like that pops up? What in the world did this guy do to advance mankind that he deserves this much money?

(Hint: if you try to answer that last question, realize that there were large and small computers running operating systems long before there ever was a microsoft. So don't embarrass yourself by saying something absurd like, "without him, we'd have no easy-to-use computers.­)

[mulegino]

You are absolutely correct. The American public is becoming cravenly sycophantic to great wealth and celebrity, a sure sign that our democratic-republic may very well be irreversibly headed towards total oligarchy and the pauperization of the middle class.
The media-entertainment complex has made sure that America's cultural icons be rich slobs, cultural and intellectual barbarians, and degenerates and dilletantes. Gates, though not the worst of the bunch by any means, is just one more example of the American veneration of banality and triteness, as long as it has money.

[cam]

Vista is really not that different to XP. It has more granular security, which is the root of many of its problems. In theory Vista is more suited to the enterprise than XP..

That said, I do agree with Joanna - most people can do everything they want to with a slim internet client. Just a matter of time before someone develops one.

[mathme]

Vista has an insane amount of overhead and, for not being different, certainly has a wide number of compatibility issues. It's slower, clunkier, and just a worse OS. I didn't even move to XP until about 6 months ago because Win2K didn't support everything i needed it to. I still run 2K on some of my systems because it's lighter weight and faster. Hell, if I didn't need DX support on these things, I'd run NT4.

[Harrier]

I am sure Ms Stern means well, but if all you're doing is writing stories and playing on the internet, you should never have a problem with any OS you have-particularly if you've loaded firefox. As a person who has returned three high powered computers after SP1 rolled out, I purchased a Mac and loaded XP Pro on it using bootcamp and never looked back. If I wanted to, and i don't, I can make XP look and perform exactly like Vista in about 7 minutes. If Ms Stern has use IE7, her broswer has gone down for no reason more than once I can assure you.

[MyOwnPerson]

Actually, I use IE7 on an XP Professional laptop and haven't had a problem.

[Joanna Stern - Huffpost Blogger]

I use Firefox 3 and never look back.

[Smokeykong]

MicroSloth is just continuing their trend of following excellence with disaster. You see for every DOS, Windows 3.1,window­s NT, Windows 98 second ed, windows 2000 pro and Windows XP there is a windows 95, 98 1st edition, ME, and now VISTA. They have a track record for withdrawing all the good faith payments that consumers make and betting them all on the wrong horse. Most consumers only need to be able to surf the Internet and write a doc every now and then any Linux distro will allow that.

Obama FTW

[JaseAllen]

Most consumers I know have want, or have children who want, to play games on their systems. I don't know of any major game publisher who supports Linux. The Linux community may be working on standardized gaming APIs, but it's not there yet. I will agree that MS lost its way in the not being able to uninstall useless junk. It's one of my few complaints of Vista. Many Linux distros are getting bloated, but at least you can uninstall most of what you don't want.

Meanwhile, Apple seems to release a "new" version of OS X every year at full price. Most of the "hundreds" of changes to each version are incremental updates and bug fixes. Many of the touted new features added are "borrowed" from Windows or Linux. Best of all, if your Mac is PPC based, you're screwed. You /can't/ upgrade your OS with out buying a whole new system at Apple's dictated price.

[mathme]

You don't know ANY? Really? How hard did you look?

[timm0]

If you want to play games, buy a wii or playstation or whatever. Your wasting electricity and not offering games enough horsepower to operate if you're intent on running games on 'regular' computers.

There are hundreds of java and other web-browser launched games that run on Linux. My daughter's playing with webkinz on my machine which I just recently upgraded from SUSE 9.3 to OpenSUSE 11 (that's a Linux distro, if you didn't already know).

The "real" reasons people give for using windoze crap are "everyone uses windoze" and "everyone uses office." It's very technical, you see.... very complicated yet intense stupidity and illogic driving it.

[Tomlastliberalleft]

I go back as far as Windows 3.1 and have seen this happen too many times now to ever have anything but hatred for Microsoft. They suffer from the same disease that has all but killed GM, namely, they absolutely hate their customers. Customers are silly, useless people who have the nerve to expect the marketplace to actually work to their advantage. Customers don't always buy into every stupid and pointless add-on that can be cobbled together by a bunch of engineers and accountants. Customers continue to expect us to fix our failed and defective products, for free! Customers have no loyalty to us even though we have routinely made them angry beyond words with a support structure that is now offshore. I have run into a few IT types who actually like Microsoft, but most of them go to the trouble to invent new words to express their contempt for Microsoft. My complaint is simple. I cannot understand why a company with the money and resources they have expect their customer base to do their product development for them. They roll out and OS and then expect the public to muddle through and identify all the errors in the system.

[mathme]

I go back to DOS 3.X. You know what's totally cool? You don't have to upgrade! I know, it's wild! I used DOS almost exclusively until Win95 and only used Windows 3.11 rarely (to play CivWin...) and, again, with Win95, I spent a lot of time in DOS. I didn't start running Windows full-time until the age of Win98, but at that time I was running NT and only using 98 for the occasional game. Of course, my machine was a monster-- Dual P166, 112MB of RAM... Open GL and GLIDE stuff flew in NT :) The point is that you don't HAVE to buy Vista, just like you didn't HAVE to buy ME (I picked up a cheap copy just to have a looksee, while waiting for "NT5," just like i did with Vista). If someone tries to sell you a turd on a bun, you don't have to eat it just because you think it's lunch time.

[timm0]

Sort of, yeah.... One of the key violations of anti-trust law that they were dead bang guilty of (before boosh got into the office and, instead of officially "drop" the case, approved a $0 budget for pursuing the DOJ case) was requiring computer manufacturers to pay an OS license fee for every machine they built - regardless of whether or not they installed an OS on it's hard drive and regardless of what OS they installed. So for many years, through 2000, you could NOT buy a computer (unless you bought individual parts and built your own) without paying (directly or indirectly) microscrew.

They "voluntarily" stopped extorting these funds from the vendors a few years back, but you're still hard pressed to buy a desktop-type of machine without being forced to buy a windoze license. There are some that will offer a couple configs that have no OS or a Linux distro. And most server-class machines come standard with no OS. But to many who shop for Dell or HP on line, or go to Best Buy or whatever to pick up a machine generally canNOT buy a computer without being forced to buy windoze.

[alguien]

for me, the problem with microsoft is that the company has its fingers in too many pies. they have an operating system, they have the office suite, they have the browser, etc., etc.

they have all of these products and none of them function all that well. then, year after year, they keep presenting the consumer with upgrades that add more bells & whistles but never really improve on actual functionality. in the end we just end up with a lot of clunky applications that are extremely memory intensive and take up tons of space on the hard drive.

[timm0]

A-freaking-men.

[MyOwnPerson]

No project management, no change control, no configuration management, no scope management, no financial management­...

It's less costly to have someone else figure out the problems for you.

[Wulfstan]

Bill Gates is just a predator.

He stole the PC operating system from Gary Kildall.

[mathme]

By 'stole' you mean 'bought' right?

[Dunnage]

Ya, Gates never really has pretended to be anything but a businessman, like his father. Now he is a philanthropist, for better or worse.

[thepeoplechoose]

Personally I like Vista. I've been using computers professionally long before the PC came into being. So in that regard I may not be a typical user and have a fuller understanding of the genre. As I see it the biggest drawback to Vista wasn't so much the OS but rather hardware and software vendors, even though they had years of lead time, didn't get their products ready for Vista in any timely fashion. The other issue is, and this is true for OSX and Linux as well, the industry has necessarily moved on from supporting 16 bit executables. That means a lot of legacy software won't work anymore. The thing is we are talking about software that is ancient by any standard and has no place in the present day computing environment.

Technology is by no means static. Some people and some critics either weren't around or seem to have forgotten that XP wasn't without problems when it was first released. In all fairness we are talking about an exceedingly complex environment with an unimagineable number of variables. In day-to-day use Vista is definitely better at this stage in its lifecycle than XP. For those looking for perfection you need to look elsewhere. But know that perfection, by definition, is unachieveable. For all the criticism, Vista has exceeded XP in all ways. It is my opinion that it is individual perceptions and a faulty recollection of the past where lies the greater flaw.

[research]

"The thing is we are talking about software that is ancient by any standard and has no place in the present day computing environmen­t."

That is so arrogant: Lots of very useful software was written for 16 bit machines. Like Electron beam simulators. The author is dead now. How am I going to run that software? No one else has written an equivalent. There are thousands of special purpose very useful unique programs that Microsloth has rendered useless through operating system drift. It's organized theft.

[Dunnage]

Point well made: organized.

[mathme]

I don't question your experience, but Intel has the source code and has decided to NEVER use Vista... that seems odd.

[Dunnage]

Money. Intel does what it needs to do for business reasons and changing any software is an enormous expense. Standardization is what business wants and what MS provides. Gamers love XP because current vid cards have been slow to adapt to Vista. Gamers have less reason to change than Intel. The vid card makers have to adjust or lose market share for folks that get Vista when they buy from Dell or Hp.

[iheardthisbefore]

Vista Home Deluxe SUCKS....t­he only reason I have it at all is that I couldn't
get the computer without it.

[ObamAtomic]

For Vista,the OS is Vista Ultimate.
Upgrade from Vista Home Deluxe to Ultimate,is great,lapt­op.....no problema!

[balance]

Alot of businesses are reluctant to adopt Vista because alot of their custom built software may not be compatible with an upgrade.

If I were MSFT, I would offer a package on Vista Business Edition with an already installed Virtual PC, configured to run an pre-installed Windows XP in a virtual machine. Basically, give their business users a way to run Windows XP in Vista, as a virtual machine (sans the inconvenience of a dual boot), without having to pay 2 OS licenses.

[DRaymond]

Vista already has a wide variety of compatibility modes for individual progarms.

[Oldgypsy]

When I began learning "PC" in college, MSDOS was in ver 4.somethin­g. Everything required another software. Windows was an amusing infant. GUI made a nice interface and eliminated laborious key-strokes. When I finally began on Win. 3.11 for Workgroups, I still used a whole gamut of specialized softwares and grew with them. The more Windows tried to encroach on these fields, the more they failed. Every version of Windows I've used, I "strip" down to its barest functions because every software I use works better than the Windows attempt to dominate that function. Eudora is better at e-mail. Agent is better for the undernet..­.etc...etc­. The thing is that 30 years ago, all the "computing wizards" expected personal computing to be much farther advanced than it is. Micro-Weak has been holding back the industry to soak its fortunes with crap version after another.
When will my PC be voice input instead of keyboard? ...interfa­ce with my home, my entertainment center? When will my PC AFFORDABLY be the joyous work-saver time-saver we were promised 3 decades ago?

[ObamAtomic]

Windows 3.1 and PC Tools,best system ever,,internet browser,Mosaic,,,,,

[KillTheMessenger]

Just download a Linux and be done with it.

[Tator]

So true, but most moonbats require a "idiot proof" box to do anything on a computer, hence their love for "Apple...h­alf the performance for twice the price."

[wolfgangmo]

Call it love of good design. Call it an appreciation for efficiency. Call it the fact that my company is so busy that I can't afford to have WinDoze crap slowing down or crashing as it does with annoying frequency [we boosted profits by about 30% when we flipped to apple].

Call us 'moonbats' if you want, but I call us good businessmen. You are welcome to stay in your cave and paint on the walls. I'll stick to my MAC.

[JaseAllen]

Half the performance for twice the price? Even I wouldn't go that far. It's a trade off. Mac/tels do cost about 20% more than Win/tels and you are limited to what Apple wants to offer. The interface is designed in a way as to discourage or prevent tweaking or tampering many of the software and hardware systems. Those the trade off of having a pretty OS with a lower than average learning curve.

It's all about choice. I just wish people would stop being so damn smug & pompous about the choice they make. That goes for Linux & Windows fanatics as well as the obvious Mac fanatics--triple for Gates, quintuple for Jobs.

[Dunnage]

XP.

[jsarets]

When I started running Linux over a decade ago, it was more like, "just download the 14 Slackware floppies and good luck with it". My, how far we've come. The GNU General Public License is an instructive document for progressive Americans to study. In an information economy, where supply is essentially infinite, a balance can be struck between freedom and equality whereby consumers, creators, distributors, and service providers all enjoy virtually limitless opportunities for productivity, prosperity, and progress. It's a collaborative meritocracy with no borders, no secrets, no centralized authority, and only one rule: share your improvements. The free and open-source software ecosystem is a truly enlightened social order I hope will be assimilated into progressive politics to some extent.

[booker52]

I have had Windows 95 to Windows Vista, and I can tell you Vista sucks!!! I will stick to Window XP. We purchased a new computer a few months ago with Vista. My poor hubby is stuck with that one. It is not very user friendly in my book.