When Windows XP Goes Away, HP Thinks Businesses Will Start Buying PCs Again

Business Insider ^ | 06/15/2013 | Kevin McLaughlin

[OneWingedShark]

I’m casually learning C# these days, but I wish that my company took initiatives that would justify me learning it for them rather than for the next place I work. Still need Visual Studio for that I guess...

I have very mixed feelings about C# — on the one hand they have tried to clean up the C-language a bit... on the other You can't polish a turd.
On the one hand, Anders Hejlsberg (Turbo Pascal, & Delphi) shows definite influence on the design(for the good, IMO); on the other there are definite disappointments in regard to parallelism and packages/libraries/modules (I play in Ada for fun; I got spoiled by its nice parallelism and packaging features).

But MS shot themselves in the ass in Windows 8 by abandoning the DOTNET framework — it signals, IMO, that they're ready to abandon it (for the next big thing) leaving everyone who learned it (or really used it) high and dry.

[Zeneta]

Yes it is.

But I don’t want to pay for 7 or a downgrade to XP.

Vista sucks.

I want out. without the cost or loss of data.

I have already lost my Itunes library and will be damned to lose it again.

[doorgunner69]

Even if I were to buy a new PC (I am not) no way would it be a HP

I learned my lesson with a HP printer when I needed technical support and got a succession of turkey-gobbling Indians. None were understandable in the least.

That said, why would I replace something that works perfectly, same as my car, my wife, etc. It is gen-x/y/z that MUST have the bleeding edge at all times. I keep what works and what I need.

[Zeneta]

BTW, I will never buy an HP product ever again.

[Yossarian]

MSFT and HP are going over the cliff hand in hand like Thelma and Louise.

I'm stealing that!

[BfloGuy]

BTW, you can buy XP really cheap.

Yeah, just bought a [supposedly] new copy of XP on eBay for $40 the other night. Will put it on my spare laptop which basically will exist to transmit my weather station data to WeatherUnderground.

I run 7 on my primary laptop, but have not found one single thing about it that I find an improvement over XP. In fact, I really, really hate that there is apparently no file-indexing other than by name.

In many directories, I like to sort by date and it's painful to get a listing. Ditto "All Programs" on the Start Menu. Very annoying lag to list them.

[cva66snipe]

If Microsoft was smart they would release a super-fixed, super-SECURE, super ...whatever... version of the exact same XP they sold a decade ago. Sell it to oldsters like me. Tons and tons of them. Sell the latest gadgety kid’s thing to the kids. Microsoft CAN have two products at once, I believe.

Microsoft has never been a consumer focused company. Rather than try making two decent OS one for ones like you and I who would purchase such an OS they focus on teen-30 something buyers. They also ignore businesses and health care providers who have substancial XP programs running and a change over would be disruptive and very costly in business loss. They I imagine would also pay to keep XP.

XP is a great system and I believe re-licensing would mean huge profits from basic users. But MS is a here it is you'll like our crappy new product or else. MS has never admitted they made a mistake in their OS designs.

[Zeneta]

In my experience and needs, XP is the best OS since DOS,

Let me decide what multi-media I want to run.

Vista and 7 or 8 assumes what you want.

I’m done with MS trying to “help” me.

Just give something that works.

An OS that is not bound by the protocols.

[Zeneta]

Anything and everything beyond XP/Dos is about multi-media.

Sold to the consumer or creator as the next best thing.

[MarkL]

Then there's interesting (and very different) languages like LISP, FORTH, Prolog, and Ada — which seem to be overlooked in the SW industry because they aren't C-like and the companies want cookie-cutter replacement-employees (meaning they don't want to train them, meaning they want "the most general" programmers out there, meaning they don't pick the best language for the job).

You're absolutely right... I was just yanking your chain, reminded of the old "OS wars." I had the opportunity to play with Smalltalk some years ago, and the entire thought process in programming was different.

Mark

[driftdiver]

I use a pc for business. If I want excitement I tell the wife to get me a beer.

[OneWingedShark]

If I had a time machine, I wouldn’t use it to kill Hitler. I’d use it to kill Microsoft and ensure that Apple took over the business computing world back in about 1985.

Okay, /rant off

If you did that then the Apple OS (or at least the API) might be in Object Pascal [or Ada]. :D

[mikrofon]

LOL, you've got it wrong, my FRiend .... I'm a command-line jockey going back 25+ years! I'd certainly hope no one takes me for a (hardly "superior") Progressive.

Besides, Allen Luddite was one of my heroes -- you know, he came up with the Password concept:

[Chode]

wouldn't bother me... at least i knew my way around the registry better and what should and should not be running in the task manager

[Chode]

100%

[Chode]

LOLOLO!!!!!!!!!

[hattend]

most of us being illiterate we see nothing but pitchers in Windows 8 tablet interface

Irony! (pictures?)

[familyop]

"Many will choose Windows 7 because they don't want to train employees to use Microsoft's new Metro interface in Windows 8."

LOL! And they wonder if the economy is really going to collapse.

[Revolting cat!]

OK then.

[Revolting cat!]

I made little sense with that sentence did I. Here’s the ideer again: Computing interfaces have gone in the past 40 years from teletype devices, to text oriented VT terminals, to icon driven visuals on PCs, where the icons still had printed names underneath them, to finally little more than block pictures of Windows 8 and smartphones, their designs reminding one of toddler games, and lastly the 140 character text limit of Twitter.

All of this parallel to the decreasing literacy of the populace. Unrelated? Coincidence?