Posted on 04/03/2008 8:00:03 PM PDT by dayglored
Microsoft said today it will continue to sell Windows XP Home beyond its scheduled June 30 kill-date for the emerging class of "ultra-low-cost PCs," or ULCPCs.
The operating system has been granted a reprieve until mid-2010, but only for the diminutive laptops such as the Asus Eee PC and Intel Classmate PC which lack the hardware necessary to run Windows Vista adequately.
The cut-off date for XP licenses in mainstream boxes remains the end of June, 2008. Free live support and warranty-based technical support will dry up next April. After that, customers need to pay for phone support until April 2014, when Microsoft washes its hands completely dry. XP security fixes will continue to be available for free.
Computer makers can sell XP Home on ULCPC machines through June 30, 2010, or one year after the scheduled launch of the next version of Windows. Exactly what lack of specs Microsoft is using to determine if a computer is an ULCPC remains unclear...
(Excerpt) Read more at theregister.co.uk ...
Ought to get together an EEE-PC ping list... just think of the pics that could be posted...
Not guilty!
Ping to read later
I heard the new generation of eee is supposed to be coming out about now. Do you know anything about this?
Check this out: 16 GB USB flash drive, $60. Plug one of these into an EEE PC and you've got all kinds of memory.
My Big Fat Hand is guilty as sin.
How, pray tell, does one wash the hands completely dry? Who in the h*ll is working for the media these days???
Re: Microsoft Vista. This program is the most popular answer whenever someone mentions a recent MAC purchase to me. I have seen enough of Vista and the Microsoft Bataan Death March to sympathize with their decisions to buy an Apple.
Funny video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N37nAqMpfeM
Ummm, bunch of illiterates maybe?
My first thought, looking at that picture of the girl clutching her iPod, was that she's got it plugged into one of those iPod-driven dildoes that rocks you to the beat of the music...
Dang. Pretty girl. Definitely NOT GUILTY.
Nice computer, too.
Any of the above here.
Any but Fierro’s hand. He’s dead, did you hear?
Sssooooo what is Microsoft going to offer to run on the eee-PC? Windows Mobile? LOL! Idiots.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
That's how it started, and how I saw it running last November when I visited Taipei. It's really meant to run Linux.
Microsoft is in desperation mode. That's the only reason they're allowing this. They see their market getting eaten from above (OS-X, Macs) and below (Linux, Eee-PC).
Even with 90% of the desktop market still theirs, they sense the deterioration, and are willing to allow XP to live even though it hurts Vista, because otherwise their market will collapse around them.
For a story of how an Empire can collapse even though it rules everything, read Asimov's "Foundation" trilogy.
They'll figure out how to put XP Home on it. The machine is actually quite capable, despite its size and cost limits.
Vista, no way. XP Pro in an office environment? Of course not. But for an ultra-portable browser/email machine? ideal!!
Microsoft HAD to allow XP to live for this, otherwise this would have been Linux's first huge strike against them in the consumer market.
I'll take the pair.
[snort]
I run XP on my Thinkpad PIII-500 with 192MB of RAM with no problem. My point was if they kill off XP what will they offer to run on these smaller laptops? The trend supports small lightly used laptops like the eee-PC. Are they betting on the processing power of them to be increased in the next few years, because I doubt that. Eventually as they(Intel and VIA) reach the 2GHZ mark on these processors the heat and energy will be to great. Unless they will come out with multi core processors for this type of computing. So I still think Linux will rule this roost in the long. Linux can be very small, like 2MB small if necessary. Windows can’t even get below 2GB today.
Microsoft as usual offers us a choice of an unsupported operating system that works, or a supported one that does not.
I don't dispute that Linux has the ability to be pared down much farther than Windows. Though I'm sure you have a typo there... 2MB (I presume you mean disk space) is not enough to hold any Linux install that can be reasonably used by a typical home user. I would believe 20MB, as I did an embedded Linux controller for a product a few years ago that ran about 30MB and we had a few extra functions.
Anyway, they're not going to kill off XP in practice -- they just want to make it harder to choose. They'll keep trying, but Vista is such a resource pig that they will lose an increasing share of the low-end market if they don't address it with something people want.
Cute, but:
1. XP is still supported in the ways that matter (updates), and will be for years to come. It just won't show up on newer machines. Oh well.
2. Vista is still unforgivably poorly supported, given how late in its cycle it is. It's nearly unsupportable.
Wow... how much?
How much what?
Yes, it obviously has nothing to do whatsoever with the fact that Vista simply isn’t selling... [/sarcasm]
Microsoft is in desperation mode. That's the only reason they're allowing this. They see their market getting eaten from above (OS-X, Macs) and below (Linux, Eee-PC).
Even with 90% of the desktop market still theirs, they sense the deterioration, and are willing to allow XP to live even though it hurts Vista, because otherwise their market will collapse around them.
Absolutely. This is something that I've been talking about for a while. Until this announcement, it appeared that microsoft had abandoned the low end of the PC market completely because Vista just simply cannot compete in this space at all. This is really bad news for microsoft because they've bloated their code with piss-poor programming and DRM that sucks the performance out of a system that they may have finally given the opening competing products like Linux have needed.
Apple and Microsoft are effectively competing in the same space of the higher-end systems. Sure, manufacturers will put Vista on mid-level PCs, but those setups are really being sold to the clueless who will pay the price of their ignorance in crappy performance.
This is a smart move by MS as it is clear that Vista is a dog in the marketplace.
That's true too, of course. But I think that while Microsoft was developing Vista, the bigger and bigger bloatware, they totally overlooked the fact that that market is moving towards smaller devices (phones, pdas) that want a tighter OS.
I have a fully functional Puppy Linux install on a 256MB USB key. I run it occasionally on my EEEpc (booting from USB). It has a word processor, spreadsheet program, even a few games. Even wireless works. Of course, you need additional space for storing stuff, but for web surfing and email it works fine. But you’re right...I wouldn’t want to use it as my primary OS.
Sorry...I though everyone was talking about linux not fitting on anything smaller that 2GB, so my post doesn’t make much sense..
Nice ring. I didn’t know you’re Italian.
[Petronski ducks, runs away]
Good move which will help Microsoft increase their already record profits. The company that makes the EEE PC is excited as well since they’ve already announced the new Windows version is expected to easily outsell their current Linux model. Guess you missed those articles somehow.
For the girl
:)
I didn't miss anything, GE. And I didn't write anything at all about how well the Eee-PC/XP might sell against the Eee-PC/Linux. You're getting those visuals again, I guess; better check your meds.
If I HAD commented on the relative potential sales, I'd have speculated that the XP version would indeed outsell the Linux version, if the performance and features were suitable for the market for such small machines.
So what?
The point of the article, which --you-- apparently missed, is that Microsoft is being forced, by a combination of the marketplace and their own mistakes in Vista, to not only prolong the life of the major competition to Vista (namely, XP), but to release versions of it for machines they never anticipated addressing before.
My hat is off to them if they succeed. Good for 'em.
But either they didn't foresee this extra longevity of XP, or they lied for years about it, in an effort to hump Vista (unsuccessfully, obviously).
You know as well as I do that out in Redmond, there are a lot of Vista-humpers who are fit to be tied about the fact their shiny new albatross is being put tight into a corner by a 7-yr-old operating system.
So I don't care one whit if they outsell Linux on the Eee-PC. I'm only saying, "Geez guys, if you're so rich, why ain't you smart?"
You are welcome to retort, "If you're so smart why ain't you rich?", but that's a different thread... ;-)
BUMP!
The Linux operating system itself can go much lower than the usual desktop applications that run on it.. As stated at IBM's Embedded Linux page:
a Linux system can actually be adapted to work with as little as 256 KB ROM and 512 KB RAM.
If they didn't mind running telnet for their web browser and ed for their word processor (one at a time!), they might need only another 128 Kbytes of RAM. But this is for serious (and insanely impoverished) geeks. Beware that none of the usual command line shells, not even sash - Stand-alone shell will go quite that low. When I have to work down here, I write my own shells using a page or two of C code to fork and exec simple commands, one at a time, as read from the input.
Linux can also stretch the other way. I've run on it systems with 2048 CPUs and 2 terabytes of main memory. This wasn't a cluster; this was a single system image (SSI) multi-processor system.
Glad to see XP sticking around, especially if still being sold OEM, but they should have woke up DOS/9x and open-sourced it for these things to get an open community started...
The Motorola RAZR²
is an example of an
advanced embedded system
using embedded Linux
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embedded_Linux:
Embedded Linux has been ported to a variety of processors not suited for use as the processor of desktop or server computers.
It is an alternative to the -- usually proprietary -- bespoke assembler or C software largely used in embedded development. Advantages compared to other embedded operating systems include: the source code can be modified and redistributed; relatively small footprint (a typical installation may require less than two megabytes of memory); no royalty or licensing costs; mature and stable; and a large support base. Embedded Linux systems combine the Linux kernel with a small set of free software utilities. The glibc is often replaced as the C standard library by less resource-consuming alternatives such as dietlibc, uClibc or Newlib.
Not sure what you meant by the "9x" in this context -- Windows 95 and 98? That, granted, has zero chance of being open sourced.
> True, but not because of Linux. Rather, this is true because of the various applications, such as web browser or word processor, that a general purpose home user will want to run.
True, for the most part. The other part is feature set -- you can do a small, tight-featured web browser in about a quarter the size of today's heavily-featured browsers.
> The Linux operating system itself can go much lower than the usual desktop applications that run on it.. As stated at IBM's Embedded Linux page: a Linux system can actually be adapted to work with as little as 256 KB ROM and 512 KB RAM.
I think we're really discussing various definitions of "a Linux system". Linux is the kernel. The GNU tools and other OS components, plus a host of applications, make up what we loosely call "a Linux system".
> If they didn't mind running telnet for their web browser and ed for their word processor (one at a time!), they might need only another 128 Kbytes of RAM. But this is for serious (and insanely impoverished) geeks. Beware that none of the usual command line shells, not even sash - Stand-alone shell will go quite that low. When I have to work down here, I write my own shells using a page or two of C code to fork and exec simple commands, one at a time, as read from the input.
In the mid-80's, I ran a 32-bit desktop minicomputer (AT&T 3B2/300) with 2MB of RAM and a 30MB MFM hard drive that only had 10MB of system files on it. Yet, it ran Sys-5 Unix, and I had a full-featured WYSIWYG screen editor, word processor, communications software, email, a couple different shells, etc. and could support a couple of concurrent logged-in users. No heavy graphics, of course, all text.
When I was on it by myself, I could run in under 512KB of RAM, and as long as I wasn't paging too badly, it ran acceptably. And that was a full, legit, Unix. I'm sure Linux could do better than telnet and ed. Vi at least.
> Linux can also stretch the other way. I've run on it systems with 2048 CPUs and 2 terabytes of main memory. This wasn't a cluster; this was a single system image (SSI) multi-processor system.
Indeed, that's a major strength of Linux -- scalability.
Back then, we ran a group of 10 or 20 people, as simultaneous interactive users, on a 256 Mb DEC PDP 11/45, running Version 6 or 7 full blown Unix.
Yes, I know. Still nothing around as good as MS-DOS 7.10a (WIN 4.10.2222)
FreeDOS still sucks, kinda. Udo Kuntz's Enhanced DOS (based on open source Caldera/DRDOS), Paragon DOS, or ROMDOS are great stand alone, but there really is no GUI other than Win3x or Win9x, and those really require MS-DOS for really good FAT32 and LFN support.
Not sure what you meant by the "9x" in this context -- Windows 95 and 98? That, granted, has zero chance of being open sourced.
Yeah, I meant Win95-WinME. and one could include Win3x, though probably 3.11wfwg would be the only one to worry about. Yes, I know they won't open their source, and yes, I know they won't release specs so an open community can write their own, but that's a damn shame, and a mistake too, IMHO.
Oh, we agree that vi sucks. I prefer modeless screen editing.
But I'm confused. The ed I know (/bin/ed) is strictly a line editor -- you even have to request a prompt 'P'. I use it when I have to edit /etc/fstab from a single-user shell when a crashed system refuses to boot with fsck hung on a failed drive. But it's only marginally better than writing with a sharp pointy stick and a pile of poo, for anything more complicated than a 10-line config file.
Are we talking about the same ed?
From this CRN Channel Media article Analyst Warned Microsoft About Vista, Low-Cost PCs:
Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT)'s announcement Thursday that it will extend the availability of Windows XP Home for ultra-low-cost PCs (ULCPCs) to June 30, 2010 might have come as some small solace to Gregg Daugherty.The article quotes from Microsoft internal docs that indicate that they intended to force-feed Vista Home Basic (the totally brain-damaged version) to anybody with a small computer. Maybe if they were lucky they could run Vista Home Premium.Daugherty is the in-house market analyst who in early 2006 warned Microsoft's Windows Vista marketing team that the new operating system's "harsher" hardware requirements didn't make a lot of sense in a market that was skewing rapidly towards ultra-low-cost mobile PCs.
Thursday's extension makes Windows XP Home available for Microsoft OEM partners to pre-install a full two years after XP Professional is discontinued. The move is seen as an effort by the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant to stave off Linux in ULCPCs, but also as an admission of sorts that Vista's pricey system requirements aren't well suited to the growing ULCPC market segment.
Daugherty's warnings and the extent to which they apparently fell on deaf ears are part of a large collection of internal Microsoft e-mails that were unsealed by a U.S. district court judge in the ongoing Vista Capable class-action suit in Seattle.
Instead, of course, the market spoke loud and clear: "We don't want your stinking, bloated Vista with its extra DRM, WGA, limitations and restrictions, and high cost -- especially on our new smaller notebooks."
Frankly, XP Home is a fine product for these small machines -- for people who want to run Windows, that is -- and although I expect Linux will gain a foothold, I expect that XP will do better.
What's futile is hoping that Vista will ever suitably address the small computer market. Microsoft missed the boat on that growing market, because of their stupidity and arrogance. Pure and simple. They screwed the pooch on this one.
Well, my hat is off to ya. What you say is true (some things no other editor can do).
In 1986 I needed a native text editor on a small system (64KB RAM, 80186 CPU) whose only programming language was a BASIC. So I wrote a line editor using that BASIC, and used ed as my model for the command set (pared-down, of course). My comment about the sharp pointy stick and the pile of poo actually originated with that experience. ;-)
These days I generally use a screen editor, except that I still regularly use sed of course. So I'm never very far from the old ed command set...
Funny watching you guys claim a victory for Linux when what this really shows is people would still rather pay for a six year old version of Windows than use your very latest version of Linux for free. And as for Vista it’s already been paid for on more machines than all versions of Linux combined too, so you’re never gonna catch it either now. Even Mac blowing you outa the water these days.
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