Windows 7 may be one nifty OS, but the aged (more like ancient) Windows XP just refuses to die — or correct us if we’re wrong — Microsoft refuses to let XP die a natural death. Got this from ComputerWorld:
Just a day before Microsoft drops support for Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), the company announced on Monday that people running some versions of Windows 7 can “downgrade” to the aged operating system for up to 10 years. The move is highly unusual. In the past, Microsoft has terminated downgrade rights — which let customers replace a newer version of Windows with an older edition without paying for two copies — within months of introducing a new OS.While few consumers may want to downgrade from Windows 7 to XP — unlike when many mutinied against Vista three years ago — businesses often want to standardize on a single operating system to simplify machine management.
Monday’s announcement was the second Windows XP downgrade rights extension. Microsoft originally limited Windows 7-to-Windows XP downgrades to six months after Windows 7′s release, but backtracked in June 2009 after an analyst with Gartner Research called the plan a “real mess.”
Instead, Microsoft later said it would allow downgrades to Windows XP until 18 months after the October 2009 debut of Windows 7, or until it released Windows 7 SP1.
Read the complete article here at ComputerWorld.
We don’t understand this — why Microsoft continues to push Windows XP support — especially after seeing how Windows 7 is just light years better than both XP and Vista combined. It runs well on all machines, from low end to high end. You can run it on netbooks and tablets.
And what’s more, there’s native Blu-ray support on Windows 7. Plug in your external blu-ray burner, watch Blu-ray movies, stream HD videos from your USB hard drive, or burn to 25GB BD-R discs — all these you can do naturally on Windows 7. And while XP stays on the ancient 32-bit standard, Windows 7 is optimized for 64-bit processors, making it easy to run high performance applications like Adobe Premiere Pro CS5, which demands 64-bit processing.
Adobe CS5 Production Premium runs better on 64-bit platforms like Windows 7
Is Microsoft developing jitters on closing down XP? We hope not. An assertive stance after 2020 for Windows XP closure should be made, both for their sakes and ours, the customers.
