The Save XP petition garners attention, Vista neglected more
I talked about people petitioning against Microsoft’s decision to retire XP by the end of the month yesterday. Now big sites are getting in on the action creating petitions for users to sign to make things more official.
In yesterday’s news I referred to Steve Ballmer’s promise to reconsider the retirement of XP if enough users voice their opinions about it. This statement resulted in massive number of users calling into Microsoft support line logging their wish for XP to stay ‘alive’ post June 30th.
Now big IT news site InfoWorld has jumped into the action with their own petition for users to sign to keep XP alive. Most surprisingly, a bit less than a quarter of a million people have signed the petition to save XP. It seems like InfoWorld really listened to it’s readers and created a "Save-XP" center with a counter counting down to the end of the month.
It seems like the plan is to get as many people to sign the petition and send it to Microsoft to show the extent the users demand XP over Vista. Many people may have not thought about this fact, but once it reaches the 30th of this month retail chains will stop selling XP licenses.
That means every new PC and Laptop will come with Vista as the only option to the general public. If you tried Vista and had it taken off in the past to get XP put on there, that move won’t be possible for the average Joe anymore.
That is something every XP user should consider, as computers are one of those consumer electronics we find replacing or buying every so often.
If you feel XP should continue to live on, head on over to InfoWorld’s site to sign the petition:
http://weblog.infoworld.com/save-xp/archives/2008/06/sign_the_save_x.html
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June 5th, 2008
that petition has been live for over 4 months
In the four months since InfoWorld asked businesses and individuals to sign a petition at SaveXP.com….
http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/05/19/news-save-xp-200k_1.html
June 6th, 2008
Gary, thanks for the correction. I must be going blind.
June 6th, 2008
I think MSFT made promises and back office deals to the entertainment industry to have DRM within its Vista operating system so that MSFT would get preferential treatment when it comes to playing video and audio on its software.
This has to be the reason MSFT is ignoring the publics will to keep XP at retail and on computers. If MSFT did not have these deals in place, chances are it would abandon Vista or keep XP until Windows 7 at retail and OEM without much fanfare.
This is why MSFT is telling businesses to upgrade to Vista, once its lucrative IT businesses and Corporate upgrades maybe consumers will too. Except a lot of businesses are staying with XP and telling MSFT where to take Vista. I think in my opinion that MSFT will be lucky that businesses will stay with XP and not migrate to Red Hat or Novell.
As it is MSFT had to backtrack and keep XP Home on the teeny laptop/weak desktop market so they would not lose that arena to Linux.
I doubt that MSFT will extend XP at retail or at OEM until Windows 7. But they are only hurting themselves. Many people I know are already dual booting with Ubuntu or some other form of Linux. I think Linux would seem to be the next natural migration after Windows XP…unless you are in the market for a Mac.
June 8th, 2008
Vista is Microsoft’s enterprise desktop, designed to work hand in glove with the latest versions of their Server software. This is why they recommend businesses upgrade.
The DRM argument is crap. And it is very expensive to support multiple versions of an OS, and that goes double for the vendors who write drivers.