Posted April 15th, 2008 at 3:42am
Microsoft has this way of (how shall I put this?) corralling their consumer base into upgrading on the MS timeline, i.e. how often and to what product. That master plan hit something of a bump when Windows Vista, the branch all the monkeys were expected to swing to from the XP branch, sorta broke and all the monkeys went tumbling down. To put it less poetically, XP users don't want to be forced to upgrade to Vista because an endless list of annoying problems and bugs associated with the operating system makes it look like a pretty bad choice. MSNBC has run an article about how Microsoft is literally forcing XP users to upgrade; tech support for mainstream users ends this month and before the year is out you won't be able to buy a copy of Windows XP anywhere no matter how much you beg. This has perturbed XP users so much that a petition with 111,000 signatures has been created, asking Microsoft to continue support for XP indefinitely or at least until Vista is useable on a regular basis.In a recent article about the “Save XP” drive, Gruman wrote that “in Vista’s first year, InfoWorld detected a deep anxiety over Vista among technologists and consumers alike. … We have not criticized Microsoft’s XP support plans. We have criticized Microsoft for ending the availability of XP on new machines past the June 30 end-of-sales date. ... It does you no good to have XP support if you can’t get
microsoft, vista, windows, xp