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Microsoft ends support for Windows XP and Office 2003

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Re: Microsoft ends support for Windows XP and Office 2003

#51

Post by FollowSteph3 »

jenscow wrote: post #17

While I don't blame Microsoft for ending support (they have been very accomodating already), but I find it strange of them to leave so many users stranded. Especially now there's several alternatives to Windows, all requiring a similar learning curve and migration pains to that of moving to Windows 7 or 8. Personally, when people have asked me about it I usually point them to Linux Mint, using their existing computer…

Most people don't realize it but Apple does this all the time. Goos luck running most 5+ year old mac on the latest Mac OS X ;)

Re: Microsoft ends support for Windows XP and Office 2003

#53

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

gtirloni wrote: post #49
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like Microsoft dropped the ball on this one - it's a government, they could probably have charged billions. Hopefully, the UK government will realise this, and either a) go open source b) get their house in order much earlier next time.

How open source will fix it for an organization that can't bother to move from a decade old operating system? In 10 years we'll reading about the UK govt having trouble moving away from Ubuntu LTS 14.04. They only have option b) if they won't to avoid this in the future. Open source or not.

Upgrading an OS OS is a lot cheaper than upgrading a proprietary one.

Re: Microsoft ends support for Windows XP and Office 2003

#54

Post by FollowSteph3 »

FollowSteph3 wrote: post #51
jenscow wrote: post #17

While I don't blame Microsoft for ending support (they have been very accomodating already), but I find it strange of them to leave so many users stranded. Especially now there's several alternatives to Windows, all requiring a similar learning curve and migration pains to that of moving to Windows 7 or 8. Personally, when people have asked me about it I usually point them to Linux Mint, using their existing computer…

Most people don't realize it but Apple does this all the time. Goos luck running most 5+ year old mac on the latest Mac OS X ;)

And going the other way apple only supports each individual Mac OS X version at most 2-4 years...

Re: Microsoft ends support for Windows XP and Office 2003

#55

Post by mhurron »

m_mueller wrote: post #50
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #44

Which versions of Internet Explorer are supported on Windows beyond XP? Is it now 'officially' impossible to support IE6 users anymore?

The IE6 compatibility issue should be mostly a thing of the past now, except for some corporate settings and china. But I feel IE8 will stay with us for a long time with a few annoying percentage points that can't always be ignored - and by now it's almost as bad as IE6 was 8 years ago. The only thing that makes the situation better than before is the much higher adoption of FF and Chrome, which at least keeps IE8 us…

Why would 8 be a problem? There is nothing supported that can't run higher and the situation that made IE6 end up being so entrenched, that MS sat on IE development for so long and IE6 was the only IE for many years, didn't happen with anything after that.

Re: Microsoft ends support for Windows XP and Office 2003

#56

Post by taspeotis »

rbanffy wrote: post #40
taspeotis wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably code that relies on implementation details and only works by coincidence. We had a bug in our application that only manifested on Windows 8 and later. The problem was that we were passing NULL instead of some other sentinel value (MSDN said to use a specific sentinel value). XP/Vista/7 took NULL anyway and the effect was the same as the sentinel value but in Windows 8 it did something different.

I remember Microsoft had "strict" builds of libraries (and Windows itself, IIRC) that did parameter checks. You would boot the machine with that software and run your program (more slowly) and some functions that would work on a consumer OS would generate errors on it. Do they still do it?

Yes, you can download the checked build from the MSDN Subscriber Downloads.

But last time I checked the .NET Framework abused some Win32 API calls [1] so if you had some WinForms application you'd end up with loads of errors in code that wasn't yours.

Might be fixed, it's been a while since I looked.

[1] http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/3...

Re: Microsoft ends support for Windows XP and Office 2003

#57

Post by Ricapar »

mhurron wrote: post #55
m_mueller wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The IE6 compatibility issue should be mostly a thing of the past now, except for some corporate settings and china. But I feel IE8 will stay with us for a long time with a few annoying percentage points that can't always be ignored - and by now it's almost as bad as IE6 was 8 years ago. The only thing that makes the situation better than before is the much higher adoption of FF and Chrome, which at least keeps IE8 us…

Why would 8 be a problem? There is nothing supported that can't run higher and the situation that made IE6 end up being so entrenched, that MS sat on IE development for so long and IE6 was the only IE for many years, didn't happen with anything after that.

IE8 is a problem because many big enterprises still run it. I know of several big US corporations that, even though they run Windows 7 now, still deploy it with IE8 for compatibility with legacy applications.

Once you start dealing with big corporations, it's not as simple as "oh it's time to update".

Re: Microsoft ends support for Windows XP and Office 2003

#58

Post by [deleted] »

Tarks wrote: post #25
k-mcgrady wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite shocked that they've struck a multimillion dollar deal to keep support UNTIL JANUARY! Is there a reason they couldn't just move their upgrade cycle up 9 months? Obviously they knew this was coming.

For the benefit of people that haven't had the dis/pleasure of working in a really big company, the large banks / govy places often have a ton of dependencies and at (least) one place I worked at had a custom tailored build of Windows with features they need. They're also heavily regulated and if they can't show evidence that they've done all the required audit checks to ensure they're in line then the repercussions…

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft ends support for Windows XP and Office 2003

#59

Post by someguy1233 »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #42
dorward wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not alone. The UK government is doing something similar. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/07/uk-governm...

Looks like Microsoft dropped the ball on this one - it's a government, they could probably have charged billions. Hopefully, the UK government will realise this, and either a) go open source b) get their house in order much earlier next time.

They slowly are going open source.

A big example is Gov.UK which is mostly mostly open source as well as a few other big UK gov services like police.gov [1]

A large part of the NHS was moved off of a proprietary oracle system just a few months ago [2]

[1] http://github.com/alphagov [2] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/10/nhs_drops_oracle_for...

Re: Microsoft ends support for Windows XP and Office 2003

#60

Post by jmnicolas »

teh_klev wrote: post #27
jmnicolas wrote: post #24

Where I work we still have business specific apps that run only on XP and our suppliers have no plan on upgrading them (unless we fund the entire project, which they will happily resell full price to over companies). This is a clear example of what the lack of competition does

As in, your supplier lacks any competition in their line of business sector? Or is this a claim that MS are to be found wanting because you're locked into your app supplier?

I was speaking about the suppliers : they almost have a monopoly and can do as they want with their customers.

This is so bad that one of them shipped us a software upgrade with a hard-coded ip address. Next time the ip change they will have to recompile ...

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