How much longer does XP have?

Just a thought I had today. I know XP is nearing the end of it's life. How much longer do you think it has?
IIRC, the oem can no longer be sold as of Jan 2008, and I think for the retail it's Feb 2009.
With new laptops now, and in the future, it will be very hard to find XP drivers I'm sure. As a gamer (but play mostly old games), compatibility is important to me, and quite honestly, and unfortunately it's a fact of evolution, some of my games just will not run in Vista.
I bought XP again not too long ago so I could play those games, and running an Inspiron E1705 all the drivers I need are readily available.
Today, while booting Vista (I run a dual boot), for no reason, Vista "forgot" I have my SB Extreme soundcard installed (with drivers!) and decided to use the laptop speakers! My soundcard and integrated sound weren't listed, but a reboot fixed that.
I know eventually the Vista bugs will be worked out, but I'm very concerned that the life of some of my older games are directly tied to the life of XP. I mean, my inspiron wont last forever.
Even so, virtual pc doesn't support 3d acceleration, so that will not work for one game in particular.
I like vista, when it works, but it seriously breaks old software.
What are anybody's thoughts, if any?

 

I think it will die out Q3 of 2008. MSFT is offically stopping to support XP in Q1 2008

 

XP will last quite a long while, I believe it will be supported for a few more years before being kicked. New hardware support may be more difficult to come by starting next year, but if you are sticking with the laptop you have, I don't think any sudden problems should arise.

Otherwise, might I inquire as to what games you are trying to play that will not play in Vista? Have you tried using compatibility mode at all?

I only know of a few games that are not supported in some form or another in Vista.

Just checked: XP support will continue AT LEAST until April 2009.

 

I think XP will last until MS comes out with Seven.

 

Oh, I've tried everything. Strange thing is, even in vista, with all the latest available hotfixes, even BF1942 and BF2 will frequently crash at startup for no explicable reason. Then a few reboots later, decides it wants to work.
Even then, I consider that "playable" by Vista standards, some games I have (pre 2000 ), will not run no matter what.
Even though they are old, I still go back to them frequently. As I said, my inspiron will one day die/become obsolete, then those games too will die.
I was very surprised at how XP really flies on my laptop. I don't remember it ever being so fast on my older desktop.

 

XP should last a while officially, and with so many people working to keep driver support available i would say it will last a good while after official support stops. Unfortunately, with Microsoft pushing DirectX 10 eventually gamers will have no choice but to upgrade. And for that I say:

DAMN MICROSOFT!

Grand Admiral

 

Driver support for XP isn't going to go away. Pretty much any hardware still gets updated 2k drivers, if not Win98.

Of course, hardware manufacturers aren't going to drop support for XP until its userbase is completely negligible. They're not Microsoft, and they don't have to promote Vista. They just write drivers for what people use.

So how long will XP last? Depends on how you define it. We know more or less when MS will drop support on it (although they've extended those things before, and given XP's popularity, it seems likely to happen again). And we know that they're going to stop selling XP soon enough. But that doesn't kill XP. It's still installed in something like 90% of all PC's. That's not going to change this year or next.

I'm taking it easy. XP is big enough to last for a while, even if Microsoft tries to kill it tomorrow. They don't have that much control over it, tbh. They're not the ones writing software or drivers (both of which will work with XP for 3-5 years still, at the very least)

All they can do is drop support for it (and they're not doing that for another couple of years), and even then, it'll still be a slow process waiting for everyone to actually upgrade before you can consider XP "dead".

 

Unfortunately, I have to disagree with that. Manufacturer's promote what is available, and from that standpoint, MS has told all OEM's to stop offering XP as of Jan 2008. It's a matter of evolution, and MS wants everyone to upgrade to Vista.

And nice avatar Jalf. I couldn't think of a better icon, that is "for the people".

 

The if it's Jan of 08, I am glad I ordered my laptop with XP.

 

No they don't. Manufacturers promote their own products. And they do that by making it work with what is commonly used. They don't care whether people use XP, Vista or Linux. But as long as people use XP, they'll make XP drivers, because otherwise they'll hurt their sales. If everyone were to switch to Vista, they'd stop making XP drivers. And if everyone were to switch to Linux, of course they'd focus on those drivers instead.

There's no magic involved. They just do what they can to ensure people can use their products, because that's how they make money.

Why do you think most of the drivers you download still work with Win2k?
Hardly anyone uses it, but hey, some do, and it requires little additional work to support it, so most hardware manufacturers do. The same will apply for XP. They already have solid XP drivers, and it's not a huge investment to maintain those. Of course if we were talking about developing new drivers for a new platform, they'd be reluctant to support it. But maintaining existing drivers is relatively painless, and if it can boost your sales, you'll do it.

 

Well I hope you're right Jalf.

 

Extended XP support is until April 2014, which means security hotfixes for all users and paid support for business and enterprise class. Hell, W2K extended support is until July 2010, so I hardly think Microsoft will drop XP support before W2K.

Driver support will slowly dry up, which means at some point XP users will be stuck with outdated hardware, but I think that is years down the road. It's still possible to get W2K drivers for hardware, and since I use that as a gauge for XP, I see no need for me to jump ship before (or after) I move on to a Macbook!

 

XP will be alive as long as Vista is around. Like someone said earlier it doesn't take much extra work to add the XP driver once you have the Vista driver.

I think the real question is... how much longer until something better comes along. I like Vista but it's not revolutionary. It's XP with eye candy and... some other features some people like to say are "wow".

 

I think XP will stay around, but market share will gradually diminish, more so next year and in 2009. I dont know the dates for when Microsoft will end support for XP, but in a few years a lot of people will have, or go for a new computer, and will probably migrate to Vista. There is still a small percentage of users using Windows 2000 right now. I expect Windows XP to have more market share even after 2009 than Windows 2000 has right now.

 

2K and XP share the same kernel so drivers are not really hard to make for it.

 

Here you go.

http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=3223

 

The corporate networks won't move off XP until late 2009 at the earliest.

 

i would say 2011 until 90% of people have vista

 

And by 2011 at least 40% will have something newer than Vista.

 

That is if Microsoft actually gets the next version of Windows released on time.

Far more. 2009 is only two years after XP's successor, while right now is six years after 2000's successor. Not to mention that XP achieved a far greater degree of market dominance than 2000 ever did.

Hardware support for XP will probably last another three years or so at least given the support still existant for 2000. XP sales last at least through June 2008, so if you think you'd like to use it on a future laptop, either buy the retail edition or an additional OEM edition.

I've had crashes in BF1942 in Vista, but not too much more than any other program (still far more than in XP, though). Battlefield Vietnam also tended to crash. Civilization III is the program that gave me the most trouble. But for all these softwares, it seems the problem only affects some of the Vista user base - but still much more than that which had problems with XP.

Now I think I'll log off my Vista machine and go play Civilization on my 2003 XP machine...

 

XP should be going on a while yet. I wouldnt worry.

 

Seeing as Windows 2000 is still going strong in the business community, I'd have to say XP has quite a bit of life still left in it.

 

XP isn't going anywhere soon. Many places still use Windows 98 and 2000. My old workplace used 98 machines up until this summer and the university I go to now runs the machines on its internal network on 2000 - and these are machines with E6600s in them! Places like businesses and educational institutes won't upgrade for the point of upgrading if what they are currently using runs fine.

 

No they don't. They have very similar kernels, but XP is based on a newer version of the XP kernel. (4.1 vs 5.0 iirc, where Vista is 6.0)
But yes, they are similar enough that porting drivers from one to the other is no big deal. But there is another side to it as well. When you already *have* an XP driver, it's fairly easy to keep it up to date. And right now, everyone *does* have up to date XP drivers. Which means they just have to put in the small amount of work to keep them up to date, so they have little motivation to drop support for XP any time soon.

 

Every computer in every computer lab on my campus uses 2k lol, take that vista!

 

I will not upgrade to anything past Windows XP until the version following Vista is released.

 

i can't stand using xp anymore at work. I like my vista =)

 

XP isn't going anywhere until MS manages to shift the business market to Vista. When you consider they only managed to shift large chunks of that market to XP a year or so ago by ending support for Win2k, I don't think we have much to worry about.

Oh, and for my .02 about Windows 7- I don't think it's showing up any time soon. Vista became what it is because MS couldn't do what they are trying to do with Windows 7 fast enough for the marketing and accounting guys, and I don't see any indication that that dynamic has changed. We'll get a few years of cool tech previews and lists of features that make us drool, and then stuff will start getting axed and the final product will arrive 6 months late, with major polish issues, and missing half of the feature set it was supposed to have, but with a spiffy new GUI. MS just doesn't do revolutionary change well.

 

While Microsoft plans to support XP with updates long into the future, it may well not be long at all before hardware exists that does not support XP. I have a pretty recently purchased Exerex 1502 laptop that came preinstalled with Vista. It was a scramble to find XP drivers because Exerex didn't provide any, but more importantly, anything earlier than XP SP2 will not successfully install on the VIA based hardware. The installation crashes with SP1.

With Vista becoming mainstream as "the" preinstalled OS, OEM venders would seem to have little concern over XP support. Any innovation they can offer, but would go unsupported in XP, would seem to be of little concern. Likewise, with multiple offerings, why would a vender like say Intel be concerned if a new chipset with nice new features wont allow an XP install, but works great under Vista? Just like my Via based Everex, why should they care if XP SP1 and earlier wont install on it?

That isn't to say that XP, XP critical updates, and compatible hardware wont be around for years to come. But the playing field is without a doubt going to shrink.

 

Until virtual pc (or other programs like it) support 3d acceleration, I'm basically stuck with running a dual-boot, unless I finally want to bury my old games in the time capsule.

 

XP will die when MS release a better version of Windows than it.

 

Hmmmm fact vs FUD....let try some fact.

http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=3221

I know people that never went to XP and are just now ditching Windows 2000 for Vista. I work on Windows 2000 servers every day at work. They are being fazed out pretty quick here but they still run fine.

XP will be around and be mainstream for at least 3 years. Meaning XP will be the majority installed/OS for at least three years. People keep their PC's much longer these days. If you dont game and you have a 2 year old PC upgrading its ram to a gig, and a bigger faster HD will make XP hum.

 

Windows 2000's Kernel is 5.0 (as it was going to be NT 5.0 before they changed the name)

Windows XP is 5.1

Windows 2003/XP-64 is 5.2

I dont know or care what Vista is....probably 6.0....I remember it as the version that pushed me to OS X.

 

XP works fine for me. With a machine from 2003 (Pentium 4 2.66GHz, 512MB DDR-333, 120GB PATA 5400RPM, GeForce4 MX 440), I can do everything I want to, except play new games (getting your computer up there is so expensive, in both money and time).

 

This is a very true statement. In August of 2007 I bought a HP dv6426 with Vista pre-installed. I had to remove it because the horrible network slowness affected my ability to use Vista in my consulting business.

Anyhow I went back to XP. XP could not find my HD when I was installing the OS...the whole no disk found error? Basically I needed A. go into the BIOS and put my Intel SATA into legacy mode loosing speed or B. Get a driver, bust out my USB floppy drive and press F6 when when booting up to the load the driver.

Well going to HP to get the driver was not happening as they had like 2 drivers for my model for XP. I can only assume they did this because my model was new and it never left HP with anything but Vista on it. Anyhow I had to go to the base model that had been out for a few years....dv6000 and get the driver.

Sadly this is not going to stop, as vendors try save money and not spend 1 sec on creating drivers for new hardware for older OS'es.

Of course you can go to the maker of the actual hardware, like Intel to get the drivers for quite a bit longer.....just making it harder to do a rebuild for those that dont have this kind of know how.

 

I was about to jump in and say that as well. Until I got this Vista laptop last month I had been running Windows 2000 on all my desktop PCs since around 2001 - even as a gamer there was never a reason to upgrade to XP.
Aside from early pre-XP backwards compatability with Win 98/Me games, 99 out of a hundred games that ran on XP would run just as well on 2000. The cores of the two systems are virtually identical as far as I know, and they do seem to use the same drivers for pretty much anything (gaming did admittedly become a bit of a problem very suddenly earlier this year, as many new games suddenly started looking for various system calls in XP SP2 specific files - though in several cases without apparantly using them for anything, as extremely simple and very minor W2K work arounds for games like Bioshock proved).

 

And this is relevant to the thread how..?

I think the better question is "How much longer do we have to see Vista?" lol

Seriously though, I think XP will be here for quite a long time, whether the Vista fanboys like it or not. The fact that MS will release an SP3 for XP soon, even when there's already Vista, means that XP will actually have an extended life.

And I agree that XP won't be dying until they release their post-Vista OS. MS should have already learned from the Vista mess and create a true next generation OS that will finally kill XP.

That, or everyone will then be running on MacOS.

 

Totally agree.

You can count me out. I tried MacOS and wasn't all that impressed.

 

i think the real question is how this post is relevant to the thread. ridiculous.