April 4th, 2008
Friday Rant: Let XP die!
So, Microsoft has set the XP cut off date. June 30, 2008. That’s fine with me. It’s time for XP to die.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I didn’t like XP, but that time has passed. Long passed. The last few XP installs that I’ve carried out have shown me how painful the process is compared to Vista. First, the install process demands that you stand around the system for an extended period of time to answer a variety of questions. With Vista the process has been cut down to a few choices at the beginning of the installations process and afterwards I can walk away and leave it to finish on its own. Then there’s finding all the necessary drivers. A system that needs me to find half a dozen or so drivers with XP installed doesn’t need any with Vista. That’s a hassle I’m happy not to have any more
Also, as I increasingly move over from 32-bit to 64-bit, with Vista I finally have a 64-bit platform that works reliably and allows me to break the 4GB barrier without having to suffer much in the way of downsides. XP Pro 64-bit couldn’t deliver me that no matter how often I tried.
It seems that XP has, over the years, collected a pretty big fan club. I guess that’s understandable given how long XP has been around, but all this “Save XP” stuff is starting to sound like little more than a few people howling at the moon. It’s not as if these people haven’t had clear notice that Vista is on the way in and XP is on the way out. How long do they realistically think Microsoft should offer XP? Another six months? A year? Two years? Indefinitely? Folks, it’s time to let it go and move on.
Maybe SP3 will rejuvenate XP a bit, maybe it won’t. Either way, I doubt that the service pack will change the fact that XP is long in the tooth on a number of fronts. It’s time for me to put my XP CDs into the drawer of doom.
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Adrian is a technology journalist and author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology. He also runs a popular blog called The PC Doctor. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations
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