Windows XP is no longer supported.
Posted 04-25-2009 at 10:35 PM by Dubious Dave
Last week I decided to give Vegastrike a try, and I didn't have a joystick. Not really that big a problem because a mouse will work, but I wanted to play it with a joystick. So I go into Best Buy and pick one up. While I'm there I see all these nice shiny new laptops and decide to check them out. The first thing any Linux fan will be hit with is the wall of Vista. Vista, Vista, Vista, everywhere Vista. I'm actually surprised that Bill Gates himself wasn't hanging out there. However I did see some netbooks with Win XP being sold, and there was a separate section just for Macs. I was curious, could I get a laptop with any flavour of Linux? I approached the salesman and asked if I could get a laptop with Linux. No I couldn't. Could I get a laptop with XP? No I couldn't. Could I get a laptop with Vista and a downgrade to Win XP? No I couldn't. And here's the interesting part. He follows that up by telling me that it wouldn't work anyway because Win XP hasn't been supported by OEMs for the last two years and I wouldn't be able to find any drivers. Now I'm not the quickest thinker ever, but didn't I just build two machines last year and dual boot with Win XP? Weren't they selling new netbooks with Windows XP? Aren't business still buying machines with Win XP? When I told him he was wrong and drivers were still available he still insisted on his statement. I suppose I could be wrong, but I find it hard to believe.
Total Comments 2
Comments
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My view on this is that manufactures of components will still have their drivers compatible with 95, 98, XP, vista. The major computer manufacturing companies will not support XP because microsoft will not support it. I am not sure of the date on this.Posted 04-26-2009 at 05:59 AM by Larry Webb 
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XP is still supported. You just can't buy a retail copy of the operating system, as far as I know. Netbooks do not bode well with Vista's inflated hardware requirements, which has given call to push XP Home as a Netbook operating system, but you'll otherwise be hard-pressed to find XP pre-installed on a proper desktop or laptop computer.
More on XP support: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows...port_lifecycle
I think some OEMs are offering XP downgrade options for business and enterprise customers. Vista adoption rates have been poor as a result of no measured ROI.Posted 04-27-2009 at 02:43 AM by rs3
