Buy Windows XP

There is speculation and rumors that with the Vista Service Pack 1 release, that Microsoft is intentionally delaying the release of Service Pack 3 for Windows XP. The testers in the Windows XP SP3 community all expected that it would be released this week, however this is not so, instead Microsoft released a beta version of SP3.

The ideas that are floating around are basically put: Vista SP1 is getting all the marketing hoopla whereas XP SP3 is delayed for no reason. Essentially Microsoft is be portrayed as not caring about support for XP and promoting Vista at its detriment. I do not know what the reality is, however as it goes for most things, its probably somewhere in the middle. I'm sure Microsoft is not happy with the resistance it has faced with the Vista upgrade, but at the same time I doubt they are willing to alienate their existing customers.

Microsoft has released Vista Service Pack 1. This is the first major fix that Microsoft has released and it is with the hope that it will not only fix the bugs, but also the sales of the product. Vista SP1 has been available since March 18th  on Windows Update Web. SP1 also tries to address the complaints about performance, reliability, and support for hardware.

As hard as Microsoft may try. At least for a couple of years, Vista will not be able to match the performance, capability, and wide-ranging compatibility that Windows XP has. No matter what they do, Vista's enormous hardware footprint will not disappear with a Service Pack. You have to run Vista on cutting edge computers to have it run smoothly, where I have Windows XP running smoothly on 5 year old machines.

The Windows Vista SP1 is out and now the developers at Microsoft are focusing on Windows XP SP3. SP3 will be released in two batches, based on the languages that are supported. Chinese (Simplified), English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish users will be getting updated in late April 2008. Arabic, Chinese (Hong Kong), Chinese (Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portugese (Brazilian), Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, Swedish, and Turkish users will have to wait three weeks after the first wave.

If you are running Windows XP Media Center or Windows XP Tablet then you will have to update you system by downloading through Windows Update.

Microsoft has tried very hard, over the years to reduce piracy of Windows and its other software in various Third World Countries like China and India. For the most part it has been successfully increase the percentage of people who buy its software.

However, with its stubborn refusal to listen to its customers, Microsoft is risking fueling the engine of piracy. As people want Windows XP and its not available on shelves they will turn to other vendors, who have no qualms selling fake copies after the deadline. There are so many reasons for Microsoft to not stop selling Windows XP that it seems literally insane if they go through with it.

Infoworld.com pioneered the effort to petition against the end of Windows XP. As you know, Microsoft will end sales of Windows XP on June 30, but nobody wants that too happen. In the past, Microsoft has screwed up and offered to return old operating systems, but it does not look like they will do it this time around.

The last time was with Windows 98 where they ended support for it and made people use Windows Me and Windows 2000. Windows Me was a total failure and plain didn't work and Windows 2000 was buggy. This forced Microsoft to return the sales of Microsoft 98 and peace was restored until Windows 2000 Sp1 was released. Let's up Microsoft realizes their mistake and puts Windows XP back on the market for the long run.

The clock is ticking and it is only a few months till Microsoft ends sales of Windows XP. This means all OEM copies as well as shrink wrapped ones will be thrown out on June 30 no matter how many there are left. However, people who build systems and sell them can use Windows XP through December 31.

No one wants this to happen, but it looks like Microsoft still isn't listening to the thousands of people who don't want this to happen. The effort to stop Microsoft may be a little too late. Organizations like Infoworld.com are encouraging readers to sign the SAVE XP petition to see if this will stop Microsoft. Microsoft has put back an old operating system in the past however so it is definitely possible for this to work.

If you look at Microsoft's history, other than the bad apple of Windows ME, every OS that they released, starting from Windows 3.0, it has been better. 3.1 was better than 3.0, 95 better than 3.1, 98 better than 95, 98SE better than 98, 2000 better than 98, XP better than 2000. But now we have the sceptre of Vista, which, regarless of what Microsoft claims, is not better than XP.

Microsoft is stuck in a quagmire of sorts, so they have decided that since people are unwilling to go to Vista, they might as well support XP some more, so they have released SP3. SP3 will do all the updates that have been released since SP2, it will add security to some profiles, and add some functionality to networking features. With this update, Microsoft is admitting that there is some life still to XP.

Microsoft announced that it will be reducing the prices of Microsft Vista. In America the price of Vista Ultimate will be reduced from $399 to $319. The thing about these price cuts is, that it is the first time that they have really had to entice consumers. I guess you could say that Windows XP was such a great OS that there doesn't seem to be a need to upgrade to Vista.

Not only that, but Vista does not perform to the level that one would think looking at the hardware requirements. I used Vista for a short period of time when it was first released, and now I run this site. It's not surprising that more and more people are starting to clamor for Windows XP, watch the price on eBay surge after Microsoft discontinues selling it.

People are more and more confused on what the better operating system is, but it's really not that simple. Most people care about performance and that applications just plain work. For XP, it is actually faster for doing common consumer and business tasks on PCs coming out of sleep mode. These tests were actually commissioned by Microsoft themselves which was kinda odd.

The performance tests showed that XP operating system remained faster than SP1 in 61 percent of operations grouped inthe consumer test suite and faster than 46 percent in the operations business group. The trials were done on identical PCs and even compared to OS X.

On most tests, XP were pretty comparable to Vista SP1. The only problem that they didn't test was that many drivers and apps don't work that well in Vista thanks to poor drivers. Overall, its an interesting test and shows that XP is still faster than Vista which wasn't much of a surprise.

WIndows XP SP3 Release Candidate 2 is out which doesn't mean it is the final version, but it does mean the final version will be out soon. However, we do know what Microsoft is up to. There are several improvements worth having and one of them pertains to security.

First of all, the SP3 update won't be on a separate .exe, but what will happen is that you will download a small file that will tell Windows update to download XP SP3. The download of the service pack is currently 65 megs which isn't too bad.

One important aspect is that there won't be any visible changes to the operating system. There may be only some extra configuration options such as a Security Options applet.  Most of the new features comes in form of security changes. There will be a Network Access Protection which give administrators more control of the network and makes sure individual computers conform to security policies.