Online Petition Favors Windows XP Over Vista

[yiozik]

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Windows may or may not be collapsing, as two Gartner Group analysts indicated last week, but Microsoft is receiving substantial pushback against Windows Vista. With less than three months left until Microsoft says it will stop selling and supporting most versions of Windows XP, will customers be forced into an operating system they don't want -- or is Microsoft facing a customer revolt of stunning proportions?

Resistance is strong enough that InfoWorld Executive Editor Galen Gruman has launched a "Save Windows XP" online petition that has received more than 100,000 responses.

"Millions of us have grown comfortable with XP and don't see a need to change to Vista. It's like having a comfortable apartment that you've enjoyed coming home to for years, only to get an eviction notice," the petition reads.

"The thought of moving to a new place -- even with the stainless steel appliances, granite countertops, and maple cabinets (or is cherry in this year?) -- just doesn't sit right. Maybe it'll be more modern, but it will also cost more and likely not be as good a fit. And you don't have any other reason to move."

Will Microsoft Pull an ME?

Gruman wants Microsoft to do something similar to its handling of the disastrous Windows Millenium Edition -- continue selling XP until an acceptable version of Vista can be developed.

It's not clear whether businesses are really pushing back on Vista, said Charles King, principal analyst for Pund-IT, in a telephone interview. "We're just a few weeks past Service Pack 1 for Vista," he noted. "The availability of SP1 is usually the trigger point for serious implementations." While business implementation of Vista so far has been minor, "I expect it to pick up speed," King said.

At the end of the day, though, neither Microsoft nor any other company can force customers to buy their wares. "You try to bring them over a little bit at a time," King said. "Business has found XP, especially the Professional version, to be a very stable operating system that gives them what they want."

The High Cost of Vista

In Gartner's critique of Windows, the analysts said that with Vista Microsoft was attempting to move to a new code base that gets them out from under years of legacy code. While that's true, King said, Microsoft did make some missteps with Vista that haven't helped.

"Vista really represents a fundamental rethinking of how the operating system should be designed, especially in the area of security. It's a more sustainable development model for Microsoft moving forward," King said. But Vista stumbled in two areas, he added. "Because of Microsoft's ambitions for the OS, it ran into product delays, which were probably inevitable. Secondly, this was the first version of Windows that required a hardware upgrade."

That means businesses will have to spend several hundred dollars per PC just to run Vista. For large enterprises, that is millions of dollars that Vista's apparent advantages don't seem to justify, King said. And that is just the most visible cost of upgrading; rolling out support and putting out incompatibility fires could drive costs well beyond the cash outlays.

But, if not Windows, where would business customers go? Few enterprises are interested in adding Macs to the IT mix, and Linux and Web-enabled solutions are seen as too radical. "A lot of companies will just keep running XP -- especially given the uncertainty in the economy," King said. "Companies don't want to make major changes in their infrastructure right now. They will try to squeeze another year or two out of their XP laptops and desktops."

[yiozik]

Users fight to save Windows XP

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SEATTLE - Microsoft Corp.'s operating systems run most personal computers around the globe and are a cash cow for the world's largest software maker. But you'd never confuse a Windows user with the passionate fans of Mac OS X or even the free Linux operating system. Unless it's someone running Windows XP, a version Microsoft wants to retire.

Fans of the six-year-old operating system set to be pulled off store shelves in June have papered the Internet with blog posts, cartoons and petitions recently. They trumpet its superiority to Windows Vista, Microsoft's latest PC operating system, whose consumer launch last January was greeted with lukewarm reviews.

No matter how hard Microsoft works to persuade people to embrace Vista, some just can't be wowed. They complain about Vista's hefty hardware requirements, its less-than-peppy performance, occasional incompatibility with other programs and devices and frequent, irritating security pop-up windows.

For them, the impending disappearance of XP computers from retailers, and the phased withdrawal of technical support in coming years, is causing a minor panic.

Take, for instance, Galen Gruman. A longtime technology journalist, Gruman is more accustomed to writing about trends than starting them.

But after talking to Windows users for months, he realized his distaste for Vista and strong attachment to XP were widespread.

"It sort of hit us that, wait a minute, XP will be gone as of June 30. What are we going to do?" he said. "If no one does something, it's going to be gone."

So Gruman started a Save XP Web petition, gathering since January more than 100,000 signatures and thousands of comments, mostly from die-hard XP users who want Microsoft to keep selling it until the next version of Windows is released, currently targeted for 2010.

On the petition site's comments section, some users proclaimed they will downgrade from Vista to XP — an option available in the past to businesses, but now open for the first time to consumers who buy Vista Ultimate or Business editions — if they need to buy a new computer after XP goes off the market.

Others used the comments section to rail against the very idea that Microsoft has the power to enforce the phase-out from a stable, decent product to one that many consider worse, while profiting from the move. Many threatened to leave Windows for Apple or Linux machines.

Microsoft already extended the XP deadline once, but it shows no signs it will do so again. The company has declined to meet with Gruman to consider the petition. Microsoft is aware of the petition, it said in a statement to The Associated Press, and "will continue to be guided by feedback we hear from partners and customers about what makes sense based on their needs."

Gruman said he'd keep pressing for a meeting.

"They really believe if they just close their eyes, people will have no choice," he said.

In fact, most people who get a new computer will end up with Vista. In 2008, 94 percent of new Windows machines for consumers worldwide will run Vista, forecasts industry research group IDC. For businesses, about 75 percent of new PCs will have Vista. (That figure takes into account companies that choose to downgrade to XP.)

Although Microsoft may not budge on selling new copies of XP, it may have to extend support for it.

Al Gillen, an IDC analyst, estimated that at the end of 2008 nearly 60 percent of consumer PCs and almost 70 percent of business PCs worldwide will still run XP. Microsoft plans to end full support — including warranty claims and free help with problems — in April 2009. The company will continue providing a more limited level of service until April 2014.

Gillen said efforts like Gruman's grass-roots petition may not influence the software maker, but business customers' demands should carry more clout.

"You really can't make 69 percent of your installed base unhappy with you," he said.

Some companies — such as Wells Manufacturing Co. in Woodstock, Ill. — are crossing their fingers that he's right. The company, which melts scrap steel and casts iron bars, has 200 PCs that run Windows 2000 or XP. (Windows 2000 is no longer sold on PCs. Mainstream support has ended, but limited support is available through the middle of 2010.)

Wells usually replaces 50 of its PCs every 18 months. In the most recent round of purchases, Chief Information Officer Lou Peterhans said, the company stuck with XP because several of its applications don't run well on Vista.

"There is no strong reason to go to Vista, other than eventually losing support for XP," he said. Peterhans added that the company isn't planning to bring in Vista computers for 18 months to two years. If Microsoft keeps to its current timetable, its next operating system, code-named Windows 7, will be on the market by then.

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