Vista is at the heart of a maelstrom - Removing XP from the market doesn't look like a wise decision

By Jayant Mishra @ Tuesday, May 13, 2008 2:02 PM

Section - PCs/Software

Not long ago, there was uproar in India over Microsoft’s delayed licence delivery, and now it's Windows Vista that seems to have annoyed Indian users. The bad news for Windows XP lovers is it will disappear from the market from June 30th. The software that will take XP's place is Vista. Windows Vista will come pre-installed with branded computers, though for the OEM market there is an extension of six months. You can even use XP until 2010 if you are planning to buy a low cost PC, because the hardware won’t be capable of supporting Vista.

This enforcement has come as a surprise for those who are happy using Windows XP. When I asked Prashant – a software engineer, on what he feels about vista he said : “ XP is far better than Vista, there are lots of problems with Vista. It occupies lot of space, slows down the system, and doesn’t support a lot of applications”. But Vista is new software and must be having additional features? “Yes, I know but they are no good for me” replied Prakash.

Sanjay, who is a senior software testing engineer, was unsure about XP's exclusion from the market. He feels it will affect his work to a great extent. Companies will have to spend a considerable amount of time in training employees on the new software. The server environment will get affected for sure. When Sanjay got to know that this enforcement is not applicable for low costs PCs, he said: “Oh then I will go with such a segment of PC”.

Tarun Arora, HR at Keane, has used Vista and thinks it is good for watching films, listening to music. “I have used it only for entertainment as of now, I will prefer using XP for office work as I am used to it” said Tarun. He also said: “Vista slows down the speed of the PC and after sometime the PC gets hot”

A lot of people from the software industry have still not used Vista, nor do they have any idea about it. But if given an option to choose between Vista and XP, they all want to stick with XP.

One of the biggest disadvantages of Vista is that it functions only on the machine it’s installed on. So if your PC conks out or you plan to get it updated you will have to buy a licenced version of Vista again.

Seeing such reactions of users it feels, it appears Microsoft has made a hasty decision in withdrawing XP from the market. X