Redmond plans to kill off XP. D-Day June 30th?

Take a gander at this article over on eWeek here.

So Microsoft plans to stop selling Windows XP on June 30, 2008. Well? That’s their right to make whatever dumb business decision they wish. It’s also my right to pick it apart and voice my long ranting opinion

Most of my clients have been stocking up on XP licenses or converting to other platforms. This trend will only increase now. The numbers of Windows shops seriously evaluating alternatives should of made Redmond think twice about this move, but apparently they don’t think folks have other choices, oops!

IMHO, Vista itself was poorly done on just about every level. It’s clear that Redmond has lost a lot of it’s OS talent from the NT years. The best thing Microsoft could do is take XP and create a new version of it called XP R2 or the like with a focus on speed and fine tuning the interface. They probably only have a 2-3 year window before Linux, which has improved drastically in just the last couple years, is a very viable alternative for the corporate desktop and many home desktops.  Unfortunately, I tend to think Microsoft is going to have to hit even more hard times before they wake up and change course.

Linux is now an indisputable growing threat to Redmond. I have a client that just took all their main business apps, rewrote them to be fully web based, and converted over 50 desktops to Linux (one floor/division) for a real world test after lots of lab testing. All they needed was a good web browser, basic word processing, basic spreadsheet capabilities, and email. Linux fit this bill for them. Linux also allowed them to make good use of existing hardware. After 2 weeks of working the bugs out here and there, even management is joking that it’s now almost a shock to see the IT folks on the 9th floor. They had some hurdles at first, but undoubtedly much less than they would of had with a Vista deployment. Things are running great with a new OS.  A new OS that will be supported for 5 years and be supported just as good 5 years from now as 12 months from now, regardless if there is a new version of the same OS out.

Mac OS X is another huge threat and is already making serious inroads too.  Many are not fond of it’s hardware restrictions and growing levels of DRM though. No matter, I’m seeing a LOT more OS X in my client’s shops. This change is very noticeable even in the small business world.

OpenSolaris has a long way to go, but it’s also come a long ways in just 2-3 years. The excellent Solaris kernel, ZFS, and many of the new technologies from Sun combined with an easily managed/patchable desktop oriented distro of Solaris could be a real nice alternative.  Yeah they’re behind the power curve that Linux has, but they are far from being out of the alternative desktop OS game.  What’s refreshing is they are aware of and admit their weaknesses.  Project Indiana holds a lot of promise.  Let’s see what Open Solaris brings us, but they really need to step on the gas over the next 2-3 years or they’ll never catch up in time to really break out.  As IT history shows, technological superiority doesn’t mean you can assume market acceptance!

So Microsoft’s stranglehold on the desktop is already showing cracks with more and more folks finding that it is possible to do work, be just as productive (or more so), and do it without or with minimal contact with Microsoft software. OS X and Linux are growing threats for sure. Just look at how iWork has progressed with it’s Keynote component just blowing PowerPoint away in many ways. A killer office suite and a solid feature equivalent to Outlook would seal the deal with many of my clients.  These clients are seriously looking for mass migration away from the increasingly annoying, expensive, and aggravating licensing of Windows and MS Office. Whether it be Apple or the Open Source folks that gets there first doesn’t really matter to them!

Microsoft needs to support XP better than it’s shameful treatment/attitude towards Windows 2000. I remember Bill Gates telling folks that Windows 2000 would be the best supported business desktop out there with a service pack every 6 months. Guess that was a huge lie? Here we are with only 4 service packs for it and the last one so long ago I can’t even recall when SP4 was released off the top of my head, but it’s been many years! By the way, Windows 2000 is supposed to be supported (security patch wise) till 2012, but Microsoft is trying to ignore it as much as it can for anything else. What would you want to bet that Vista will be lucky to see SP3?  FYI, NT 4 saw 7 service packs (1-6 & SP 6a)!

The big problem for Redmond is that for the average user, too many folks are starting to ask why I need to go out and buy a new PC just to run a new OS to do the same thing my current PC/OS does. Then when the new PC and OS doesn’t run any better (or often worse), many are starting to recognize the racket for what it is. The upgrade needs to feel like an upgrade, not a downgrade as is often the case with vista. Compared to Windows 2000 many noticed XP was a resource hog. Microsoft didn’t pay attention and figured the bloat and DRM of Vista wouldn’t matter, bad call. Many folks were hoping Vista SP1 would address their performance issues. Unfortunately it’s becoming clear that Vista SP1 isn’t going to and folks that were on the fence considering the upgrade have climbed back down off it and are looking at other options.

Another problem for Redmond is that the OS itself is becoming less and less important to folks. Most folks just want their day to day applications to work well and could care the least about the OS underneath it all. If the OS is bloated and/or has a lot of user interface changes, it’s probably not going to be welcome. It’s very telling when you hear so many folks commenting that they took their new Vista PC and ‘upgraded’ it to XP.

Now if Redmond actually follows through with this killing off of XP in June, I’d say there’s a nice business opportunity staring you in the face! If you’ve got some cash handy, you could go out and buy up XP Pro licenese kits (retail and/or OEM) and stockpile them. They’re likely to become gold in the eyes of many! Anyone want to guess what the going price for a legit XP Pro OEM kit on eBay will be in a year or two if Microsoft continues on this idiotic road map?

There’s already a nice market for folks selling PCs and laptops with XP on them (versus Vista). We actually have several firms in my area that ADVERTISE that they offer WinXP systems. It seems to be a big competitive advantage for them since the big box stores are pretty much forcing Vista down folks throats and many are refusing it. I gather since last summer they’ve been making a killing with this XP approach! Of course many of the local PC shops are also making a killing doing Vista to XP ‘upgrades’ for customers.

There’s also a nice market of used corporate desktops that are preloaded with XP which I predict will become a booming business model for the next few years. I’ve been ordering many of these systems for my smaller clients for over a year now. They’re cheap, come ready to go with minimal fuss, and most pack a 90 day warranty (who cares, they’re so darn cheap!). For sub $250-300 each you can hardly go wrong choosing this route in many situations. Why pay double that (or more) for a new PC with Vista that will have to be taken to XP before deployment and a standard warranty that really isn’t worth much unless it arrives DOA. You can figure just the XP license that comes on these PC’s is worth half, or more, of the cost!

If all you need is basic internet, email, and office applications it’s really hard to justify a new OS and/or new hardware for the typical desktop. I’ve been on 5 year old P3 systems with Windows 2000 Pro on them and they run basic business applications as good, often better, as much newer systems with XP on them. That speaks volumes for where Redmond is going wrong. Redmond used to get away with this, but Vista has finally opened folks eyes to the hardware racket and OS bloat…even many an average user!

I upgraded my Mac laptop from OS X 10.4 to 10.5 and guess what? I was surprised that it runs just as good and some things seem more responsive. Hey we’re talking about a first release of a new OS version. With a few tweaks it runs even faster.

OS X 10.5 has only been out since late October 2007 and they’ve already updated it twice and a 3rd update coming in weeks! When did Vista come out? When was Vista SP1 finally available? When was XP released? When will we finally get XP SP3? You get the vibe from Redmond that they didn’t even want to do SP3 for XP. How much would you want to bet that Vista only sees SP2 with this trend of less and less service pack support from Microsoft?

I’d say 9 out of 10 of my clients are ordering new PC’s with XP preloaded for well over a year now. The rest are buying new Vista PCs and immediately imaging them to XP upon arrival. Just saw where a client did this with over 200 new desktops as they came in! This is one of the reasons why I say the bad numbers for Vista are much worse than they already appear to be. I’d say you could probably take the reported Vista deployment/sales number and cut them in half (or more) to get real world usage numbers. From perusing the stats of a couple big, high traffic websites that I have access to, the operating system stats tend to bare out my theory and these are sites that should be biased IN FAVOR of Vista users too!

I worry for many of my clients, but not for myself. I’m setting here on my 2nd generation MacBook Pro. This is a laptop that I just recently got around to getting my last core day to day production app running native on it (CAD) and it runs darn nice I might add.  I’m finding that my dependency on Microsoft products is quickly fading away. My IBM ThinkPad running Windows is getting more lonely by the day as the Mac is often my first choice when I’m packing to head out on a call or a trip. Plus with VMWare Fusion and a large hard drive, I can run just about any OS I want on it, XP, 2000, Svr 2003, Ubuntu, Solaris, OpenSolaris, OpenBSD/FreeBSD, you name it. VMWare makes the Mac platform pretty cool, useful, and it’s ROI figures even more interesting over the long haul.  Undoubtedly the most useful and flexible laptop I’ve owned.