As a member of the programming community, I can tell you that there is STRONG resistance to programming in Vista. Why? Well, there's a lot of reasons. #1) There just isn't enough market penetration to make Vista worth programming for. #2) It's unlikely that the huge corporations will EVER adopt Vista, especially now that we have a release date of 2010 for Windows 7. So why bother? #3) When SP1 was released (and we were paying attention) a whole bunch of security apps broke. Why should I write a program for Vista when a patch could break my software, and then I'm stuck having to patch it to make it work with Micro$oft's patch. All I can say to that is NO way. #4) It's not cost effective, especially considering that upgrading your development teams to Vista rapidly reaches a point of diminishing returns as 2010 approaches. Vista sales are stagnant. Sure, there is the silent majority, but they are the majority of Vista users, not the majority of computer owners. Most people who own PC's are still running XP (and in fact, the 3 people I know who have bought PC's in the last year, and who were not technical at all, specifically asked for XP over Vista and got it. The general public is hearing about the problems with Vista and want nothing to do with it.)
We run 3 laptops, and 2 desktops here. Two of the laptops run OS X Leopard (a MacBook and a Macbook Pro). One laptop runs Vista (A Sony Vaio) and that's only because we can't easily downgrade it. One desktop runs XP Pro and the other desktop (the server) is running Linux. I've used all of these machines extensively. From a programmer's point of view, there is very little difference between programming for XP and programming for Vista. It just makes no sense to invest in Vista software production when the margins are so low. For a small software house, it makes no sense at all, and for a large software house, it makes more sense to continue to support XP over Vista and slowly migrate to Vista as more people get new machines.
boxtech
· 1 year ago
True, all true. My point is that the time of support for XP should be expected. 6 years from end of shipping or 10 years from launch of SP2. They are right that it's an extension for XP in general but SP2 was such a major upgrade. Plus XP was out 3 years longer than "normal".
All Comments
We run 3 laptops, and 2 desktops here. Two of the laptops run OS X Leopard (a MacBook and a Macbook Pro). One laptop runs Vista (A Sony Vaio) and that's only because we can't easily downgrade it. One desktop runs XP Pro and the other desktop (the server) is running Linux. I've used all of these machines extensively. From a programmer's point of view, there is very little difference between programming for XP and programming for Vista. It just makes no sense to invest in Vista software production when the margins are so low. For a small software house, it makes no sense at all, and for a large software house, it makes more sense to continue to support XP over Vista and slowly migrate to Vista as more people get new machines.