On 5/12/2016 7:57 AM, Terry Coombs wrote:
wrote:
On Thu, 12 May 2016 08:54:30 -0400, Bud Frede
wrote:


Refresh cycles in business for desktops and laptops is 5 years or
less from what I've seen. Businesses will have done at least a
couple of refreshes since 2001, so they're likely to have moved on
from XP already. If they didn't, then it's their own fault. Who
would expect Microsoft to support an OS for business use for even as
long as they did?


Business use is where you want a stable platform that does not change
that much over time. Retraining your staff and recreating business
records for new systems that have marginal improvements in
functionality is simply wasting money. That is why the POS business
stayed with XP as long as it did. Running a string of cash registers
is essentially the same operation as it has been for 100 years. They
don't need "pinch" and they really try to avoid "swipe". ;-)

Touch screen support itself has been in the hardware for over 30
years, running on DOS machines.

Last time I was there , the chinese restaurant I used to deliver for was
still using W2K in their POS terminal ... if it works , don't **** with it !

Exactly. I had a buddy always razing me for being so slow to update
(software, hardware). As if, somehow, all of the work my machines
were doing was "stale" because they weren't 2017 models running
the latest Bugware.

I would calmly reply: OK, let's assume I'm willing to spend the
DAYS (!) reinstalling software, assume there is no learning curve
for the new OS, assume I can move my licenses over to the new machine
without having to repurchase anything (and, that anything I have
to repurchase will NOT introduce new bugs or require a learning
curve)... So, what am I going to *get* for this "investment"?
Let's assume the machine is *10* times faster, overall. Will
it speed up how quickly I decided which key to hit, next? Or,
move the mouse to the desired icon 10 times faster? Or, catch
my typographical errors 10 times faster? Or,...

[I.e., if you're playing GAMES, newer and faster make sense. But,
if you are doing anything meatware limited, the machine is rarely
the problem!]

And that's why I will stick with XP as long as possible . And when I move
, it'll be to one of the Linux-based OS's . M$ is getting pretty good at
taking our money for little to no benefit to the end user .

That's true of most software vendors. I was looking for a file compression
tool and stumbled on WinZIP (again). Version **20**?? Sheesh! What the
hell does it do now that PKZIP didn't do 25 years ago???