I think it is already hugely disappointing how desktops / windows are often treated like a gaming environment only. Perhaps I think too much of a developer but using a desktop or windows for gaming ONLY is like getting a gym membership, going to the gym and relaxing in the bar.

People view things in terms of what they use them for. A chef looks at a gas range very differently than a bachelor whose idea of a fancy dinner is throwing some beanie-weenies in with the mac and cheese. Most people use computers for email, Facebook, and games. Maybe the odd letter or two if they ever need to print something.

Desktop sales have fallen for one simple reason: people don't need new desktops. As long as their computer can run Gmail, Facebook, and Farmville they're set. Toss in a media player so they can watch DVD's and listen to music and some simple office suite and they're golden. Computers made years ago still fulfill that role perfectly well, so people don't see the need to go out and spend hundreds of dollars on a new thing that does exactly what the thing they already have does.

Why do you think Microsoft was/is trumpeting that "XP is dying" call so hard? I don't remember them doing the same thing with any of the other OS's or software that reached EOL. It's because Microsoft's biggest competition is (and has been for a long time) it's own installed base. XP works. People are happy with it. No need to upgrade. That means no new desktop which means falling computer sales.

Why do you think Microsoft was/is trumpeting that "XP is dying" call so hard? I don't remember them doing the same thing with any of the other OS's or software that reached EOL. It's because Microsoft's biggest competition is (and has been for a long time) it's own installed base. XP works. People are happy with it. No need to upgrade. That means no new desktop which means falling computer sales.

I can see them do the same in the future for Windows 7 once it reaches EOL. For most people it's as good as Windows XP, is not even better; and situation is more-or-less the same with Win7/8/upcoming 9. I personally had way less problems with Win7 than with WinXP, and some features that didn't work on XP worked perfectly on 7, which shocked me.

Desktop sales have fallen for one simple reason: people don't need new desktops. As long as their computer can run Gmail, Facebook, and Farmville they're set. Toss in a media player so they can watch DVD's and listen to music and some simple office suite and they're golden. Computers made years ago still fulfill that role perfectly well, so people don't see the need to go out and spend hundreds of dollars on a new thing that does exactly what the thing they already have does.

I agree with that. For most people, a cheaper laptop PC or even tablet PC are more than enough as they provide all the basic needs. Also, additional perks of laptops over desktops are their size and portability; they aren't fixed on one place if they need to work, nor do they need to see a heap of cables (or even worse for them, touch cables). Usually it's power users who are more geared for desktop PC, as their power is more suitable for the tasks they need (such as programming, video editing, or even gaming).

Linux often incorporates all of the basic tools, including office suite such as Libre Office, in its distributions; however its problem is that Linux by design is more suitable for power users rather than regular users (Terminal is scary). If SteamOS manages to somewhat mitigate that (I'm not sure if it includes office suite and other programs for work), I don't see the reason why it wouldn't become a stable platform, with the size of the console and ability to provide office in the living room on demand - something other consoles don't have.

Why do you think Microsoft was/is trumpeting that "XP is dying" call so hard? I don't remember them doing the same thing with any of the other OS's or software that reached EOL. It's because Microsoft's biggest competition is (and has been for a long time) it's own installed base. XP works. People are happy with it. No need to upgrade. That means no new desktop which means falling computer sales.

It's actually XP itself that was unusual here. No other OS version from Microsoft has lasted so long, or continued to be in such widespread use for so long after it's release date. They actually did the very same with IE6 a few years back.

XP was a great OS in it's time, but time has moved on. It's no longer good for multicore, it's no longer good for larger amounts of memory, it's 64-bit support is a joke. It was designed around certain assumptions that were valid for the hardware of it's time, but the hardware has changed and those assumptions no longer hold good. Sure it'll still work, but it's not getting the best out of your hardware.

It was also designed around certain security assumptions that are hopelessly naive today (and have been for a long time). Remember the great release of SP2? When Microsoft held up the development of what was then called Longhorn in order to paper over the cracks? That was 2004 (10 years ago!) and it was already showing the cracks even then.

The reality is that Microsoft were their own worst enemies. If Vista had been a worthy successor at RTM we wouldn't even be having this discussion today. XP would have EOLed on it's original schedule (which has been extended well beyond what it should have been and well beyond what's comparable with other Windows versions).

Don't forget that Windows 7 was the fastest selling OS ever. It even outsold Harry Potter on Amazon. Because people were ready to jump, they wanted to jump, but until then there had been nothing worthwhile to jump to.

It's easy to forget that when XP was originally released there was a chorus of "why should I upgrade? 98SE is good enough. It works. It does everything I need." It would be interesting to find out if there's any crossover between those people and today's XP holdouts.

Aside from those, the other main holdouts are in the corporate space, where factors such as browser and other legacy app compatibility held sway ("so I've to spend another 5 million upgrading my Oracle software if I want to move to a new browser version? No thanks"). Again Microsoft shot themselves in the foot with Vista - they were too willing to throw out backwards compatibility, they delayed too long before releasing the server version so none of the cool new features could be managed, a lot of Group Policies and other networking settings just broke with Vista and you'd end up having to effectively maintain a separate network for Vista PCs. There's still fallout from that even today where mixing Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 machines on the same network causes some measure of grief.

So no, there's no legions of XP users howling to keep their favourite version of Windows around for longer. There's a few holdouts, a few Internet Hate Warriors, and a lot in the slower-moving corporate world (which is where the "XP must die!" push was really aimed at).

@mhagain, I agree with you, but I think there are some other factors as well. When the internet really started to take off globally, XP was the dominant operating system. As such, it's common in the third world, and also amoung less technically savvy users. My mom, for instance, still has an XP machine.

Aaaand XP could run in 1.5Ghz CPUs with 256Mb of RAM.

At Vista release, by 2005 or 2006, I barely knew people who had 512Mb of RAM in their PCs, let alone the 1Gb required to have Vista working (kinda) right.

Aaaand XP could run in 1.5Ghz CPUs with 256Mb of RAM.

I got Windows 8 x64 running on 256MB of RAM too.

Besides, a low amount of memory usage doesn't mean the O/S performs better.

Windows 8 wasn't released on 2006. Vista was. Big difference.

Aaaand XP could run in 1.5Ghz CPUs with 256Mb of RAM.

At Vista release, by 2005 or 2006, I barely knew people who had 512Mb of RAM in their PCs, let alone the 1Gb required to have Vista working (kinda) right.

Vista was a hog (and a leaky one at that, if I recall correctly). Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 are pretty miserly with RAM though. I haven't tried it on 1GB, but 2GB is relatively smooth. They've done a lot of work under the hood to reduce memory redundancies and use RAM more efficiently.

But I do wonder who you knew in 2005 that didn't have at least a gig of RAM -- maybe your location has to do with it -- I had 4 GB in my circa 2004-built PC. I was running XP (32-bit) on a Pentium 4, I recall having to do some tweaking to make 512 more megabytes usable (XP reserved 1GB address space for memory mapped IO, etc by default, so it wouldn't use more than 3GB of RAM otherwise, even if you had more).

But I certainly did skip Vista, like most everyone, and for good reason.

I'd a gig in 2004, no problems and it was quite cheap. Even so XP with SP3, some AV, a few programs running and you'd easily see a sizable chunk of that gone.

If memory serves mainstream "multimedia" PCs were still coming in quite stingy on memory even as late as 2006 or 7 though. Of course nowadays you can get 8gb for ~€50, SSDs are plummeting to €0.50 per gb and all this talk of being ultra-frugal with memory seems like the time when we used to live in a brown paper bag in the sewer.

Where did this thing about memory being such a dominant arbiter of performance come from anyway? Sure it was true once, but it's not anymore: these days it's a cheap and plentiful resource. Got better things to worry about!

Where did this thing about memory being such a dominant arbiter of performance come from anyway? Sure it was true once, but it's not anymore: these days it's a cheap and plentiful resource. Got better things to worry about!

2GB-4GB is standard (luckily). 2GB being too low for browsers theese days (not watching videos or flash even). Ram is not that plentiful, considering enclosed devices, notebooks or even desktop motherboards that still stick to 8 bus maximum. The character of cpu cache coherency and Ram clock towards CPU clock pushes every smart software in storing memory wisely either. My devenv.exe is currently having 8 471 KB allocated, while firefox has 580 000 KB, with 2 windows and 5 inactive windows. I realy discourage this aproach towards RAM usage, even if standard was 8GB.