According to the last count on InfoWorld’s “Save XP” petition, as of this morning, 202,557 people signed the petition.
Microsoft is expected to end OEM sales and shrink wrapped sales of Windows XP (WinXP) on June 30, 2008 despite the objections of 202,557 petitioners. So, the clock ticks with XPs life in the balance.
This whole issue was brought to my mind while I was doing some research for our upcoming eLearning portal launch and was entrenched in my new installation of Vista. I was looking through some of the files and the structure of Vista Home Basic that I installed on one of the partitions of my new PC drive.
If you don’t know me really well, let me tell you that I’m an odd sort of curious person. I have to understand and examine everything - almost to a flaw. That being said, it should be easy to understand that over time, I’ve accumulated quite a bit of knowledge and documentation on the Microsoft Operating Systems over the years. Not only as it relates to our former repair business, but as it relates to my own curiosity! And with all that close examination, I’ve managed to get some things just permanently stuck in my head as well as on paper.
Odd stuff. Like versions of operating system files, dates, sizes, and times of those files, and odd trivia like that.
Well, imagine my surprise when I noticed that the fresh install of my Windows Vista Home Basic has many of the same files and versions dated from my original installation of Windows XP! I can only give you a glimpse of this, because I’m really busy getting ready for our 10th anniversary celebration and our launch coming up in a few weeks. But I will follow-up in detail after our launch.
On a fresh Windows XP installation with my specific build, many of the system files are dated August 29, 2002, and contain a version number of: 5.1.2600.0. Included in these files are the services.exe file, the Background Intelligent Update Service (BITS), and many more.
Now, Vista just made it’s appearance recently, like somewhere toward the beginning of 2007 right? Well guess who found services.exe and BITS (only to name a few) in her new Vista installation with the same file date and version number? No, I’m not joking!
I’m sure you’ve read the news how Vista is nothing more than a security service pack for XP. (And I might add that it’s a very poor one at that!) Well, the bloggers who are saying that aren’t joking!
Occasionally, I’ll find a file version with the same date but an addition on the end showing that it’s been revised. So instead of seeing version 5.1.2600.0, I’ll see version 5.1.2600.1106. But for the most part, as far as the files are concerned, it’s XP in Vista clothing!
I just wanted to share this with you and put it out there for now. More on this later……
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