Windows XP 15 years

Exactly fifteen years ago, the world saw “Windows XP released to manufacturing” and, although the system was widely sold only in October 2001, it was August 24 that can be considered the release date of the most popular OS for personal computers in history. Another successful Microsoft product, Windows 7, managed to overtake XP in popularity only 10 years after its release in 2011.

By the beginning of the new millennium, Microsoft managers acknowledged that the completely successful Windows 98 was already becoming obsolete, Windows 2000 did not meet the requirements that were set for products, and did not want to remember Windows ME with all its crashes, bugs and unstable work, which became a kind of “Standard” of how not to do it not only for developers within the company, but in general in the IT community:


“Ballmer Peak”

For reasons of Windows ME failure, XP became the heiress of its other predecessor - Windows 2000 Professional.

A distinctive feature of XP from its predecessors can be called massive changes in design, security, delivery bundled with the OS hated by many Internet Explorer 6 ( IE line itself recently celebrated its 21st anniversary ) and, most importantly - XP had many variations for different audiences, although open spaces of the CIS mainly enjoyed the pirated version of XP Professional.

For example, a few years after the release of major versions of operating systems such as Home, Professional and others, Microsoft overtook time and released the Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, which came bundled with a PDA and supported working with a stylus, recognized handwriting and, in fact, could would become the base OS for tablets. An attempt to master this market turned out to be hasty - the world and technology were not ready to create tablets that were comfortable to use, well, after that the iPad and other modern devices saw the light. How it all ended - we know. Instead of creating a mobile OS for tablets that is comfortable in working independently, Microsoft took the path of total “equality” using Windows 8, 8.1 and 10 as an example, and the mobile segment did not submit even when using the Nokia brand, because the OS itself was far from the main one for users but an ecosystem, applications and compatibility. Perhaps this was overlooked, as MS got used to the fact that “the PC world revolves around Windows”, which cannot be said about mobile devices.

There is another interesting fact of the prophetic abilities of Microsoft executives, which were revealed only with the release of Windows 7. At a time when 32-bit processors dominated the market, MS developers released Windows XP 64-bit Edition and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition. The first was intended for Intel Italium processors, the second - for processors based on AMD64, Opteron and Athlon 64 technologies and processors with Intel EM64T technology. However, the massive upgrade of the computer park and the transition to 64-bit architecture took place only at the end of the zero, but the fact that the fact that the end of the 32-bit processors is near is doing honor to Microsoft, and when this happened, they were ready for this.

Well, the most probably well-known fact of using XP, which is surprising among people who are not familiar with the financial sector - Windows XP Embedded. It is with this assembly that you can encounter when servicing ATMs, terminals or other equipment, where you certainly do not expect to meet "Windows".

In addition to the “life” in ATMs and terminals, Windows XP still remains a significant and irreplaceable OS in some areas. For example, it was under WinXP that one of the well-known European manufacturers wrote diagnostic software that not only “tightly” glues to the hardware on which it was installed, but also works only from under XP.

The main innovations in Windows XP regarding Windows 2000 are:

• new interface design;
• function "remote assistant";
• System Restore;
• remote access capability;
• advanced work with CD;
• the ability to write to -R -RW discs using the system;
• direct work with ZIP and CAB archives without using software and others.

Already in 2004, Microsoft reported the sale of 210 million licensed copies of Windows XP. One can only guess about the real number of users of the company’s OS with pirated copies.

Microsoft has released three service packs for XP. SP1 was released a year after the release, on September 9, 2002. It was probably one of the most important updates, because it was with SP1 that the systems of the family began to support USB 2.0, which retains its position to this day and reluctantly backslides before the onset of USB 3.0. Two years later, the company introduced SP2, and a month before the start of sales of Vista in January 2007, it was familiar to everyone and mandatory after its release SP3.

Speaking of Vista. Many joked that Microsoft has stable OSs obtained every other time and, unfortunately, turned out to be right. The system that was supposed to catch the triumphal banner of XP failed miserably. Perhaps the problem was in a hurry on the part of MS, perhaps in errors during development, but Vista was gluttonous and always buggy and did not take root. Plus, the hardware manufacturers were not ready for the new OS and often the drivers for the old hardware were not corny, and the “knurled” drivers for XP did not work. The same problem faced many owners of laptops who, in anticipation of the “regular Windows”, ignored the “Vista” sticker on the case, and when trying to install XP they faced the same problem - lack of drivers, but this time for XP.

What is most sad, Microsoft did not think about the wide consumer. If in the case of XP, the hardware requirements were more than sparing, which allowed most users to "switch" to the new OS, then Vista was deprived of this nobility:


System requirements Windows XP (2001), Wikipedia


System requirements Windows Vista (early 2007) , Wikipedia

Apparently, XP requirements were more than acceptable. In 2001, there were very many 266 MHz in many, and a substantial proportion of users even possessed the recommended 600 MHz processor clock speed. The same with RAM - in 2001 64 Mb was considered a frankly small number for a home or working PC and many had 128, or even 256 (closer to the middle of zero) Mb memory.

In the case of Vista, someone got stuck and from users who peacefully and comfortably existed on XP with 800-1500 MHz processors, they already demanded from 800 for minimal work (from 1000 MHz) and up to 2000 and two cores. With RAM, it’s even sadder - from 512 to 1024 Mb, the lion’s share of which the system "eats" tightly.

Plus, problems with stability and, as a result, the existence of Vista by the masses were ignored, and one of the few channels of stable sales was pre-installation on laptops, to which the official drivers on XP simply did not exist (in any case, on manufacturers' websites).

The situation was saved by the release of Windows 7, which rightfully took the “throne” of Windows XP and is now the dominant product in the line of OS from Microsoft.

After Microsoft realized that the situation had stabilized, the support for Windows XP was announced, which, nevertheless, was postponed several times due to the huge number of users.

Of course, progress has played a role. The older XP was, the less new software it could work with, so we can say that Microsoft did not try to “kill” its best product, but simply did not want time to do it for it. Plus, you need to sell new OSs, expanding the audience.

Unsurprisingly, XP is still standing on its feet relative to many other operating systems created after it. So according to statistics, a little more than 10% of PC users around the world still use the 2001 release system. Of course, the lion's share falls on the third world countries and China, where people cannot afford to leave the system due to inability to replace equipment or for other reasons, for example, for production reasons, but the figure is still impressive:

netmarketshare.com

As you can see from the diagram, Vista, planned as the “heiress of XP”, did not even enter the main unit and sheltered in “Other”, but Windows 7 has nothing to blush with an indicator in almost half of the global operating system market.

Surprisingly, even after withdrawing from support in 2015, XP survived 3 out of 5 OSs that came out after it - Vista, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 can be recorded as “losers”. In defense of the last two, we can say that they became “outsiders” with respect to the old XP after the release of Windows 10, that is, they coped with the role assigned to them and transferred a significant part of their audience to a new product - Windows 10, albeit through a huge advertising campaign and , at times, coercion. In general, we did what XP had to do for Vista, but it did not grow together.

In the near future, only Windows 7 can claim XP laurels and there is a suspicion that Microsoft again miscalculated - the seven and 8.0-8.1 turned out to be too different (as a result, their successor to Windows 10). Will XP Windows 7 repeat history? It is likely, but we only learn about it by 2022-23, when the most popular OS at the moment is about 15 years old.

In the meantime, the laurels of the most "long-playing" and popular operating system in the world in the history of Windows XP remain.