The Richter Scale^®

InfoWorld started a petition a few months ago to help convince Microsoft to postpone its plan to discontinue shipping Windows XP on June 30, 2008.

Of the more than a dozen PCs in regular use in our home and office, only three run Microsoft Vista, and they create daily administrative agony for our IT manager (that would be me). Software doesn’t run properly unless you’re set up as Administrator, and even then there are problems. Running files off our file server is problematic without further changes, network file copies are horrifically slow, the user interface requires re-learning, and the list of Vista woes goes on.

In short, Microsoft Vista is the bane of our networked computer existence here at Richter Scale central. So much so that when I was shopping around for a new ultra-portable notebook last month, I ended up foregoing the Sony TZ series I really wanted and instead chose the Fujitsu Lifebook P-8010, primarily because I could get it shipped to me with Windows XP instead of Vista. And I couldn’t be happier with that decision. Windows XP just works - it’s fast, efficient, stable, and not prone to ever constant security pop-ups.

While I can understand that Microsoft wants to sell more copies of Vista, efforts to force Vista down the throats of folks who don’t want to use Vista are not going to win Microsoft many friends. In fact, if my discussions with others who have problems with Vista are any indication, it means that there will be a lot of folks not upgrading their Windows XP-based PCs for a long time to come, if but only to avoid having to downgrade their Windows experience to Vista.

If you believe, as I do, that Windows XP needs to stick around as a supported and sold operating system, it could not hurt to make your voice heard by signing the Save Windows XP Petition.