This week has seen the end of two juggernauts of the IT industry, namely Bill Gates stepping down from the top job at Microsoft, and, much to the chagrin of users all over the world, the announcement of the end of sales of Windows XP. However, support for the software package will continue for some time.
Bill Gates has left the top job at Microsoft to focus on his charity work, and the distribution of his personal wealth towards this end. He will still be working at Microsoft for one day a week.
His announcement of leaving the company was met with some fanfare, and I think the video below sums it up best:
This video is his final keynote, and begins by explaining how he will switch from full time at Microsoft to full time for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to fulfill his wishes of making a difference, along with his wife and his fortune! He intends to spend his personal fortune on some truly neccessary projects around the world, aimed at improving conditions for underpriviledged peoples.
On the Windows XP front, according to the Guardian:
As of last Monday, Windows XP has officially reached "end of life" - meaning you won't be able to get it, at least from Microsoft - nearly seven years after its October 2001 release. The end had already been extended by six months by Microsoft, which had originally intended to retire it in January, one year after the release of Vista, its successor.
But consumer and enterprise dissatisfaction with Vista forced a delay, and even now a number of companies are still reluctant to upgrade to Vista, even though it has already had its first service pack upgrade.
Bill Veghte, head of Windows, posted a letter online (at microsoft.com/windows/letter.html) acknowledging that at Vista's launch "some key applications and drivers were not yet available", but added that now "most devices work on most systems, and in most cases where the latest driver is not available on Windows Update, we are able to provide a link to the device vendor's website where the latest driver can be found".
However, Dell, one of the largest PC makers in the world, has posted details on a company blog of precisely how customers can keep on getting PCs with XP, which it describes as "the longest-shipping (2001-08) and most widely accepted operating system Microsoft has put out to date".
I personally use Vista Ultimate 64 bit, because unlike XP (32 bit) it can handle over 3GB of Ram, and the 64 bit Version of XP was an even greater nightmare than Vista on the first release. You will all be happy to know however that Vista is much more stable now, and as good as XP at games, and, it supports direct X 10, all great reasons to make the switch.
If the grapevine is anything to go by, we may be in for a new revision of Windows, Windows 7 early next year... Let's hope the roll out of this incarnation goes smoother than Vista did! Stay tuned...
