But here are some other facts:

• Windows XP is the most used operating system on the planet! It has 44% of the market share.  This means a high percentage of users are still using it, so developers have to support it.
• Windows XP is still on (extended) support until April 2014.
• .NET 4.5 is an In-Place Upgrade.  That means that once you install it, you are no longer able to see issues that will happen on a .net 4.0 machine.  (Because those dlls are gone.)

Some people argue that it has Visual Studio 2012 has "support" for XP with the "Targeting" feature.  But this feature has so many flaws it is stunning. 

Basically, when you "Target" .net 4.0 your compiler will tell you if you have used a .net 4.5 feature.   That is it!  Nothing else.

But once you start running, all your runtime stuff is really using .net 4.5 (even if you are targeting .net 4.0). 

An example of how this is bad can be found in the bugs fixed in .net 4.5.  If you are developing "Targeting" .net 4.0 and your code relies on a bug that is fixed in .net 4.5, you will not know that your code is broken (for 4.0) until you run it on a separate machine that ONLY has .net 4.0 installed.

"Fine!" you say.  I will Remote Debug on a Windows XP machine.  But that is also not supported.

This means that testing for .net 4.0 compatibility cannot happen at Debug time.  It must be later down the chain.  And the further down the chain it goes the more those bugs cost to fix.

The best part about all this craziness is that it based on .net 4.5.  So those who think, "I will just install Visual Studio 2012 to use for my new apps and use Visual Studio 2010 for my old apps" are wrong.  And probably will not know it until they see bugs on production Windows XP machines that they cannot reproduce on their .net 4.5 developer machine.

Anyway, this post is a bit of a rant.  But it is just driving me nuts that Microsoft is not supporting the most used Operating system on the planet.  They should wait until usage dies down (like they did with Windows 2000.  It was at 8% when they dropped it from .net 3.0.)

But if .NET developers had complained about this like VC++ users did, MAYBE ms could change this.

• Server apps because upgrading a single server is a far less difficult prospect that upgrading thousands of client machines.  And the server is frequently under the control of the party that needs the upgrade.  Client apps are frequently controlled by a third party and forcing an OS upgrade is far more difficult.
• Individual apps are also different because there scope is smaller.  Even IE that has a huge install base, does not have the wide reaching scope of that the .net framework has.

@ZippyV - It is the bugs I don't know about that bother me.  Microsoft will not release a list of all the fixed bugs.  So I have no idea what to look out for until it has bit me.

@felix9 - I have no idea what the chance of hitting one of these bugs is, because no one (unless you are a Microsoft insider) knows what the bugs are.  But a good example is this one: If you have a collection that is grouped and sorted, then adding the first item can crash your app.  Because I know about that one, it will not mess me up.  But I have no idea how many more like that there are.  And if I cannot see them while I am debugging then that adds $$$ to my development and/or introduces bugs to production.

@cbae -  Security fixes are not what concern me here (though those are very important until April 2014).  I am talking about .net framework bug fixes.

"Fine!" you say.  I will Remote Debug on a Windows XP machine.  But that is also not supported.

This means that testing for .net 4.0 compatibility cannot happen at Debug time.  It must be later down the chain.  And the further down the chain it goes the more those bugs cost to fix.

To be fair, even in the time of MFC, bugs show up in Win98 don't necessarily show up in Win2k. If you really concern about the impact of difference in platform / runtime that much, nothing stops you to run a WinXP VM (or physical machine) with all the development tools loaded for testing.

Remember, all development tools on MSDN are licensed on per-user basis. So as long as all users touching that test VM are licensed user, there will be no licensing issue.

Just install VS2012 with .NET v4.5 on your development machine for the enhanced IDE features, and install VS2010 on that testing machine for debug purpose.

Just install VS2012 with .NET v4.5 on your development machine for the enhanced IDE features, and install VS2010 on that testing machine for debug purpose.

But doing that causes me to have to debug twice.  Once for .net 4.5 and again for .net 4.0.  All for a .net 4.0 application.

To be fair, even in the time of MFC, bugs show up in Win98 don't necessarily show up in Win2k. If you really concern about the impact of difference in platform / runtime that much, nothing stops you to run a WinXP VM (or physical machine) with all the development tools loaded for testing.

.NET is billed as a "code once run on all platforms" framework.  Part of the reason I use it is so I don't have the same problems native developers have between operating systems.

Having several machines is a workaround.  Something I would (and could) do if I were developing for an operating system that is seeing 5% - 9% market share.

But Windows XP has the most market share out there!  (A whopping 44%)  Of all operating systems on the planet, it has the most.  Workarounds for dropped operating systems should not have to be applied to an operating system that 44% of my and your customers are using. 

I look at the numbers and I am confused as to what Microsoft is thinking.

I think that's only true if you include Asia, where there is massive use of pirated XP.

According to NetMarketshare.com
-----------------------------------------------------
Nth. America:  XP: 26%  Win7: 48%
Sth. America:  XP: 34%  Win7: 54%
Europe:           XP: 32%  Win7: 46%
Australia:        XP: 23%   Win7: 47%
Africa:            XP: 39%   Win7: 51%
Asia:              XP: 57%   Win7: 34%

In all regions other than Asia, use of XP is falling steadily and Win7 rising at the inverse rate.

2 hours ago, Vaccano wrote

But doing that causes me to have to debug twice.  Once for .net 4.5 and again for .net 4.0.  All for a .net 4.0 application.

You code in .NET v4.5 and test on .NET v4.0. Or you can just use VS2010 and "code and test" all in .NET v4.0. It's a matter of choice.

IMO, you should always debug on the major platform you're going to support. That means if your company decide to major support WinXP, you should debug in there anyway, even if .NET v4.5 somehow backported to support WinXP.

@Vaccano:

.NET is billed as a "code once run on all platforms" framework.  Part of the reason I use it is so I don't have the same problems native developers have between operating systems.

Having several machines is a workaround.  Something I would (and could) do if I were developing for an operating system that is seeing 5% - 9% market share.

But Windows XP has the most market share out there!  (A whopping 44%)  Of all operating systems on the planet, it has the most.  Workarounds for dropped operating systems should not have to be applied to an operating system that 44% of my and your customers are using. 

I look at the numbers and I am confused as to what Microsoft is thinking.

Not exactly.

If your application will do "Administrators" tasks, you should expect UAC on Vista+.

If your application store setting on you application folder but you don't need it to "Run as Administrator", you should expect the setting files could be virtualized on Vista+.

If your application need listen to the network, you need to cater with firewall on WinXP SP2+, and there are different interface to set firewall rule on WinXP/2003 or Vista/Win2008+. And depending on the type of machine you're going to support, you probably need to care about sleep/resume too.

If your application need to support CJK character, because of difference in codepage version being supported (this matters more for we Hong Kong people, because both the change from Unicode 5 to 6 and include of Big5-HKSCS matters to lots of us) Characters legel to be displayed in Vista doesn't mean it can be displayed in WinXP (without government issued patch, which known to have problem to be installed on Win2003 SP2).

So no, if your application will have to expect difference on OS level even if the .NET runtime version is the same.

For argument regarding "Windows XP has the most market share out there!". It's probably still true depending on area you're in. But bear in mind it's market share is diminishing because Microsoft has already cut the retail licensing. And because lots of companies have audit rule that disallow software which no longer have security related updates, lots lots of the companies have started planning to migrate to Win7. It's up to your company to decide when to cut WinXP support. (Remember, for each OS your application decide to support, there's a support cost added on the bill.)

Nth. America:  XP: 26%  Win7: 48%

It seems crazy that Microsoft would cause all these difficuties for 1/4 of all their users.  Though really, they are just causing them for me.  Because I can't say to 1/4 of my user base, too bad, you have to upgrade (not if I want to stay gainfully employed that is).

@cheong

You code in .NET v4.5 and test on .NET v4.0. Or you can just use VS2010 and "code and test" all in .NET v4.0. It's a matter of choice.

If your application will do "Administrators" tasks, you should expect UAC on Vista+.

3 hours ago, Vaccano wrote

@cheong

You are correct, there are differences between the versions, but these are not subtle hidden issues/bugs.  They are well documented changes/differences.  There is a huge difference between the two.

Not everything is that obvious. The inability to install government made patch for HKSCS in Win2003 Server is not known to us until we try to install that and the server won't boot even to safe mode afterwards. We do it again on clean installation and fail again to confirm this. And you'd think since WinXP and Win2003 use the same kernel, software that can run on WinXP could be pretty sure be able to run on Win2003?

Because the HKSCS character "邨" (which means "estate") appear in 20-30% of Hong Kong addresses, inability to handle this on the server is a very significant bug to us. Actually we even created a test case specifically testing for this - just that the tests are only run on WinXP and never on the server before UAT.

After this incident, it's very clear to me that if you're going to support a platform, you have to debug the program on the platform the software is going to run on.

6 hours ago, Vaccano wrote

It seems crazy that Microsoft would cause all these difficuties for 1/4 of all their users.  Though really, they are just causing them for me.  Because I can't say to 1/4 of my user base, too bad, you have to upgrade (not if I want to stay gainfully employed that is).

Unfortunately, it's not as simple as that.

If you look at the stats, the XP base has been falling at a steady rate of about 2% per month, so your XP base will continue to decline quickly if it's in line with the general demographics.

Furthermore, o/s version and the age of the hardware it's running on, tend to be closely linked, as most people (and businesses) don't perform major version upgrades on hardware, they replace hardware with new versions loaded. XP's age tends to suggest that the hardware is well due for replacement in a large proportion of cases (even if they were downgraded from Vista) and MS are about to release a shiny new version with interesting new hardware options supporting it... expect the XP base to take a further big hit as a result.

1 day ago, devSpeed wrote

Microsoft dropped support for XP in SQL Server with 2008 R2 SP1. *snip*

Where is the support policy defined for SQL Server that states that?

The documentation lists Windows XP for several flavors of R2.  Subsequent service packs wouldn't remove that ... surely?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143506(v=sql.105).aspx">http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143506(v=sql.105).aspx

12 hours ago, Vaccano wrote

@ZippyV
I work in the Medical Industry creating applications for data entry.  (That is why this issue frustrates me so.  If these hidden bugs get to our production version then it can impact a patient's care (very bad day for everyone).)

You are looking at the situation in the wrong way.

• Your target market doesn't even come close to what Hitslink displays. They are 2 different environments. The marketshare of Window XP might be a lot higher or lower with your customers.
• If there are bugs affecting your applications then you didn't test enough or the bugs don't affect your software.
• You seem to forget that a new version can introduce new bugs.

9 hours ago, elmer wrote

*snip*

Unfortunately, it's not as simple as that.

If you look at the stats, the XP base has been falling at a steady rate of about 2% per month, so your XP base will continue to decline quickly if it's in line with the general demographics.

Furthermore, o/s version and the age of the hardware it's running on, tend to be closely linked, as most people (and businesses) don't perform major version upgrades on hardware, they replace hardware with new versions loaded. XP's age tends to suggest that the hardware is well due for replacement in a large proportion of cases (even if they were downgraded from Vista) and MS are about to release a shiny new version with interesting new hardware options supporting it... expect the XP base to take a further big hit as a result.

Don't underestimate IT departments. We buy new Windows 7 machines, wipe them, and put XP on with our volume license. I really hope that the pending end of security updates forces us on to Win7, but I think we'll keep using XP until hardware vendors stop making drivers for it.

3 hours ago, ZippyV wrote

*snip*

• You seem to forget that a new version can introduce new bugs.

 

Also, if they decided that they were going to support 4.5 on XP, then their ability to detect bugs would then be diluted. So, not only could they introduce new bugs, but they wouldn't be as effective at tracking them down.

I don't think people realize how complicated it is to test even the smallest things. Have a look at the test labs sometime. They have thousands of machines with different configurations running bajillions of tests. It annoys me when I think about even what it takes for somebody in a small shop to successfully roll out a change, and then hear people insist that somebody the size of Microsoft should make a certain change, because it's "a really simple thing to do".

Furthermore, o/s version and the age of the hardware it's running on, tend to be closely linked, as most people (and businesses) don't perform major version upgrades on hardware, they replace hardware with new versions loaded.

@Kettch - I never thought of it as easy.  But if it applies to a fourth of the market, it is the right thing to do.

1 hour ago, Vaccano wrote

@elmer

*snip*
And the damage caused to XP by this .NET release is extreme.  To do that to such a large amount of users (and by extension developers) is crazy.

What features of .net 4.5 do you need?

What features of .net 4.5 do you need?

The features that I personally need are beside the point of this discussion.  One person (or company) does not matter to Microsoft in the large scheme of things.

But if you must know, I mostly want to not get stuck on an old IDE.  I cannot upgrade to Visual Studio 2012 because it requires .net 4.5.

I also would like to use the non-CTP version of Async and Await.

look back to the "Longhorn reboot" and the push to get the huge XP service pack out.

while at the time it was the right thing for MS to get the security fixes for XP out it also meant that the release of what became "Vista" was much delayed.  so really Vista and WIndows 7 were both late getting out and many folks got locked into the XP OS far more than they should have.

while i have my own concerns with the upcoming WIndows 8 i do tell anyone still using XP they really need to update unless they have a very very special case and then they should not look for new features, just maint on old code.

when windows 95 came out it was the end of the windows 3.1 era.

this is the end of the xp era, time to move on.

9 hours ago, spivonious wrote

Don't underestimate IT departments. We buy new Windows 7 machines, wipe them, and put XP on with our volume license. I really hope that the pending end of security updates forces us on to Win7, but I think we'll keep using XP until hardware vendors stop making drivers for it.

Once Win8 is released, new machines will be sold with Win8, and then available for downgrade according to Win8 downgrade rights.

I haven't seen details of the Win8 downgrade rights yet, but previously they allowed downgrade to previous 2 versions... i.e. Win7 downgrade rights currently entitle use of XP.

It will be interesting to see if this is rolled forward as downgrade rights to Vista, and hence eliminating downgrade rights to XP.

Of course, how much attention anyone pays to such a limit (if even imposed) would be another matter.

Going back to VS 2003 for a month and doing all the same stuff you do today (but more productively in VS 2010) as a test.

2 hours ago, davewill wrote

...

Going back to VS 2003 for a month and doing all the same stuff you do today (but more productively in VS 2010) as a test.

I feel your pain. Had to maintain an ASP.NET 1.1 web application for ages, and that got me back to VS 2003 over and over. They should include that as a valid cause for medical use of controlled substances.

@ZippyV: actually, there's an easier way: VS2012 can use VS2010 solutions without upgrading. One can always create the solution in VS2010 (on a machine not tainted with .NET 4.5), then develop with VS2012 targeting .NET 4. In the remote case where you get a bug during testing that doesn't repro in VS2012, it's always possible to go back to the VS2010 machine and debug away.

• Windows XP is still on (extended) support until April 2014.

Extended support means that Microsoft is still releasing security patches for XP. It does not mean that they are still making software for it.

Anyway, this post is a bit of a rant.  But it is just driving me nuts that Microsoft is not supporting the most used Operating system on the planet.  They should wait until usage dies down (like they did with Windows 2000.  It was at 8% when they dropped it from .net 3.0.)

Microsoft was only incorporated in 1982. This means that Windows XP was released a full third of a lifetime ago for Microsoft.

How many other companies do you see supporting products from that long ago? Do you see Ford actively hurting their sales of new cars by selling parts for 1967 vehicles? Do you see Apple supporting any of the Power-PC based machines they sold in 2001? Do you see Google still looking like this?

The long story short is that (in the judgement of WinDiv in Redmond) was that pushing Windows XP SP3 and IE8 to Windows XP was a tragic mistake that encouraged users to stick with XP rather than putting in place an upgrade strategy for business. This combined with relatively lack-lustre take-up of Vista has really pushed Microsoft back from being far-and-away the top technical company in 2004 to merely one of the top in 2012.

Consequently, and I can't emphasise this enough, Microsoft are actively trying to kill XP, just like they are trying to kill IE6. They see it as damaging their sales of newer PCs, and they actively encourage products, third-party vendors and businesses to drop support for it.

That is why .NET4.5 isn't coming to Windows XP. It's not for any technical reason - it's because Microsoft see supporting customers on Windows XP as actively undermining their profit margins through Windows 7 sales, and since Sinofsky's department are currently beating the pants off of DevDiv in sales, Sinofsky is winning in the board-room to get Visual Studio, .NET and other critical DevDiv technologies to move to being newest-two-platforms-only.

Like it or hate it, that's Microsoft's policy; and for those who don't like it, the sad fact is that even with a 10-year support, Microsoft supports its products for more than twice as long as the nearest competitor in the market; Apple, and nearly 10 years longer than the oft-cited-alternative, Linux.

...pushing Windows XP SP3 and IE8 to Windows XP was a tragic mistake that encouraged users to stick with XP rather than putting in place an upgrade strategy for business.

Microsoft are actively trying to kill XP, just like they are trying to kill IE6.

28 minutes ago, Vaccano wrote

@figuerres -  I agree that XP is been kept running longer than it should.  But that is because Microsoft failed so hard with Vista.  

...

*snip*

I agree with you.  What is making me upset is that they are making me pay for their mistakes.  I want them to find a way to kill their products that does not cause me to have to suffer for their mistakes.

They messed up with Vista, they messed up with the SP3 and IE8.  This has resulted in the prologed life of Windows XP.  This FACT is there: A quarter of all machines in North America are using it.  Developers should not have to take the hit (in either lost customers or extra development and support costs) for Microsoft's mistakes.

Making developers suffer because they have caused XP to live longer than it should have is NOT the right way to force out XP.

Seriously, the Vista alibi is getting old. Whatever opinion you have on Vista, the hard numbers tell you that business users are still massively excercising their downgrade rights today (ask yourself how is it possible that 80% of your customers are still on XP, three years after Windows 7 was released).

That's not Vista, it's companies running poorly written software that doesn't run in Vista+ that it would cost way too much to fix. They are squeezing the most out of their investment, that's understandable, but they are the ultimate reason why XP is still around. Vista, SP3, IE8: that's utter BS.

Really, I don't care what the real reason is for XP's prolonged life.

All that concerns me is the fact that it HAS been prolonged and Microsoft has failed to manage it into an end of life scenario.

The fact still remains that a quarter of all machines in North America are running XP.  Developers are now faced with the choice of lost customers or higher development and support costs.

Because Microsoft failed to manage THEIR platform's lifespan they are going to just make developers cope with the pain of their failure. 

I don't think it's only about selling new Windows licenses, but how much it costs to dispense the methadone *cough* errr, maintenance on XP. Yeah...maintenance...that's what I meant to say. There are costs not only for Microsoft, but for the customers. The longer the users procrastinate, the more expensive the switch will be.

All that concerns me is the fact that it HAS been prolonged and Microsoft has failed to manage it into an end of life scenario.

No, they are doing a decent job of putting it into end-of-life. No new updates, no new browser releases, and no development platform updates. That sounds like reasonable stuff to do.

What do you suggest they do to get people off of XP?

3 minutes ago, Vaccano wrote

@Blue Ink:

Really, I don't care what the real reason is for XP's prolonged life.

All that concerns me is the fact that it HAS been prolonged and Microsoft has failed to manage it into an end of life scenario.

The fact still remains that a quarter of all machines in North America are running XP.  Developers are now faced with the choice of lost customers or higher development and support costs.

Because Microsoft failed to manage THEIR platform's lifespan they are going to just make developers cope with the pain of their failure. 

 

Dude, you are wasting your breath.I am glad that there is no longer support for XP, as a decade is long enough, and that operating system is decrepit, when you look at new hardware and the possibilities available.

As Aldous Huxley writes "rolling around in the muck, is not the best way of getting clean". If you listed to Jason Zander, they have shaved off terabytes in their Visual Studio 2012 builds.

I don't mean this impolitely, but the world has moved on, it is about time you did. If you choose not to, then that is your problem, not ours or Microsoft's!

1 minute ago, Vaccano wrote

 But despite your arguments, there are still at least a full quarter of ALL MACHINES out there running XP.  Microsoft needed to have a quicker end of support for XP (all support) to make the kind of move they are making.

 

Clearly in the minority then, if we wait for you, it will be another decade. You are the problem here, not Microsoft.

That is what you are finding hard to accept.

But then, we have known about XP's EOL for years. There are just still 21 months of life left in XP, so let's do a little math... take away the time needed to upgrade (nobody in their right mind would run their business on an OS without security patches, and those who plan to are just a lawsuit waiting to happen). Then take away the time it takes to design, develop, test and deploy the product. What's left? A few months? One year? Is it worthwhile to start a new development for that?

8 hours ago, electricninja33 wrote

.NET 4.5 dramatically optimizes the TPL and other multithreading framework code without using anything new that requires Vista or later, and this is vitally important for the async/await keywords. This is my fourth company in five years and every single one mandates XP as a baseline spec for their products. There's no reason not to support Windows XP; nothing changed in WPF that will require a newer version of DirectX. Nor did anything in the CLR thread pool change to REQUIRE Vista or later. This is basically planned obsolescence.

I also would like to be able to use the "async" keyword for my two customers in a million that use Windows 95. But it's not going to happen.

You have a choice. If .NET 4.5 gives you an N% edge where N% is more than the proportion of your customers using XP, then use .NET 4.5 and drop support for XP. Otherwise, you'll just have to use .NET4.0 and wait a while before you can use your async keyword.

12 hours ago, Vaccano wrote

Microsoft needed to have a quicker end of support for XP (all support) to make the kind of move they are making.

I want my company to move off XP (and we are heading in that direction).  But it will be a while still, and the staticstics show I am not alone.

Please explain how these two statements are consistent. If Microsoft had made the end-of-life sooner, then they'd have dropped support for .NET 3 from XP and we'd have just had this conversation earlier. If they kept support for .NET 4.5, then you'd just come back and complain when they make this decision for .NET 5.0 or .NET 7 or whatever.

There's going to be an end of life for every product at some point, and people who have hammered their business into relying on XP living forever are going to get mad whether it EOLs in 2008 or 2058. I frankly can't see how you can do better in the industry than seeing Microsoft give you twelve years of non-breaking changes to XP including basically a free major version upgrade (SP2).

Find me a single company with a better EOL policy, or come up with a better way that Microsoft can kill XP, and maybe I'll take you a bit more seriously. Most people (i.e. >75% of the market) have ditched XP. If you're in the last quarter, it's time for you to move on.

Let's not forget that most of that remaining 25% are corporate environments that won't be running your software anyway, so it's not like it's even 25% of your customers.

But is it really so odd to do what your developer customer base wants?

Head on over to Visual Studio User Voice and look at the top requests.  You will see that XP support is number 5.  And all the ones above it are C++ and IDE related.

So the top .net related request of users is to add XP support for .net 4.5.

This is all because developers have lots of customers that are using XP.  We can't make them change.  But we can't make Microsoft change either. 

So will all try to cope with the mess of the in-place upgrade as best as possible (my corporation has blocked .net 4.5 from all computers).

But in the end it would have made everything so much better if XP support was there.  Or failing that, make .net 4.5  a side-by-side install so that it does not mess up development of .net 4.0 apps.

47 minutes ago, Vaccano wrote

e upgrade as best as possible (my corporation has blocked .net 4.5 from all computers).

But in the end it would have made everything so much better if XP support was there.  Or failing that, make .net 4.5  a side-by-side install so that it does not mess up development of .net 4.0 apps.

No, it would have made things much much worse. Take the time to watch the following videos

http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/NET-45-Conversation-with-the-BCL-Team-Improvements-Evolution-and-More

http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/NET-45-Size-on-disk-improvements

Engineering .NET to work side by side, would have been doubling their workload for people like your organization that will not move on with the times

The fact of the matter is that presently the traditional desktop is inconsequential to Microsoft's vision, and your complains are quite selfish, and self serving.

Maybe you get a thrill out of posting tirelessly about what is a non-issue for 75% (if that number does not alarm you, nothing will - it completely negates your argument) of people, so you thinking that making a fuss in this thread will change anything, as as misguided as your organizations unwillingness to move on.

This post really is quite boring now, with some really fine minds making it abundantly clear why you are wrong, but like a troll you will keep coming back with irrational and ill argued assertions.

Assuming you have a standard split of the demographic, it means that 1/4 of your income comes from people running XP. 

Most companies are not doing so well that they can afford to just drop a quarter of their income because you think it is "selfish".

And stop calling me a troll.  I am presenting facts is a clear and un-argumentative manner.

It's simple. If your customers are running XP, then you develop for XP. I really doubt that there are any insurmountable bugs that prevent you from using .NET 4.

2 hours ago, Vaccano wrote

People here can say that asking Microsoft to supporting XP is ridiculous. 

I'm not saying it's ridiculous. I'm just saying it's not going to happen. XP is dead. The Microsoft board has spoken.

Assuming you have a standard split of the demographic, it means that 1/4 of your income comes from people running XP. 

But not 1/4 of Microsoft's customers. The people on XP stopped giving their money to the residents of Redmond many moons ago, and hence they no longer enjoy the support of Microsoft.

Companies (like mine) still give Microsoft money for Dev Tools so that they can create their product(s) for Windows XP (along with the other Windows OS options).

And that is the reason I am upset.  We are paying (via MSDN Subscription) for upgrades I cannot use.

However, I am a realist enough to realize that the amount of money contributed by companies like mine is not large in the overall Microsoft money pail.

And, Microsoft has done a good job conniving ... sorry convincing, developers into believing they can use Visual Studio 2012 to "target" .NET 4.0 and that it will work just as good.

By the time developers realize the mistake, they will have already paid for their upgrades.

So, sadly, in the end all Microsoft is going to be hit with is angry developer customers.  They already have a lot of those for other reasons, so adding some more is probably not a big deal for them.

3 hours ago, elmer wrote

July Marketshare stats out, and XP continues its steady decline. North America WinXP: -1% => 25% Win7: +1% => 49%

To be fair. That figure is irrelevent. The only relevent figure is how many of his customer still using WinXP and won't upgrade to a newer OS.

And for Vaccano, since Microsoft did nothing from preventing you to use VS2010 to develop for WinXP, I think if you're pinned by customer demand to still develop for WinXP, you shouldn't complain.

See VB6 users continue to complain they can't get workable multithread solution even if they continue to pay for MSDN subscription.

And, except those syntax sugars, name one thing that is missing in .NET v4.0 that'll affect your ability to build solutions to show it's a big deal for you.

So what's wrong with a simple reply???!

Vaccano wrote
Head on over to Visual Studio User Voice and look at the top requests. You will see that XP support is number 5.

Or it was, until someone at Microsoft noticed it. It's since been marked as "Declined" just to get it off the list.

I wouldn't be too upset if we couldn't use 4.5 on XP/2003, so long as it wasn't an in-place upgrade. As it stands, we can either buy into the multi-targeting lie and write 4.0 code that won't work on a computer with 4.0 on it, or ignore 4.5/VS2012 and write 4.0 code that won't work on a computer with 4.5 on it.

Either way, we're screwed, and Microsoft doesn't give a flying elephant.

Reading through a Paul Thurrott article http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/windows-7/windows-7-enterprise-deployment-143885 he mentioned a company called Browsium who is stating that 80% of large organizations are running XP.

80% is high.  Really high.  So I went looking to see how valid this Browsium appeared to be.

http://www.browsium.com/

On their site they mentioned the statistics http://www.browsium.com/2012/07/30/windows7-are-we-half-way-there-yet/

That is where I found the qualifier "Though it's difficult to find hard data on the situation, we estimate...".  So the 20/80 needs to be weighted in your mind accordingly.

Without transparent numbers it is really hard to know.  I sure hope we are not in the early stages of a technology divide between consumer and business technology.  Charles love to use the phrase "general purpose".  In a divided world I guess we will need 2 phrases.

5 hours ago, RichardD3 wrote

I wouldn't be too upset if we couldn't use 4.5 on XP/2003, so long as it wasn't an in-place upgrade. As it stands, we can either buy into the multi-targeting lie and write 4.0 code that won't work on a computer with 4.0 on it, or ignore 4.5/VS2012 and write 4.0 code that won't work on a computer with 4.5 on it.

Install a VM with only 4.0 on it and use remote debugging. It'll need to be a Win7 VM, since remote debugging isn't supported on XP in VS2012 but it'll still allow you to test under the conditions you would have previously (in fact marginally better since your VM can be free of any apps you normally have installed on your PC that might cause conflicts).

8 hours ago, davewill wrote

I sure hope we are not in the early stages of a technology divide between consumer and business technology.

I suspect we are about to see a divide, with Business rolling forward to Win7 and Consumers rolling forward to Win8... and XP being put to rest in the process.

Definitely in the short term business will stick to Windows 7 (with Windows 8 for touch scenarios -- fingers crossed) and consumers with Windows 8.  Thinking further down the road when Windows 9 comes out in 2014 and businesses are on Windows 7.  The divide gets larger.  Then Windows 10 comes out and both businesses and consumers move to Windows 10 maybe.  Then we begin the friction cycle again with Windows 11 and possibly 12 before we sync again at Windows 13.

What if during those higher friction years the business market drives the Windows that businesses use in a significantly different direction than the consumer Windows?  How would things turn out if the prior years business pressure applied for XP had lasted even longer?  Is there a chance business pressure for a similar situation (for say ... Windows 9 (consumer) versus Windows 7 (business)) is heightened given their previous experiences with the XP Vista/7 divide?  Will businesses be even more adimant.

Hard to know.  Seems like a lot of businesses forget to factor in the development discount they get for being in the same general purpose computing pool as everyone else.

Most I.T. department buy branded PCs with service to create custom "recovery image". If the OS is not bought with the machines, these vendors will most likely decline this request (because they're likely to be unable to fetch all required drivers too). I doubt any I.T. department staffs will let this situation happen.

We have no intention using any of the features in .NET 4.5 anytime soon but unfortunately that doesn't prevent our application failing on a users machine if they have installed .NET 4.5 even for previous versions of our application!

The other side of the problem is that we can't make our users stop using Windows XP so we have no good reason to stop supporting it for a long time to come.

So in conclusion, I don't really care that .NET 4.5 isn't supported on Windows XP but I hate the fact that it's an in-place upgrade to .NET 4.0.

Why in the world would Microsoft do this? The only reason I can think of is so they can phase out Windows XP and sell more copies of Windows 7 and 8. At the cost of developers all over the world.

2 hours ago, craftworkga​mes wrote

The only reason I can think of is so they can phase out Windows XP and sell more copies of Windows 7 and 8. At the cost of developers all over the world.

XP has been out of mainstream support since April 14 2009. XP SP2 mainstream support ended on July 13, 2010. XP SP3 mainstream support is still in effect. That's the phasing out indicators, not what platform .NET runs on (in my opinion(

However mainstream support doesn't mean "We're going to target our newest software against an operating system that's 10+ years old."

As for having to test on 4.5, well, 4.5 fixes bugs. You'd also have to test against .NET service packs for exactly the same reason I'm afraid.

.NET v4 is still under mainstream support, Microsoft does not have reason to prevent WinXP users to get an update for a currently supported product.

31 minutes ago, cheong wrote

@blowdart:Btw, I still think that even if Microsoft does not intend to support .NET v4.5 on WinXP, they should still release a seperate 4.0.4 update package for WinXP users.

What do you think should be in it?

Vista+ users can install the fixes by installing .NET v4.5, but WinXP users cannot. That's why I think there should be seperate package made avaliable to WinXP users.