Microsoft's ongoing war on a beloved Microsoft product [View all]

People like Windows XP, particularly XP pro.

It is old, but it does everything a desktop needs to do, and when Windows Vista (corrected on edit) came along Hewlett Packard was upset that business clients would buy a new computer, and got a dispensation from Windows to sell Vista machines with XP pre-loaded and Vista an un-installed option. You had to pay for the privilege of NOT using Vista. (I bought one of the last OEM XP machines marketed because I knew for sure it would work with all of the software on my old XP machine.)

Now, different people like later MS OS flavors, and that's fine. But as a pure desktopper I don't happen to need whatever they offer. I am somewaht computer savvy and if I see a new functionality I really want I will upgrade to get it. But I happen to have no problems or issues with XP for my purposes.

Frustrated with the popularity of the venerable XP pro, Microsoft made later Internet Explorer upgrades unusable on XP. So every week, more and more websites say, This site doesn't work on your old version of Internet Explorer.

So you have no choice but to buy Windows Sparkle-Pony, or whatever the latest operating system is called... or simply use a non-Microsoft browser.

I am not a fan of Chrome and Firefox, but I use them more and more often and use IE less and less. Oddly, those non-Microsoft products don't see my operating system as a problem.

I am stuck in some old fogey time-warp... I am, due to some character flaw, disinclined to replace things that work fine.

Silly me.