Windows XP SP2 and 7 Other Things Microsoft Killed This Year

Microsoft's official curtailing this week of support and patches for Windows 2000 and Windows XP Service Pack 2 marks the latest in a string of moves by the company to kill of products and technologies that either outlived their uselessness or never became useful in the first place.

While some in the industry would very much like to see Microsoft speed the demise of even more of its wares before they do any more harm (namely Internet Explorer 6), here's a rundown of what Microsoft has snuffed out so far in 2010.

[hoops]

One thing they never shoiuld have canned was the Courier Tablet. It was one of the FEW MS devices that set itself apart from the rest. Running on the Windows mobile 7 OS would have been killer with full XBL intergration. Pure win. And what does MS do? They kill it and now are partning up with HP and the likes to make iPad rip off tablets. LOL.
The Courier was so unique and MS killed it. Balmer should be fired. He is such a clown.

Edit @Conloles

"Gizmodo is reporting that the project was killed yesterday. There's speculation that the intense popularity of Apple's relatively low-cost iPad, coupled with the imminent arrival of Android-based tablets and possibly even WebOS slates from HP, could have scared the software giant away from releasing the device."

http://www.tuaw.com/2010/04...

From my understanding they will incorporate some fo the Courier tech in future products, but I wont hold my breath with MS in reagdrs to this as they will watch the market and look to see what Apple does....how sad IMO as MS could have put the same type of muscle and vigor into Courier as they did with Kentic and they could have created something great.

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

[rezzah]

They only good for copying and ripping people off.

[Conloles]

Hoops theoretically the Courier was impossible to do technology isn't still capable yet of producing a product as good as that. Having said that I dream of the day the Courier comes to life - however some of their tablets have taken ideas take a look at the Copia Ereader.

[TheAntiFanboy]

Like Sony who ripped off Xbox Live, Apple who ripped off Walkman, Nintendo who ripped off PlayStation, and every other major tech company in existence.

It. Fucking. Happens. And no one's innocent of it. Fucking deal with it.

[IdleLeeSiuLung]

I agree, Balmer is an idiot. Wish Bill Gates was still at the helm. Unfortunately, he is off doing charity work giving away his mountain of money.

Courier was a really interesting concept, I still don't understand why the canned it.

[hoops]

They canned it because they were afraid it would not sell because it did not look like the iPad.
This is the way MS thinks. Copy Apple fully or in partial and it will sell instead of trailblazing.
The IRONY here is WIN MOBILE 7 is entirely different than anything out on the market...so it would have been pure win to put that in the Courier.
WINMO7/COURIER would have been cutting edge. Instead MS is going to play it safe and rip off Apple...EVEN though MS has a longer history of touch tablets than Apple.
MS just does not have the balls to take a chance.
Balmer SHOULD be fired.

@quadalupeupe

"Microsoft wants you to buy their new products..."

Apple is no different. As a matter if fact, Apple invented this LOL.
They are known for releasing products with missing features found in other competing products, only to release a updated version 1 year later. Ipad, iPhone come to mind right away. Lets not even mention the Macbooks/Macs.
They are all guilty of this

[Consoldtobots]

I think it was more to do with the horrible battery life a device with 2 screens would have. We can hardly keep one screen on for 4-5 hrs and they want to do 2? Like always MS is big on promises but small on delivery.

[JustTheFactsMr]

I wouldn't get too excited about Winmob 7.

http://www.infoworld.com/d/...

Android is free to OEM's, Apple UI is still best in class and Win 7 has no apps and looks to be another clunker in the spirit of Kin. RIM continues to expand market despite all the Android and Apple love in the media.

HP WENT AND SPENT A BILLION DOLLARS ON A MOBILE PLATFORM BECAUSE THEY HAD LOST COMPLETE FAITH IN MS TO DELIVER ON A MOBILE PLATFORM - INCLUDING WINMOB 7.

Already requiring MS to go far beyond the usual free dev tools and actually pay developers and guarantee revenue shortfalls to them. Developers even think it has a good chance to fail. No backwards compatibility with 6.5 apps means they have already had the rug pulled from under their feet once and without significant guarantees they aren't jumping in again. The horns and trumpets will be blown by the usual media suspects but nobody will be listening except a few developers that were guaranteed money to do so. Meanwhile Android and Apple have developers climbing over each other for free and hundreds of thousands of apps already. It's Windows in reverse. Decades to catch up if even possible. Just like Search.

The emperor has no clothes. Just lots of money to spend on a press junket that likes freebies in exchange for pushing the illusion they do. That is no longer enough for some. Once that tipping point is reached it will become apparent to more and more mainstream people and the snowball will take on it's own life.

Their problem is their competitors have pockets just as deep to influence the media and also have better products and strategies to match. Mobile is lost for another decade. Kin, courier, mobile 6.5 are just the beginning of the end. Winmob 7 will just be confirmation of how bad it really is. Just more roadkill and embarrassment at the end of the day. Incredible level of incompetence to have had that much of a LEAD and still blown it.

Apple will own the premium mobile market and Android will eat everything else in it's path. RIM will continue to own the business market. Mobile is the growth market and MS will get table scraps at best.

The rapid shift to cloud computing will seriously erode the Windows business revenue stream in the next 5 years making fighting back in mobile even more difficult. Expect more layoffs and far less influence on the business market as well. And a losing or at best stagnant stock.

Apple and Google are coming hard after the game market as well. Mac will start seeing a significant increase and uptake in PC gaming in the next several years and more and more devs will use opengl and start dropping directx to support cross-platform. Why? Apple walks the walk and MS just talks now. Developers, developers, developers get it.

MS needs to fire Ballmer like NOW and buy RIM yesterday to have had any chance in mobile. Something unlikely to happen in either case.

[asyouburn]

Ensemble studios (RIP), FASA studios (RIP)

[dragonelite]

And a lot of those folks still work under microsoft wing in bungie and robot entertainment.

[asyouburn]

no longer with msoft

[dragonelite]

Microsoft still owns a big part of bungie.
They even gave them their new office.

[quadalupeupe]

Microsoft wants you to buy their new products...

[Alos88]

If I had to choose between Windows 7 and death, I'd hesitantly choose Windows 7.
If it was between Vista and death I'd put the noose around my neck myself.

[ranmafandude]

I'm still using windows xp lol. 6 year old pc still going strong.

[Consoldtobots]

oh I definitely think they will have a hard time getting anyone off XP, ESPECIALLY business environments. They really don't have the time to beta test software and need RELIABLE computing from the get go. Hell I remember how long it took for the business world to upgrade to XP. MSs business model is outdated and it will show in the next few years. Trying to be good at too many things at once has cost them dearly in their bread and butter market of PC OSs. Now you have a surging Apple and downright scary Google taking over the industry at a much faster pace the MS did 20 yrs ago. Can we say the rich kid on the block got caught with his pants down stroking his marbles one too many times?

[r1sh12]

I jumped of XP, to use windows 7.
I havent looked back, I even upgraded my computers so they could easily run on 7.
WIndows 7 is what vista should have been, but I still like WIndows 7 professional

[ReBurn]

I think you're way off base about the businesses and upgrading to Windows 7, and I think you're wrong about Microsoft's business model. Microsoft learned a lot from the Vista experience and Windows 7 doesn't make those same mistakes.

They were forward-thinking enough to include XP mode with Windows 7, which is essentially a Windows XP virtual machine, so that older software would still be usable on Windows 7. Microsoft also re-wrote quite a bit of the Windows kernel and fixed many of the issues that plagued Windows for years, which cleans up a lot of the old security exploits.

While Apple is certainly doing well, their Mac business is not that big of a threat to Microsoft right now. It's hardly a blip on the Microsoft radar since you have to buy Apple's expensive hardware. There's no such thing as a "commodity" type of Mac. Windows 7 alone passed Mac OS's total market share just a few months after it released.

And Google, while strong, isn't winning that much of the overall pie. But they are doing exceptionally well in several verticals. For instance, Google's productivity offerings like Google Docs and Google Spreadsheets aren't really hurting Microsoft's Office suite at all. Microsoft Office is still the king of office automation and productivity software with no real serious challenges right now.

A lot of people love to hate Microsoft. But they really do create some good software that helps a lot of companies make money.

[J-Smith]

if only they would kill off the xbox brand

[asyouburn]

i love games!!! all games. and xbox plays them.

[shikwan]

Then Sony wouldn't have no one to follow in their online department!