WinXP on X50?

This is funny :)

It's just a forum guys and gals...

[karhill]

Originally Posted by karhill

Talk about moving the goal posts.... The question was: is Windows designed to be portable. The answer is yes. Is portability a black and white issue? No. It's grey. Some processors are going to be easier to port to than others. As you rightly pointed out, decisions are made all the time about how much effort should be expended to achieve a given level of portability. A good example is big endian versus little endian. During the inital development of Windows NT, a decision had to be made about whether the development team should go the extra mile to make sure the code was big endian/little endian neutral. Since the x86 was little endian, and since the original target process (beyond the x86) was the Intel i960, also an Intel product that defaulted to little endian, it was decided that to support little endian processors only. That's one reason (political being another) that the Sparc and Motorola architectures, which are big endian, were not initially ported to. The PowerPC port was interesting. Apple, coming from the Motorola world, was a big endian centric operating system. When Apple ported to the PowerPC, they ran big endian. However, the PowerPC can be run backwards or forwards (it supports running either as a big endian processor or a little endian processor). So when Windows was ported to the PowerPC, Microsoft ran it little endian. [edited for spelling]

uh excus me. windows xp was NEVER NEVER NEVER!! desgined to be a mobile os. it was desgined fro a laptop or a desktop not a ppc.


chris

Dude! I'm having problems parsing your comments again. I think agreement exists here. Windows XP design goals did not include running it on a PDA. (In other words, in the context of this discussion, portable != mobile. Portable means capable of being ported to a different architecture.)

But, really on with the spirit of this thread....

You guys are all lamers. I've got VMWARE running on my Axim. It's usually partioned into 2 virtual machines. One is running OS X. Most of the time in OS X I'm running a classic Mac emulator, and when I need to do Windows stuff I run WINE inside that. Performance is not too bad if I'm running off the flash memory as opposed to the SD card.

The other virtual machine hosts the call center CRM application for our company (an S&P 500 company that shall remain unamed).

[karhill]

The other virtual machine hosts the call center CRM application for our company (an S&P 500 company that shall remain unamed).

No. Really. Once the CTO took it golfing by mistake. (Confused it with his Axim). Really hosed us up. Customer supports reps couldn't do anything for the rest of the day. ("Sorry sir, our computer system is golfing.")

[gadgetnerd]

This thread is great, just great. I have a feeling it won't last much longer...

come on, for the average axim user, just remind yourself that you bought a Ppc not a PC, so u wont feel that crap or cheated or whatever when u see someone else run assorted OSs on their ppc while u r stuck with wm5/2k3se.

[runnr548]

That's sweet! I don't need it, but it is cool!

[aximbigfan]

come on, for the average axim user, just remind yourself that you bought a Ppc not a PC, so u wont feel that crap or cheated or whatever when u see someone else run assorted OSs on their ppc while u r stuck with wm5/2k3se.

i would report this post, but i have a feeling that nothing would happen. even advanced users arnt going to be able to get xp on there axim.


chris

Why in the world would you want to report this post?

its not posSABLE.. xp is desined to run on xi86 procs... your x50 has an arm proc...... why dont you do a little searching befor posting?


chris

pot calling the kettle black!!!!

[aximbigfan]

pot calling the kettle black!!!!

excuse me? i do through searches before everyone fo my new threads.

chris

[firebush]

Triple booting OSX, XP, and Linux on my x51v. :nw:

Beat that. It's a little slow, especially when I run OSX and then boot XP at the same time within OSX using Parallels software!

[Wollombi]

Lets all get back on the same page here. Neither of you are completely right, because you are talking about different things. Windows NT and Windows XP are VERY different beasts -- even though XP was a continuation of the NT platform it does not mean that all of the original requirements of NT have continued on. Microsoft took a lesson from the Mac when they built XP, deciding that its better to code the product for the largest market share, giving up some of the 'portability' in the process. The DirectX layer is a good example of that; it would take a LOT of work to port that to a new processor. Speaking of Windows NT, you could say that it was written with the goal of multi-platform support, but that does not mean that it is "processor neutral". It simply means that it wasn't geared solely toward the x86 CPU. An OS that was completely "processor neutral" would have to be very simplified and inefficient. There is hardware-level support for a great deal of the core components of Windows, and that's what has helped the OS improve so much over the last 20 years.

Getting back to the topic, the whole idea of porting Windows XP to a PocketPC is a bit ridiculous. If it is one of those "lets see if we can do it" types of things, then fine, I see the value in it being a challenge. But as far as it being a good solution to the problems we have with Windows Mobile, there's simply no way to justify the argument. WM, especially the PocketPC version, was specifically designed to support PDA hardware, and to perform in a PDA world. Things like on-screen keyboards, touch screens, instant-on, etc. are all huge benefits that I think we're taking for granted. WM is far from perfect, but it is a MUCH better fit than XP would be. People are upset now with the slowdowns in WM5? Wait till XP starts playing its virtual memory games, and watch as your PDA becomes a useless battery-killer (maybe still having some value as a pocket warmer).

As Microsoft continues their product lines, I do see a convergence at some point, and the WM or CE line going away. Before that happens, they will need to more or less re-build the entire platform to be much more modular, being able to pull out huge chunks of the OS without causing problems. My guess is that we'll see this in Vista's grandchild, maybe great-grandchild.

Very well stated, bluevolume!

[Wollombi]

you know maybe, youd be a little more credible to me if you were to post what programming languges you know and your certificans.

i686 is adiffernt proc atrtchutlture how ever windows will run on it. and im sorry that windows mobile 5 is so buggy but that doesnt mean that you can suddenly revert to xp ok., this thread is going absulutly npwhere. it is a collection of complete n00bs who knwo nothing about computers arguing with a few seasoned programmers. if icoudl lock this thread now i would.

Hmm...

I'm not sure who peed in your Cheerios before you got up to post your comments, but you really need to lighten up. Your comments, a sampling of which I quoted above, are not only not useful, but you come across as overwhelmingly arrogant instead of the intelligent, well balanced contributor that you generally are. Quite frankly, Chris, I had come to expect much better of you based on many of your other posts. This seems very unlike you. Honestly, you have lost some credibility in my book, and I'm sure a few others', by your behavior in this thread.

BTW, I see nobody here actually saying that XP could run on an Axim, just that the underlying NT code that XP is based on was designed to run on more than the x86 architecture, which is absolutely true.

Report the thread if you feel you must.

[IM0001]

Very interesting.....

From what I can see so far..

Our PPC's are computers.

They can be programed.

To run "anything" if we wanted (Speed being no factor)

All it takes is Money, Knowhow, and Time..

Mostly Money.

Lets just keep praying for an WM5 fix for the X50V which is just .01% more likely than XP for our ppc's.

Hmm...

I'm not sure who peed in your Cheerios before you got up to post your comments, but you really need to lighten up. Your comments, a sampling of which I quoted above, are not only not useful, but you come across as overwhelmingly arrogant instead of the intelligent, well balanced contributor that you generally are. Quite frankly, Chris, I had come to expect much better of you based on many of your other posts. This seems very unlike you. Honestly, you have lost some credibility in my book, and I'm sure a few others', by your behavior in this thread.

BTW, I see nobody here actually saying that XP could run on an Axim, just that the underlying NT code that XP is based on was designed to run on more than the x86 architecture, which is absolutely true.

Report the thread if you feel you must.

Agreed.