Vista Family Discount Keys Found Not Compatible 394
acousticiris writes "Many (if not all) users who took advantage of Microsoft's Vista Family Discount have been issued invalid installation keys and cannot install Windows Vista Home Premium. Microsoft says, 'There is no expected time period for a fix at this time.' According to the article, the keys are valid for something, just not Windows Vista. Perhaps it's just too simple to issue these folks new keys and send them on their way."
Unacceptable (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Unacceptable (Score:3, Interesting)
They offered to refund people's money. Is that not an acceptable response for a product that doesn't work?
Not Surprised... (Score:3, Interesting)
digest (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, get a grip people (Score:5, Interesting)
This site is supposed to be about news and technical scoops not about personal opinion or flame wars. Get a grip. We like different operating systems. All the other ones suck. Let's move on and talk about something interesting.
Re:Why would they subject themselves to this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Also...
Why would they accept an OS that gets slower with every release? Why would they accept an OS that requires more and more from their hardware investment, eventually requiring replacement (as may be very likely the case with Vista) instead of getting sleeker and slimmer and more efficient? Why would they accept an OS that carries with it the highest threat of adware, viruses, worms, trojans - for whatever reason? When terrible mistakes are made - like activex - why don't they expect the company to fix those mistakes?
Just wondering. I mean clearly, they do not hold Microsoft to a very high standard. I left the OS a couple of years ago, having had all I was willing to take. But most people around me stick with MS, regardless of what trouble they have.
Personally, I think part of the answer is application lock-in; people who use some app that they can't get away from, and where the developers force them to upgrade to the next OS because otherwise, the next version or revision of the locked-in app won't work.
Keys work on Ultimate (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why would they subject themselves to this? (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't know if you're in the US, but it's commonplace here now. For example, if you have a head cold and want some plain old Sudafed, you are treated as a possible criminal and have your license scanned or number tracked on paper and you have to sign for it.
Actually, I tend to feel like I'm being treated like a criminal unless I've been robbed.
Family Plan wasn't in beta. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why would they subject themselves to this? (Score:5, Interesting)
I just posted this in the topic about Window's new DRM patents, and realized after that that discussion is already dead. Seems everyone jumped into the discussion about the guy who gave up on Linux after 10 years, and now there has been almost a dozen discussions since then. I just want to make a point I feel really strongly about. I don't think there is anything really wrong with this if you are up front about it. At the risk of being marked off topic, here I go with my little rant...
While many of you Linux user don't seem to be too worried about this, I think you should be. As pointed out by others, it will have a detrimental effect right across the board. No more dual boot with Windows and Linux. No Wine, no more popular drivers for Linux because of the DRM, no virtual machines that run Linux without paying a Windows tax, and in the end, it will get harder every day to find a computer that will even run Linux.
As a Window's programmer since 3.1, I am seeing a nightmare scenario staring me in the face. I can see the day coming when a person can no longer develop software on their own computer, because it will only run in some kind of sandbox, if at all, unless you buy a special developer's license. Of course I too will finally defect to Linux long before that happens, if that is still an option.
I'm am seriously disturbed by the vision I am seeing in all I have read tonight - but I am too tired to articulate it all - it's late at night where I am at the moment and it's been a long day. It's like someone said - the frog in the pot thing - the public has to wake up to this DRM business before it's too late.
Before I go - there is one more thing I want to get off my chest here. One might hope and pray that it will be stopped by anti-trust laws before it goes too far, but I wouldn't get my hopes up. Why did the courts not press for a breakup of Microsoft? I think they were leaned on by the US government - for a reason I have not seen articulated before. The fact is that Microsoft is a US corporation, one of America's finest. It brings in big bucks to the good ol' US of A. So from a local perspective, among fellow Americans, Microsoft's monopolistic practices are scandalous, but if an American - especially a Congressman - looks at it from a nationalistic perspective, it's good for America. In fact, the worse it becomes (the monopolistic practices) the better it is for USA. Bill Gates' age old dream of world domination happens to coincide with America's dream of world domination. That's why we can't count on the US courts to put a stop to this.
Wow - I didn't think I was going to say all these things. It's like suddenly I see where all this is going now, and it's real scary.
Re:Why would they subject themselves to this? (Score:2, Interesting)
Yum seems to work all the time though. Probably was just a single bad download mirror in my case.
I guess I made the right decision (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why would they subject themselves to this? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why would they accept an OS that gets slower with every release?
Because a) in many cases it isn't true (the higher end your hardware, the less true it is) and b) in the cases where it isn't, it's quite normal behaviour (eg: more recent versions of Linux are slower on low-end machines than older ones).
The only OS in recent memory that has improved in performance on low end machines with new releases is OS X, which has far, far more to do with how dismally slow it was at initial release and compiler improvements, than it does with Apple's OS development.
Re:Wait.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, Apple has been heavily focusing lately. They pretty much dropped off the professional market (ever noticed how the switcher ads presents the PC as the "boring machine for business" and the Mac as the "fashionable machine for having fun"?). They're focusing on home user media applications with the iPod, iPhone and Apple TV, with the Mac as the hub between them -- that metaphor is a few years old already, actually.
Final Cut Pro, Motion, Logic and Shake are pretty much "also rans" right now. They're not supporting 3rd party development on the iPhone, which would be a must for power users.
I guess they've understood that they cannot beat Microsoft in the corporate environment, so they no longer even try.
Re:Why would they subject themselves to this? (Score:3, Interesting)
However, if it consumes 10% of the CPU, then some of those advantages are for naught.
As an aside:
I'd been noticing high-ish CPU utilization on my XP laptop during periods when it should be idle. I decided today to find out what the culprits were.
Sure, Google Desktop was using a bit to keep its index up-to-date and generate flashy graphics, and every now and then the drivers for the touchpad would stir things up a bit, but neither of those two were significant contributors. The real culprit turned out to be intel's wireless drivers, which were using 10% (!) of that 1.83GHz 2m-cached P3-M's potential, all for themselves. What's more is that disabling those CPU-hogging portions of the intel drivers has not in any way affected wireless performance, but has made the machine quieter, cooler, faster, and live longer on batteries. For free.
Perhaps the perceived CPU penalty with Vista is caused by needlessly bloated third-party drivers?
Re:Why would they subject themselves to this? (Score:4, Interesting)
I still fail to see how this makes sense. I think you have fallen into the trap of thinking that Linux is an operating system. It's not. Linux is the kernel. From there, you mix and match. Most distros use a GNU userland, but there are other options. Many distros use X.org, but there are other options. Some distros use GNOME. Others use KDE. Others use neither. If you think of Linux as an operating system, it's a big mess. But how can you think of something embedded in your WLAN router and something that runs your desktop with OpenGL and bells and whistles as the same OS?
Once you accept that there isn't a single Linux OS, but that there are multiple operating systems, each built on top of the Linux kernel, things will start to look very different. Now, for example, you have FREESCO, which doesn't have a GUI (I think), and Ubuntu, which uses GNOME for its GUI.
Now, back to your comment. You say:
``the key thing missing in all linux versions is a stable and always-there set of GUI tools''
Ubuntu has these, and so do many other distros.
``linux (IMO) is crippled by that lack of a standard GUI layer.''
I don't see how the fact that FREESCO does not incorporate GNOME cripples Ubuntu in any way.
Re:Why would they subject themselves to this? (Score:3, Interesting)
9% baseline cpu utilization at idle on an Athlon X2 4200+ dual core, 663 mb used by kernel out of 2 gb. This is 2 days after the initial install (indexing isn't running), with no 3rd party drivers loaded as nVidia doesn't have RTM drivers for their "vista ready" nForce 4 chipsets yet. So no sound or gigabit lan for me just yet, and no the RC1/RC2/XP drivers won't load.
Windows desktop manager (dwm.exe) is responsible for 5-6% of the load by itself, explorer.exe generally eats up 2-3% even with no windows open.
It's more usable than RC1 was in terms of feeling sluggish, but resource utilization is still pretty darned high for gaming and rendering.
Don't think Vista's going to make it off of my sandbox machine until a service pack or three make it out the door. Just a hunch.
Re:Paid customers getting the shaft? (Score:3, Interesting)