PC Makers Offering a Bridge Back To XP 523
The Telegraph is reporting on efforts by PC manufacturers to give customers buying systems pre-installed with Windows Vista a much-sought way to downgrade to Windows XP. ( A few months back we discussed Microsoft's similar concession for corporate customers.) "It took took five years and $6 billion to develop, but Microsoft's Vista operating system, which was launched early this year, has been shunned by consumers — with computer manufacturers taking the bizarre step of offering downgrades to the old XP version of Windows."
typo in summary (Score:5, Funny)
Who's took? He must've been a genius to develop Vista with only $6 billion!
Re:typo in summary (Score:5, Funny)
Expensive to develop, and worthless - Nice combo (Score:2, Funny)
Why hang on to the old? (Score:5, Funny)
Anonymous Coward Sig 2.0:
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I love Microsoft! I want a job at Microsoft!
Comment summary: (Score:5, Funny)
All of the parties will provide various slightly off-topic and apocryphal anecdotes and statistics to support their position.
Yeah but (Score:5, Funny)
According to some excel functions, that's really only 3,932,100,000.
Re:Comment summary: (Score:5, Funny)
You forgot one:
People who really shouldn't have bothered with the article, let alone the thread, will complain about what other people say about it. Personally I troll all those trolls who don't troll themselves...
Re:Comment summary: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:typo in summary (Score:3, Funny)
How bad is Vista? (Score:5, Funny)
That said, even with that kind of bad PR, Vista will no doubt make headay in to the market in 1-2 years time. It took at least that long for XP to really have good market penetration.... and by that time, computers should be able to run Vista reasonably.
Good thing (Score:5, Funny)
Artificially Limited Lifespan (Score:5, Funny)
Vista is (Score:2, Funny)
Oh Lord! (Score:5, Funny)
There's even a potential bumper sticker/T-Shirt market: "Even your mom knows Vista sucks."
Man alive, if that anecdote's even remotely true, it flat-out trumps the more technically oriented reports in indicating that Redmond is in serious trouble.
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Toro
Re:Bizzare? (Score:4, Funny)
Of course. 612 seconds ought to be enough for anyone.
FIVE DAYS? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:how about a downgrade to ME (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I've been out of it but... (Score:4, Funny)
It makes good business sense for the PC manufacturers.
If they're seeing squawking clients in the valuable before-christmas season, they should do something. And if a downgrade to XP is what it takes... then so be it.
The manufacturers might be partners with miker$of when it is convenient, but a friend-coerced is a pretty fair-weather friend. I imagine that business arrangement works both ways and miker$of is under some pressure from stockholders to sell their product.
For the record to someone that mentioned a PC on which XP wouldn't run... I recently had to reload a spanky-new gateway *shudder* PC at the office. It had linux on it (which ran like a champ as a SERVER for HUNDREDS OF USERS (database, app server, web server, samba, DNS, and so on) and we were reloading it for a developer to use as as desktop. I know it will barely run Vista and make his life miserable.
XP won't run on it because Intel doesn't make (a working set of)drivers for the board's SATA controller. Not for XP. I tried Professional, Home, and even Server 2003 to make sure. Won't run. Bluescreens before you see the GUI. Tried both pre and post DRM versions (Original, SP1, and SP2 ++DRM). No XP "love". Looked on their website and they sorta support XP, but couldn't find a way to order one with that OS. (I was going to order one, clone the HD's magic partition, and take it back.)
The company didn't want to buy a PATA drive to put on a single chain with the UDMA66 DVD-ROM. I don't blame them.
I poked around both intel's and gutway's sites (which is kind of like sticking your hand in a public toilet by the way...) for an hour or two to no avail. Google-is-evil-ified the motherboard and SATA controller to see if anyone had other ideas. Lots of problems and no solutions later I ditched this idea.
Intel provides Linux support, why not XP? They have an XP driver listed, and I tried all 3 choices (which loads the same driver *sigh*), but still I get the friendly BSOD I know so well.
I won't rule out the idea that I might've missed something, but the probability is sliding fast towards nil.
I didn't have a copy of vista, and won't be having one. A glance at the side of the PC says that it is for Home Premium Two-Steps Left or some such version. Gutway doesn't do recovery CDs, putting the image on a recovery partition at the front of the disk for the client to burn. It evidently got erased before I received the PC.
as an annoying sidenote, the thing doesn't have a floppy drive, so I had to open the side of the case and connect a floppy before I could mash F6 to load a driver from floppy.
Anyway, I won't give the developer vista as he's already had the black feather pointed at him (the only one in the shop, because some of our clients downgraded to vista). He just looks pitiful when someone suggests he might be getting vista again. Everyone in the office has stopped teasing him about it because... well... it is meaner than tasering a mental patient in a wheelchair.
CE.
Re:My one experience with Vista (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Expensive to develop, and worthless - Nice comb (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Sure, NOW they offer it. (Score:3, Funny)
This offer was still around, it was just only available through Bittorrent.
Downgrades? (Score:4, Funny)
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Re:Good riddance (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I've been out of it but... (Score:3, Funny)
So the ultimate Upgrade is Win2k? I already knew that. I just wish they would release the damn 64-bit patch instead of keeping it Enterprise-only.
Re:typo in summary (Score:5, Funny)
DRM (Score:1, Funny)
Re:You keep using that word (Score:3, Funny)
Re:They are lying. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Why hang on to the old? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Vista is (Score:2, Funny)
Costco (Score:3, Funny)
Re:how about a downgrade to ME (Score:4, Funny)
I much prefer "ME2", which associates with both Windows ME and the taint of AOL.