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."
Bizzare? (Score:0, Insightful)
Downgrade? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I've been out of it but... (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jannem/449271968/ [flickr.com]
Wheels coming off? (Score:3, Insightful)
MS seems to have been able to push crap out in the past. The only way they got away with it was monopoly position, user lock-in, favors of the press, and the ignorance of the general public about what computers were actually capable of, at the time when MS was releasing its features.
Seven years, how many thousands of programmers, evil genius and chair-throwing asshole at the top, and it's still not ready? Perhaps modern OS development is a task so complex that traditional human organizations -- the hierarchical corporation being the most powerful to date -- can no longer tackle it. Is open-source collaboration the next big thing in societal evolution?
Re:I've been out of it but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Vic, those overglorified PC monkeys are yanking your chain. You have a number of OS choices. Fraggin' suits and their "unofficial" quotas...
As for XP being a "downgrade" from Vista, let's consider Merriam-Webster's definition of UPgrade:
Note the "for increased usefulness" part. Until Vista somehow offers a marked usefulness over XP, it's not going to be able to justify the price tags...ESPECIALLY Ultimate...
The Time Has Come (Score:5, Insightful)
I was assured by my Dell rep last week that XP will be available well into next year. I think Microsoft has a serious problem, and is finding that, at the end of the day, it is the one at the whim of the manufacturers and consumers, not the other way around.
Microsoft doesn't care enough to improve (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of my experience has been with Ubuntu. Functionally, it does most of what I need right after installation. (I'm including the basically simple Flash, Java, and codec installations that really should be included in the baseline installation.) Most users want email, Web surfing, and basic document editing, and Ubuntu delivers all of that. On its own merits, it should have roughly half the market, except that it's cheaper, too, so it should have more than that.
What's wrong with this picture? The problem is that most Linux people have a cooks-first mentality, and when a regular diner comes along with a question or any comment except for extreme praise, the standard answer translates into "Why haven't you read the cookbook yet? The answer is right there." Well, the reason they didn't read the cookbook is because they just want to eat a tasty Linux sandwich, not to become a master chef.
There's nothing wrong with the open kitchen concept--but the Linux people keep trying to force people into the kitchen. Sorry, but my time is limited, and even though I made my living as a programmer for some years, I've had enough of it--and most 'diners' want even less than that. They just want it to work and help them get their computer-related tasks done.
Of course Microsoft's cooking model is a closed and locked kitchen, with no health inspectors and a complete waiver of liability printed on the back of your receipt--and you accepted all of the terms and conditions when you sat down at the table. However at least Microsoft is interested in the diners' money, even if they don't care about poison software.
Anyway, I'd love to see Vista flop in the dirt. I want some real choices, and most of the time I'm at work I'm forced to use Windows. Freedom is about real choice, and Microsoft is dedicated to eliminating freedom, no matter what their ads say.
Limited Lifespan (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bizzare? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I've been out of it but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Windows ME again? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe in a few months Vista will be a good upgrade, who knows, but right now I can't see one feature that I want.
history (Score:4, Insightful)
In the early 90's, MS nearly blew it. MS was pooh-poohing the Internet. Windows 95 was going to ignore the Internet-- the Internet wasn't important. However, Bill Gates realized the importance of the Internet, and singlehandedly turned the company attitude around. He "got it".
This time, with Vista, MS has blown it. They've been pushing DRM. They didn't learn the right lessons from the WGA fiasco. If all that Vista's DRM did was stop a few DVDs from being viewed or CDs being ripped for the 10 seconds needed to circumvent the protection, the DRM wouldn't be a big deal. But no, DRM is so deeply embedded in Vista that it casts its shadow on everything Vista does. Vista runs slower. Vista breaks more often. Hardware capable of supporting Vista's DRM schemes is more expensive. Security concerns have been deliberately conflated, with security for users from viruses being handled with less concern than security for MS and the MAFIAA from the users. And MS insults users' intelligence with lies about _all_ the security being for their own good. It's not possible to just turn off some sort of "DRM service" and have Vista just work, because Vista really is defective by design. In exchange for putting up with all those inconveniences, people receive in return less than nothing.
This time around, MS doesn't have Bill Gates in there, getting it right. He's busy trying to save the world from diseases. Laudable, and I wish him the best. But I wish he'd put some of these charitable impulses towards making MS kinder and gentler. I don't know whether Gates would get it this time, as he did in the early 90's. But no one else of consequence at MS is getting it right, and that's scary that a behemoth like MS can make such a blindingly obvious idiotic blunder. Perhaps corporations are inherently flawed systems in this way, susceptible to bad groupthink. They may wake up before they bleed too much. Sic transit gloria MS.
Artificial How? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, yes and no (Score:5, Insightful)
I recently upgraded my computers, my windows xp game machine from a P4HT and my linux dual P3 machine both to Core 2 Duos and 2gigs of ram. The windows machine used to have 1 gig of ddr and the P3 had 512mb of that ram that failed.
Both were okay machines in their own right, I am currently playing a lot of LOTRO and the frame rates weren't too bad with pretty decent settings. The problem was lack of memory, ddr is expensive compared to ddr2 and I had all full slots.
So, with two new machines, am I experiencing what you claim? HELL NO. For one thing, bios boot time (before the OS starts loading) have dropped to mere seconds, often so fast I can't even hit del fast enough. While the machines themselves idle most of the time, they respond a lot faster when I actually want them to work.
BRING OUT THE CAR ANOLOGY
If you drive you car one hour a day at 240 miles per hour (lets keep the math simple) then you claim that a car with a top speed over 10 miles per hour is wastefull since obviously on average your car only drives 10 miles per hour in a day period.
Computer speed is not just about total capacity, it is about how fast it can do the tasks you ask it to do. If I boot my computer, I wanted to work on it NOW, every milisecond it is not ready is wasted time. If I open a document I want to work on it. Don't matter that a 10 second load time ain't that long, it is time I spend waiting.
That is the secret of why powerfull computers make for better productivity, NOT because we need them to constantly be performing heavy workloads, but because we want them to do what we want them to do quickly so we can do our work in the flow we want it too.
I remember the days when if you wanted to print a document you went and got a cup of coffee while the computer got ready, and then you went an hour later to the printer room to get your document from the pile. It worked, but your workflow was being dictated by the hardware/software. Not a good thing.
BRING OUT THE SECOND CAR ANOLOGY
Old diesels had to warmup before they could be driven. Not too much of a problem, just make it part of your getting ready routine to go outside and start the car before you actually leave. But god, those petrol cars with their instant usuable engines were handy, and we curse when we have to scape the windows when there is frost. We want the car to be ready when we want it to be ready, not when its hardware is ready.
I agree that getting a new powerfull computer and then wasting all its cycles on crap is not progress, but just because a new powerfull computer spends most of its time idling does NOT mean it is useless. Same as your car that spends most of its times doing 0 miles per hour is NOT wasting all that horse power.
Re:They are lying. (Score:1, Insightful)
There are laptops out there that will not run XP properly.
Usually it is a driver issue, such as a soundcard or whatever not working. It will work with Linux... you can go out and find other laptops with that exact same device/chipset and install the driver but it just won't work. It is almost like the device specifically detects the XP driver and refuses to work.
Buys Linux time (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Bizzare? (Score:2, Insightful)
The same should be applied to Vista. If Vista responsiveness slows because you are running poorly written programs the responsibility is ultimately that of Microsoft.
A slow program is the programmer's fault but it shouldn't make the whole system unusable.
Re:I've been out of it but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course, no one in their right mind would do.
I can work with a single monitor, rather than two. I can work with a 15 inch 800x600 screen rather than something much larger. I can work with 512mb of ram and simply deal with files thrashing out disk constantly. I can close one browser before opening the next to free up memory when testing. I can close down my text editor before opening my FTP client rather than using one integrated suite. Were I a designer as well as a developer, I could build all of my graphics in a couple of layers, always merging down, in an old version of Photoshop rather than using things like layer effects.
A more powerful machine, the latest software, etc. may not be essential to being able to brute force my way through jobs. That doesn't change the simple fact that it's nowhere near as efficient and that, dealing with those inefficiencies, I'll be tempted to cut corners on quality rather than endure whatever hardships.
Sure, there are people who disagree with that. They'll take the cheap and easy approach. Then again, there're a lot of people who call themselves web developers while hustling for $25/hr to write crappy code.
In my case, I'm a director, running a decent sized team of developers at one of the fastest growing west coast digital media agencies. My life is a constant balance of cost vs. reward. In that world, with developers whose skills merit charging a decent rate, the increase in efficiency from investing in hardware and software is absolutely merrited. The reward point isn't there for the very latest, most powerful possible hardware. It absolutely is there for running on a two to three year hardware cycle and within two cycles of various Adobe products. In a pinch, we'll pull out an old machine and a single monitor but the cost of doing so is usually so great (about a $20-50/hr billable productivity drop) that it merits a ~$2,500 hardware/software setup in one to three weeks.
So, while it's doable to use old hardware, there really is a large productivity gain to be had. If charging at true professional rates, proudly refusing to upgrade really isn't a justifiable cost saving.
Revisionism (Score:5, Insightful)
It was new kids coming in to Microsoft from college who "got it." It was the cover articles in Time and Newsweek who "got it." Microsoft only "got it" because they had no other choice. If they had followed Mr. Gates' plan, they would've missed it entirely.
Re:I've been out of it but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Non-MS Patches? (Score:3, Insightful)
They can be made to do so. (They're a monopoly, antithetical to free market economies, so they no longer deserve the freedom to run their company for their own benefit).
Re:I've been out of it but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Artificial monopoly (Score:3, Insightful)
Using proprietary software for any mission critical part of your business is reckless.
Bad quality PR (Score:3, Insightful)
(emphasis mine)
That sounds horrible. Aside from their attempt on every second word to scale back the perceived failure of Vista, they know very well what they say isn't true.
To get mammoths like DELL and Lenovo to consider a "small minority" of customers so quickly, at the potential to sell overspecced machines loaded with Vista (something they waited patiently for over 5 years), then they're not a small minority at all.
Re:how about a downgrade to ME (Score:2, Insightful)
The title really doesn't make any sense..
I was completly unaware that windows was not vista, and someone needs to let MS know, as their packaging is wrong too (it still says Windows Vista)..
Re:I've been out of it but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Grantid, we use a much newer 1.4ghz Amd Tbird (Year 2001 maybe?) for processing digital photos. The hard drive space and speed is useful for that. Also, it works fine for digital videos from cameras (video clips really), 100MB tops.
For those few users that actually do encode DVD quality/length video, measured in GB, I can see the need for more power....however I don't know any that do.
Re:Artificial monopoly (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, Hewlett Packard, Dell, Siebel, SAS, Intel, AMD, Apple, and CA will be revising their mission statements shortly.
Perhaps the most idiotic comment I have ever seen posted on Slashdot, ever.
Re:My one experience with Vista (Score:3, Insightful)
For me, Vista is completely useless, and I've had it on my laptop for the past 6 months, trying it every few weeks or so to download updates and see if it managed to not completely suck, but it still does.