$50 to Get XP On a New Dell

CWmike writes "Dell will charge customers up to $50 for factory-installed Windows XP on some PCs after Wednesday, according to the company's Web site. Buyers of the low-priced Vostro line of desktops and notebooks will pay $20 to $50 more for Windows XP Professional installed as a 'downgrade' from Windows Vista Business or Vista Ultimate than they would for Vista only."

Downgrade?

[sconeu]

If it's a "Downgrade", shouldn't it be *CHEAPER*?????

Re:$50 for assurance of less headache ?

[tepples]

Then how much would you pay for Ubuntu, which causes even fewer headaches than Windows XP as long as GNU/Linux supports your hardware?

Wasting money

[Recovering Hater]

Look, I know xp is what everyone wants, but it should be obvious that the days are numbered for this OS.

Or...

[oodaloop]

you could just get Ubuntu from Dell. Hell, I'd take one of their DOS machines before buying Vista.

Re:Downgrade?

[indifferent children]

XP is smaller, faster, less buggy, and doesn't come encumbered with a ton of DRM crap. How is that a "downgrade"?

Re:$50 for assurance of less headache ?

[KiltedKnight]

Then how much would you pay for Ubuntu, which causes even fewer headaches than Windows XP as long as GNU/Linux supports your hardware?

Why, nothing of course. :)

other side of the coin

[night_flyer]

As opposed to buying a copy of XP from someone else for $150?

Re:It's like divorce

[memojuez]

It's a pretty sad statement about a product when people are willing to pay MORE not to use it.

Forget about Apple Mr. Gates, you're doing a good job of self-destructing.

Better idea:

[Penguinisto]

How much would they add as a surcharge to ship any model I choose WITHOUT a Microsoft operating system on it?

As in: "...can you just send me the laptop with nothing at all installed on the hard disk? I intend to install (Ubuntu/Fedora/OpenSuSE) on it. No, I really don't want anything in the way of tech support outside of parts and labor."

/P

Labor ain't free

[RingDev]

The HD's are likely all imaged with a single Vista image. In order to mass market XP, they will likely have to re-tool slightly to continue producing XP imaged drives in addition to Vista imaged drives. It's not much, but it does add to the labor, and while $50 is a bit steep, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the combination of tooling, labor, and licensing adds up to close to that amount.

-Rick

Re:no problem

[loafula]

$500 - $1500 is the price you pay for a PC that actually runs. An additional $20 on top of that is BS.

Re:$50 for assurance of less headache ?

[Penguinisto]

Then how much would you pay for Ubuntu, which causes even fewer headaches than Windows XP as long as GNU/Linux supports your hardware?

...as much free tech support for it (Ubuntu, or any Linux distro, really) as my friends and relatives can stand.

...time and effort in teaching others (including random strangers) how to use it if they ask.

...time and effort in explaining in detail how I manage to get neat stuff to happen on it (e.g. getting the Windows version of the 3D app Poser to work in OpenSuSE).

...any and all code modifications that I make to customize and/or bugfix any open-source component of it - even if I don't distribute the binaries or project source code myself.

(there are many more ways, but yeah - it's worth paying-back that way, if not in other ways as well).

/P

Re:Wasting money

[Anonymous Coward]

Respectfully, you speak like someone who isn't in business and doesn't have to worry about budgets, productivity, downtime, etc. I've only started my career and my charge-out rate is $125/hr. After paying my salary, my employer makes nearly $90/hr from an hour of my productive time.

Whether you look at from the point of view of clients having to pay us to fix their constant vista related bugs or the productivity my boss would lose if I was offline for even a half hour on a vista related issue, $50 is a bargain.

I've spent 4 hours in the last 3 months fixing issues on my parents computer, including a complete reinstall because the damn thing would not boot up anymore. That's too much. The value of time is something that people vastly underestimate. $50 XP downgrades will pay for itself ten times over.

Microsoft Monopoly

[mlwmohawk]

Yet again we see proof that Microsoft has a monopoly. If there were real competition in the market, people would not be forced to bend over and pay more. There would be competition, Dell would have to offer it at the same price or another operating system would win.

Also, if there were competition, Microsoft would not have the economic ability to decide to drop a product that people wanted and force them into something they didn't. If I was a share holder and there was actual competition in the market place, I'd have the board and CEO fired for failing their fiduciary responsibilities.

But since they have a monopoly, there is no economic feedback.

Re:$50 for assurance of less headache ?

[L33THa0R69]

Then how much would you pay for Ubuntu, which causes even fewer headaches than Windows XP as long as GNU/Linux supports your hardware?

You mean, how much would you pay for Ubantu, which causes even fewer headaches than Windows XP as long as it doesn't cause any headaches?

Re:It's like divorce

[CastrTroy]

It's only sad because MS spent 5+ years working on Vista, and now people want to pay not to use it. It's not sad in the more general sense, that people want to pay more to use a better product.

Re:Wasting money

[The Warlock]

Vista is not nearly as bad (and for that matter XP is not nearly as good) as the Slashdot echo chamber makes it out to be. We had the same type and level of whining when switching from 2000 to XP, or from 98SE to 2000. Anyone here want to go back to either of those two?

Re:Labor ain't free

[zappepcs]

The costs that you spoke of have already been paid for. It's part of the taking Vista on as a new product process. The hardware/factory space etc. required is the same for both Vista and XP. Since OEMs are not producing imaged HDs 24/7, building 2 different but equally supported (in the factory) systems is neither more difficult or more expensive than doing just one. They have to support how many versions of Vista? They supported all those versions of Vista while they were still supporting versions of XP but now the price is increased?

There is far more to this than manufacturing costs.

Re:It's like divorce

[Trigun]

Plus it doesn't bitch at you every time that you want to do something even remotely dangerous.

It's not a wife, it's a Jewish mother.

Staying with Windows 2000

[Animats]

I'm still running Windows 2000 on the last Windows machine. It's so drama-free. No pushed updates, no annoying popups from Microsoft, no crashes in years.

You run Windows 2000. XP is tied to the mothership in Redmond. With Vista, Microsoft runs you.

Re:It's like divorce

[BigJClark]

This is because of the requirement of having a fscking graphics card to run an OS.

Historically, its been the other way around :/

Re:Staying with Windows 2000

[Creepy Crawler]

The only problem to run Win2k is on a laptop with Wifi. There's no coherent Wifi subsystem to do what one can do in WinXP. XP's system pales in comparison to Ubuntu though. Nothing can beat iwconfig/ifconfig/iptables combo... except for pf.

If one has a Linux-liked wifi card, switch to Ubuntu. Its worth the trouble.

Re:Wasting money

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer Linux to Windoze and I use Ubuntu as well as Red Hat Enterprise on daily basis, but...

I agree 100%. I have no problem with Vista, and I would take it over XP any day. Compatibility issues aside (and let's be honest here, this won't affect 99% of users at this point). It's INFINITELY more secure than XP.

Re:It's like divorce

[V_Pundit]

Absolutely right. $50 is a small price to pay to upgrade back to XP.

5+ Years

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

I think this is a big part of the problem. When you have that kind of time line, the project loses focus. Remember all of the things that were supposed to be in Vista but were dropped along the way? There never seemed to be a clear vision of what it was supposed to be. It doesn't have to be that way. NASA certainly has shown that long term projects can have spectacular results.

Re:A respectable number

[Jasonjk74]

And most of those games are still on an Atari 7800 level in 2008. And before I'm told that I don't understand Linux/FOSS; I use Linux every day, but the Linux gaming situation is pitiful. Now, I'll expect one of the following responses from someone here: 1. "But it runs World of Warcraft (in Wine)!" 2. "Linux users aren't worried about games, buy an XBox 360. Lack of games is a feature of Linux!"

Re:Wasting money

[Rogerborg]

We had the same type and level of whining when switching from 2000 to XP, or from 98SE to 2000. Anyone here want to go back to either of those two?

"go back"? I'm still waiting for a compelling reason to upgrade from 2K to XP. Seriously.

Re:It's like divorce

[Peet42]

It's not sad in the more general sense, that people want to pay more to use a better product.

Indeed, but for my $50 I would rather have a properly supported version of Windows 2000. It's all been downhill since there.

tooling/labor/licensing costs... what???

[JonTurner]

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the combination of tooling, labor, and licensing adds up to close to that amount.

Because, as we all know, this is the first time they have ever sold Windows XP and they have to create the entire install and assembly process from scratch and re-engineer their business process to support this extremely rare special case...

Yes, that was sarcasm.

Re:Wasting money

[Rogerborg]

So, the advice from Microsoft is to allow Vista to just automatically escalate your privileges?

Sigh.

I actually like UAC, and I'd recommend that most users just leave it on and suck up the increasingly infrequent nags. Perhaps it's a motorcycling thing; you give a final look over your shoulder before every maneuver, even though 99% of the time there's nothing there. It's the 1% that's going to kill you.

Re:Wasting money

[Koiu Lpoi]

Sure we did, but there were people on both sides of the fence, and the other side always had at least some reasons to switch. All I ever hear about Vista is "it's not as bad as people say", never "it's good because of X Y Z". Maybe I'm just getting old, but I remember people talking about 2k and saying how it never bluescreened and drivers were more compatible, but others said 98se was faster and better. Today, I hear that XP is faster, better, more usable, and easier, while vista is "not that bad". Seems a little different to me.

And just for the record, I use Vista on a daily basis on my computer, and have no problems. It is "not that bad", but it certainly is "not that good" either.

Re:It's Twitter, Slashdot Duped Again!

[eln]

Who cares who posted it, it's a legitimate news story from a fairly reliable source (computer world). This story is of interest to the tech world in general.

And no, I'm not a twitter sock puppet, and I generally think he's kind of over the top, but this article looks like a pretty straightforward summary of the article it links to. This particular piece is not in any way "hysterical FUD." Do you add anyone who responds to twitter's posts or reads his journal to his list of sock puppets?

I want to see how they plan on downgrading...

[Khyber]

Considering NVIDIA is too lazy to put in a simple entry in their driver's .INF file so their newer mobile cards would work in XP [slashdot.org] I want to see how many of the newer model laptops could POSSIBLY downgrade without doing what I had to do - hack the .INF and get the deviceid in there so XP would see the hardware (8600M GS).

Seriously, people at NVIDIA must be REALLY LAZY to not include one line of code into an .INF file so their card would work under XP (since they ARE using a unified driver architecture and all for the very purpose of keeping things compatible across the board)

Re:Hello! You get both operating systems.

[Just Some Guy]

Look folks, the reason for the extra $50 is simple. You get both Vista AND XP.

For probably 90% of the people paying extra to get XP, that's functionally identical to getting only XP.

Re:Hello! You get both operating systems.

[MrMacman2u]

Soooo... two pieces of crap for the price of one?

Re:Hello! You get both operating systems.

[NiceGeek]

If you refuse to take Vista do you get the $50 back? No? Then people are still paying $50 to avoid using Vista.

Re:tooling/labor/licensing costs... what???

[RingDev]

I appreciate your sarcasm, but have you ever run a low overhead high efficiency production line?

If you have exactly the right amount of resources to distribute Vista as per your current plan, where are you going to get the resources to distribute XP? Sure, maybe it's 1 extra man-hour a day to get the installs done, or to swap bins and output trays for pre-loaded XP hard drives. But that's 1 hour of labor that you have to pay for only because you are offering XP. 1 hour could be $20 payment for a union factory worker with seniority. Figure another $10 in taxes, SS, UE, etc on top of that, $4 to the health care plan, and another $1 to the retirement plan. You've just paid an extra $35 for 1 hour of labor.

Now you also need to update your sales catalog to reflect the new availability and pricing.

Update you web site to include the configuration option.

Update your marketing material to let consumers know they have the choice.

Update your support documentation so that your Tier 1 script readers know to ask "Do you have Windows XP or Vista?"

Duplicate your warehouse and distribution organization to handle identical models of PCs and laptops with both OS's.

Continuously review production and sales data to determine if you need to increase, decrease, or suspend production of XP PC/Laptops.

etc...

And, if what another commenter has mentioned is true, about Dell no longer having distribution rights to XP to allow them to use pre-loaded HD's, you are looking at having to pay the labor to have each and every laptop loaded manually.

So yeah, it costs a bit extra for them to offer it. Could part of the $50 be due to MS trying to push them away from the selling it? Likely. Could some of the $50 be due to Dell trying to dissuade people from buying it? Also likely. But to claim that running extra product varieties on an existing production line will not increase production costs is just short sighted.

-Rick

Re:Hello! You get both operating systems.

[hansamurai]

Yes, but Microsoft gets to say they sold a copy of Vista too, padding their sales charts.

Re:It's like divorce

[bigstrat2003]

It's a pretty sad statement about a product when people are willing to pay MORE not to use it.

More like a pretty sad statement about people's susceptibility to FUD about a product. The vast majority of Vista hate I hear is FUD.

Re:It's like divorce

[mrchaotica]

"Activation." (I.e., having to beg somebody for permission to use your own property.)

Re:5+ Years

[timeOday]

It doesn't have to be that way. NASA certainly has shown that long term projects can have spectacular results.

Linux has shown that OS development doesn't have to be phased in huge long-term projects in the first place. The kernel changes continuously, often supporting both the current "best" way of doing something as well as the previous "deprecated" interface that will disappear after a few years.

Now, you could say "you can't leap a chasm two inches at a time," but where is the great leap forward with Vista?

Two for the Price of Two

[TheNinjaroach]

It's actually two pieces of crap for the price of two. The Vista OEM license is bundled in with the price of the hardware, and you pay extra for the backwards-compatible XP license.

Re:5+ Years

[TimothyDavis]

Do you also remember Microsoft dropping work on Vista to heavily invest in XP.SP2? Do you remember the significant changes that went into security training and code analysis to finally work on securing Windows?

The ship took a massive course change during the product cycle for Vista - which changed what the priorities were for the final release. This should not be overlooked.

Don't get me wrong, the Vista that did ship was a huge piece of junk - but SP1 has fixed many of the significant problems people faced. Now if they would just work on the fit and finish, and the bloat, it would be a good OS.

As for Dell charging more for XP, you *do* realize that it costs Dell money to test and support this OS on their hardware, right? Many of the device driver models changed between XP and Vista - much of this was to sandbox drivers or move them out of the kernel. This is a good thing.

At this point the demand for XP has dropped to a minority share - so why *not* pass the cost to the folks who are generating it? Do you think that you can reasonably request Dell put Win98SE on your machine for no extra charge?

Re:It's like divorce

[Kjella]

WinME is just the wierdest release Microsoft ever did, only one year after 98SE and a year before XP Home, both technically and marketwise. In retrospect I think it was the Golgafrincham B Ark of Microsoft developers, where all the good brainpower was transferred to the 2k/XP line while those too incompetent to bring on and yet not incompetent enough to outright fire were left on the 98/ME line. The bean counters wanted some ROI so instead of releasing a service pack to 98 and so WinME came to be. I don't think Vista can be described in much the same way.

That said, many people would use XP because it's XP and for no other reason. It has all the buttons in the right places and works exactly the same as it's "supposed to" work. Let others figure out the funny stuff for you, then you migrate when you need to. I migrated from 2000 SP4 to XP SP2, now I run XP in a virtualbox under Linux but maybe someday I'll upgrade to a Vista version too. Not today though, not tomorrow either.

Re:It's like divorce

[tattood]

Of course DirectX runs on XBOXes... They're made by Microsoft! Do you see DirectX running on OSX or Playstation or Wii?

Re:It's like divorce

[DrVomact]

I'm curious: what makes XP "downhill" from 2000? Because I used both, and XP feels like a cleaner version of 2000 (once you turn off theming, anyway).

So you judge an OS by the quality of its GUI? By that measure, I'd say Win 2000 wins (the two OSs pretty well come out even on every other measure). XP definitely had a far more irritating GUI than Win 2000. I don't remember what "theming" is, but I remember having to:

• Turn off balloon "help"
• Turn off "notifications" (balloons that nag you from the task bar (I think that required a reg edit)
• Reverting to Windows "classic"
  • folders
  • windows
  • menus
• Turning off the wonderful "firewall"
• Telling XP not to hide "inactive" icons in the tool bar.
• Generally finding every option that tells XP to STFU

Only time I ever found a reason to prefer XP over 2000 was when I was messing with wireless, and learned that it was a pain to support anything better than WEP encryption on 2000 (something MS could have easily done in a patch). Only reason I've been paying for XP these days is that it will be supported with fixes for all those security holes longer than 2000.

How about a better deal?

[cayenne8]

How about an even better deal.

Dell sells you the box without any software or OS installed, and takes $50 off the price?

Re:It's like divorce

[TheNetAvenger]

The fact is that DirectX runs in other environments, like Xbox and Xbox360. If all you're doing is gaming, then you shouldn't be surprised if your box is 'rock solid.'


1) Environments would not be the correct term.
2) XBox and XBox360 both run Windows- XBox is Win2K, XBox360 is XP x64.

This whole thread is based on the premise that Windows crashes, and reliability studies continue to show that since Win2k and XP, crashes are as rare on Windows as they are on any other OS. Vista so far is reporting to be even more stable than any OS, which is a bit surprising.

Windows stability issues is an old tale that needs to finally stop. People stopped bitching about Apple OS 9 when it was replaced with OS X, yet people still make fun of Windows based on the Win9x era.

Windows users don't see crashes, this is not the Win9x kernel era, the 'Windows crashes all the time' myth crap needs to stop once and for all...

Re:It's like divorce

[mrchaotica]

Right. And my point was the contrapositive: since it is really my property, then I shouldn't have to beg someone else's permission to use! That's why XP is intolerable compared to 2000.