Vista To XP Upgrade Triples In Price, Now $150 907
ozmanjusri writes "Dell has tripled the charge to upgrade Vista PCs to XP. Under current licensing 'downgrade' agreements, system builders can install XP Pro instead of Vista Business or Vista Ultimate; however, Dell has opted for a surcharge of $150 over the price of Vista for the older but more popular XP Professional operating system. Rob Enderle says the downgrade fees could potentially be disastrous for Microsoft: 'The fix for this should be to focus like lasers on demand generation for Vista but instead Microsoft is focusing aggressively on financial penalties," says Enderle. 'Forcing customers to go someplace they don't want to go by raising prices is a Christmas present for Apple and those that are positioning Linux on the desktop.'"
Re:One of the first posts (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know. It's not red for me. But then again I'm logged in with the "no icon" and "Slashdot Classic Discussion System" options, which makes everything seem to work 10x faster than the new defaults.
I used to use the "low-bandwidth" option too, before I realised that also cut out the polls.
Well. Merry Christmas. (Score:1, Informative)
Windows Vista-Compiz Edition [ubuntu.com]
Windows_Vista [thepiratebay.org]
Windows 2003 Ent. Corp. SWE +keygen! [thepiratebay.org]
Windows.XP.Professional.Corporate.SP3.CLEAN [thepiratebay.org]
VLK Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 SP3 [thepiratebay.org]
Windows 2000 Professional SP4 - Included Serial [thepiratebay.org]
An additional $150? (Score:3, Informative)
Vista is really not that bad... (Score:5, Informative)
... there, I said it!
I was forced to buy a new computer this summer in a hurry, and all I could get was Vista SP1. Maybe it's just that SP1 took care of the big issues that you hear about, I don't know. But it works just fine, quite responsive, stable as hell, and I haven't had a single problem with it. I turned off all the Aero crap because I just didn't care for it, not because it was a performance issue.
Mostly I'm in Ubuntu Intrepid anyway, but Vista is just the new Windows as far as I can tell - no worse than any of 'em. When I hear some of the stuff people say about Vista, I wonder what they're talking about, because it doesn't match my experience at all.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I don't get it (Score:2, Informative)
Please quantify 'never had a problem with it.' If you are an expert user, I wouldn't expect you to have a problem with it. You probably went in and turned of the UAC crap, etc., for example, when you got it. You probably knew how to tweak some of the settings and cut out unnecessary services to get better performance out of your relatively low-end machine.
I've seen Vista on relatively low-end hardware. It's slow as hell. Most common tasks like copying files and installing drivers take more than 50% longer on the same hardware without tweaks or loading additional software. I have benchmarked this, personally.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
That's why Ubuntu is growing in popularity... it's about as efficient as XP while still including all of the useful features of Vista, like integrated search and composited desktop. Boots into about 200-300MB RAM used, which is 2-3x smaller than Vista, leaving room to virtualise Windows XP for your legacy applications.
Re:Hello... I'm a PC (Score:3, Informative)
Well, one reason is because Apple consistently breaks backwards compatibility.
We had to hold off on upgrading to Leopard because QPS didn't work on it.
Bait and switch (Score:2, Informative)
The goal of the bait-and-switch is to convince some buyers to purchase the substitute good as a means of avoiding disappointment over not getting the bait, or as a way to recover sunk costs expended to try to obtain the bait.
Re:I don't get it (Score:1, Informative)
I honestly wonder how you don't get it.
Vista file I/O feels about 2-3x slower than XP. Benchmarked have pegged this at "only" 2x slower.
Do you know how bad a 100% performance drop is?! I've been using Vista for over a year now as my primary OS (was using XP before) and I can honestly say that my new 4GB Vista machine is 2x slower than my 4 year old 2GB XP machine. The CPU might be a little faster, but that doesn't really matter because file I/O cripples the machine.
Re:Hello... I'm a PC (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Informative)
Launching applications is easier and faster:
(1) press ctrl+esc to bring up start menu
(2) press N (first letter of "notepad"
(3) press O
(4) press Enter (autocompletion)
Five keystrokes, about 500ms, and way faster than navigating to it with the mouse. And similarly for launching most of the apps I use.
To navigate to a network share that I used recently
(1) ctrl+esc
(2) \ (first character of "\\herbert")
(3) \
(4) h
(5) down cursor key into the auto-completion list
(6) Enter
7 keystrokes, about 800ms.
What functionality is easier to find? -- any installed application! e.g. I know that Windows Backup is installed somewhere, but I don't know where, and I can't remember if it's called "Windows Backup" or just "Backup" or "System Backup".
(1) ctrl+esc
(2) b
(3) a (this is enough for the autocomplete list to populate)
(4) enter (to launch it)
What else is easier? Well, I judge what time to start the commute home by looking at traffic maps. On XP it involved clicking on my web-browser launch icon, clicking on the favourites menu, navigating to the bookmark that has the stuff, clicking on it, waiting 15 seconds for the page to load.
On Vista, a snippet of that webpage is sitting on my desktop in the form of a Vista Gadget. Total time required to judge traffic conditions: 300ms, the time it takes me to look at that corner of the screen and digest it.
Re:I don't get it (Score:2, Informative)
Many of us do not consider that low end. Two years is not old. I use a P-IV 2.6GHz/2Gig RAM from 2003 and it flies on XP Pro. Old? I don't think of it as old or obsolete in any way. It performs fine and does everything I throw at it. What would it become with Vista?
I'm typing this on an Asus EEE 701.... That machine is newer than yours but by your definition obsolete. For me it isn't because it does exactly as I want.
I think it's just margin improvement for Dell (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
Funny it never worked for me. Probably because I have non-english Vista. It seems to me that Vista expects me to type the "friendly name" of the app. So typing "c" or "cm" does not offer "cmd". I always have to type in all of "eventvwr", "regedit", "notepad", "write", "explorer" - the programs I use most. Finding the program by typing the executable name never works. Annoying as hell.
Another pet peeve is that explorer is lying about file and directory names. Some clever brain in MS thinks that showing "user friendly" localized name of c:\users is a good idea. Removing hidden Desktop.ini helps. Try finding that in Help.
Another thing - copying from network to \program files is a no-no as long as UAC is enabled. I'm a developer so I want to copy my own executables on test system. Doesn't matter what are the permissions, whether I'm Administrator or not, whether I copy from network to Vista or to Vista from network ...
Re:I don't get it (Score:2, Informative)
Superfetch is a huge part of the perception that Vista is a 'resource pig'. It loads your RAM with commonly accessed files when there is nothing else to do with it, in theory that ram can be cleared as soon as something you're running actually needs it so there is no performance loss in preloading.
I've been running Vista for around 18 months on a relatively inexpensive machine as well and the only complaint I have with it is that it is still far slower for gaming than XP would be.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
About 100-200ms depending on caffeine consumption minus typos. Another area where Vista is reinventing the wheel, badly. Can be made fun of like: "reinventing the wheel as a square", or "reinventing the 'wheel'" (root's group in Unix, UAC/security joke)
Re:I don't get it (Score:2, Informative)
Except in Vista, you don't have to type the whole path. Specifically, you don't have to start from the start.
For example, try launching torrent on XP this way. Typing the mu is annoying, but I can type "torr" really quickly.
Can you "run" a document you've opened recently on XP? Not that I know of. You can open it on Vista easily (like Quicksilver allows).
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
Or you could use Launchy [launchy.net].
(1) alt/win+space
(2) n (selects notepad)
(3) enter
Bookmark the network share, then
(1) alt/win+space
(2) first letter or two of bookmark name
(3) enter
windows backup
(1) alt/win+space
(2) b, maybe a
(3) enter
And it works in windows XP, Vista, and Linux(!).
Re:I don't get it (Score:1, Informative)
Can you "run" a document you've opened recently on XP? Not that I know of.
If only XP had that feature. Maybe they could call that "Recent Documents" or something...
Re:It will work... (Score:1, Informative)
>I don't understand why anyone bothers with Microsoft Windows any more. Linux is so wonderful now and does everything I need it to
Precisely. KDE4 now even has GPU-accelerated desktop graphics.
(Caveat: if you have a Nvidia card, beware of http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=115916 [nvnews.net] issue use nvidia's drivers version 180.06 and later http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=118088 [nvnews.net] )
If your graphics card has working Linux drivers, KDE4 blows any other desktop away for performance ... and bling.
> I have one copy of XP on a computer now that is only used to support Flight Simulator. ...
>with the one exception of Flight Simulator. That's it.
Try this:
http://www.flightgear.org/ [flightgear.org]
http://www.flightgear.org/Gallery-v1.0/ [flightgear.org]
Enjoy.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, it runs fine on my old machine to, the dual cpu quad core with 8gb ram... i don't see why everyone if complaining. Oh yeah, and I am a fucking moron.
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Informative)
So Vista doesn't use 1GB while sitting idle.
"It's just precaching all sorts of things in case you use them
So it is using 1GB of RAM while sitting idle
No matter what it uses the RAM for it is using it, loading it with programs that you might use at some point. If you don't use any of those cached programs then Vista is wasting RAM and cycles doing nothing that benefits the user.
Re:Microsoft's Turd (Score:2, Informative)
yeah, but, with respect, you can tweak vista in about 5 minutes (google it) and you'll get all that performance back (and in fact, vista is really quite KDE like in a lot of ways). it's not hard.
the main act of Supreme Retardation by microsfot was in selecting the default settings that vista uses. it seems maximized to piss people off. i agree you shouldn't have to tweak them out of the box. (XP also requires tweaking to get huge improvements, though not as drastic).
also, don't be mislead by vista's memory use. it's doing much smarted things with memory than XP does and does not signify sloth. google "superfetch".
I often run on a similarly spec'd machine to yours and it's absolutely fine, and benchmarks the electro-magnetic simulation software I use in the same time as XP on the machine.
Re:It will work... (Score:5, Informative)
I wondered about the legality of using a mouse as a component to buy an OEM operating system, so I did some research.
Turns out prior to August 2005, you could buy a copy of an OEM operating system with an "essential, non-peripheral component" [edbott.com] - so a mouse would not qualify, but an IEC power cable would.
The changed rules renamed the licenses "system builder" [edbott.com] and made them available to anyone building their own PC - including end users.
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Informative)
A whole bunch of older programs(and for that matter a whole bunch of newer programs) particularly games, do not run well under 64 bit, that doesn't change between Vista, XP, or Server 2008.
32 bit Vista will run nearly anything I've thrown at it, it's got the same compatibility modes as XP plus some extras.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, Vista is exactly like XP was when it first came out. It's not worth shelling out to buy a copy to upgrade your current PC unless you have a really good reason to(or are curious like I was), but it is an improvement and if you're buying a new PC that comes with a windows license anyway there is no reason(unless you really need some specific piece of software which does not work with Vista) to pay to downgrade either, and there is absolutely no reason to pay extra money(for business which isn't designed for home use, or ultimate which is quite nice but more expensive and then for the downgrade license) to avoid it.
Vista is the next Microsoft OS, it's a little bit better than the old Microsoft OS, not enough to rush out and grab it, but enough that it's fine if you end up with it. Nearly all the hardware incompatibilities are gone(and most of those were either creative thinking they can get their own way or printer manufacturers simply refusing to upgrade the drivers for their low end stuff), the copy bug wasn't a bug in the first place(or more precisely it was a bug in XP not a bug in Vista), it's not, for the most part, software incompatible(unless you're trying to run software that won't work in 64 bit in a 64 bit environment which isn't vista anyway).
Re:It will work... (Score:4, Informative)
Incorrect. A mouse did qualify. I called Microsoft about selling OEM OS's with mice pre-2005, and they OK'd it. In fact, re-read the article you linked.
It was, specifically, under essential component. The agreement at MS at the time was that since the system requirements included a mouse, it was an essential component.
This is straight from Microsoft, to me, pre-2005.
As someone who has done a few of these "upgrades" (Score:2, Informative)
The main problem with people who want to do a manual XP install on a new PC is not being prepared spec-wise before doing it. They think they can just buy any old off the shelf system and boot from an old XP disc they had from years ago and that's not the case. The first issue is SATA drives. XP doesn't natively support SATA drives from the install CD. On most Dells you can bypass this by putting the controller into compatability mode in the bios but once set if you try to revert back to native mode it will bluescreen at boot. If you know the exact SATA controller, you can slipstream the drivers into the install CD, but that requires some expertise to do. Second, peripheral drivers. It is getting harder to get drivers for lots of things (especially laptops) for XP. If a system came with Vista-64, the manufacturer may not even have have 32 bit Vista drivers. If I can get ahold of a user before they make their purchase. I'll try to tell them to buy a straight Intel system. Intel processor and chipset. For those systems the drivers are typically available from Intel or as an alternate Dell who has XP driver support for all of their Optiplex systems (which you can usually reuse the drivers for another Intel system). Lastly is the audio. New systems use the new Microsoft HD Audio bus, which is available as a hotfix, but onboard audio chipset makers like Sigmatel, Conexant, Analog Devices don't typically host audio drivers on their site, and if you load similar drivers from another manufacturer, you may find that some ports on the computer don't function or the mixer may be messed up. So I can understand Dell starting to charge more since they have to grease the wheel with the hardware manufacturers to get driver support.