Windows 7 Licensing a "Disaster" For XP Shops 567
snydeq writes "Enterprise licensing for Windows 7 could cause major headaches and add more cost to the Windows 7 migration effort, InfoWorld reports. Under the proposed license, businesses that purchase PCs with Windows 7 pre-installed within six months of the Oct. 23 launch date will be able to downgrade those systems to XP, and later upgrade back to Windows 7 when ready to migrate users. PCs bought after April 22, 2010, however, can only be downgraded to Vista — no help for XP-based organizations, which would be wise to wait 12 to 18 months before adopting Windows 7, so that they can test hardware and software compatibility and ensure their vendors' Windows 7 support meets their needs. XP shops that chose not to install Vista will have to either rush their migration process or spend extra to enroll in Microsoft's Software Assurance program, which allows them to install any OS version — for about $90 per year per PC."
Re:$90 per year per pc? Really? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not a big deal? (Score:2, Informative)
Win 7 Professional Upgrade license WITHOUT software assurance (With volume License) can downgrade to:
Win 95
Win 98
Win NT
Win XP Professional
Win Vista Business
Re:Downgrade then Upgrade... sigh... (Score:3, Informative)
Selling licenses is indeed easy, but consider which of these is worse...
(A) Having to provide support for customers running 1 Microsoft operating system.
(B) Having to provide support for customers running 2 Microsoft operating systems.
(C) Having to provide support for customers running 3 Microsoft operating systems.
There is your driving motivator to get customers off of older versions.
And of course, though we all like to have a giggle at Microsoft's expense, the same would likely be true of any OS or app.
Re:$90 per year per pc? Really? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Software Rental (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly. Consumers need to understand what this licensing means and why Linux, OS X, and older versions of Windows (2000-XP) are a better investment than Vista/Windows 7 licensing.
I still use W2K at home. XP is literally a patch-work and I am tired of the reboots, so I have mostly abandoned it. Vista is slow, lacks drivers, and drops support for hardware that is perfectly good in W2K-XP. Windows 7 is an improvement -- although Windows Explorer in RC1 is annoyingly slow and reason enough for me to abandon Windows 7.
Re:$90 per year per pc? Really? (Score:4, Informative)
What does the D stand for in MSDN again? That's right, Developer. Which is also the only environment that a MSDN server license is allowed to be used in.
Re:Put on the fire-retardant suit, it's flame-time (Score:1, Informative)
I have a homebrew distro of XP
....and there's your problem.
Re:$90 per year per pc? Really? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Or you know... (Score:3, Informative)
In a company environment you even install from a deployment server instead so not even a CD is needed. And often that installation is done without even touching the preinstalled OS.
But lately there have been hardware that required extra drivers to be added to the XP installation so a plain vanilla CD wouldn't work, it has to be tweaked. And if M$ gots their way the hardware manufacturers will soon drop XP supported drivers on their new hardware just to force people to go to Vista or Win 7.
Re:The power of lock-in (Score:3, Informative)
XP discontinued from April '10, Win 7 price hike (Score:2, Informative)
From April, MS will no longer sell you a copy of XP, that's the problem.
See my submission on this and the leaked Windows 7 price hike ($45-$55 for the Starter Edition, up to $40 more expensive than the XP licence for netbook machines!):
http://slashdot.org/submission/1021213/Microsoft---Windows-7-Pricing-Malfunction [slashdot.org]
Re:Put on the fire-retardant suit, it's flame-time (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is that his only alternative is to install an old version of XP and wait an eternity while it updates, then spend an age hunting around for all the drivers and then spend lots more time installing those. Imagine the pain of having to reinstall XP from an original pre-SP1 copy.
Re:Geeks Care, Users Don't (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The whole thing is silly (Score:4, Informative)
They're still trying to milk XP demand for all it's worth and more.
If MS hadn't made crap when it released vista, there wouldn't be such a fuss to upgrade to XP in the first place.
Re:Put on the fire-retardant suit, it's flame-time (Score:2, Informative)
linux installed fine, but without working sound. You killed your linux installation through attempting to update video drivers.
windows installed fine, but without working LAN drivers. I am assuming you corrected this and installed proper ATI drivers without crashing your system.
Objectively, how is your Linux experience any better than Windows?
Objectively, for linux, don't update the video drivers. You know the old routine, "doc it hurts when I move my arm like this" doc says "well, then don't move your arm like this". Other than gamers, does anyone really need 3D drivers, etc?
Objectively, for windows, you type "apt-get install madwifi-module" and 10 seconds later you're all done. No, just kidding ha ha ha, windows doesn't work like that, you get the LAN drivers working by going to the company website (assuming it's still online), selecting the english language version and/or cut and pasting all the text into the babelfish, registering your email for spam reception to get an account, watch a dozen stupid flash animations (and ads), clicking around approximately one million times, downloading the LAN drivers in some weird compressed format, installing winrar to uncompress the distribution file, run some goofy GUI program that requires a .NET install just to load a freaking LAN driver that incidentally changes your web browser homepage to some .ru bride site, adds an icon to your screen for AOL dialup, and reroutes citbank.com to some .info site, then rebooting a couple times. Err, um, wait, how am I gonna download the LAN drivers without working LAN drivers. Like layers of an onion, deeper and deeper.
Sounds like overall, the windows experience will be much worse, stay with linux.
Re:Software Rental (Score:5, Informative)
Do you have mod points right now?
If so, before actually changing any of the drop down mod boxes under the comments, go to the bottom of the page and click the "Moderate" button.
I don't know why it works, but it does.
I'm unitron (5733). Had to log out to make this comment without undoing some mods I made.
Re:Microsoft seeking a patent... (Score:3, Informative)
Your comment is timely because my girl friend (I know, I must be lying) just came to me yesterday and started bitching about how much she hates Office 2007 and how doing common tasks has been completely changed. First she started ranting about not being able to do a simple undo, and was only able to undo after her co-worker told her about Ctrl+Z (she never found the menu command for undo). Then she went on a long tirade about how now instead of going to the file menu, she has to use the "Disk icon".
She is what I consider a fairly average computer user. She uses Word, Excel and Powerpoint to do everything from bid quotes, to standard office paperwork, to presentations for the staff. Microsoft trotted out the "ribbon" with a campaign about how it is supposed to be more intuitive. Outside of Microsoft marketing, I haven't heard a single user in the real world do anything but complain about how jacked the "new, improved" interface is.
Re:Software Rental (Score:4, Informative)
On the other hand, if you don't have mod points, go up to the top of the comments where there are three drop down menu boxes for threshold and 2 other things and two buttons--reply and change--and without changing anything, click the change button.
Don't know why that works , either, but it seems to.
Thanks for forcing me to find a fix for something that's been driving me nuts for a couple of weeks now.
I'm still unitron (5733), still avoiding undoing mods.
Re:Software Rental (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Put on the fire-retardant suit, it's flame-time (Score:3, Informative)
If it's anything like my machine, the RC for Win7 installed fine, and grabbed drivers for what it needed during install.
Installed on my desktop, took less than an hour to be on the internet. Installed on my laptop, took a bit longer, since it's not as powerful, but still, didn't need to modify or get anything manually.
Re:Software Rental (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Downgrade then Upgrade... sigh... (Score:3, Informative)
Remember that, in the consumer and small-to-medium-sized business market, Microsoft doesn't provide any end-user support beyond patches; it's the manufacturers' responsibility. I'm sure Dell isn't thrilled about supporting WinXP for years to come, but I'd bet that if they could just keep rolling out XP machines to the customers that want them, they'd be happy to continue to support them. OEMs can't be happy about having to dodge all these obstacles Microsoft puts in their way either.
Re:Software Rental (Score:1, Informative)
Looks fine if you browse while logged out.
Re:Microsoft seeking a patent... (Score:4, Informative)
The undo icon is on the "quickbar" which is in the titlebar, and always visible. It's right next to the save icon. It is weird, though it's the only place undo and redo buttons exist.
And what is the functional difference between the File menu and the Office menu?
Re:Software Rental (Score:3, Informative)
|http://c.fsdn.com/sd/cs_sic_controls_new.png?*
Adblock. De-borking the internet so lazy admins don't have to.
Re:Microsoft seeking a patent... (Score:2, Informative)
Ummmm....I don't use Office enough to actually create custom task bars. I just looked and the "Undo" command is right under the ribbon. Next to Redo and (The other thing that seems to be a sticking point) a save button.
I think a lot of the complaining about the ribbon has a lot to do with people not liking anything to be different at all....not it having a lack of usability.