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.'"
Bender sez... (Score:5, Funny)
Blackmail is such an ugly word...
I prefer "extortion." The "X" makes it sound cool
Re:Bender sez... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Bender sez... (Score:5, Insightful)
I am erotic. You are kinky. They are perverts.
We protect. Our allies enforce. Our enemies oppress.
Government appropriates. Telecoms lobby. WiFi users steal.
It all depends on your point of view.
Re:Bender sez... (Score:5, Interesting)
The only thing it would persuade me to do is pop over to The Pirate Bay.
If I've already paid Microsoft for an operating system then I'm not going to feel the tiniest twinge of guilt about downloading the one I really wanted.
Even if I haven't paid, stuff like this doesn't generate much sympathy. I'm more likely to think that a lot of people have paid twice so all I'm doing is "dumpster diving" for the unused copies.
It will work... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It will work... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, but explain eight years of Bush to me then.
Re:It will work... (Score:5, Funny)
Smart people influence the stupid people, eh? Sorry, but explain eight years of Bush to me then.
You haven't been influenced yet? :P
Re:It will work... (Score:5, Interesting)
The main thing is that Dell now sell most of their hardware at a spec that will run Vista acceptably, as long as you make sure you spec 1 or 2GB ram, and the memory upgrade is only slightly more than the XP cross-grade.
What I still want it to be able to spec a full Linux desktop with all the hardware supported fully. Why is this still so hard for them when the commmunity has 99% of all the issues sorted already?
Re:It will work... (Score:5, Funny)
From the summary:
Wow. This many years and y'all still believe in Santa Claus?
Re:It will work... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, but explain eight years of Bush to me then.
Seems to have worked quite well. You're blaming Bush and not the smart people.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It will work... (Score:4, Interesting)
I got an Acer Aspire One a month back. The hardware that I wanted (on sale at Staples) came with pre-installed XP. I booted it up that way once to make sure that the machine worked, then deleted XP and installed Fedora 10 on it. But I suppose my purchase counted as a sale of XP and part of the price I paid for the laptop went to Microsoft, even though I haven't used any Microsoft operating systems since Windows 98 was brand new. (Tried it for a month, didn't like it, and switched to Red Hat Linux. Never looked back.)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It will work... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm tired of the "people are stupid" argument.
Become an educator.
Re:It will work... (Score:5, Insightful)
> Being the consumer sheeple they are, they're going to go with what hits their wallet the least
The Pirate Bay
Re:It will work... (Score:5, Interesting)
Nope.
Actually the number of customers asking for Xp downgrades are going up. We sell them a low cost Windows XP Pro OEM license and a mouse. they add another sticker to their computer and for less than dell we have a local computer expert who downgrades their new HP,Sony,Dell to XP for very little AND gives them a real working antivirus (Avast) and no extra crud like Dell and the others like to force on you.
In fact friday I bought 20 more copes of XP OEM to make sure we have the stock.
the prices going up will make our sales go even faster.
Re:It will work... (Score:4, Insightful)
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: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.
XP Pro is worth more (Score:5, Insightful)
They charge more for XP Pro, so it must be more valuable than Vista. I'll go with that instead.
Re:XP Pro is worth more (Score:5, Funny)
*chuckle* That card already got played. I have a screenshot of the HP page for a laptop. It has a line that says:
"Upgrade to genuine Windows Vista Ultimate for $99 ($60 value)"
I know what they mean, but I couldn't stop myself from thinking "I can't wait to run out and spend $99 on something I value at $60!"
Re:XP Pro is worth more (Score:5, Funny)
Re:XP Pro is worth more (Score:5, Funny)
If you throw a wad of paper in there while holding the Shift key, does it disappear forever?
:D
Now *THAT* would be cool to see.
Re:It will work... (Score:4, Interesting)
It won't work everywhere.
Some older friends of mine just ordered a new Dell, and they paid the extra $150 for XP. They did ask my opinion first, but I only told them that I too would pay extra to get XP over Vista if I had to run windows. They made the final decision themselves.
This wasn't some high end system either where $150 was a drop in the bucket. It total price was $900, including the XP fee.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
For everything else, including Microsoft Office, I use Linux. Any Windows software that I need runs fine under Codeweaver's Crossover Office. Even at that, I use OpenOffice almost exclusively now.
I don't understand why anyone bothers with Microsoft Windows any more. Linux is so wonderful now and does everything I need it too with the one exception of Flight Simulator. That's it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course it will work, people who can't stand the small change from XP to Vista, will not tolerate a change to Linux... the only problem for Microsoft is that they might say "screw it, instead of paying $150 for a downgrade I better get a Mac" so they might switch to Mac out of spite even though are not comfortable with the OS.
The word sheeple is abusive (Score:4, Insightful)
What's also dreadful about it is that it's an excuse for your inability to get your ideas over. You convince yourself that it's not that your ideas are wrong, or that your arguments are weak, or that your communication skills aren't up to the job. No, it's because people are sheeple, so it's not your fault.
Re:It will work... (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft's is huge! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's so huge and its hold is so strong that even the giants like Microsoft, trying their hardest to destroy it, can't succeed.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft can spray all the marketing turd polish they want on Vista but it will still stink.
Vista, with good drivers, is JUST AS GOOD AS XP.
Is it different, in a way that some are scared by? Sure. If you use XP drivers, is it worse? Yep. But Windows Vista isn't any worse than Windows XP, and if you're getting a new PC you might as well get the new OS as well.
Any turd-i-ness that Vista retains is strictly due to it being Windows.
Re:Microsoft's Turd (Score:4, Insightful)
Any turd-i-ness that Vista retains is strictly due to it being Windows.
I don't believe a Windows that runs like a dog even if you blow $1,000 on new hardware and that has been designed to allow Microsoft to de-escalate your privileges when it pleases them (turn on full DRM or apply other, stealth "updates") describes XP nearly as well as it describes Vista.
Ballmer should be on his hands and knees begging Allchin to come back. Even promise him a chair on the board, if he can find one.
Re:Microsoft's Turd (Score:5, Interesting)
Anecdotal story: I helped my brother in-law install an XP partition on his laptop, since Vista was crashing (probably hardware/driver issues on a cheap HP laptop).
His comment: "Wow, it's faster and my old games work on it!"
I'd say that unless some magic new feature (which I've yet to see) balances out the slowness and incompatibility, Vista is arguably worse.
Can you name a feature that makes Vista better than XP in a way that can't be tweaked with a registry key or some free add-on? If you say aero then I won't argue, but most sane people use their OS to run other programs, not just a shiny UI...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Microsoft's Turd (Score:4, Insightful)
The magic new feature is support.
Windows 98 did die out because it was broken, there were plenty of after market software solutions that could more then make up for any of 98's downfalls. But then companies like Avira and Mozilla go to Microsoft to get support insight and help integrating their products into Vista and all the sudden the coincidence of ending the life of the windows 98 support for a lot of the products. They same happened with windows 2000 which technically should be able to run almost everything XP could. SO your right in that XP might not be missing anything. It won't become functionally obsolete, it will just get left behind in some sort of unconcerned move every software vendor will make to newer MS products.
In other words, there will come a time when you need something and you will end up having to upgrade to get it or the free and open source products like Mozilla will just ignore the platform and no one with the skill will pick it up.
Re:Microsoft's Turd (Score:4, Insightful)
Is there really any reason to upgrade to Vista (aside from the "we're forcing you to upgrade through lack of support" nonsense)? Upgrading to XP got most (home) users onto the NT codebase, but what does upgrading to Vista really give to end users? That pretty GUI which requires 2GB ram and 3d hardware to run smoothly? Tch. I'll pass, thanks.
Part of an old culture, early PC performance curve (Score:5, Insightful)
I've personally never liked the idea of replacing a 7-year-old machine only to get the exact same (or worse) performance.
Amen. I believe this is a matter of cultural momentum. During the early days of PC adoption, you could easily forecast that hardware would become faster, memory would become plentiful, and (here's the important bit) that people would be hungry for improvement. This latter point was a crucial business driver, because there was so much unrealised potential in the PC during the early era. Can you actually write an entire book using a PC for example? You can now, but it wasn't so easy then.
When you look at today's performance and price curves, the forecasts have diverged a bit, and the business drivers will again be that strong. You can't keep adding multipliers to the resources an OS needs, because hardware capability isn't increasing logarithmically any more. And more to the point, the hunger isn't there any more. Superb capability has become a commodity, so there is little perceived need to fund improvements.
The issue with Microsoft is that -- largely due to their size -- they have been working on the assumption that people will always hunger for more, when in fact those needs have largely been met by now. If they really want to remain profitable, they should simply stop innovating, cut their team down to where their momentum is less than that of continental drift, and print copies of XP Pro to people who will still continue to insist on Windows for new computers. The rest of us would be grateful to them if they did.
Re:Part of an old culture, early PC performance cu (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:Microsoft's Turd (Score:5, Insightful)
I bought my wife a computer for Christmas for around 300 - no monitor.
She asked that I install Linux on it for her.
She wasn't home when I set it up so I decided to give vista a whirl thinking that surely it isn't as resource intensive as everyone here makes it out to be.
This was not a high end system, but a definite upgrade from her old computer. It was a 2.1GHz 64 bit Dual Core Processor with 2 gig of ram.
It was worse than I could have imagined. The only thing that was fast was the boot time but afterward everything was almost non-responsive and did not get much better after all the drivers were installed.
I ended up installing 64 bit Debian Sid withe KDE 4 from experimental.
KDE 4 is blew Vista out of the water in terms of speed. I can't compare much of the features because Vista took so damn long to do anything I finally gave up.
Re:Microsoft's Turd (Score:5, Insightful)
Uhm... Wasn't the reason people hate linux that they have to google around for fixes for things that should work out of the box, and wasn't the great part of Windows that every end user can just use the computer without having to tweak it...?
I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly, I don't know what all the resistance to Vista is all about. I've been using it everyday for the past 18 months plus, and I've never had a problem with it, and that's on what was a relatively low-end machine I bought three years ago. All my hardware works fine, it never crashes, and it's easy to use. It doesn't seem at all slow to me, either. And, yes, I also use Linux as my main computer at work. I just prefer Vista for its ease-of-use when I come home.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I installed it at home. I got a new computer with >4GB of RAM. And MS doesn't sell XP 64 anymore, so I installed Vista 64.
The UI is a ton better than XP.
Yes, it does have problems, sometimes it even burps while copying files, which is bizarre to me, since it's such a basic function.
But all in all it's pretty good, and I could hardly see going back to XP now.
Honestly, my biggest problem with Vista is that it appears MS is going to strand us Vista users and come out with Windows 7 next year with no afforda
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you quantify that? What tasks are quicker to perform? What functionality is easier to find?
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: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: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: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: (Score:3, Funny)
The UI isn't better performing or less cluttered. It's prettier. How do you quantify prettier?
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
So when you want to run zapthealiens.exe, you hit windows+escape, type in "zap" and hit enter, and it auto-executes zapregistry.exe for you. Some progress, that.
Unix has had file completion for decades now, starting with csh and "set filec". But no-one has, to my knowledge, yet been stupid enough to make an autocomplete that makes a guess and presents or executes what's most likely. The user must make a choice, and the order choices are presented in are static and won't change depending on usage. To do otherwise is sheer stupidity. It defeats motoric learning.
Re: (Score:3)
Not trying to bash you or Vista but your examples are pretty weak.
Accessing the Device Manager: On XP click the start menu, right click computer, go the the correct tab and click the "Device Manager" button. On Vista click the start menu, type "Device" and click on "Device Manager".
Not only is accessing the Device Manager not something that really needed near instant access but that your saying that one whole extra click makes the UI better is reaching.
Removing a program: On XP click the start menu, click "Control Panel" and click on "Uninstall program". On Vista click the start menu, type "Remove" and click in "Add or remove programs".
Again not something that really requires, or should have, near instant access but in addition most programs in XP put a "Uninstall program X" in their start menu folder.
Configuring Windows tasks in general: On XP find whatever obscure way to change what you want one window after the other. On Vista type what you want to do.
That Windows itself is finally giving people CLI options is good. But since your example is so vague a
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
The UI is a ton better than XP.
Yes, it does have problems, sometimes it even burps while copying files, which is bizarre to me, since it's such a basic function.
So you value the UI more highly than correct functionality during file copy? To me that says you don't do anything important with your computer. I have stuff I can't replace on my computers. My laptop dual boots with Vista and I find I fire up the Vista partition on average once every 6 months.
But XP is past its prime.
XP does everything I need and is more stable. If you call that "past its prime" give me "past its prime" every time please.
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
There used to such a think as a responsible business.
Being consumer friendly was not always considered an anti-business approach.
And while it may be the norm, it is still not an excuse.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
And you can qualify this statement with evidence? I can attest to the fact that this comment of your is patently false, and that is through extensive experience on vista using 1, 2 and 4 gigs of ram on different machines.
To put it simply: You sir, are full of shit.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Vista is brought down on its knees even when copying big files around.
I have to wonder whether this is because it is checking you aren't copying anything M$ thinks you shouldn't.
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Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't get it either. Why anyone in the consumer space would want to use XP over Vista is beyond me at this point.
At this point I have been using Vista for over a year. Anytime I have to go back and use XP it feels like an out-dated system. For one, the lack of an integrated desktop search client is a huge productivity loss. It's like using a Mac without Spotlight, who really wants to do that anymore?
Secondly, desktop composition in Vista also vastly improves the windows switcher by providing live previews of the windows instead of undescriptive application icons.
Overall I find Vista to be a huge step forward in usability over XP.
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:I don't get it (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Last year, I bought a medium level $800 Acer desktop for my aunt/uncle. I was tired of wrestling with their XP Home 500 mhz celeron. It wasn't just the slow speed, but the lack of UAC that made basic security with these two a nightmare. They wouldn't take Ubuntu because they absolutely had to have Quickbooks for the 3 invoices they wrote on it a year (I'm not joking, it's what they knew and didn't want alternatives to).
I will admit, with UAC, and putting them on non-administrative (just standard) accounts with Firefox on, Vista is much nicer than XP in this direction.
But when I got the computer, in addition to Acer's stupid and ultimately useless bloatware sucking up all the speed, Microsoft's Aero was set for maximum bling on integrated graphics. It took the computer minutes to start up. The entire time, out of the box, it sounded like it was grinding (and it was grinding to a halt with the hourglass every few minutes) as it was constantly swapping even with 2GB ram.
I stopped all that with over 15 tedious uninstalls of various components of Acer's pre-installed bloatware (why oh why can't MS have a synaptic type installer/uninstaller with multiple installs/uninstalls at once?) and stopping several services and setting all of the visual effects to minimize asides a few font/other smoothing settings. The machine felt several times faster.
But most of that is beyond the regular user. This computer, brand new, felt like a dog out of the box. Why Acer does this is beyond me, it can't look good for them. But more than that, why Microsoft lets them, will be the death of them one day. This is Apple's big win - their computers just work out of the box. And feel new and fast.
While the bloatware is not new, it's gets worse every reiteration. What is new is MS's own default settings are dragging the systems down. Not even uninstalls make it better. People have to muck with the systems.
I suppose that is part of the resistance to Vista. Security wise, and some other things (like icon/thumbnail browsing and editing - rotation) is much nicer. I like not seeing .db thumbnail files in every directory. Big win there. But the experience out of the box is abysmal.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Interesting)
When Vista was first release, I had a client that used an industry specific billing/accounting/inventory management system for the health care industry. Granted I had been working with them for about 6 months and the software vendor warned them "WILL NOT WORK IN VISTA". I kept pressuring them to buy their workstations before the switch over. They wanted to go through Dell, that was the hardware vendor the software company recommended and why rock the boat, especially since they have to deal with said vendor long term.
At any rate, I warned them that on Jan 31st they wouldn't be able to buy PC's with XP loaded from Dell. Honestly, I think they thought I was lying or making it up. This was a small business less than 10 employees who were waiting for a big public aid check to come in. (80% of their business is public aid, and they get paid it's always a matter of when). I even told them in December to put the workstation purchases on the company credit card or go to the bank and get a 180 day short term note, but just buy the workstations before the switch over.
I finished up the disaster recovery plan and all the work I had been hired for about the middle of Jan. I told them again to buy the workstations then. But long story short, I got a phone call in March saying, "We can't buy XP from DELL, so we had to buy vista and the software won't work". I was working on another project 500 miles away and answered bluntly in six words: "Don't say I didn't warn you."
The software vendor flew down some engineers and the company got the luxury of spending $16k to be the beta testers for their Vista version of the software. Apparently it was July before they had all the kinks worked out.
I heard this story repeated several times with various in house or specialty applications in the early days. Especially in small businesses where suddenly, on of their cheap office PC's broke and they had to run out and buy a replacement, and all they could find was machines with Vista that couldn't run their software. It wasn't until the summer that MS allowed the option to pre-install XP again on machines.
Today, it's not that bad, but at launch, there were some problems.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Interesting)
Anything that requires a control panel - they need a rewrite because of UAC (control panel applets can't elevate).
Anything that uses the system registry. Microsoft 'helpfully' redirect it. Ditto Program Files.
Several APIs no longer behave as they were documented in XP. This is a real git as it introduces hard to find bugs.
The one thing about porting projects is you quickly realize how buggy vista is.. You could't pay me to install it again (it's banned on the network anyway because it did something stupid to the routers).
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I never understood the resistance to New Coke [wikipedia.org]. It tasted fine to me and I drank it with no problem. But apparently many people didn't like it and complained. They wanted the old Coke. Fortunately, The Coca-Cola Company listened to their customers and gave them what they wanted. They returned to the old formula with Coke Classic and customers returned to buying their products. Nothing leads to success like listening to the customer and sel
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly, I don't know what all the resistance to Vista is all about. I've been using it everyday for the past 18 months plus, and I've never had a problem with it
The problem is your failure to understand that not everyone uses the same hardware as you and not everyone does the same things that you do on your computer.
It's the same as the developer who closes a bug report with "Works on my computer".
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
no only does that no begin to qualify as a low end machine but that would give good to great performance in any game on the market and will continue to do so for a few years.
The baseline for smooth operating system performance should be a 4 year old stock dell value consumer desktop.
Think 1+ghz celeron/duron, with 256mb ram, 64mb of which is dedicated to run the onboard intel video chipset. Probably an 80gb drive, a dvd-rom, 10/100 nic with cheap chipset.
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:4, Insightful)
Have you compared Vista to XP on the same machine? I find that's where the biggest differences are apparent. Perhaps I have an odd usage model, but I generally want Windows to get out of my way while I use applications, not watch shiny things eat my battery life and slow down background processes.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
With only difference that you will not get Ubuntu on your PC unless especially asked. And you would pay $0 for it to be installed. And thus you have no contemplations about installing some other Linux (you might like better) on it. Or even buying Windows for it.
If you do not like 8.10, you can go on using 8.04 or 7.10 or even earlier. You might be surprised how many people do not upgrade their *buntus since it works for them already.
The point of RTFA that people prefer XP to Vista, yet are forced to
Economics (Score:5, Funny)
Well, since it's an upgrade, it's only fair that people should pay more, right?
Yohoho! (Score:5, Insightful)
Merry Christmas and a bottle of rum! But seriously, combined with economic downturn, more and more people will just pirate it.
How do they rationalize it to the consumer, I'm kind of curious, given that they phrase it as a "downgrade"
Hello... I'm a PC (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't wait for the Apple ads to make fun of this. People are willing to pay extra to avoid Windows Vista.
Re:Hello... I'm a PC (Score:4, Funny)
This is how it will probably go :)
Mac: Hello, I'm a mac
PC: And I'm a PC.
Mac: So PC, I heard that people are now paying THREE TIMES more for XP then they were before, just to avoid Vista!
PC: Hold on a second Mac, I'm installing some updates and I have to reboot.
Mac: Ok..
PC: Alright be right ba-
Stop 0x0000001e (c000009a 80123f36 02000000 00000246)
Unhandled Kernel exception c000009a from 8123f26
Address 80123f36 has base at 80100000 - ntoskrnl.exe
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hello... I'm a PC (Score:5, Insightful)
Can people buy Macs with older versions of their OS?
Why would we? The issue here is that Microsoft's "progression" of operating systems is sometimes forward, sometimes backward. Apple seems to be consistently moving forward.
Re: (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.
Why so shocked (Score:5, Funny)
I believe I've seen this every year since 1994 (Score:5, Funny)
I have seen the future: Windows $NEXT_VERSION [today.com] Milestone $MOCKUP.
I tried it on a low-end laptop with four Core 2 Duo chips and only 8 gig of memory, and trust me: $NEXT_VERSION is shaping up to be one heck of a product.
WordPad and Paint have seen major overhauls to their user interfaces. Forget the freetards and their "distros" full of all sorts of useless shovelware like FireFox" and "OpenOffice" and, haha, "GIMP"! - the bundled software with Windows $NEXT_VERSION is clear, simple, sparse and to-the-point. The much-loved $HATED user interface from Office $HATED_VERSION is now part of WordPad and Paint! It'll leave $LAST_VERSION utterly in the shade.
The controversial Digital Rights Management system in $CURRENT_VERSION has been worked over, with user-downloadable "tilt bits," which you can configure to your own liking. It'll require every user to supply a blood sample for DNA analysis, and the beta nearly took my finger off, but of course that's only if you want to play premium content. The Blu-Ray(tm) of Battlefield Earth was unbelievable on this operating system.
A public beta should be released by the end of this year. There's just no way that Steve "Trains Run On Time" Ballmer will miss the Christmas deadline. The final release should leave the midnight queues on $CURRENT_VERSION release day - the street riots, the water cannons, the rubber bullets - in the shade.
I am so excited about $NEXT_VERSION of Windows. It will go beyond just solving all of the problems with $CURRENT_VERSION, it will be an entirely new paradigm. Forget about security problems, those are all fixed in $NEXT_VERSION. And they're finally ridding themselves of $ANCIENT_LEGACY_STUFF. We have to charge them more for $PREVIOUS_VERSION, to get them to understand just how cool $NEXT_VERSION will be.
Also, there'll be $DATABASE_FILESYSTEM. It'll be awesome!
I wonder how $NEXT_VERSION will compare to $NEXT_NEXT_VERSION.
bigger inconvenience. (Score:5, Funny)
This could backfire by making XP look better (Score:5, Insightful)
That's partially true. People do believe the cost of something is related to it's value. Well now MS is implying that XP is better because it costs much more to have it. The sad thing is they're probably right in that it is better.
$150 is stupid (Score:5, Interesting)
This won't really apply to home users but for corporate and office users they will not pay $150 to downgrade to XP when they can use the restore WinXP SP3 CD that came with the prior PCs. Long as the PCs have a license sticker on the machine such as Vista or higher they have the right to downgrade for free.
Dell is just milking everybody much as they can and it's wrong. Makes me wonder if this is even legal?
Why? (Score:3, Interesting)
Does Microsoft charge them more for XP? (Which would be illogical for older software).
Surely they don't prtend that it costs more to dump one image to a drive rather than another?
Costs more because of diver support? Nope, Dell don't write the drivers...
So, I'm confused as to how they can justify this.
Mind you, not surprising from a company that charges the same for a PC with Linux as it does for Vista....
holy shit (Score:4, Funny)
Monopoly (Score:3, Insightful)
This is something that can only happen when there is a monopoly involved. If there were a real and competitive environment, a vendor would not be able to do this to their customers without them choosing the competition.
It is so bad, that they aren't choosing competition, they are choosing to keep their previous product. Its pathetic.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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:Vista is really not that bad... (Score:5, Interesting)
I suspect at this point there are three problems with vista.
The first is word-of-mouth. Vista is bad because everyone says so. This started out as an informed opinion among IT people playing with Vista before SP1 and seeing that it was clearly slower then XP and with some sudden problems (like stalling of file copies and way too many UAC prompts and very few drivers). Many of those issues were fixed, but by then the informed opinion of people who know what they're talking about had been spread to people who like to think they're in the first group. These people eventually tried windows, probably poorly configured and certainly with cynical expectations, and naturally found instances of all the problems they were told about. Then, regardless of if these issues were reduced or even removed the opinion that vista was bad gets spread to the average user. They probably never try it at all, but just listen to the local guy who knows how to install things and open word without help. Basically... there were issues, and people told about these issues will continue to see them no matter how thoroughly they were fixed, because that's how expectations work.
The second issue is... the lack of obvious improvements. Ok, Vista's security model is better then XP's. It probably has some back-end improvements, and the move to 64-bit standard lays the groundwork for more theoretical improvement down the road. But does it run faster then XP? Is the user interface, to someone who's been using previous versions of windows all their life, easier to use then XP's? Is it easier to preform common tasks? No. Vista uses more resources then XP and on low-end PC's XP is way faster. Vista makes big changes to user interface, and while they're probably better for the long run, a long-time PC user will be lost when they first see Vista's UI... and may decide then and there that XP's was better. They'll try to open word, type something, and print it and find it takes twice as long on Vista. Maybe they'd eventually learn to do it faster in Vista then they did in XP, but by then they've already bought their downgrade rights and never looked back.
Finally, people are starting to get pissed off that they're being *forced* to an OS they don't want to use. Making DirectX 10 Vista only was a shitty thing to do to customers. All the talk about DRM and how they'll need all new everything from cables to televisions to watch "premium content" put people off, regardless of truth. And most of all, telling people that to use XP they'll have to buy Vista and then pay more isn't exactly endearing. People who want to use Linux have known for years how hard it is to get a standard, mass produced PC without paying for windows... and now for the first time people who want XP are finding that they can't just get an XP CD out of a bargin bin and get a computer without an OS. It's Vista or... Vista. Not even Vista or nothing.
Re:Vista is really not that bad... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you do real work with it.
Vista Test by me.
Client DEMANDED Vista. we gave it to him.
Accounting software stopped working. Upgraded to a tune of $4500.00 to make it work.
Software for the CNC machines stopped working. (reporting and program generation) no solution. Must dual boot to XP or VMWARE to XP.
Software for CAD. Stopped working (Autocad Dongle Vista Issue.) Upgrade to fix the issue $8900.00
Vista COST that company well over $20,000.00 and give them a hit on productivity.
My Personal test... video editign station. New Vista system: Editing software fails or errors a LOT. under XP on the SAME HARDWARE it has no failures.
Vendor has no workable solution other than "we are working on that"
Vista take a working computer and makes it not work for it's job.
Now, I can switch from industry standard pro video editing software to one of the crappy toys that works under vista. but then the HDMI capture card and the other analog capture cards fail to operate as they DONT HAVE VISTA DRIVERS.
Vista is great for a home PC that is not used for anything. Vista sucks when you make money on the Computer and HAVE TO have the system work no matter what.
Hence almost EVERY corporation has no plants to upgrade to Vista. Even microsoft Puppets like Comcast are not doing it.
I think it's just margin improvement for Dell (Score:5, Informative)
Want me to "upgrade" to Vista? Dump the DRM. (Score:3, Interesting)
If MS wants me to upgrade to Vista, I'll do it, once they make it an operating system suitable for general purpose computation.
That means dumping the DRM. I don't want to "take advantage" of any "premium content" on my computer in any event. If I want to, there are other ways to ensure a "premium experience" that I can do myself. I' don't mind "activation" and all that BS, but once the OS is licensed, butt out.
Bottom line: I don't trust an OS that doesn't trust me.
Re:But... (Score:5, Insightful)
> Somebody had to post it
No.
We're missing the bigger picture here (Score:3, Funny)
How much was the Mojave upgrade? It's spoken so highly of on TV by real experts. Yes sir, it sounds like MS really hit the mark with that one.
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.