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Windows Operating Systems Software The Almighty Buck

Windows 7 Licensing a "Disaster" For XP Shops 567

Posted by kdawson from the punished-for-cautious-waiting dept.
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."
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Windows 7 Licensing a "Disaster" For XP Shops More

Windows 7 Licensing a "Disaster" For XP Shops

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  • Or you know... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Darkinspiration ( 901976 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @02:25PM (#28352073)
    Most shop will just ignore this little twist and downgrade to xp anyway. No sane admin will run a mix of os on user workstations if he can prevent it.

      • Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)

        by iamhassi ( 659463 )
        "Vista 7 is made from chilli [bbspot.com]."

        ahhh... if only that was a real commercial! I'd try OpenBSD just for that commercial.

      • The whole thing is silly (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Gay for Linux ( 942545 ) * on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @02:58PM (#28352579)
        From TFA: "Web apps tuned to Internet Explorer 6, which Microsoft has essentially orphaned. Windows 7 will ship with IE8, which has a compatibility mode for IE7, but not for IE6. And if IT retains IE7 in Windows 7, Silver notes that IE7 lacks an IE6 compatibility mode. So IT must rework its IE6-dependent Web apps or use XP mode to run IE6. Both are hassles."

        When Apple releases a new OS and says it's not compatible with the old, there's a huge line to suck Steve Jobs' dick. "Support of legacy software has made Windows a bloated piece of shit. Apple's so smart."

        When Microsoft makes a similar change people whine about all the hassles they'll have to go through.

        • Re:The whole thing is silly (Score:4, Funny)

          by sexconker ( 1179573 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @03:04PM (#28352679)

          Even though you're gay for linux, you seem to be able to see /. for what it is.

        • Re:The whole thing is silly (Score:5, Insightful)

          by kannibal_klown ( 531544 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @03:14PM (#28352803)

          When Apple releases a new OS and says it's not compatible with the old, there's a huge line to suck Steve Jobs' ****. "Support of legacy software has made Windows a bloated piece of shit. Apple's so smart."

          When Microsoft makes a similar change people whine about all the hassles they'll have to go through.

          As a personal user I wouldn't mind if Microsoft decided to pull an Apple and cut off support for all of their legacy stuff. I don't really use much legacy software anymore, and am just about done with PC gaming. If it would streamline the OS and remove some bugs, I'm all for it and would applaud them instead of criticize.

          However I can see why businesses aren't happy: many rely on old custom legacy systems. They have websites setup for IE 6, rely on legacy era (ie DOS) applications for obscure equipment, some Sales admin/entry software that can only work on certain environments, etc. And hardware, they don't just have to worry about workstations but external devices (like scales, sensors, lab equipment, etc) that might only work with a DOS-based program through an old COM port.

          In short, businesses have a LOT of specialized software that they need to keep running and cannot replace and thus want things to stay status-quo, and I can't really blame them. If upgrading their PCs and OS means spending hundreds of thousands (if not millions) on new software and hardware, you can imagine that they'd like to sit just where they are.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by pHus10n ( 1443071 )
            That's what kills me about the legacy apps people always bring up. Why do ---I--- need legacy code for your disgustingly old database software (or insert another example)? I don't! Rebuild the operating system from the ground up, and let legacy users stay on that software. For the rest of us that need a modern system, bring out Windows Awesome or we'll just continue looking for other options.

            • Re:The whole thing is silly (Score:5, Insightful)

              by gbjbaanb ( 229885 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @05:04PM (#28354383)

              because nobody really cares about you. You don't buy a copy of Windows on Select agreement, or Software Assurance - ie you don't pay Stevie every year to run the same software, or in the case where you get tp upgrade to the latest version, *have* to upgrade whether you want to or not.

              See, you don't want to run anything but the latest stuff, but you don't spend like those companies do, and they;re the ones who buy the "enterprise" software that still needs XP, or NT4, or DOS. Selling to you is just a sideline to Microsoft's real business.

              And last I looked, you weren't the marketplace for Biztalk, Exchange and all the other Really Expensive server software MS gets to sell to the companies that pay for Windows on their yearly licences.

        • Re:The whole thing is silly (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Sj0 ( 472011 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @03:34PM (#28353161) Journal

          Yeah, The Internet is a fucking hypocrite. It's almost like it's an amalgamation of a huge number of people with a huge number of differing opinions instead of a single entity. Doesn't it know it must be internally consistent, ideologically!?

          • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

            by Chris Burke ( 6130 )

            Yeah, The Internet is a fucking hypocrite. It's almost like it's an amalgamation of a huge number of people with a huge number of differing opinions instead of a single entity. Doesn't it know it must be internally consistent, ideologically!?

            Geeze. The Internet is also pretty sarcastic.

          • Re:The whole thing is silly (Score:5, Funny)

            by ring-eldest ( 866342 ) <ring_eldest@NOSPAM.hotmail.com> on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @05:18PM (#28354535)
            Strangely enough, the internet is pretty consistent, you're just measuring the wrong thing and calling it signal. The internet says, loud and clear,

            99% PORN

            1% Mindless rambling about other crap while waiting for porn to download.

            The internet is a steadfast brick wall of consistency. Or perhaps a hard, throbbing rod of consistency.

    • Re:Or you know... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by eln ( 21727 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @02:37PM (#28352273)
      I really don't get it...how will Microsoft even know you downgraded to XP if you just boot the machine up for the first time using a WinXP install CD, and then later reinstall Windows 7 with the OS disk (you do insist on OS install disks being shipped with your new PCs, right?) at a later date? They would only be activating the Windows 7 installation one time, and MS would likely never know or care.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

        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.

      • wga?

    • I wonder if you are trading a risky-sounding strategy that is actually better for a less risky-sounding strategy that is worse.

    • Re:Or you know... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by $RANDOMLUSER ( 804576 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @02:50PM (#28352483)
      Why does the phrase "Lost Generation" keep coming to mind? Microsoft is setting themselves up to fail (again). Skip over Vista, skip over Win 7.0, eventually the learning curve from jumping from XP to Win 7 SP1 becomes no worse than jumping from XP to Ubuntu. Me, I swore that Win2K would be my last Microsoft OS, and it was. I'll dabble with supporting friends and relatives XP machines, because it's similar enough to 2K. I tried to configure a cow-orkers laptop a few times, now I just routinely refuse.

    • 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]

      • Most businesses have volume license XP keys. They do not buy XP at all. Well, they sort of do pay. They pay a yearly subscription to use those volume keys. Will all those XP keys stop working? Maybe. If microsoft does that, they will be inviting those companies to go to an OS other then one from microsoft. I think those enterprise volume keys will still work.

    • Re:Or you know... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by RichardJenkins ( 1362463 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @03:05PM (#28352693)

      Yep. I don't want to switch to Windows 7. XP works just fine for Office apps, Firefox, Adobe reader, winzip a couple of proprietary apps and....that's it. The Devil's biggest trick was convincing the world that OS's need to be regularly upgraded to something very very different.

      Would be happy to pay a reasonable sum for patches (done properly mind you, no larking about until Tuesday to get critical vulnerabilities out of the way), but having to either accept the costs of a mixed OS environment, or a large migration project for no benefit whatsoever, or pay extra for an old OS which is *still* supported really pisses me the fuck off.

      Sigh, I guess this is the price we all pay for being reliant on a company which I suspect is past it's peak.

      (On the subject of things that piss me the fuck off, I also hate it when you have to make an effort to decode marketing spiel to work out what a product does - I'm looking at you, VMWare.)

      • Re:Or you know... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Zarel ( 900479 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @04:11PM (#28353727)

        Sigh, I guess this is the price we all pay for being reliant on a company which I suspect is past it's peak.

        What?

        Microsoft is doing exactly what any other software company in their position has done, and would do. You have GenericSoftware 3.0. Then, GenericSoftware 4.0 is released. You either you have to deal with a mixed software environment, or you have to upgrade everyone to GenericSoftware 4.0. How is what Microsoft's doing different from what every other company is doing?

        And don't tell me open-source doesn't have this problem. Windows XP was released in 2001. If you asked for support and patches for, say, Mozilla Phoenix 0.3 (released 2002), you'd get laughed out of pretty much everywhere. And if you actually cared about using open-source, you'd be using Linux and you wouldn't have this problem in the first place.

        And it's not compatibility, either: Windows 7 is coming with Windows XP Mode, which will give you all the IE6 you'll need for your buggy ActiveX webapps.

        So tell me: What's wrong with what Microsoft is doing with Windows XP?

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by geekoid ( 135745 )

          "If you asked for support and patches for, say, Mozilla Phoenix 0.3 (released 2002), you'd get laughed out of pretty much everywhere"

          or more likely be pointed to the repository where you can get it, for free. Oh, and if you need a specific patch and could move to the newest branch, you could hire someone to patch it. I can't think of a situation where that could possible happen, but if it did you have options.

          MS is different because of HOW they are doing it.

          XP mode doesn't run everything that well, yet.

          Will

  • More good will and love from Microsoft. Unfortunatly, for most of these "shops", Linux is not an option, as they are too entrenched with Ballmer and crew.

  • The power of lock-in (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Nerdposeur ( 910128 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @02:27PM (#28352107) Journal
    And yet, somehow I fear that even this will not usher in The Year of Linux on the Desktop.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by superdana ( 1211758 )
      Windows is far from the only obstacle keeping Linux off the desktop.

      • Re:The power of lock-in (Score:5, Funny)

        by theheadlessrabbit ( 1022587 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @05:13PM (#28354487) Homepage Journal

        Windows is far from the only obstacle keeping Linux off the desktop.

        Blasphemer!
        Linux is perfect, it is totally ready for the desktop.

        I want to tell you all the reasons why linux is perfect, but I'm going to have to keep this brief, since I'm still recovering from a kernal update that went horribly wrong. but once I get my wifi working again, I can fix my no sound in flash issues. Hopefully, that wont break my DVD playback abilities this time, which i finally got to work, despite the screen saver still popping up after being turned off...

        but, once I get all that out of the way, you can expect a long list of reasons why linux is indeed ready for the desktop.

        • Re:The power of lock-in (Score:4, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @05:42PM (#28354755)

          Blasphemer!
          Windows is perfect, it is totally ready for the desktop.

          I want to tell you all the reasons why windows is perfect, but I'm going to have to keep this brief, since I'm still recovering from a windows update that went horribly wrong. but once I track down the update failed error code I can start re-adding my printer and network definitions, then I can start looking at cleaning out my corrupted registry and removing these visues I keep getting. Hopefully, that wont break my DVD playback abilities this time, which i finally got to work, despite the screen saver still popping up after being turned off...

          but, once I get all that out of the way, you can expect a long list of reasons why windows is indeed ready for the desktop, unlike linux, which has no END of problems!

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by maugle ( 1369813 )
      If we ever hit the magical Year of the Linux Desktop, where ordinary users suddenly switch to Linux in droves, it'll be due to Linux's strengths, not Microsoft's mistakes. Proclaiming that the Linux Revolution is upon us every time Microsoft slips up will only make you look silly.

      On a side note, the year of the Linux desktop was about 3 years ago for me.

  • Downgrade then Upgrade... sigh... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by decipher_saint ( 72686 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @02:29PM (#28352119)

    How about just "Sell XP Licenses" or is that too easy?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Allicorn ( 175921 )

      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: (Score:3, Informative)

        by yuna49 ( 905461 )

        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.

  • $90 per year per pc? Really? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tacokill ( 531275 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @02:29PM (#28352121)
    Is this number right? For $90/yr/pc, I can install any MSFT operating system?

    Why isn't this program publicized? I am a small business and I have to tell you...the entire Windows licensing system is very very difficult to navigate. And I am 100% certain that is "by design". The more confused they can make me, the more money they can extract out of me and my company (or so they think).

    In actual practice, I don't mind spending money where needed and $90/yr/pc seems about fair for a Windows OS.

    Bonus points if someone can point me to a vendor who will sell it to me.

    • Software Rental (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Lead Butthead ( 321013 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @02:32PM (#28352179) Journal

      M$ has finally came clean and declare that their users don't 'own' a piece of software, or for that matter, a perpetual license on a per system basis. Instead it's a rental license that must be renewed yearly. Failure to do so will result in deactivation and data loss.

      • Re:Software Rental (Score:5, Informative)

        by Dystopian Rebel ( 714995 ) * on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @02:40PM (#28352323) Journal

        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:Software Rental (Score:5, Interesting)

        by UnrefinedLayman ( 185512 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @03:28PM (#28353055)
        Can anyone explain what the FUCK happened to slashdot to make comments unreadable, and how to fix it? There are unremovable grey horizontal and vertical bars and pill icons everywhere. OMGPONIES was supposed to be a joke, and now they've made it reality.

        Viz: http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/9974/wtfiswrongwithslashdot.png [imageshack.us]

        • Re:Software Rental (Score:5, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @03:46PM (#28353333)

          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:Software Rental (Score:4, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @03:59PM (#28353533)

          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: (Score:3, Informative)

          by bwintx ( 813768 )
          It's [sourceforge.net] one of several CSS bugs currently plaguing /. They usually don't occur if you're logged out, FWIW.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by TitusC3v5 ( 608284 )
          It's farked up CSS, as another user already mentioned. Adding this to my adblock list fixed it for me, though:

          |http://c.fsdn.com/sd/cs_sic_controls_new.png?*

          Adblock. De-borking the internet so lazy admins don't have to.

    • Re:$90 per year per pc? Really? (Score:4, Informative)

      by gubers33 ( 1302099 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @02:32PM (#28352191)
      If it is a large company $90/yr/pc is an outrageous price. You would be spending more for the operating system than the PC, considering most companies get a fairly good discount when buying large quantities of PCs.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Synchis ( 191050 )

      Your kidding right?

      Please tell me your actually kidding, and your really a Linux shop making a really funny joke!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cdrudge ( 68377 )

      If your software license rep doesn't know about software assurance, run, don't walk to someone else. Any authorized Microsoft license rep that manages Open, Open Value, Select, or Enterprise Licensing should know about software assurance [microsoft.com].

    • Re:$90 per year per pc? Really? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Samalie ( 1016193 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @02:39PM (#28352317)
      No, for $90/PC/year, plus the cost of the open license of Windows, you can run any Microsoft OS you want, technically all the way down to MS-DOS & Windows 3.0.
    • I would love to sign up, then flood their call centers with complaints that Win 3.11 won't run on my New i7 build = D

  • same old (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gx5000 ( 863863 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @02:31PM (#28352151)
    We're on XP...
    They are thinking of going Vista because of the 1 on 1 MS support we have.
    Most techs here are well against any move away from XP...
    Vista II or 7 depending what your take is is not an option.
    We want out of the M$ revenue tree...
    Just code something that works and we'll pay for the patches/upgrades.
    Stop trying to sell us new stuff that just takes up more CPU cycles for no good reason.
    This industry is going nowhere fast.

    • Re:same old (Score:5, Funny)

      by thePowerOfGrayskull ( 905905 ) <marc,paradise&gmail,com> on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @02:58PM (#28352581) Homepage Journal

      We're on XP...
      They are thinking of going Vista because of the 1 on 1 MS support we have.
      Most techs here are well against any move away from XP...
      Vista II or 7 depending what your take is is not an option.
      We want out of the M$ revenue tree...
      Just code something that works and we'll pay for the patches/upgrades.
      Stop trying to sell us new stuff that just takes up more CPU cycles for no good reason.
      This industry is going nowhere fast.

      Burma-shave!

  • It's worth wondering if it isn't cheaper over the medium and long term to just start upgrading to Windows 7 in phases as soon as it comes out. First to users that have shown the least need for hand-holding, then at an ever faster pace to users in ascending order of needyness. The XP/Vista options do not look cheaper or any more attractive.

  • Put on the fire-retardant suit, it's flame-time (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jollyreaper ( 513215 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @02:38PM (#28352283)

    Anecdotal observation time. I just built a new desktop and am planning on using it as a testbed. I have a homebrew distro of XP called XP 64-bit Ultimate which is intended to be a current, patched, up-to-date version of XP so you're not stuck downloading several hundred megs of patches and cruft when you do a new install. I also have Ubuntu 9.04 and the beta for Windows 7.

    Ubuntu worked right out of the box, decent default viddy drivers, network card detected. Sound isn't working but I hadn't expected any of it to work since this is a newish motherboard with everything integrated so that's much better than I expected. XP had a worse default viddy driver and no networking. Of course, I managed to kill Ubuntu trying to get the full ATI drivers working but that's probably just a silly mistake made overlooking something.

    Now I know that people will say "n00b, you can slipstream stuff into your custom build of xp your such a linux fanboy" etc etc but what's nice about Ubuntu is you don't have to dick with any of that stuff. Distros release very frequently and you can burn a new CD whenever you want. You can't even cheat with Windows and borrow someone's more recent CD because your legally-purchased key won't likely be compatible.

    This is a roundabout way of saying that for all the unfamiliar quirks and different ways of doing things, open source is so much nicer to work with simply due to the lack of the licensing model.

    • Okay, so to get this straight:
      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? It sounds like overall, it was worse (assuming you had a need to upgrade to ATI drivers. ). I'm not saying that linux can't be easily installed and working, obviously that is not true. However, your anecdotal experience -- if anything --- seems to say you should stay with Windows.

  • My fingers are up in the air when I read "disaster". At least SD is trying to let you know when a title is being over dramatic.

  • April plenty of time (Score:3, Funny)

    by Penguinoflight ( 517245 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @02:38PM (#28352301) Journal

    The release candidate will have been available for 11 months come april of next year, which is plenty of time to test hardware. Given that 7 is primarily an upgrade to Vista applications and drivers will not have issues, at least not unknown ones.

    Vista can add security and stability to some environments when installed correctly. The same will be true with Windows 7 at final release, and will do so without as many slowdowns that Vista brings.

    Just like it's suboptimal to run very old hardware with new operating systems, it's also suboptimal to run new hardware with an old system. Device vendors often fail to provide adequate drivers for outdated operating systems, and like it or not the base hardware in today's systems is completely different than it was back when XP was new.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

      Yeah, good luck with that.

      I recently tried out W7 RC for the first time, and put fallout 3 on there while I was at it. It's known as a glitchy game, but it ran OK.

      Then, after about a day of play, the system ran the automatic update while I was playing. No problem. The following day when I tried to play, the game would randomly freeze every 5-10 minutes of play. I rolled the system back, systematically (damn nice, and absolutely necessary, feature, what with the likelihood that updates =will= break things) u

  • Microsoft seeking a patent... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by syousef ( 465911 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @02:41PM (#28352357) Journal

    "A method of automatically loading a weapon for repeatedly and regularly firing at one's foot without breaking the rythm".

    Microsoft has in the last couple of years:

    - Released THE most hated OS since WinMe

    - Released a confusing myriad of versions of their latest OS' which seek to differentiate by feature set, ultimately pissing off any customer who buys or is forced by a hardware manufacturer to buy an inferior version of the OS only to find that they must upgrade to get important functionality enabled

    - Replaced their Office interface with that goddawful ever changing ribbon which certain geeks continue to defend despite it completely ruining productivity, and now they're incorporating it into every damn program they can

    - Fired their Aces game development team ending a long running franchise in flight simulation

    - Put just about everyone off side with their nutty Windows Genuine campaign

    - Fucked up their Zune software with date based bugs

    It's like the captain of the ship's drunk at the helm.

    • Re:Microsoft seeking a patent... (Score:5, Funny)

      by spire3661 ( 1038968 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @02:46PM (#28352431) Journal

      Hate that goddamn ribbon, if it wasnt for keyboard shortcuts I still couldnt print or save.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by dave562 ( 969951 )

        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

    • Thank you. Now I don't feel so bad paying double for my MacBook Pro than what a better equipped Dell XPS costs.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Toreo asesino ( 951231 )

      ...and yet for all of that, nobody else had been able to make much inroad. Hmmm.

  • Microsoft Will Cave (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Farmer Pete ( 1350093 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @03:01PM (#28352635)
    I'll bet 100 mod points that Windows XP will be available at least a year after Windows 7 release. Microsoft barks a loud bark, but in the end, they tend to buckle under pressure from their biggest supporters.

  • Software vs. Hardware support - A Realistic View. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @03:04PM (#28352683)

    "...which allows them to install any OS version..."

    This "Assurance" is bullshit. XP WILL die eventually, and it will be due to the hardware vendors not writing drivers anymore, not because Microsoft has "assured" you by taking your money. It's already getting difficult to find XP driver support for new hardware out there TODAY, much less 12 - 24 months from now when businesses will still be looking to run XP.

  • Bah! They're Just Testing the Water (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @03:27PM (#28353035) Homepage Journal
    They're just testing how much more abuse they can heap on their customers before those customers start leaving in droves. It really is quite consistent with their business strategies. They'll keep pushing until a lot of customers start looking elsewhere then they'll backpedal to just before that point and dial it in there. They're experts of having things just good enough and just usable enough that people don't go looking elsewhere.

    If you've been following their behavior for a while, it's pretty clear what they're up to. Watch for an increasingly bizarre set of announcements in the coming months, and at least one major backpedal.

  • HOLY FUCK (Score:4, Insightful)

    by moniker127 ( 1290002 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @03:39PM (#28353217)
    You mean if i'm using an 8 year old operating system and a 7 year old browser I may have some issues upgrading to the latest and greatest If i feel like formatting several times and have no idea what XP mode is?

    Seriously- the amount of backwards compatibility microsoft gives is ridiculous. Microsoft bends over backwards to provide backwards compatibility- including installing a full copy of an older operating system in their new one. If you cant find some solution that works for you- are aren't actually looking.

  • Unless you are a school district... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kenh ( 9056 ) on Tuesday June 16, 2009 @05:43PM (#28354771) Homepage Journal

    I work in a public school district and our flavor of SOftware Assurance costs much less than $90/PC - closer to $40/PC including a healthy selection of MS software (Office 2003/2007, the various shrinkwrap applications students use, etc.).

    We save almost $150-200 per PC by not buying an OS pre-installed, and our typical hardware lasts about 5 years in the hands of our students, so the cost is essentially a wash (5x$40 = $200, which is aprox. savings of buying "blank" PCs from Dell), but we always have the ability to upgrade the OS/apps at will.

    We plan on skipping Vista[0] and holding on to XP through the upcoming school year, then deploy Windows 7 on enduser desktops.

    [0] Except for certain tablet laptops which only have drivers for VIsta...

  • What to do when recession turns into a depression? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Billly Gates ( 198444 ) on Wednesday June 17, 2009 @01:41AM (#28358327) Journal

    Why raise the price.

      I am sure all these businesses who are fighting tooth and nail not to lay off any more workers would love to waste more money for an OS that does the same things as XP for more money.

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