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Windows XP: Prices, And One Reaction
Jim42688 writes: "Looks like the prices Amazon was reporting for Windows XP a while back were right. On the back of today's ad for CompUSA, it lists the prices to preorder. Home Full, 199.99, Home Upgrade, 99.99. Professional full, 299.99, Professional upgrade, 199.99." Perfect timing -- Fwis writes: "Use your power as a consumer to Boycott XP.
The site is now functioning smoothly, and we invite you to log in and
participate in discussions, polls, and news stories related to Microsoft's release
of the XP line of products." There are some interesting links on this page if you (or someone with purchasing power at your company) is considering XP.
One problem with things being built-in... is that MS destroys any competition, and eventually controls the feature-set.
If people no longer need to get third-party software to burn cds, for example.... there is no longer a market for cd-software. Eventually, MS dictates the hardware interface to the manufacturers, seeing as how they are the only ones producing software, and pretty soon... you get the picture.
MS-Win95b is acceptably stable given enough RAM, HD and maintenance. The only thing that has caused me to upgrade a few to Win98 is USB cameras not installing on 95.
MS-WinNT may be more stable, but some hardware and software still refuses to run under it. I believe XP is an NT descendant, so I'd worry about this.
Upgrading is fine for journalists who have stories to write, and for other software reviewers. I just don't know why the rest of us should upgrade. To get a bunch of bugfixes & security patches? Feh! If I need'em, I'll get them separately.
If this software is good, then buy it, use it and enjoy it! Then again, if it is just a piece of crap, don't buy it, use it -or enjoy it! It is up to you! Boycotting a great piece of software just because it is made by M$ is wrong I think. I have never tried XP, and propably never going to buy it, but if it is good, people should have the right to use it, and maybe we can learn from it and improve out favourite penguin or devil-OSes ...
Find nice cocktail recipes @ www.spitzy.net
No, Microsoft is not happy, which is why you haven't and you never will see such a version of Windows. They aren't happy for (at least) two reasons:
- You're going to buy Windows anyway... why should they sell you what you want for $30 when they can sell you that + a bunch of crap you don't want for $200?
- Why should they give away a chance to get their software on your PC? Every PC that ships with media player is another PC they can claim is part of their "installed base". This they can then use to get companies to stream in their format, as opposed to Real Audio/Video.
So keep dreaming... such a thing will never happen.To within half a percent, pi seconds is a nanocentury. -- Tom Duff
XP will be the doom of Microsoft. One day in the future, XP will be studied along with the Apple III, IBM Micro Channel Architecture, and Intel/Rambus as an example of corporate arrogance trumping common sense with DISATEROUS results.
/. poster has put it (brilliantly, I might add), that with XP, Microsoft has done to itself what the DOJ never could have done: Release a product that will ENABLE competition, and possibly ruin the company.
As one
XP is the product of the two biggest sins a corporation can commit: arrogance and contempt. It's arrogant in that it's overpriced, offers NOTHING new over WIndows 2000, and in fact, takes away from it.
The "Home" version strips you of network capability, unlike 98/95/ME/2000, it CANNOT be used as a client on anything but a peer-to-peer network. It won't allow you to log into a NT domain. I haven't tested it to see if Novell Client 32 will allow logins to a Netware server, but I'd suspect that it's broken as well. It has no support for SMP at all (though 9X didn't either), to get SMP requires the $200 "Professional" version upgrade. None of this is because XP can't do SMP or serve as a network client, it's because MS chose to deliberately CRIPPLE it, and yet sell it for a radically increased price over ME/98.
The Home version upgrade is 100% more expensive than ME! (ME could be had for $50 to upgrade from 98). For what benefit? None that I can tell. Sure, you are likely to gain some of 2000's stability, but you will surely lose game compatibility (which is why the deplorable Win `9X is still the gamers OS). Is that worth $100? Not to me. And I'd bet not to many joe blows.
MS comits the sin of contempt with Product Activation, and it's spyware nature. XP "decides" how far to let you upgrade your hardware before requiring reactication. Which can lose you your data if there is but the SLIGHTEST glitch in this process. MS is better known for creating "unintended consequences" in it's "features" than it is in writing bug-free code. XP constantly monitors your hardware configuration,assigning it a "checksum" number via some formula, and if it gets too far from the "checksum" number originally generated when you installed it, it will CEASE to function.
I hope they have those support lines well staffed.
That's right, now on a XP system, the system owner does NOT have root access to the machine! This is something no MS OS has attempted to do before.
Even if XP didn't have the fatal flaws of arrogance and contempt, the fact that it's a 100%-200% increase in price over 9X alone would be enough to doom it. In this time of economic crisis, particularly in the tech sector, a 100+% increase in the "MS Tax" will do nothing but slow sales, ESPECIALLY when you expect MS to make licenses of ME, 98, and 2000 scarce quickly.
The "window" of opportunity for Linux is open.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
I see this same statement all the time, and while I generally agree with it, just yesterday it finally occured to me why I find it so bothersome. That reason is simply:
They can't really use Microsoft Windows either.
These masses of "average joe" users who will never be able to use linux really don't know how to use windows either. Almost everything about the computer is "too hard" for them... except playing a couple simple games, reading email and surfing the web, and sometimes struggling through a word processor.
In all of these cases where the "can" use windows, they are blissfully unaware of 95% of the features that the software offers them. They save their files whereever the "save as" dialog defaults, and later if someone asks them to copy the file onto a floppy, they have no idea how to do it or even where they put the file on their drive. These are the masses that constantly need someone to "fix the computer". I could go on and on (but not today).
The point is that saying "linux is too hard" is usually meant to imply that "but windows is easy". The sad truth is that the vast majority of the population can't really use ANY operating system, linux, windows, macos, Be, whatever. Of course, the vast majority of the driving population can't change their car's oil or probably even a tire, and they can't program their on-screen controls VCR, etc, etc.
Sure, windows is probably overall a bit easier, largely because of automated install programs and more commercial software (that has a lot of work put into reducing costly tech support queried).
For these mainstream novice users, the system they've invested hundreds of hours not really using in any signifcant way, but stumbling and strugging through to get the minimal "productivity" they manage is going to be easier than anything that is a change, not matter how much a change for the better it may happen to be.
Well, that's enough ranting for now. There's already hundreds of messages, so it's highly unlikely many people will read this... but I feel a bit better finally coming to terms why "people can't use linux" bothers me, when I generally agree with the statement.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
You spent years getting familiar with Windows. You can't expect to pick up Linux in a day. This says nothing about the relative quality or utility of the different OSes.
In fact, learning Linux probably is initially harder than learning Windows. On the other hand, learning Linux is probably a more valuable skill: you learn to use software that doesn't change every year. And once you understand the command line tools and scripting, you can do really amazing things very quickly.
The biggest problem I had was KDE or Gnome? But then I started using it...
I think the answer is: it doesn't matter. Learn to use LaTeX, Emacs, xterm, and the standard POSIX tools. Learn Python or Perl. And if you are an "economist in training", learn R (for data analysis).
Are there open source alternatives? You bet. No, not quite the same bundle of functionality, but overall better: Maxima (symbolic math+functional programming), OCAML and Haskell (functional programming), R (graphics, interactive numerical programming), Python (graphics, 3D visualization, interactive numerical programming), and many others.