How Much Does a Vista Upgrade Cost?

dptalia writes "Microsoft has rolled out its Vista upgrade program, where people can buy a qualifying PC with XP today and upgrade to Vista later for free. This article talks about what free really means. Some companies, such as Dell, charge $45 for converting to Vista Home from XP home. And then comes the question of actually trying to upgrade your computer... Is "free" really worth it?"

Comments

Cue standard slashdot responses:

[dada21]

1. Does it run Linux?
2. It'll cost me nothing because you can't upgrade *nix to Win*
3. Profit!
4. I already read this on digg.
5. ...as in beer.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. Why are Slashdot folks, and why is IT in general, so negative and pessimistic? What happened to the great American "can do" attitude and the entrepreneurial spirit that made Silicon Valley so great? Do you think the attitude and values you display today improve upon the innovation of the past or anchor down progress and keep the status quo?

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are Slashdot folks, and why is IT in general, so negative and pessimistic? What happened to the great American "can do" attitude and the entrepreneurial spirit that made Silicon Valley so great?

It's not like we haven't already seen the Vista betas. There's not much to hope for at this point.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure the step before "3. Profit!" is "2. ???" :-)

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are Slashdot folks, and why is IT in general, so negative and pessimistic?

Answer: because of Management

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[aussie_a]

What happened to the great American "can do" attitude

Don't worry. I have a very can do attitude when it comes to Vista. As in, I can do without Vista.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Anonymous Coward]

"...and the entrepreneurial spirit that made Silicon Valley so great?"

Redmod, Wa is turely a geographical odyssey. It's now located in Silicon Valley? Well, I guess that's somewhat true. Where else does Microsoft buy its "innovation".

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[ravenshrike]

What happened to the great American "can do" attitude and the entrepreneurial spirit that made Silicon Valley so great Taxes, and the public school system.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[bangenge]

You forgot the chairs and the exploding laptops. ;)

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Mistlefoot]

Hope abounds.

There are not many reasons to buy a 64 bit PC right now when it comes with 32 bit XP. To consider that I'd buy one and then outright buy Vista when it's released is bizarre. The fact is that most computer buyer's do use windows and will continue to use windows.

This really is something that MS must do to appease the hardware providers they deal with constantly. That it may prove to be an inconvenience (doing an install twice and losing your settings) is unfortunate but it will at least offer an option for those who are shopping.

I know that my 3 1/2 year old PIV 1700 machine has served me well. I expect my next machine will last a while too and there is no reason to be stuck with XP forever. Vista is actually one of the reasons I have held off a purchase right now. A purchase today will allow me to play with my toy and not working about messing stuff up. I'll format in January when I grab Vista (or March or June or whenever).

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, because microsoft is the pinnacle of innovation. give me a fucking break, they haven't produced anything that wasn't stolen from someone else.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[saridder]

research.microsoft.com for internal innovations. I watched "RingCam" become RoundeTable, a commercially viable, innovative video conferencing. I am a competitor and will crush them in this arena, but we don't complain and then copy what they do 5 years later.

As for a lesson in how the world works, most innovations in big companies are acquired. It's cheaper to watch 10 startups and follow what the market wants, realize which approach will work then buy them, as opposed to gambling/putting a stake in the ground and hope yours wins. Sometimes the latter is the correct approach, but that's the exception, not the rule. So why complain that Microsoft buys companies? Why not instead get a good idea, start your own company and get bought? Or do you just want to copy what others are doing and give it away for free?

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[hazah]

Hah. That was rich. I hope you get a medal. Do they give medals for stupidity? I didn't give up windows because of availability, and I couldn't care about any market-share (read: meaningless) statistic predictions. I'm amused by how backwards your view of the situation is. I suspect getting your head out of your ass is a good first step.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Anonymous Coward]

More negativity, is that all that you and your community can do? How about come up with some ideas that you can put into good use instead of complaining? That's what I mean about this community - you do nothing but cry. Where's your can do and entrepreneurial spirit? Do you think the attitude and values you display today improve upon the innovation of the past or anchor down progress and keep the status quo?

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[ericthughes]

AND..... I, for one, welcome our new KPP overlord ...

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[cuantar]

Or do you just want to copy what others are doing and give it away for free?

Yes.

More to the point: The free software/open source software community is not a market, and I really don't like the business-speak that comes to the surface every time free software comes up. The goal of everything is not profit or some idea of "winning." Sometimes people just like to share things that they've written to be useful, in the hope that it will help someone else.

I don't write code for a living; instead, it's a hobby to me. I would argue that much of the free software community began like that: they write code because they enjoy it as something to do on the side, not because it makes them money. I don't really feel any compusion to try to charge people for the things I produce for fun.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Neil Hodges]

How exactly is it "10 years behind what the market demands"? If the marked demands an operating system for those who can't even figure out how to use a word processor, or can barely write an e-mail without asking for help, maybe we don't want to fill that need. For those who are willing to put some effort into thought, and probably an extra five minutes every week or so, there's the Ubuntu series, and there's the series derived from Red Hat Linux.

If the market continues to fill demands for those who put in no effort, then fewer will put in effort, and soon the operating system will do the thinking for the average consumer.

If the market demands hardware support, community operating systems can't be blamed, since the vendors rarely provide any sort of support, while they write complete drivers for the ubiquitous operating systems. Have they ever thought that if they fixed the compatibility issue, that more people would flock to operating systems of less previous popularity? If the market demands fancy eye-candy, there are implementations of such "features" that have been around for years, as certain operating systems' features stagnated. Due to the aforementioned circumstances, people haven't really seen the superfluous features that have been added to the alternatives.

Most vendors don't support 'community' operating systems due to a lack of money for software provided. One could argue that since these operating systems are free, no money could ever come in to spur interest. This isn't the case; any consumer, regardless of computer background, is willing to pay for good, or ubiquitous, software. This just hasn't been realized by most. However, due to the money with the most ubiquitous operating systems, people will continue to feed this trend, and the market will continue to serve such people.

The situation is pretty hopeless, isn't it?

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[saridder]

But for others, IT is business and living. In fact it's a large industry that fuels GDP, productivity and growth, and will raise living standards for the next century - in both developed and underdeveloped countries. Why complain or begrudge someone if they can make a living off what you do for a hobby? I know plenty of people who do photography, travel or woodworking for a hobby, but they don't have a radical opinion against others who try to sell their photos, write travel articles or crafts for money.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[grasshoppa]

Because, in general, most of us have worked in the IT field long enough to know the realities of it; Software houses do just enough to get away with it. The more exotic the field, the less they do.

Vista will be a fine OS in a couple years time. We all know this. After it's gone through it's rough first couple years ( because MS released it just to get it out the door,not necessarily because it was done ).

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[interiot]

But pat answers save time and space, since it discourages people from saying the same things over and over. Pat answer lists are entertaining because they take insight to create, but they're useful too.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the whole point of Consumer IT is to make life easier, more productive, enjoyable and entertaining. I'd rather have an OS that enables me to process, edit and share photos and videos of my last vacation with my friends and family then one that enables me to "pwn" my HW or compile a new version of vi. We shouldn't be slaves to our computer or barred from using IT just because we're not smart enough. It's the opposite - computers should be our slaves to make our lives easier because they're not smart enought to do what we do.

If I had to write this whole web page in HTML just to get my message across, I'd never be able to contribute to this discussion. Why shouldn't someone smarter than me make this little window in my web browser so I can type my answer, collaborate, discuss and share info with others who are interested in the same subject as me?

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[genooma]

And he said anything about using linux... when?

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Technician]

I have a very can do attitude when it comes to Vista. As in, I can do without Vista.

I have learned from my past mistakes what the upgrade treadmill problems are.

I was running DOS. On top of that I installed Windows 3.1. On top of that I installed the Windows 95 Upgrade (the one without IE included) and installed IE as a seprate program. This process took several years and went through several hardware upgrades such as memory, hard drive, and later motherboard and CPU. Each re-instalation was a major pain. I learned quickly never to do upgrade upon upgrade again. It just takes too long. Windows 98 was a replacement, not an upgrade on top.

What I learned is the upgrade is nice IF the upgrade is a replacement, not an upgrade that requires a prior qualifying product to be already installed.

In a nutshell. If the upgrade is a stand alone fresh install, that if fine. Doing an install and then doing an install, and then doing an install... Forget it. You will regret it on your first hard drive replacement.

So.. To properly answer the question.. I need to know what kind of upgrade we are talking about. Does it do a fresh install, or does it require the prior qualified (auth per WGA perhaps) version installed? I would hate to do the recovery from a dead hard drive to include install, configure networking for phone home, patch, WGA auth, install service packs, upgrade, re auth with WGA, install applications such as MS office, re auth with WGA, etc.

To repeat the question, Will the upgrade install on a bare new hare drive or does it need a pre-qualified install of the prior version? Using the Genuine Windows sticker number is not a problem. Doing an endless install on install is a problem.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Anonymous Coward]

What happened to the great American "can do" attitude and the entrepreneurial spirit that made Silicon Valley so great?

It was outsourced to another country where the "can do" attitude can be made for less.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Nefarious Wheel]

The goal of everything is not profit or some idea of "winning...

"If it doesn't matter if you win or lose," said Whorf brusquely, "then why do you bother keeping score?"

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Anonymous Coward]

As opposed to the old days where the public school system were one room shacks and had less resources then we have today, taught fairy tales and myths - G. Washington and Cherry trees anyone? Civil war was fought to free slaves anyone? - instead of history, produced a "product" that got a majority of America ready for vocational, middle class professions like auto-mechanics, ship builders and HVAC repairmen? The rest were farmers and the elite going to college (farmers and poor couldn't go because there were no college loans back then). Ahhh the good ol' days of WASP frats and elitism...

The taxes were less then too. Is your point that our taxes are too high as compared to the rest of the civilized world? I think you know you'll lose that argument..

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[plopez]

Why are Slashdot folks, and why is IT in general, so negative and pessimistic?

Experience, mostly. After having been lied to, screwed, blued and tatooed you get cynical. You get handed crap and are expected to make it work. You are seen as a cost center, when your contributions can be very useful to an organization. Managers insist on treating IT as a factory assembly line 'reach for the lowest common denominator' type job when it is a knowledge based skill based job.

When POS vendor hardware or software fail, the vendor blames the IT department. When the IT department is incompetent, they blame the vendor.

You give everything, weekends, relationships, holidays, mental and physical health and then get laid off anyway. See also http://www.adminspotting.org/

And MS is one of the worst. They promise it is easy. And it is easy, if you don't actually want to solve any serious problems. It's OK for for a few minmal classes of problems (web shopping cart, hierarchial accounting system) but not so great for actual business problems. The reason so much COBOL is still out there is that most programmers still haven't progressed far from COBOL.

ERPs are great, if you can change your business practices to fit the ERP. Which is totaly backwards, the software is developed to fit the business, not vice versa. Consultants for the ERP de jour swoop in, pick up fat pay checks and then leave the IT departments to hold the bag.

There is no good reason for Vista. Windows server 2003 and XP could serve for another 20 years under a nice incremental improvement process. But no, MS is going to once again pull the rug out from under us. A whole new class of security holes, new libraries, new incompatibilies and if you were dumb enough to pay for certs, a whole new set of certs. SQL Server 2000 was around for about 7 years, that gives you a reasonsable ROI. Changing every 2-3 years leaves you no ROI as by the time things stabilise, you have to change again.

I'm done. 9 months from now I will be in another field. Have fun, suckers....

(Damn, 3 glasses of wine and I am ranting and raving. I am getting cranky in my old age...)

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Broken scope]

Or maybe he struck a nerve.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[10Ghz]

In fact it's a large industry that fuels GDP, productivity and growth, and will raise living standards for the next century

Here's the thing: There's a lot more companies that use software, as opposed to companies that make and sell software. If a company buys a piece of software from another company for $1000 it increases the GDP by $1000. If they get similar piece of software for free, then GDP does not increase. But in both cases the user receives the benefits of the software. So is GDP accurate measure here? Why is it considered a good thing when money moves from one pocket to another pocket?

Why is it a good thing that large number of companies are spending huge amounts of money of software-licenses? Wouldn't it be better if those companies could get the software for free, and they could then use the money they saved on something else instead? You stare at the amount of sales that are related to software. But the money involved in those sales is taken from someone, and given to someone else. I see no inherint value in that if you could just keep the money and still get the software. Software-companies might be harmed to some extent, but the USERS of software would benefit trendemously.

As to your analogy on photographs... Well, in software we have this thing called "patents". You can't patent a picture of a sunset and then sue everyone else taking and sharing pictures of sunsets. In software, you could do just that. Also, you could look at pictures from several different photographers, you can't do that in software. We have handful of companies that control their stuff with iron fist, and give you EULA's that are 20 pages long, telling you what rights they reserve to themselves (usually all of them), and what you are denied to do. There really is a world of difference between photography and software, and your analogy is lame. What would you think if you had to sign a long and complicated agreement before you could see a photograph? What if you took a picture of a sunset, knowing that some other photographer could sue you because of that?

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Anonymous Coward]

Which frees us up to do more higher value jobs.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[lord_rob the only on]

I have learned from my past mistakes what the upgrade treadmill problems are.

I would agree with you if I hadn't tried Debian GNU/Linux. The big problem of Windows is that it doesn't use a database managed installation system. When you remove a program under Windows (add/remove program in control pannel), what Windows does is simply calling the uninstaller of said program. Then it's up to the uninstaller to handle the uninstallation properly. When the uninstaller asks you something like "This is a shared library, are you sure you really want to remove it ?", you'd better say no unless you are really really sure. This is because Windows doesn't use a database managed installer, and hence cannot determine whether a given shared library can be safely removed or is used by another program. For the very same reason, when Windows is upgraded, it cannot be determined if the components that are removed/upgraded will be incompatible with installed programs or not. I have been running Debian Sid for more than four years now, upgrading the packages every days. Still no major problem for me.

Anyway for the case of Windows, I would tend to agree with you anyway ...

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm done. 9 months from now I will be in another field. Have fun, suckers....

Hey,foetus! It only gets worse out here.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[jrumney]

Windows upgrades have always worked on bare hard drives by inserting a CD (or floppy) for the product you are upgrading from, no need to have it actually installed. This may change of course, with this new WGA bollocks.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[aussie_a]

Actually I'll stick with Windows XP I think :P (which I own a legal copy of). I did enjoy how you and the AC troll assumed I used Linux though.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Jugalator]

I agree. Why are Slashdot folks, and why is IT in general, so negative and pessimistic? What happened to the great American "can do" attitude and the entrepreneurial spirit that made Silicon Valley so great? Do you think the attitude and values you display today improve upon the innovation of the past or anchor down progress and keep the status quo?

Paranoia, pessimism, and social anxiety are all common traits among geeks and there's probably some fancy psychological explanation behind it. It's also a common hurdle for them in getting girls. Others than similarly minded rarely like any of these traits in their partner.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried Vista for a week. Mission critical vendors said, "We don't support Vista".
I said "When will you?"
They said "When we stop getting NT support calls."

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Rovastar]

"There is no good reason for Vista. Windows server 2003 and XP could serve for another 20 years under a nice incremental improvement process. But no, MS is going to once again pull the rug out from under us. A whole new class of security holes, new libraries, new incompatibilies and if you were dumb enough to pay for certs, a whole new set of certs. SQL Server 2000 was around for about 7 years, that gives you a reasonsable ROI. Changing every 2-3 years leaves you no ROI as by the time things stabilise, you have to change again."

Where on earth do you get 2-3 years from when talking about XP? XP came out over 5 years ago - October 25, 2001. And Vista isn't even out yet.

You imply that XP will not work when Vista comes out obviously this is not the case. Microsoft will probably end up supporting XP well over the 7 years (well it is over 5 so far) you think is a reasonable ROI.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[MojoStan]

To repeat the question, Will the upgrade install on a bare new hare drive or does it need a pre-qualified install of the prior version? Using the Genuine Windows sticker number is not a problem.

From my experience (upgrade versions of Windows 2000 and XP), qualifying prior versions have never needed to be "installed" to perform a "replace/fresh/clean/start-from-scratch" install using an upgrade version. When installig on a bare hard drive, the upgrade version might ask you to pop in the previous version's CD for proof. I didn't use the upgrade version of Windows 95 like you did, but didn't it ask if you wanted to wipe the hard drive and start from scratch (instead of upgrading "on top" of the old installation)?

Just like previous versions of Windows, Windows Vista upgrade versions will still allow clean installations and in-place upgrades (that's what Microsoft calls them). MS describes these options on this page: Upgrade Planning for Windows Vista.

Heck, I'll just cut-and-paste the relevant info from that page:

The options

You can upgrade from your current edition of Microsoft Windows XP or Windows 2000 to a corresponding or better edition of Windows Vista by purchasing and installing an upgrade copy of Windows Vista. Depending on which edition of Windows you are running and the edition of Windows Vista you would like to install, you have two options for the installation process:

In-place upgrade
You can upgrade in-place, which means you can install Windows Vista and retain your applications, files, and settings as they were in your previous edition of Windows.

Clean install
Upgrading to Windows Vista with a clean install means that you should use Windows Easy Transfer to automatically copy all your files and settings to an extra hard drive or other storage device, and then install Windows Vista. After the installation is complete, Windows Easy Transfer will reload your files and settings on your upgraded PC. You will then need to reinstall your applications.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Milton Waddams]

There are probably more of these "Standard slashdot responses" posts than the standard slashdot responses.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[oliderid]

I'm not old... I'm 31. But well I've got already some experiences with OS "upgrades".

The only upgrades where I saw a real improvement was Windows 95 (a huge improvment over Windows 3.1) and Suse 9.1 (better US devices support, better printer support, etc). For the rest most of my upgrade weren't "rational" : Who cares if I really need it? Let's see how it works? Having OS X.XX will be cool! Such a beautiful interface, I want it!
This irrationality costs me hours of tweaking, hacking, lamenting, trying. I'm tired of it :-). I prefer to do more useful stuffs.

So if ain't broke, don't fix it.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Anonymous Coward]

I was running DOS. On top of that I installed Windows 3.1. On top of that I installed the Windows 95 Upgrade (the one without IE included) and installed IE as a seprate program. This process took several years

You should have installed smartdrv first.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Anonymous Coward]

The Windows 95 Upgrade allowed you to do a clean install. It would just ask during the install for you to insert your Windows 3.x installation media if it didn't see it already installed.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[LaughingCoder]

Why is it a good thing that large number of companies are spending huge amounts of money of software-licenses? Wouldn't it be better if those companies could get the software for free

Plus there is the added benefit of no taxes. The company that WOULD have made $1000 selling software licenses WOULD have had to pay taxes on that income. But with free software, there is no taxable transaction. Taken to the limit the government could lose billions of dollars of tax revenues ...

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[asylumx]

When the IT department is incompetent, they blame the vendor

Oh, is THAT why most Slashdot readers are always picking on Microsoft?

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[MyNameIsEarl]

Cowboy Neal

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[drsquare]

If the market continues to fill demands for those who put in no effort, then fewer will put in effort, and soon the operating system will do the thinking for the average consumer.

Why should an operating system require effort? Computers are supposed to do work for us, not the other way round.

You can say what you want about microsoft but at least they don't tell you to upgrade the kernel or compile modules when you want to install some hardware.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[orasio]

I think the whole point of Consumer IT is to make life easier, more productive, enjoyable and entertaining. I'd rather have an OS that enables me to process, edit and share photos and videos of my last vacation with my friends and family then one that enables me to "pwn" my HW or compile a new version of vi. We shouldn't be slaves to our computer or barred from using IT just because we're not smart enough.


That problem has been solved. The software is there.
The issue right now is marketing and distribution.

Ubuntu with Automatix does everything you want, easily.
Installing Ubuntu from the live CDs is too easy.
And they send you the CDs for free, if you don't want to download them, or don't get them from a friend (at least 5 friends of mine converted with my CDs, successfuly, and with Ubuntu 7.04 I'm planning on all my familiy as they need new OSes).

Microsoft beats them, because you get Windows readily installed on new computers.

It's not feature of the software per se, but a distribution issue.
I think that the focus should be there, right now. Not about the software itself, but improving the way it gets distributed, and marketed.

Once it is installed, there is another issue, Automatix, that takes care of codecs, and proprietary software(there you get the ability to share pics with your friends with Picasa, just like your friends do it).

After that, using and administering Ubuntu is a walk in the park. A consistent interface, very easy. Installing new stuff is done in two ways. Most stuff is either preinstalled, like OpenOffice, or comes through the Package Manager.
Proprietary stuff comes from Autmatix. No hunting for the downloads.

There, the distribution problem is solved much more easily in Ubuntu.
I think that with better distribution, and more publicity, Ubuntu is ready for the desktop, when ease of use is our target. Or at least it's a lot more ready than XP.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Paco103]

The only upgrade edition I have ever run was ME (don't mock me!), however a clean install with the upgrade version is possible. When you boot to the upgrade disc, it prompts for the previous version disc (mine was a 98SE OEM). It accepts that, requests the upgrade disc back, and does a nice clean install (as clean as ME gets anyway). This was even in the product manual.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Anonymous Coward]

Your answer is at http://www.apple.com/

There, fixed. Next!

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[stunt_penguin]

If that's the case, we need to find out who's originating all these ideas and use theirs!

Is there anyone out there? Heloo?

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[jridley]

Plus there is the added benefit of no taxes. The company that WOULD have made $1000 selling software licenses WOULD have had to pay taxes on that income. But with free software, there is no taxable transaction.

Horrible thought:
If the RIAA were to be a group of software companies, every time someone release a free program that competed with a commercial product, either the author or everyone who downloaded it would be held liable for all those copies of the commercial program that isn't selling. The software companies could just stop making their product better, keep selling the same crap year after year, and if their sales dropped, it would all be because of those damn commies giving away their software, and they'd claim the right to sue everyone involved to make up the difference.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[jZnat]

Because meta-humour is sometimes funnier than the humour it describes. At least according to the Slashdot mods...

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[LaughingCoder]

I see your point. I think both of our observations fall squarely under the category of "unintended consequences" of the F/OSS movement, though I think the loss of taxable transactions is real today, whereas the potential for suing over lost revenue is hypothetical (I hope).

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Technician]

Windows upgrades have always worked on bare hard drives by inserting a CD (or floppy) for the product you are upgrading from, no need to have it actually installed.

I can tell you never did the Windows 95 upgrade. It does not boot. It does not install from DOS. It does require Windows 3.X which requires DOS. After that to get on the web, required installing a browser such as IE seprately. After my 3rd system rebuild, I swore off upgrades on upgrades and opted for fresh installs only.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Technician]

A fresh install after a hard drive install is fine.

When installig on a bare hard drive, the upgrade version might ask you to pop in the previous version's CD for proof.

I hope the pop in the prior CD works on the ghost image many vendors have provided in place of a Windows CD.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should driving a car require effort? Why should surgery require effort? Why should $FOO require effort?

These question can only be asked by someone who likes to have his ass wiped for him his whole life. There are some tasks that require training, imagine that. But I guess you could walk and talk the minute you were born.

Idiot.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[cosminn]

Windows is not ALWAYS using a database managed installation system. MSI is aimed to fix that

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Anonymous Coward]

The big problem of Windows is that it doesn't use a database managed installation system. When you remove a program under Windows (add/remove program in control pannel), what Windows does is simply calling the uninstaller of said program.

What's with removing programs ? I never remove programs under Linux. At the price of hard drives nowadays I don't mind ig 1 or 2 GB are taken by some apps I'm not planning to (ever) use. Why should I remove them ? They don't do anything wrong by just sitting there.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[fpp666]

You forgot: "will somebody please think about the children?!??"

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[HiThere]

Your MSWind95 install must have been broken if you considered MSWind98 an improvement. I installed it, and within a week I was re-installing 95. I still have that MSWind95 machine...though it no longer connects to the net. I haven't had a memorable crash since I removed the anti-virus and disconnected from the net (and re-installed).

I do understand that the later versions of MSWind98 were better, but the first one blew goats...and I never bothered with the later versions because it also offered NO benefits.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[HiThere]

If two different programs each demand a different version of the same library...you've got problems no matter what size disk you have. There are ways around this, though none are particularly good.

If Debian has the programs in it's repository, then you can choose which one you want the system to handle, and install the other as a /usr/local/... program. WITH it's needed libraries. Debian will then only manage the upgrades to one of the programs. More usual is to find a version of the program that is compatible with the current system. If that's possible, then the installer will handle it. (But just TRY to install Alice from the testing repository!)

The Debian approach is to handle all the most common cases with the installer. If the installer won't handle it, it's up to the user how to handle it. Usually this means putting all the necessary executables (including libraries) in a place that won't conflict with any system file. Frequently a simple compile will handle the process, linking against the system libraries. If not, you may need to compile lots of auxillary libraries. This can get messy enough that complex cases are usually better avoided. (The repository contains a tremendous breadth of programs, so this is normally feasible.)

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[lord_rob the only on]

What's with removing programs ? I never remove programs under Linux. At the price of hard drives nowadays I don't mind ig 1 or 2 GB are taken by some apps I'm not planning to (ever) use. Why should I remove them ? They don't do anything wrong by just sitting there.

That was what I also thought in the beginning. But there are at least two reasons not to keep unused software installed. First, when you use Debian Sid, softwares are upgraded daily. So if you keep unused softwares, chances are you will have to download new versions of softwares you don't use, hence wasting bandwidth. Where I live, the upload/download is limited to 10GB per month (yea it sucks but it is like that). Second, some packages I might not need could be loading as services everytime I boot, hence slowing bootup and wasting memory, system availabilty.

Those are the two reasons I can think of but I'm pretty sure there are several more reasons ...

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[fwarren]

But with free software, there is no taxable transaction. Taken to the limit the government could lose billions of dollars of tax revenues ...

Yes, they could....

If they left the money in the bank and did not spend it. Most likely what would have been the software budget, will go to something else and when that something else is purchased, the government still gets their tax money.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[ultranova]

Pat answer lists are entertaining because they take insight to create, but they're useful too.

Insight ? Hardly. They are "Slashbot groupthink, of which I'm above of" -posts in new form. They add nothing useful to the discussion, they simply make their posters feel superior to the unwashed masses. They also make an easy-to-do first post that gets modded up as "Funny".

But I am above such badly washed elitism, for I don't post such lists.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[ultranova]

I agree. Why are Slashdot folks, and why is IT in general, so negative and pessimistic?

It's because we take the long run view of the world. In the long run, we will all die, our species will go extinct, the world will end, the Sun will darken and the universe will either collapse or freeze. Take that, optimism !

What happened to the great American "can do" attitude and the entrepreneurial spirit that made Silicon Valley so great?

It got patented.

Do you think the attitude and values you display today improve upon the innovation of the past or anchor down progress and keep the status quo?

Progressing and keeping the status quo is a contradiction in terms. But I'd say that progress is certainly being anchored down by all the crap that keeps on getting piled to it by DMCA, DRM, USPO and other such idiocy.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[AndyChrist]

But in both cases the user receives the benefits of the software. So is GDP accurate measure here? Why is it considered a good thing when money moves from one pocket to another pocket?

Because then it can move on to another pocket, and so on. The faster it does that, the more money everyone makes that year.

Of course, it's better for the individual that they get something for nothing and are able to decide on other places to send that money.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[ultranova]

Why should an operating system require effort? Computers are supposed to do work for us, not the other way round.

Computers need to be told what you want them to do before they can do it. That requires effort. The human-computer interface is the hardest part of computer programing, 3D modelling programs being an especially infamous example of this.

A computer can be used for an infinite variety of tasks, but no interface can have sufficient automation to make any possible task simple. Telling even another human being what you want done can be a difficult task; to demand that the computer that has neither anything resembling intelligence or experience from the real world to read your thoughts and make some sense from them is nonsense.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[drinkypoo]

Or, again, maybe he's just a worthless troll. FOSS is all about the opposite of what this troll says. It's not about just crying about the situation, it's about doing something. It's not about pessimism, it's about hope. Hope that you can make a difference. Hope that you can maintain your freedom. Hope that you can help others maintain theirs. Anyone who says that all the FOSS community does is whine is either an idiot or a troll. Anyone who believes that's all the FOSS community does should check out where the actual whining generated by FOSS is coming from: it's coming from those companies wedded to a doomed business model that's being destroyed by FOSS. This guy is an idiot, a troll, an astroturfer, or some combination thereof.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Broken scope]

Astroturfer?

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Anonymous Coward]

Read what you have quoted carefully.

Depending on which edition of Windows you are running and the edition of Windows Vista you would like to install,...

That there is your "escape" clause....

As has been the case for all Windows upgrade programs, a fresh install on a clean new HD is available only with a new retail copy of the OS, not an upgrade disk. And yes, I have been through this cycle of Win95->Win98->Win NT->WinXP. A crashed harddisk (WinXP) was when the fun really began.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[throx]

Actually, the Windows system (MSI) is very much like the Debian system - it's all an opt-in thing that only works if you use the installer for everything you do. The MSI system keeps reference counts on all your shared libraries, makes sure directories are cleaned up on uninstall and manages pretty much everything else you can think of too.

However, if you choose to install stuff OUTSIDE the MSI system then it's the same as installing stuff outside the Debian package system - you end up with problems when Debian thinks that there's nothing using a library when that program (call it "Oracle" for instance) which you use every day suddenly can't find a library.

What you're noticing though is there's a lot more stuff outside the package system in Windows than there is in Linux. As Linux gets more popular and more closed source third party apps start running around with their own custom installers, you'll see it developing much the same problems in library management that Windows does.

The one thing Unix in general does better than Windows is unlink() works on files in use, while Windows makes you reboot.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[dhasenan]

Yes, there is. It's called Plan 9.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[stunt_penguin]

From outer space? :p

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Anonymous Coward]

Read what you have quoted carefully.

Depending on which edition of Windows you are running and the edition of Windows Vista you would like to install,...

That there is your "escape" clause....

As has been the case for all Windows upgrade programs, a fresh install on a clean new HD is available only with a new retail copy of the OS, not an upgrade disk.

The word "edition" refers to "Home Basic Edition," "Business Edition," et. al. The word "version" refers to "upgrade version" and "retail version." Read the page that quote came from and it's very obvious that you're misinterpreting the word "edition."

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Allador]

"If two different programs each demand a different version of the same library...you've got problems no matter what size disk you have. There are ways around this, though none are particularly good."

This is easy to resolve in Windows. The ISV should not rely on shared libraries, unless they are core windows libraries, and then you dont tie to a specific version of the image, you tie to 'at least' a specific image. And you watch your dependent libraries, and test with new versions from MS. If they break by removing or changing the signature on a message, then you ship a patch out asap. Though in reality, this tends to happen very very infrequently. For better or worse, MS is very attentive to maintaining backwards compatibility.

Any ISV installing software that relies on an exact point version of software doesnt deserve your (or anybody's) money.

If the library isnt a windows core library, then it should ship and install in the same directory as your program's executable. This way, the path resolution always finds this library first, even if there are different versions scattered across the machine.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[10Ghz]

Because then it can move on to another pocket, and so on. The faster it does that, the more money everyone makes that year.

How so? Why is it better for the company to receive software, and give the software-company $1000 for it, as opposed for just receiving the software, and not paying a thing for it? Just because that $1000 is not paid to someone, does not mean that it does not exist. The money is still there, it just never leaves the company's account.

Yes, that scenario wouldn't be that good to companies that sell software. But it would benefit those who use software. And the users of software outnumber the sellers of software by about 1000:1.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[tehcyder]

This process took several years

Christ, if it took you that long just to install Windows 95, imagine what would happen if you tried Vista! The installation process would probably still be going on after your death.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[HiThere]

???
I've *USED* MSWind, though not recently. It's NOT easy to handle in MSWind. Perhaps I didn't describe the process well. In MSWind the equivalent is referred to as "dll hell". Now perhaps you recognize it.

It's much easier to resolve in Debian (or Red Hat, or any other Linux I've tried) then in MSWind. I'll grant you I haven't used anything more recent than MSWind2000, but I believe that the problem still exists, and I haven't heard that it has become significantly easier.

Actually, it's worse, because under MSWind you rarely have the source code, so you CAN'T compile and link the programs in a different location. There may be other ways around this, but my solution before I switched was generally to just avoid the problem. Chose one or the other. Since I had two computers, occasionally I'd set them up differently, so that I didn't loose access to any needed program. (At some point I installed Linux on one of them and within 6 months Linux was on both of them. Withing 3 years MSWind was just gone. [I'll grant you that much of this was because I actually read the EULA on MSWind2000...and I saw excerpts from the EULA for MSWindXP.])

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Allador]

The fixes I described dont apply to the software user, they apply to the ISV. If this is a problem, then only use applications whose source you have access to. While this isnt universally possible, it is possible in many scenarios.

But if you're still experiencing DLL hell, then the problem isnt with windows, its with the companies or open-source projects developing your software.

There are numerous mechanisms to resolve this. Here are some links:

DLL Redirection
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dllproc/ba se/dynamic_link_library_redirection.asp

Registration Free COM
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dndotnet/h tml/rfacomwalk.asp

Good Blog summarizing this stuff:
http://blogs.msdn.com/junfeng/archive/2006/01/24/5 17221.aspx

Basically, this problem has been solved for years ... there are just alot of fairly crummy ISV's that dont bother to learn their trade very well.

The dotlocal stuff in particular is fantastic, and helps you make completely local and portable applications, which will work just by dropping the flat of files, no installation necessary.

You're right though in that its not easy to solve as the application consumer. It _is_ easy to solve by a competent ISV though.

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[HiThere]

I am a "consumer" of many more products than I am a producer of, and my experience was that very frequently I would be dependent upon two different closed source products with conflicting requirements. Under Linux, I can manage that without needing two separate machines. But it's still a bit of work, and annoying. Under MSWind I usually either had to choose one and let the other go, or maintain two separate machines. (This is partially because under Linux I usually have the source code available.)

OTOH, another solution that often works is to maintain multiple search paths. Under MSWind this required a reboot, but it was a solution that would often work. (It was just so much of a hassle that it was easier to maintain two machines...perhaps I could have always made it work with enough effort.)

Re:Cue standard slashdot responses:

[Allador]

You have a very legitimate complaint here. The people making the software you're using are at fault. Unfortunately, regardless of whose fault it is (ie, how much MS is to blame), this is a common problem on windows.

Any frustration in my posts is the hordes of crappy ISVs that dont bother to learn how to properly develop on their platform.

a recent "install" experience

[yagu]

I recently built my own machine... 2G memory, .5TB (2 SATA drives), 3.06Ghz dual core... all very cool. I spent almost 2 weeks getting my XP Professional installed and working properly (for what reason would an OS not come with PS/2 generic mouse drivers?). The sound was a nightmare to get running, the video was a joke. Fortunately (I guess), a lot of the drivers came with the motherboard (as one might expect), but the installation and configuration was amazingly tedious, and error prone.

I'm convinced one part of the horrible nature is that even today it seems that EVERY driver, EVERY re-configuration demanded a reboot though in my wildest imagination, I couldn't think of a rationale -- this continuity interruptus makes for a tedious, drawn out, error-sprinkled, bad-taste-in-the-mouth experience.

I finally shook out all of the bugs (oh, yeah, about 100+ XP updates -- the CD was pre-SP1, go figure), got a SCREAMING machine, absolutely delighted with the configuration and performance.

Now, to be on-topic, I can't begin to imagine these upgrades will be problem free, I can't even think they'd be problem-sparse. It's non-trivial work installing from scratch, much less considering layering something as big as Vista over an existing XP. I wouldn't want to do it. I've read enough reviews from people with bollixed machines (granted, they were working with release candidates) -- there will be a LOT of people out there who've committed too much data and personal work (blood, sweat and tears) on their new XP machines -- and they're going to lose data.

It's interesting to note the article recommends upgrading to Vista by doing a clean install. That's not really upgrading XP, that's installing Vista. How many people will not have had their data backed up properly ahead of this? How many will be left with applications that ran on XP that won't run on Vista?

The article is probably right, this is MS' olive branch to vendors who had hoped to roll out the new machines with brand spanking new Vista already installed. It's a PR debacle and nightmare in the making. Fortunately for MS, that would be mostly irrelevant.

(To contrast, on same machine described above, I took the new Mandriva, booted up, installed and got completely running, all sound and video working perfectly -- in less than 2 hours!

Funny, for my life I could not find a satisfactory solution (or even find a google solution) to get the XP dual boot file configured properly to reference the Mandriva... Finally gave up, and let lilo handle it, the configuration was painless and flawless. Go figure.)

Re:a recent "install" experience

[Above]

I use FreeBSD at work, because it's the best OS for servers.

I deal with Windows, Exchange, Office, because my employer will bear the costs.

When I shell out my own money for a new machine, I buy an Apple. I pay money to never have to write this story. I am fortunate to have the money to do that (not that it's a huge premium), but I love being able to buy a new machine and well, start using it immediately to do useful work. It even helps me migrate from my old machine in a useful way. In minutes.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[PayPaI]

If you don't have a XP SP2 cd, you can slipstream your existing CD to SP2.
That would have saved you a lot of time.
Not sure why your mouse didn't work, maybe a BIOS issue? I usually take about two hours to do XP from when I put in the CD to when the last update finishes. Maybe you're running a junky board? something with a VIA or SiS chipset, perhaps?

Re:a recent "install" experience

[Nightspirit]

Were you trying to install the 64 bit version or something?

For the life of me I can't figure out how you could have all this difficulty unless you had a bad BIOS driver or something.

I've installed xp pro on countless machines (including ones with a ps/2 mouse) and the only problems I've had was when bad hardware was installed ($5 chinese off-brand soundcard from frys, what was I thinking?) or I had to look up RAID drivers.

I do agree with you about rebooting nightmare. Google slipstreaming windows XP for how to avoid doing this in the future.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[CastrTroy]

The article is probably right, this is MS' olive branch to vendors who had hoped to roll out the new machines with brand spanking new Vista already installed. It's a PR debacle and nightmare in the making. Fortunately for MS, that would be mostly irrelevant.

I read another article on Google News earlier stating the same thing. A bunch of computer makers are pissed because they think nobody will buy new PCs this holiday season because they're all waiting for Vista. They have certain quotas to meet for the holiday season. Never mind that they'll have higher sales than they've had in 4 years the day Vista is released, they can't wait that long. So they're going to offer free or cheap upgrades to Vista, to everyone who buys a machine with XP now. I think they're banking on the fact that 75% of the people won't bother to updgrade, or will lose their golden ticket, and won't be able to upgrade, and that this will cost MS very little.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[pookemon]

Taking 2 weeks to get an XP installation working correctly (versus 2hours for Mandriva) indicates your lack of experience setting up XP. XP does come with a generic PS/2 mouse driver - if it didn't work then you probably didn't have the drivers for your mobo installed. A setup with XP is easy. Install XP, install your mobo drivers, install your gfx driver and then any other drivers for extra hardware (printer/scanner etc.).

And rather than do your 100+ XP updates (XP is how old now?) you would have been better off downloading the SP2 Admin installation and updating from there.

It's always (or at least from 95 onwards) been the case that upgrading from one version of Windows to the next is best done with a clean install. That's because a clean install removes some of the crap that builds on your machine over time (ie. Registry). But going to Vista is still going to be an upgrade no matter how you install it. Saying it isn't is like saying "I didn't upgrade my Hyundai because they didn't pull it apart and rebuild it as a ferrari".

And I doubt this is an "olive branch". What it is is MS and the major Vendors realising that if they don't offer the free upgrade, neither of them will sell much until Vista is available.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[k12linux]

I can just about mirror your experience. I recently built a PC for a friend who needed XP Home because of some Windows app that he needs for work. First though I booted up Knoppix to confirm all the parts were working. Everything worked... sound, network, video.. everything.

Since that went so well I tried an OpenSUSE install. Again, everything was detected and just worked on bootup. It took about 30 minutes from booting the CD to having a fully patched system. (He didn't want Linux so this was really just a chance to play with this combination of hardware and see if I wanted to build myself one just like it or not.)

The XP install (yes, the cd was XP-SP2.. full retail copy) was a real PITA. I had to go hunt down a keyboard with a ps/2 connector because I couldn't do the install with the USB KB. It took over 3 hours to get the OS installed and enough drivers added on to make everything work right along with all the patches.

After the pain of the XP install was over it worked just fine. He loves it... it's faster than any PC he has ever owned.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[modecx]

You should read up on slipstreaming, it's the only way to go for fresh install.

Also, you know that you don't have to reboot every time a driver asks you to restart, right? Sure, sometimes a driver (or Windows) won't accept anything but a restart, but that's a rare case. The majority of time you can pretty much install every driver you need, then do one reboot, and everything works. I usually install my graphics driver, then do that reboot, because that at least affords you some screen space--some drivers overflow the screen and make installation a bitch. If I had to install, reboot, install, reboot... Well, I'd want to immolate myself on whilst sitting on Steve Ballmer's lap.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[Jason Earl]

The problem with that line of thinking is that the Christmas season presents sales opportunities that simply don't come around again later in the year. No one wants to get a coupon for a Vista computer in their stocking, and a computer with XP pre-installed simply isn't as competitive an offering as a computer with Vista installed would be. That means that a significant amount of money that would have gone towards PCs this Christmas will probably go towards something else. OEMs are pissed, and rightly so. Missing the Christmas season is the unpardonable sin in the retail business.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[dknj]

I recently built my own machine... 2G memory, .5TB (2 SATA drives), 3.06Ghz dual core... all very cool. I spent almost 2 weeks getting Ubuntu installed and working properly (for what reason would an OS not come with generic video drivers?). The sound was a nightmare to get running, don't get me started on my unsupported video capture card. Fortunately (I guess), a lot of the drivers came with the linux kernel (as one might expect), but the installation and configuration was amazingly tedious, and error prone.

I'm convinced one part of the horrible nature is that even today it seems that EVERY driver, EVERY re-configuration demanded intimate knowledge of my hardware though in my wildest imagination, I couldn't think of a rationale -- this continuity interruptus makes for a tedious, drawn out, error-sprinkled, bad-taste-in-the-mouth experience.

I finally shook out all of the bugs (oh, yeah, about 100MB+ of software updates -- the original was from earlier this year, go figure), got a SCREAMING machine, absolutely delighted with the configuration and performance (although my 3d benchmark isn't as high as windows).

Now, to be on-topic, I can't begin to imagine these upgrades will be problem free, I can't even think they'd be problem-sparse. It's non-trivial work installing from scratch, much less considering layering something as big as GLXserver over an existing Xorg installation. I wouldn't want to do it. I've read enough reviews from people with bollixed machines (granted, they were working with CVS releases) -- there will be a LOT of people out there who've committed too much data and personal work (blood, sweat and tears) on their new Linux machines -- and they're going to lose data (ReiserFS anyone?).

It's interesting to note the article doesn't recommends upgrading to a newer version of Ubuntu by doing a clean install. That's not really upgrading Ubuntu, that's installing Ubuntu. How many people will not have had their data backed up properly ahead of this? How many will be left with applications that ran on a previous kernel that won't run on the current kernel?

The article is probably wrong, this is GNU's olive branch to... well... no one really... who had hoped to roll out the new machines with brand spanking new Linux distro already installed. It's a PR debacle and nightmare in the making. Fortunately for Linux, that would be mostly irrelevant.

(To contrast, on same machine described above, I took the new Vista release candidate, booted up, installed and got completely running, all sound and video working perfectly -- in less than 2 hours!

Funny, for my life I could not find a satisfactory solution (or even find a google solution) to get Grub configured properly to reference Vista... Finally gave up, and let the new Vista boot loader handle it, the configuration was painless and flawless. Go figure.)

Feel free to replace with with Mac OS X, FreeBSD, BeOS, any other Linux distro, etc. Just because you fail at life (i mean really, who has issues with a windows installation on stable hardware....) doesn't mean you need to act like a hobbyist OS is the holy grail. Oh yea, Syllable 4 Life!!!</sarcasm>

Re:a recent "install" experience

[mabhatter654]

I hear you... try installing without a floppy for the modern disk controllers!!! XP still won't take CD or USB keys for drivers at boot time! What a crock, MUCH of the problem people have is related to THAT feature missing! If you could load up a CD or USB key with all the drivers before you start it would save HOURS on an XP install. But alas, even that wouldn't work because every vendor has to use their own EXE for DRIVERS instead of a standard format. Now if you're installing Dells it's really easy, unless you add something non-Dell.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[smash]

How's this for wierd... I couldn't (well, didn't try very hard, as far as what I want to do is concerned, XP = win2k + bloat + cleartype, which appears to be included in some form, in recent nvidia drivers) get XP installed on my system to a SATA disk. Yes, i'm sure there's a work-around, however the work-around I used was to simply install Win2k.

My question is why the hell should win2k work fine with that configuration, and XP broken? Microsoft tell me that XP is faster and more reliable, easier to use, etc :D

Not that I particularly care, just curious...

Re:a recent "install" experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, get a life, will you?

Re:a recent "install" experience

[Sinbios]

for what reason would an OS not come with PS/2 generic mouse drivers?

It /does/ come with generic PS/2 mouse drivers. If the mouse isn't broken and it didn't work then your motherboard or BIOS likely have issues.

The sound was a nightmare to get running, the video was a joke.

If by a nightmare you mean "Go to manufacturer's website, download drivers, install"... and what, were you trying to use the generic XP driver for the video? Those are only meant to get you running so you can install the proper drivers from the hardware manufacturer. If the hardware manufacturer's drivers don't work you can hardly blame Windows.

EVERY driver, EVERY re-configuration demanded a reboot

You know, you don't have to reboot every time it says "It is recommended that you reboot now, but you can press cancel to reboot later". Just install all your drivers and updates in one go, and reboot once.

I finally shook out all of the bugs (oh, yeah, about 100+ XP updates -- the CD was pre-SP1, go figure)

The majority of these are probably in SP2... and that's one update.

In short, you don't have to be all "Windows is teh suxx0rs, Linux FTW!!" just because you're inexperienced with Windows installations (In hindsight, this post seems more like a troll than anything else. "The sound was a pain to get working, it's Windows' fault"? Is it possible to be that ignorant?) Especially considering that Linux is notorious for terrible hardware compatibility.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[Sinbios]

Haha, where are my mod points when I need 'em? Mod parent up!

Re:a recent "install" experience

[Skippy_kangaroo]

Taking 2 weeks to get an XP installation working correctly (versus 2hours for Mandriva) indicates your lack of experience setting up XP.

But that seems to be precisely the point. If only trained professionals or computer nerds with lots of experience can install XP properly what hope is there for the rest of us? It shouldn't be like that.

A PS/2 driver is no use to anyone if you can't find it. See if you can work out the relevance of this classic quote:

"I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
"That's the Display Department."
"With a torch."
"The lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"But you found the plans, didn't you?"
"Oh yes, they were 'on display' in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the leopard.'"

Re:a recent "install" experience

[HermMunster]

It should have taken you a couple of hours of an afternoon to do all that you talk about. Also, you may not have given any thought to the CD that came with your motherboard. If you have an add-on video card you might have wanted to look at the download section of the company that manufacturers the chipset. Just those few things would get you up and running in no time.

I build custom machines for a living and often I'll be installing 3-4 machines at a time. I own the business and I do this on my own. I prioritize well so things go fast.

On a Linux box I can spend more time than a XP box. It isn't because of the lack of things it is because things aren't readily available and I have to search far and wide to get what I want.

There absolutely is no compelling reason to buy Vista. No one needs to buy that program to solve any problem they have. The security features are no guarantee that in 6 months after Vista's release we won't be back to the same ole crap dealing with viruses and adware/spyware/malware. In fact, it has been made abundantly clear that the end user can just as easily install malware on their computer as they could under XP. Ridding the machine of it is going to be exactly the same series of steps and take just as long if not longer. Patch days from MS will remain and they will be just as large as XP.

What you get with Vista is a DRM infected nightmare and a pretty interface that you will pay dearly for in order to run it. You don't mind upgrading your computer video, memory, and hard drive just so you can use the translucent windows and reorganized structure to the programs?

Let's hope that most people understand that the Dell hype of Vista is just that--hype. I wish he'd stop disseminating inaccurate information. But hey, Dell is suffering pretty bad financially and needs to sell more hardware. They have been selling these el-cheapo boxes that won't take advantage of the only feature Vista has to offer (the translucent windows), so Dell gets to sell higher priced boxes again. Those price wars were eating up Dell and their market position. Hell, even some of the el-cheapo enthusiast built boxes were better performers, more standardized, and and more easily upgraded than some most of the mid-range Dells and even some of the high end Dells.

My customers see my custom computers see their long manufacturer warranties and know that Dell is just crap. I never dispute that Dell makes good solid notebooks. But their desktops are atrocious.

The bundled software in Dells are weak and usually trial versions that expire in 90 days. They use el-cheapo parts and their connectors, powersupplies, and mountings to the motherboards are very proprietary. Dell knows this. They planned it. But they also know they will sell many more costly machines now that Vista requires so much more power to operate.

But your experience with an XP Pro install is not common, in fact it is rare. With better prioritization you could get any box up and running in a matter of a couple of hours, including the complete assembly process.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[Al Dimond]

Funny, for my life I could not find a satisfactory solution (or even find a google solution) to get the XP dual boot file configured properly to reference the Mandriva... Finally gave up, and let lilo handle it, the configuration was painless and flawless. Go figure.)

Apparently it's possible to do this. Instructions are about 3/4 the way down. I wouldn't call this "easy", but it will get you Linux without overwriting your MBR, like the article says. Though there's really no need to be apprehensive about letting LILO or GRUB call NTLDR, it's just one extra step in the process. Given that such a large proportion of LILO/GRUB users dual-boot it's really no surprise that those bootloaders handle the situation well.

I haven't tried these instructions, and if you're happy with what you've got don't fuck with it, but they seem reasonable enough from my knowledge of NTLDR. It sounds like you've seen Windows' boot.ini file at least, but, as the article describes, there's more than meets the eye there. There are some aspects of NTLDR's configuration that don't make much sense, but at least it's not hard to throw together a working configuration. On the other hand, Vista's bootloader is completely ridiculous. Once you get in a mess with it you're not getting out. I would never configure it to boot anything but the copy of Vista on its own partition, and let LILO/GRUB handle everything else.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[HermMunster]

None of his problems were XP related. They were inexperience or prioritization. Windows fully supports PS2 connectors and he doesn't need SP2 to get going. On the contrary, his Linux box did not install vendor optimized fully capable drivers for video or sound. In order to make that work he would need to visit his friendly chipset vendor and download their drivers for linux and install them. He's running gimped drivers to start on a fresh install of Linux because the chipset manufacturers won't provide commercial free driver installs with the OS.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[pookemon]

But there's nothing complex about installing XP - the hardest thing about it is if you have to load custom drivers during the installation (ie. for SATA controllers). If you don't install the correct drivers in Linux I would expect you'd have similar issues.

"A PS/2 driver is no use to anyone if you can't find it."

You don't have to - it loads by default. The problem was probably fixed by installing either the mobo drivers or the service packs. If you have an old version of windows (Pre SP1) and a new motherboard - then of course there's going to be issues. How old was the Mandriva distro? Go and get one from 2002(?) and see what issues you have then.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[AmberBlackCat]

I have been able to walk people through Windows installs over the phone in less than two hours. And I don't remember ever having trouble with a standard mouse plugged into a ps2 port, even with the 16-bit Windows. Maybe you just don't know anything about Windows.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[HermMunster]

Windows XP support USB keyboards and mice in the base install. The XP installer fully supports a PS2 keyboard and mouse.

Your sound and video were the gimped versions that are installed with the Linux distro. You still need to go out and download the proper 3d accelerated optimized drivers from the chipset vendors. Same for sound. Sorry, but that's just a fact of life for Linux, at least it was the last time I installed it.

If you didn't have support for your USB keyboard or mouse you had non-standard components. Albeit rare, some are out there. My customers are always told to buy for something other than price. In other words, never buy that el-cheapo mouse that is not a recognizable name or you'll pay in time and gas trying to get it to work and then driving back to the store to return it.

The issues described in his posting are demonstrative of a lack of experience and/or prioritization.

After 5 years of distribution with a large number of new products released over that half decade it would be no wonder that some people have problems with some new components and their drivers.

XP HAS NEVER HAD A PROBLEM WITH PS2 DRIVERS, EVER.

If you have a problem it is your problem not XP.

I do not in any way support Microsoft and I do not care to protect their name or business. It isn't my job to police for them and I don't care what anyone I encounter does with XP legal or otherwise. It just isn't my problem.

I do dislike the fact that Microsoft has stolen, deceived, and broken so many laws to get and maintain their monopoly. I hate monopoly companies. But I can honestly say that those comparative stories about XP vs. Linux are not giving the fully story to the readers, so I am commenting.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[jcr]

"Taking 2 weeks to get an XP installation working correctly (versus 2hours for Mandriva) indicates your lack of experience setting up XP. XP does come with a generic PS/2 mouse driver - if it didn't work then you probably didn't have the drivers for your mobo installed. A setup with XP is easy. Install XP, install your mobo drivers, install your gfx driver and then any other drivers for extra hardware (printer/scanner etc.)."

And that, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is why I shot him. The defense rests.

-jcr

Re:a recent "install" experience

[guruevi]

I find it so weird that Wintendo-fanboys always have the following attitude:

Of course your Linux boots up and everything works dandy but then you have to install the proprietary drivers from the hardware vendors because they don't want to release some information about what fits where in the register and how to call certain functions so you can play your favorite games with faster 3D acceleration. Since that is not painless, it's an inherent problem with Linux, not the proprietary hardware you bought.

Of course Windows doesn't come with all those drivers pre-loaded, you have to install them yourself. That your keyboard or mouse or network card (and there's a bunch out there that don't work vanilla) isn't working on startup isn't relevant, you don't need to use those to ... oh wait, you DO need those to download your patches and drivers... Since that is not painless either, well, it's your hardware, not a problem with Windows.

My idea: buy an open source supportive or supported video card, they're out there. Run any vanilla linux and it will work right-out-of-the-box. Or buy a Mac, all your proprietary stuff that works right out of the box. Or buy a combination of proprietary hardware and linux and get the hassle of typing 2 lines on command line to get NVidia drivers working or buy a proprietary operating system with a half-ass Dell and spend the next 3 days setting up your system or buy an utterly old system from the year 2001 where XP should have all drivers for and spend only 1 day installing patches, upgrades, virusses and reboots.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have to reboot every time it tells you to, you can simply install all of the drivers/software that needs rebooting at once. Then do one EASY restart and you're fine. Guess your common sense went down the drain with all that money you blew.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[ydrol]

Your sound and video were the gimped versions that are installed with the Linux distro.

Some non-free Linux distros (eg Mandriva Powerpack) do come with official nvidia drivers. Does XP?

You still need to go out and download the proper 3d accelerated optimized drivers from the chipset vendors.

just like XP, IF you needed it. For office work and simple games the Linux GPL drivers are just fine.

Same for sound.

Er no actually. Most of the GPL drivers for most sound chips are perfectly adequate.

Sorry, but that's just a fact of life for Linux, at least it was the last time I installed it.

Apparently so. You do know most Linux distros will also install drivers for printers, scanners, analogue TV cards and now Digital TV cards during installation. Seen that on XP too? I haven't. And heck people even forget, even XP didnt have a basic DVD player ready after installation. You had to get the vendor video card drivers or very recent media player. Mandriva now has LinDVD.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[Almahtar]

"If you didn't have support for your USB keyboard or mouse you had non-standard components. Albeit rare, some are out there. "

And yet, if it works in Linux and not Windows, Linux still deserves praise for hardware compatibility, which it gets a TOTALLY undeserved bum rap for. Heaven forbid Linux support something that's non-standard and actually freely document it, as opposed to the myriad Windows drivers that are completely non-standard and non-open, which people have to reverse-engineer(ATI, anyone?)

Nobody with a mildly informed opinion has a right to bash Linux's hardware support. Bring it. Try.

Oh, for bonus fun:
"The issues described in his posting are demonstrative of a lack of experience and/or prioritization."

I.E. You haven't experienced the same thing (or aren't willing to admit it), therefore it obviously has to be false. I hear the same thing from Microsoft guys that haven't even attempted Open Source alternatives all the time. Move along...

Re:a recent "install" experience

[ydrol]

Apparently so. You do know most Linux distros will also install drivers for printers, scanners, analogue TV cards and now Digital TV cards during installation. Seen that on XP too? I haven't. And heck people even forget, even XP didnt have a basic DVD player ready after installation. You had to get the vendor video card drivers or very recent media player. Mandriva now has LinDVD.

And I didnt event mention, motherboard drivers.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree if the "non-standard" hardware did work on linux do the windows fans avoid giving credit.
And how come it is the customers fault for using non-standard hardware but then when IE isn't a standards compliant browser the IE fanboys are quiet?

Re:a recent "install" experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude... You're getting a Apple!

Re:a recent "install" experience

[TubeSteak]

No one wants to get a coupon for a Vista computer in their stocking, and a computer with XP pre-installed simply isn't as competitive an offering as a computer with Vista installed would be. That means that a significant amount of money that would have gone towards PCs this Christmas will probably go towards something else. OEMs are pissed, and rightly so.

A lot of people buy stuff & then never fill out the rebate & mail it.

It all depends on how much the freebie is worth. The less it's worth, the lower the redemption rate. $45 for Vista is in that lowball range where people will buy it thinking "oooh, I will save [however much Vista is - $45]." Later on, they will either never redeem it, or they'll pay for Vista then pay someone to install it for them.

I imagine that some people won't be buying computers because Vista is not out, but I suspect it won't be as many as you'd think. Consumers (as a group) are fairly dumb & if you dangle freebies & discounts in front of them, they will buy & more than they intended to.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[nick.ian.k]

It's always (or at least from 95 onwards) been the case that upgrading from one version of Windows to the next is best done with a clean install. That's because a clean install removes some of the crap that builds on your machine over time (ie. Registry).

Over ten years later and that aspect of things *still* proves to be an enormous problem. This is a much bigger deal than fighting with driver issues, pulling down the latest patches, or slipstreaming a CD with the necessary service packs: this means that, in addition to installing the OS and getting it working with your hardware, you've got to re-install all your applications, reconfigure preferences/settings (or copy over/import the relevant data where possible), and so on...what a tremendous nightmare! Not trolling or flaming here, folks: I'm genuinely curious why it is that Microsoft still thinks that this is acceptable? And I'm not looking for a "because people are still buying" response...I'm more interested if anyone's seen them actually address the issue, at least as a talking point.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[aaronl]

I can't speak for the odd problems that the GP had with keyboard/mouse, but Windows XP *DOES NOT* come with drivers for most modern hardware. Most Linux distributions come with drivers for nearly anything out there.

To finish installing XP, you need to go download video drivers, sound drivers, network drivers, motherboard drivers, etc. Hell, you can't even install on many SATA systems without having a floppy drive and teaching XP how to talk to a SATA controller.

To make Vista have accelerated 3D, I still needed to go download and install a driver. The MS driver for my network chipset won't do gigabit, but Linux and XP don't have trouble with it. It also wasn't too fond of my 802.11g USB dongle, and doesn't (and probably never will) support some of my older hardware, like a scanner and a few printers.

As for Linux, I've never had to install a non-distribution supplied driver for my system for anything other than video. In that case, I clicked "Add/Remove..." from my "Applications" menu, selected "NVIDIA binary X.Org driver", and hit OK. The one place I see Linux having bad support is for 802.11g chipsets, and that is 100% a problem created by the manufacturers and not one with Linux.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[a.d.trick]

I'm not exactly a Windows fan (I don't even use it), but I fail to see what is good about Macs in this respect. As a Mac user, you build your own computer because you can't build your own computer. If you go off and by an happy little supported Dell PC, it will work. Ok, it's missing some things at first, like a decent web browser, and Windows just generally stinks, but that's a separate issue than what he's talking about.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[seweso]

I believe most Christmas shoppers see a PC as a PC, not as Windows Xp or Windows Vista. Only nerds care about Vista at this point. Most people would even be better of when they get Windows Xp and not Windows Vista. Maybe someone could hit the street and ask a few people some Vista-Christmas-buying-related questions. Because we nerds always seem to know what the average users wants (and I seem to be one of them).

Re:a recent "install" experience

[jesterzog]

That means that a significant amount of money that would have gone towards PCs this Christmas will probably go towards something else. OEMs are pissed, and rightly so. Missing the Christmas season is the unpardonable sin in the retail business.

In all honesty, though, what would retailers do about it? Ditch Microsoft and start shipping PC's with Linspire?

Re:a recent "install" experience

[esmrg]

I had to go hunt down a keyboard with a ps/2 connector because I couldn't do the install with the USB KB.

There should be a setting in the BIOS to enable legacy mode for USB keyboards. Essentially it is a PS2 emulation mode for USB keyboards - and it solves the very problem of which you speak. When I switched to a wireless KB I realized fairly quickly I could not make selections in the boot menu without legacy mode on. (Legacy KB is required while the processor is in real mode.) When the system switches to protected mode, the newer usb interface will override it. :)

Re:a recent "install" experience

[jesterzog]

After the pain of the XP install was over it worked just fine. He loves it... it's faster than any PC he has ever owned.

This is one of the reasons that I get a little skeptical about how so many people like to judge a linux distribution by its installer. A lot of reviews I've read over time of linux distributions have focussed almost entirely on the installer. It's true that most people who use Linux (unlike Windows) will need to install it at some point, and installation is quite important because of that. But surely the entire enduring experience after the installation, including things like system maintenance to keep it running nicely, is at least as important.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[waferhead]

Oddly, I installed the Mandriva 2007 via a FREE (as in beer) Mandriva ONE CD, and it installed the NVidia driver for me, just as a retail version of 2007 would.
(You are comparing retail versions, right?)

Once online, the updates (easy urpmi is your friend) downloaded and installed the latest version.
The 3D tools worked flawlessly.

Installing Windows from scratch is a long, drawn out PITA, for anyone.
Especially compared to ANY modern commercial Linux distro.

Saying it isn't does not make it so.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[Macthorpe]

SATA is a relatively new thing and the XP CD just doesn't include SATA drivers on it. So you need a floppy with SATA drivers on it so that it can actually read/write to the HD. It's nothing sinister.

I'm confused about Win2k working though. I'm not sure of the chronology with regards to Vista releases so I'm guessing it could just be that the Win2k disc you were using is just more up to date.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck is a Wintendo fanboy?

You do know that you can't run XP on the fucking Gamecube, right?

Re:a recent "install" experience

[mgblst]

I guess your hardware is too new. Linux versions are updated more frequently, which has advantages and disadvantages. Windows XP can't have the drivers that didn't exist when it was created. You might as well blame the hardware manufacturers for deviate from standards so much, or not have drivers accessable from the hardware.

It is easy to blame microsoft in this situation, but I have installed XP on about 30 different IBM laptops without a problem, so I am quite happy with it.

The ps2 mouse and keyboard problem is weird!

Re:a recent "install" experience

[Tim C]

I had to go hunt down a keyboard with a ps/2 connector because I couldn't do the install with the USB KB.

Then there's something wrong with the hardware, as I've installed XP (plain and SP2) on several machines with USB keyboards without any issue at all.

I don't know what your problem was, but it wasn't the OS.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[richie2000]

My guess would be that his Win2k was not SATA-aware at all and ran his chipset in PATA-compatible BIOS mode instead - many, maybe even most, SATA chipsets seem to have that ability. Why XP doesn't even try this as a last resort is beyond me.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[loic_2003]

Of course Windows doesn't come with all those drivers pre-loaded, you have to install them yourself. That your keyboard or mouse or network card (and there's a bunch out there that don't work vanilla) isn't working on startup isn't relevant, you don't need to use those to ... oh wait, you DO need those to download your patches and drivers... Since that is not painless either, well, it's your hardware, not a problem with Windows.

Where you're getting these ps/2 comliant keyboards that don't work I have no idea... even a £1.99 keyboard I have works fine. The only hardware I've ever had driver trouble with in XP was a cheapo video input card made by a company that went bust before XP even came out. On the other hand I think I have spent over 20 hours trying to get drivers to work on linux boxes and I've only tried to get maybe four or five running, ever.
The difference between having to install drivers for the hardware on linux and windows is that windows takes ~5 minutes once downloaded (google manufacturer -> click support -> divers -> download -> double click downloaded file -> click install -> reboot and you're done compared with potential hours spent trying to get a driver to work in linux. You have to install a compiler, hunt though obscure websites for ages and praying that this driver you have works. I once found myself having to compile my bloody kernel just trying to get a driver to work for my wirelss NIC. It's a joke. Once you have an SP2 install of XP on the go, it takes less that 1 hour to install all the drivers (mobo, graphics card, sound card... and you're done.).

Linux is only free if your time is worth nothing!

Re:a recent "install" experience

[Keeper]

If it took 2 weeks for you to get XP up and running, you weren't trying very hard. If your PS2 hardware wasn't "recognized", there is something VERY wrong with your setup, not windows.

My last system was a MCE PC built from the following parts:

- AMD 3800+ X2 processor
- 2 x 1gb DDR2-800 ram (Corsair, 5-5-5-8)
- 2 x 500gb SATA drives (Western Digital RE2 WD5000YS)
- ASUS M2NPV-VM GF6150 AM2 mobo
- NVidia 7600GS based video card w/256MB ram (fanless board made by xfx)
- NVidia dual tv capture card

Install of XP took roughly 30 minutes. Windows update took about an hour (that includes time taken installing WHQL drivers for everything on the mobo + video). Took 2 minutes to stick in the driver disk for the VFD display and install it. Took 10 minutes to download the latest drivers for the tuner card and install it. Took another 5 minutes to install the nvidia dvd decoder package. It took me 10 minutes to find the underscan settings in the nvidia display driver and tweak those.

Done.

Total time: less than 2 hours.

If you wanted to be adventurous, you could spend another 5 minutes and install the AMD cool 'n quiet driver (reduce power consumption when idle).

If it weren't a MCE install, it would have taken me less than 1.5 hours (MCE involves some disk swapping and updates not required for a normal xp install).

It took me far longer to troubleshoot a stability problem than installing XP (my ram wouldn't run at spec in dual channel mode; each stick worked fine single channel).

Re:a recent "install" experience

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

Where you're getting these ps/2 comliant keyboards that don't work I have no idea... even a £1.99 keyboard I have works fine

Ehh... Let's read the posts too, instead of just answering. The parent didn't mention ps/2 keyboards and neither did the original poster. The only problem explicitly mentioned was one with the usb keyboard -- and don't start denying those, I can personally testify to their existence (both on Windows and linux).

You have to install a compiler, hunt though obscure websites for ages and praying that this driver you have works. I once found myself having to compile my bloody kernel just trying to get a driver to work for my wirelss NIC. It's a joke. Once you have an SP2 install of XP on the go, it takes less that 1 hour to install all the drivers (mobo, graphics card, sound card... and you're done.).

It's great that you have found what works for you. My experiences have been quite different, but I don't think there's much value in upping each others heroic stories about the battles we've had with fearsome operating systems (It quite soon starts to sound like a Monty Python sketch -- "Yeah? Well, when I installed Windows I had to sleep in a hole in the ground, wake up at four and walk 20km uphill to the office."). By the way, this is something that usually improves the level of conversation: avoid exaggerations or generalizations from a small amount of samples. If you read the paragraph you wrote, you'll see that you did both there. It lowers the value of your whole post.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[xarak]

But most people would be in the logic of "I already have XP, I'll wait the extra month to get Vista and probably a better run for my money hardware-wise too" so I'm not sure its going to help them out anyway.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[aug24]

OEMs are pissed, and rightly so.

Rightly? RIGHTLY? Because the Redmond fairies haven't given them a big money-making opportunity?

Well in that case, OI, FAIRIES! Where's my rocket car!?

Worth a shot, eh?

Justin.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[Anonymous Coward]

If you look at any of the Linux drivers, you'll find that most of them do contain vendor and individual chipset specific code. Many of these routines are written and supplied by the vendors themselves I.e. they are just as good as the vendor supplied Windows drivers. The only difference between Linux and Windows is that the vendor doesn't need to supply their own chipset specific drivers, because the Linux drivers already contain their chipset specific optimisations.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[DirtyFly]

Your experiance is NOT common, i do XP installs allmost every day and rarelly encounter any problem except for the 'must patch' before get into the net if you use a sp1 CD.

NEVER EVER had I had a problem with PS2 drivers.

dont know how youve got int such a trouble unless you built the computer with very cheap or strange hardware.

Windows can have all sorts of problems but difficult instalation IS NOT one of them.

I use Linux at home and I've never had a single instalation that was straight forward.

As for the 'free' upgrade , man what would you expect ? Service is more expensive than hardware and some software, Microsoft will offer you a free upgrade, to another OS and we are 6 monthes ahead, its up to you to install it, if you want someone else to install it , then PAY for the service. Apple does not offer the software upgrades that M$ does and i see no one biting apple. Oh BTW how was is the upgrade procedure from one fedora core version to the other ? ....

Jorge

Re:a recent "install" experience

[Macthorpe]

I'll put that down as my "thing learnt today"! Wasn't aware that SATA had that kind of ability, which is why (so far) I haven't taken the plunge to upgrade to it. All my drives are still good ol' PATA.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[dvNull]

I spent almost 2 weeks getting my XP Professional installed and working properly (for what reason would an OS not come with PS/2 generic mouse drivers?).

2 weeks for a clean install of XP? I don't buy it. Unless you have some really strange hardware combination or faulty hardware, I cannot imagine it taking ANYONE 2 weeks to install XP unless they are doing it for the first time. More than likely your claim is an exaggeration or you built the machine, slacked off for 2 weeks and did your install.

I have a pretty basic configuration and it takes me around 90 minutes to install XP including all updates from Windows Update and all my drivers. It could probably be shorter except that I grab a beer and watch TV while windows update is doing its work.

And they have always had PS/2 support. And this is the part of your claim that makes me want to call shennanigans. Windows has its problems its true, but people here seem to exaggerate it so such an extent that makes it obvious that they are talking out of their ass.

The one thing I will agree from your post is that any sort of Upgrade option will be a nightmare. Windows has never done a good upgrade job in any revision since Windows 95.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[drsquare]

Apparently so. You do know most Linux distros will also install drivers for printers, scanners, analogue TV cards and now Digital TV cards during installation.

Many Linux distros require you to install a new kernel to get your hardware working. How come an eight year old version of Windows gets my ADSL working with a few button clicks, whilst a mere two year old version of Linux needs a new kernel?

Whatever's wrong with Vista, if it doesn't make you compile kernels I'll consider it more suitable than Linux.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[drsquare]

If you can't get it installed then what difference does it make how well it runs?

It might be the greatest OS ever, but if you're trying to get ADSL working, and it doesn't work because it assumes it's pppoe when it's nothing of the sort, and it doesn't recognise your modem, it's as useful as DOS.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[argStyopa]

It's funny, I just built a system and I was amazed at how quickly the install/run process went, compared to all the systems I've built since about 1990.

Maybe an hour from 'opening boxes' to 'windows updating'. Granted, all the updates suck, that's directly MSs fault for not bundling occasionally an 'uber patch' that updates all systems from 1.0 to current.

Note that when you're installing everything from sound to mice to video, etc. when it says "system will need to reboot" you usually don't HAVE to. It's only to make THAT component fully functional. Hit cancel, and keep installing everything that doesn't DEPEND on that part to work (for example, I wouldn't install the video player software until after you're rebooted from installing the DVD player(s)), and you only have a couple of reboots at the end of the process.

Also, any reasonably competent tech friend can burn a copy of your XP install disk as a 'no hands' install, that uses YOUR serial numbers and data (no piracy!) but installs XP in one session in which you don't have to sit there hitting ok...ok....ok....ok.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[ydrol]

Many Linux distros require you to install a new kernel to get your hardware working.

Usually, that is part of the evolutionary process for new types of hardware. or for hardware for which only closed source drivers are available. In these cases, more often than not, the next release of the distro will have appropiate kernel modules bundled. Two recent examples.. Happauge TV cards, Broadcom WIFI. Both required faffing about with modules just last year. Both installed automagically during installation with Mandriva 2007. (Granted, the Broadcom installation needed to ask me for the windows Broadcom files, but it was still all part of the main installation., "a few button clicks" as you put it.)

How come an eight year old version of Windows gets my ADSL working with a few button clicks, whilst a mere two year old version of Linux needs a new kernel?

Because PCI ADSL cards, which I suspect you are talking about, are the worst offenders for closed source drivers, and there is little motivation to work on such hardware with routers selling for the same price? Also you are veering off subject slightly because there are NO drivers for such hardware in XP , to my knowledge, you still had to go and get the drivers from elsewhere, which was the whole point of this sub-thread.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[ydrol]

Oops, I meant,

Happauge digital TV cards,

Analogue TV card support at installation has been around for ages, unlike XP.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[RidiculousPie]

ou still need to go out and download the proper 3d accelerated optimized drivers from the chipset vendors. Same for sound. Sorry, but that's just a fact of life for Linux, at least it was the last time I installed it.

And for those thousands of pcs with integrated intel graphics, which have open source drivers, which are included with your distro, it is not a fact of life. Stop trolling.

Windows XP support USB keyboards and mice in the base install.

But not the Wireless Intellimouse Explorer they manufacture themselves. "You need to go out and download the proper Microsoft drivers from Microsoft". Stop trolling.

Installing an OS requires planning and an amount of manual installation/downloads. Regardless of who makes it. There is no need to troll.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Your sound and video were the gimped versions that are installed with the Linux distro.

...and the ones that come with XP? Nope, for full support you still have to download the vendor's driver!

If you have a problem it is your problem not XP.

Yawn. That's been Microsoft's line for years!

But I can honestly say that those comparative stories about XP vs. Linux are not giving the fully story to the readers, so I am commenting.

Same with Windows fanbois! Get back to work, Microsoftie!

Re:a recent "install" experience

[zerocool^]

Dude, chill.

Windows XP came out over 5 years ago. When it came out, it included nearly every driver for every obscure piece of hardware known to man. It included even in beta a driver for the newfangled Voodoo5 5500 graphics card with 4 GPU's on it. All sorts of network cards and modems (thank god, it supported the lne100tx tulip card and a good number of realtek 8139 cards). Video cards - it supported the Riva TNT2, the state of the art card at the time. It has shitloads of printer drivers. It supports soundblaster live cards.

The reason it doesn't know what your CMEDIA-AZEALUS onboard sound card is, or your GeForce FX 7850GTX Special edition, or your Intel eepro1000 Gigabit network card is, is because it came out 5 years ago! They don't release new driver packs with the updates, so yes, heavens to murtrigord, you're going to have to install some drivers from the CD's that come with your hardware.

This isn't an issue on various flavors of linux because THEY'RE NEWER! Windows XP came out around the same time as RedHat 7.1. Go find a RH7.1 install and see what it recognizes. And Vista is still beta, cheif. Once it comes out, then you can start knocking it. You found a problem with Vista - did you submit a bug report? That's what beta versions are for, ya know. Finding the kind of stuff you found, and rather than ranting about it, getting it fixed before it ships.

~Wix

Re:a recent "install" experience

[jZnat]

Taking 2 weeks to get an XP installation working correctly (versus 2hours for Mandriva) indicates your lack of experience setting up XP. XP does come with a generic PS/2 mouse driver - if it didn't work then you probably didn't have the drivers for your mobo installed. A setup with XP is easy. Install XP, install your mobo drivers, install your gfx driver and then any other drivers for extra hardware (printer/scanner etc.).

Oh boy, I feel old now. I remember when Linux was the hard to install operating system that had no drivers. What a turn of events...

Re:a recent "install" experience

[jZnat]

So, where can you buy 5-year-old hardware new?

Most people discard their old hardware and buy new hardware, so XP is severely outdated.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually yes.

I looked into vista heavily and decided that the money I need to spend I might as well get a nice mac pro tower with OSX and never ever have to have the hell that is Microsoft Operating systems.

problem though.... anydvd is not out for mac, I need to be able to voilate copyrights. Copying a DVD, compressing it to a mp4 and then sharing several gigs of movies with friends is absolutely essential.

so I guess I keep an old machine with Windows 2000 on it for that task.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[Anonymous Coward]

"I recently built my own machine... 2G memory, .5TB (2 SATA drives), 3.06Ghz dual core..."

5TB with two drives??!? Nice, but your full of shit. I have yet to see a 2.5 TB single drive. (assuming RAID 0 for performance just don't cry when a drive fails and you lose everything) I hope you meant GB not TB.
Or maybe it was .5TB or 500 GB. 500 GB is easy can even do it with one drive.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[richie2000]

I forgot to mention that sometimes, this is also a BIOS option.

http://www.techarp.com/showFreeBOG.aspx?lang=0&bog no=313 and http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html as well as http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imst/sb/cs-0 15988.htm has some more info.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[k12linux]

I don't know what your problem was, but it wasn't the OS.

Ahh.. of course. The fact that Linux *could* use the USB keyboard means nothing. Must be a hardware flaw that only pops up during a Windows install. Maybe the PC was alergic to the Windows installer.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[k12linux]

This could have been the problem. I didn't bother to check the BIOS since I had a ps/2 kb handy. It was still interesting that the Linux installer didn't have any issues and Linux was far easier to install yet all I seem to hear is how hard Linux is to install.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[Jason Earl]

They could make it easier to purchase machines without a Windows license. There's lots of folks that have legitimate reasons for not wanting a Windows license on new hardware, and there are even more people that would be happy to install a pirated version of Windows if they could save a bit of money on the hardware.

Remember, Windows and Windows support are both considerable costs for OEMs. Selling more blank hardware not only makes the OEMs hardware look more cost effective but it cuts down on costs as well.

Or they could push Linspire :). With the right marketing that's not even such a bad idea.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[k12linux]

Your sound and video were the gimped versions that are installed with the Linux distro.

I'll admit I didn't try any 3D/GL games under SUSE or Knoppix. Then again, my sound and video were "gimped" under the Windows install too... even more-so. Video was VGA 800x600 (and 8 colors) max until I updated and there was NO sound until I installed extra drivers. There was also no ethernet.

If you didn't have support for your USB keyboard or mouse you had non-standard components.

I don't remember the brand of KB and the mouse worked. Both worked just fine under both Linux distros including the SUSE installer.

XP HAS NEVER HAD A PROBLEM WITH PS2 DRIVERS, EVER.

re-read the post... I never said it did. That's why I went and got a PS/2 KB which worked fine.

If you have a problem it is your problem not XP.

I have at least 19 years experience installing, maintaining and administering DOS, Windows and networks for every version released from MS-DOS v3.3 through v6.22 and Windows v3.0 through XP & 2003 server. I have nearly that many years of experience with Linux from one of the first slackware releases up through the latest RHEL, Fedora, SUSE and Gentoo versions.

The point being I'm not some bumbling idiot who jammed an XP SP2 install CD in the drive and then was shocked a Genie didn't pop out and do everything for me. I actually do know how to install hardware, partition drives, install OSes, multiboot, etc. Yet even with that it still took far too long (IMHO) to install MS's flagship home OS latest version from brand new CDs.

Sure, I was able to walk away regularly and let it do it's thing (especially during the phase of formatting the drive) but it still needed far too much interaction, too many reboots and too many downloads. In the past 2 years, the only Linux install I've had that took that long (start to finish, including video drivers) was a Gentoo stage 1 install which took somewhere on the order of 30 hours (including all apps) and a fair amount of user interaction.

Anyhow, I'm just relating my most recent experience with installing XP Home on new hardware and saying it was similar to the GP post. I'll defend MS where they deserve it but installing on the latest hardware isn't one of those places. Whether this experience is typical or not isn't really relavent. (In fact I'm installing Server 2003 (sp2 standard edition) right now on a couple of production boxes and it's going very well.)

Re:a recent "install" experience

[k12linux]

whilst a mere two year old version of Linux needs a new kernel?

And you can get the very latest version of virtually every distro for free if you want. If a 2-year old version distro doesn't work you can just grab the latest one. Can you say the same for Windows? If I have Win2000 and some hardware is only supported under XP do I get a free upgrade?

Re:a recent "install" experience

[Tim C]

No, the fact that the XP installer does support USB keyboards means that there was something different about this one - therefore, if not a hardware fault, certainly a hardware issue. Feel free to practice your sarcasm though, it could use it.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[k12linux]

So because *windows XP installer* didn't know how to use a keyboard it is the fault of the KB itself? Various other posts have claimed they've experienced the same problem even with MS branded USB keyboards. Also, two different Linux distros were able to use the keyboard even from the very first boot prompt (when only the bootloader had been run.)

Add all that together and, to me, it makes it a Windows XP installer problem and not hardware problem.

While XP itself may be 5 years old, SP2 is not nearly that old and I was installing from an XP SP2 installation CD.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[drsquare]

Because PCI ADSL cards, which I suspect you are talking about

No, USB.

Also you are veering off subject slightly because there are NO drivers for such hardware in XP , to my knowledge, you still had to go and get the drivers from elsewhere

They generally come on a CD with the hardware that does everything. No reboot either.

Two recent examples.. Happauge TV cards, Broadcom WIFI. Both required faffing about with modules just last year. Both installed automagically during installation with Mandriva 2007.

My Happauge TV card doesn't work with Linux at all.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[jesterzog]

It might be the greatest OS ever, but if you're trying to get ADSL working, and it doesn't work because it assumes it's pppoe when it's nothing of the sort, and it doesn't recognise your modem, it's as useful as DOS.

I guess my point is that as long as the enduring experience is good, it opens up other options. For one thing, it'd make it easier for OEM's or retailers to install it for you, which is effectively what they do with Windows at the moment. It also opens up other possibilities, such as having someone else install it. (My mum and dad wouldn't care about the installer if I did it all for them, but they'd care a lot about being able to keep things working after I'd gone home.)

When I was first getting started in Linux (ages ago now), the installation was relatively easy. It took a while, and I had to figure out things I hadn't done much of before, such as boot managers and repartitioning. What really caused me to go back to Windows for a few more years, though, was that the whole system slowly degraded over time in ways that I couldn't figure out how to fix. The reason for this was that although the installer set things up initially, it didn't help to keep them running. I was basically dumped all at once into a system with a heap of configuration files for programs that I knew nothing about, most of which had no obvious configuration interface. The only way I knew how to reliably change some of the settings was to reinstall from scratch, and obviously I didn't want to do that.

I think a neat thing about a lot of distro's and desktop environments lately is that they're providing a slightly more intuitive interface for helping people to fix things when they break. I'm still not sure if they're quite there yet, but it's a lot better than it's been in the past.

Re:a recent "install" experience

[smash]

Yep, this is my bet as well.

My initial post was fairly sarcastic, i was merely playing the role of a user who would take microsofts claims of faster and easier to use to heart :D

Ironically, out of all the OSes I've installed on this box (Win2k, WinXP, FreeBSD 6.x, Ubuntu 6.10), XP was the most awkward to deal with :)

About tree-fitty

[Anonymous Coward]

Chef's Father: ...and I yelled, I said, "What do you want from us, Microsoft?" And Microsoft bent down, and said, "I need about tree-fitty."
[long pause]
Kyle: What's tree-fitty?
Chef's Father: Tree dollars, and fitty cents.
Chef's Mother: Tree-fitty.
Stan: He wanted money?
Chef's Father: That's right. I said, "I ain't givin' you no tree-fitty, you goddamn Microsoft! Get your own goddamn money!"
Chef's Mother: I gave him a dollar.
Chef's Father: She gave him a dollar.
Chef's Mother: I thought he'd go away if I have him a dollar.
Chef's Father: Well, of course he's not gonna go away, Mary! You give him a dollar, he's gonna assume you got more!

Re:About tree-fitty

[Anonymous Coward]

You've got more on this? You've got talent - keep writing.

Re:About tree-fitty

[Anonymous Coward]

duh.. South Park !

What free really means

[biocute]

Some companies, such as Dell, charge $45 for converting to Vista Home from XP home.

So it's similar to some open source service providers charging for installation and support, even the software itself is free.

This deal is not meant for bargin-hunters, but for people who really need a new machine right now, and the only thing holding them off is the operating system.

Depends on how nerfed you want your OS to be...

[Loopy]

The Ultimate version will run around $400 from what I've heard (yes, it's rumor). While the home/basic version will run a LOT cheaper, you'll be unable to do a lot of the stuff "tweakers" like to do to customize and manage things. Think: XP Pro had Remote Desktop, where XP Home did not. That kinda stuff.

Re:Depends on how nerfed you want your OS to be...

[dbIII]

Surely everyone here knows to get the cheaper OEM version - it should still be legal to buy it with an internal component like a $10 floppy disk drive.

Re:Depends on how nerfed you want your OS to be...

[pookemon]

I read somewhere a while ago that you don't have to get any hardware with the OEM version - it's just that you forfeit the "free" (MS once tried to charge me AUD$100 for reporting a bug in VB5 when it first came out) support that MS provides with the non-OEM version. Technically the support is supposed to come from the Vendor.

Re:Depends on how nerfed you want your OS to be...

[TheSpoom]

Those of us who want to do lots of tweaking know where to find our copy when the time comes. ;^)

(NB: I probably won't upgrade to Vista anyway, it doesn't seem worth it.)

Re:Depends on how nerfed you want your OS to be...

[laffer1]

Forget reading.. you can go to newegg.com or many other sites and order an OEM System Builder version of Windows XP. I'm sure the same will happen with vista. I recently built a new PC and bought OEM XP Home SP2 for it. Works great and came with a beta 2 copy of vista which was useless to me since I had RC1 anyway.

And before anyone asks, I use XP for gaming and .NET development. The rest of the time I use MidnightBSD or Mac OS X.

As for XP installation, it took me two tries to get it just right. The first install assigned C: to my old sata drive formatted with NTFS and so the OS installed on F:\ which caused several hardware and software problems. My Microsoft fingerprint reader keyboard software didn't work properly for instance. In the end, I ended up reinstalling after I formatted the old sata disk to put MidnightBSD on the system and Windows conveniently changed F: to C: which caused windows not to boot properly. They should really use %systemroot% or something.

After my last install I have everything working properly except for a few issues with Creative's Audigy driver not detecting mic and line in and some known bugs with Nvidia's Geforce driver and Enemy Territory's command map screen. 52 windows update + IE7 + Windows Media Player 10.

I tried vista on this machine before XP came. Aside from problems with the nvidia driver and OpenGL, I found it to be tolerable. The new start menu layout sucks but I said the same thing about XP at first. I might get used to it. Its not revolutionary by any means. In fact, it felt like KDE in a way. It almost looks like windows but behaves a little different. Disclaimer: I'm not a big KDE fan

I can report that Microsoft almost caught up to Mac OS 10.4. The bar has been raised a little for open source projects and I'm sure many of them will meet or exceed it soon. MidnightBSD might take awhile though :)

On a side note, anyone interested in using FreeBSD or MidnightBSD on a Intel DP965LT motherboard might want to know there are problems with SATA/IDE support. FreeBSD 6.2 beta2 can boot up on it but fails to detect the cdrom during install. MidnightBSD does not detect chipset yet, but the latest snapshot can get into sysinstall and fails just as FreeBSD does. Vista and XP can both work with the motherboard and I haven't tried linux but the latest kernel added ICH8 support.

Re:Depends on how nerfed you want your OS to be...

[Firehed]

Actually, I think the new Vista license specifies that you need to purchase a "full" system in order to legally get OEM -where "full" was defined as what constituted a new system in the transferring debacle - a new motherboard and hard drive. But don't quote me on that (unless I'm right).

Re:Depends on how nerfed you want your OS to be...

[jonwil]

Thats assuming there even IS an OEM version of Vista Ultimate.

Re:Depends on how nerfed you want your OS to be...

[compwizrd]

xp license does as well(and they lay it out as a full system, not just a board and hard drive), and the office licensing has for a long time.

this new setup came out around sept 2005.

Re:Depends on how nerfed you want your OS to be...

[Chaset]

I'm probably veering off topic, but that has been my rant about Windows... why does it STILL use drive letters? I don't understand how anybody thought that was ever a good idea. (Unix-like systems or the old Mac never needed it) With Win95, they were changing so many things that they should have taken the opportunity to do away with that useless silliness. My Win2k install got hosed the same way when I did something that got the drive letters reassigned. How hard would it be to have the boot process just keep track of "the device I'm booting from" rather than the drive letter? Apparently, even a multi-billion dollar company can't hire someone who can figure that out.

They're keeping this stupid idea (drive letters) in Vista?

Re:Depends on how nerfed you want your OS to be...

[dbIII]

this new setup came out around sept 2005.

Are you sure? I've purchase a few OEM copies of Microsoft software with spare power supplies and other useful bits since then.

Re:Depends on how nerfed you want your OS to be...

[giorgiofr]

if you dislike the idea so much, do as I did and mount secondary partitions under the root. it will still be called C: but at least you'll only have one drive letter. it is done via the disk management applet.

Re:Depends on how nerfed you want your OS to be...

[Anonymous Coward]

I, me, myself, find it way easier when I remove a hard drive of my computer.
Considering each letter is a hard drive.
They could be directory names like in *nix, but i would fast try to reorder
what is in the root and put them in other places....
This forced tactics from windows is somehow very convenient end error prone.
And actually for 'production environment', you dont hell care about my problem because you have nas....so C: for everything os related, and everything else on network so who cares about drive letters...

Re:Depends on how nerfed you want your OS to be...

[Anonymous Coward]

I may be incorrect, but I don't think you're able to defrag any drives mounted that way. (If I recall correctly)

Re:Depends on how nerfed you want your OS to be...

[giorgiofr]

No, you can defrag them just fine, their (much worse) problem is that they are not assigned a recycle bin, so if you try to delete a file most of the time the operation fails (but randomly it works! why? no idea) unless you shift-delete it in which case it always works.

Re:Depends on how nerfed you want your OS to be...

[zerocool^]

Yeah, I definately want to get that from thepiratebay.

There's no Other source for the Remote Desktop client.

~X

Re:Depends on how nerfed you want your OS to be...

[Anonymous Coward]

The original poster was referring to the remote desktop service, not the client. XP Home does not have remote desktop capabilities. You have to use VNC or something equivalent if you want to remotely access your computer.

Re:Depends on how nerfed you want your OS to be...

[compwizrd]

oh, you can buy the OEM copy by itself, because you can resell it again, as long as its not opened. but to legally install it, you need the full system.

Re:Depends on how nerfed you want your OS to be...

[Chaset]

Yeah, I've read about the reassigning techniques, but that wouldn't have helped the problem in question. I think the sequence was that I installed win2k on F: because I still had Win98 on C: (and various extended partitions on D and E), and booting from F: worked fine until one day I did something that caused the machine to assign C: to the boot drive.... hmm, I wish my memory weren't so fuzzy. In any case, the Win2k installer wouldn't have let me install onto a subdirectory of a C: drive that had Win98 on it (and that doesn't even address the fact that Win2k prefers to be on NTFS).

Also, too many programs (as of a few years ago) still assumed CD-ROMs were on a drive letter, giving you no option to specify something else upon install or CD presence check.

Furthermore, it doesn't address the oddness one gets with removables. One man's zip is G:, another man's M:. If you had a shortcut to a file on a removable, it wouldn't work just because you happenned to put your disk into a different drive. (e.g. multiple Zip drives or Compact Flash readers) If you assigned a removable drive letter to a directory, it would still be just as klunky.
In other words, though reassigning partially remedied the aesthetic aspect of the drive letter mess, but it's still a lousy idea. If MS had gotten rid of it, one wouldn't have to work around it. It's not a useful concept any more (I don't think it ever was), and if MS had any sense, they would get rid of it in Vista.

I much prefer the way the old MacOS did volume handling. If you have a "Project X" Zip disk, it's a "Project X" disk no matter where you take it and which computer or drive you stick it into. Aliases to files on a removable always worked regardless of which drive the removable was in. That alias would work even if copied to a different computer. Startup drives were specified by an internal ID (with the User presented with volume names in a GUI), and there were no arbitrary restrictions on which partitions can boot the computer ("Only Primary partitions can be set Active" Ugh!). Moving a bootable drive to another computer or another SCSI chain did not break anything. Adding/subracting drives did not break anything. Vista could be made the same way, if they tried.

But I'm off-topic and I'm ranting. Ignore at will.

Well..

[Arthur B.]

My dell came with windows XP and a free upgrade to linux !

Re:Well..

[jmv]

Actually, my Dell came with FreeDOS (and a free upgrade to Linux of course).

How about a downgrade coupon ....

[tomhudson]

... for those who buy a box with Vista and want XP instead because their favorite game/app/whatever doesn't work?

Re:How about a downgrade coupon ....

[Anonymous Coward]

Who's the numbnuts who modded this Funny?

Re:How about a downgrade coupon ....

[megaditto]

In that case you may get the discounted OEM XP Home for a mere $100.

Everybody wins!

Re:How about a downgrade coupon ....

[Lord Kano]

What's wrong with XP Corp and a valid VLK?

Re:How about a downgrade coupon ....

[megaditto]

These cost too much. A typical Home user would not like to pay tens of thousands of dollars for XP Corp (and most companies cannot just hand these out).

Re:How about a downgrade coupon ....

[Lord Kano]

These cost too much. A typical Home user would not like to pay tens of thousands of dollars for XP Corp (and most companies cannot just hand these out).

You apparently missed my point.

LK

Re:How about a downgrade coupon ....

[megaditto]

what was your point?

"Stealing software saves you money?"

Re:How about a downgrade coupon ....

[Anonymous Coward]

"Stealing software saves you money?"

I don't know about stealing, but copyright infringement certainly can.

what about time?

[Wizzerd911]

How about the cost of time waiting forever for Vista to do everything while it eats up resources uselessly. That's gotta cost businesses millions to have all their computers suddenly slow down to a crawl with Vista on them. Also, employees are slower on systems they've never used before so there's another time hit.

It costs

[Anonymous Coward]

as much as the interest of Bill Gates account

Buy your PC now and get the upgrade cheap

[davidwr]

Just don't install it until XP support expires.

Re:Buy your PC now and get the upgrade cheap

[From A Far Away Land]

By then, there will be Vista SP2, and there will be more worms for Vista, than there are in my vermicompost box.

Not a matter of importance.

[Lethyos]

This is just a little fan on the flames to convince hold-outs (as others have correctly indicated in this thread). Once Vista begins shipping, it will be installed ubiquitously on nearly all comodity machines and the influence on the bottom line of the cost will be, for the most part, unaffected.

Re:Not a matter of importance.

[realmolo]

Agreed. How many people have:

a)a machine powerful enough to run Vista well
b)actually care about upgrading their operating system

The answer is "not many". I can count on one hand the number of people I know that have upgraded the operating system on their PC. Almost everyone just buys a new PC. Especially these days, where every 12 months you can buy an $600 machine that is TWICE as fast as the $600 machine you bought 12 months ago.

Upgrades are pointless, is what I'm saying. And even if NO ONE upgraded to Vista, MS is still going to sell a zillion copies on new machines.

Re:Not a matter of importance.

[fermion]

This is absolutely not so. It is like saying that XP had no effect on the price of the computer. In fact, in order to not to look like it was using it's monopoly to cheat consumers, it had to create a scaled down version of XP. If one wants the sam OS that one had 5 years ago, say in NT or 2000, the cost of the cheapest rises from a few hundred dollars to over $500. I know that the retort is that no one really needs those extra features, but that is like saying a mac mini is comparable to the cheapest Dell, as most already have a keyboard and mouse, so the fact that the mini does not include these useless accessories is irrelevant. Likewise, most don't upgrade, so the low specs are also of no consequence.

This trend of keeping the price constant by reducing the amount of product is only continuing. The low end OS will continue to be 'free' with the computer, but much like the entry level car, the pressure to upgrade to the well equipped vehicle will be significant. We already see the upgrade price to be 10-20 percent of the cost of the computer, and the percentage spent on the OS will only increase. The full version of Vista might run twice the price of the full version of XP, so upgrade costs of over $200 will not be unreasonable. That $1200 well equipped desktop could shoot up to $1500. And we are not even talking office machines. If the user wants what is now XP Media Edition, that will likely have to add as much as 20% to the cost.

At the end of the day, we will see what we have seen for the past 10 years. Stiff competition is pushing hardware prices down to the bare minimum, while MS is free to price the OS not in accordance to market forces, but in accordance to internal whims.

Re:Not a matter of importance.

[mabhatter654]

that's not quite true. For companies that just buy Dell they'll be stuck with Vista when it comes out.. MS MIGHT let Dell backsell XP like they did 2000, but this time around I doubt it. That means when the Boss demands a new PC IT will be stuck trying to "make it work" because Vista testing is not complete, or the companies must-have app is not ready... nothing like forced hoop-jumping to waste everybody's time and money.. and it's a lot of money wasted!

Learn to spell "its", damn it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Spelling matters.

Re:Learn to spell "its", damn it.

[Anonymous Coward]

that would rather be grammar issue, not spelling

Need a new term

[dbIII]

"Free" as in Vista.

Re:Need a new term

[bcat24]

Are you suggesting that Vista is unpleasantly like being drunk?

Re:Need a new term

[absoluteflatness]

What's so unpleasant about being drunk?

Re:Need a new term

[m00seb0y]

>> What's so unpleasant about being drunk?

You ask a glass of water!

Re:Need a new term

[hdparm]

Nothing really. Until the next morning.

The pleasures of NOT upgrading

[codefrog]

It's a total toss up for me on which I'll have more fun not buying; Vista or a PS3.
On the one hand, not buying Vista is a Genuine Advantage in many ways...
but by not buying a PS3, I save more money and also get the bonus of not upgrading to newer DRM.

Thank goodness I can afford to do both!

Usually not.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is "free" really worth it?"

Usually not, that's why I don't use Linux.

Re:Usually not.

[Ash-Fox]

Usually not, that's why I don't use Linux.

Fixed... I think.

Cue standard slashdot responses:

[aussie_a]

1. Making lists of what the standard slashdot responses are.

The interesting thing is that...

[Admin_Jason]

This article has not, nor have any of the comments thus far, spoken to the underlying hardware issues. While there will always be costs for OS and software upgrades outside the open sourced community (I don't see anyone balking at Oracle upgrades, Adobe product development, and a host of others...), the fundamental point is that the underlying hardware will support an upgrade whenever you the end user decides to make that migration. For some of us, that upgrade will happen sooner, while for others, much later. For most /.'ers, I submit that upgrades will be easier than that of the average consumer, cost factors and functionality issues notwithstanding. The article and most comments thus far have suggested that upgrading an OS from one iteration to the next is filled with potholes, and to have to pay for that inconvenience is insulting. If that truly is the case, then clearly, you can hold off on another purchase for the time being. If you absolutely must purchase, why not spend a few extra bucks on a 40 GB drive over at Newegg and throw the OS and programs on one and your docs and files on the other. When it comes time to upgrade - install the whole bugger from scratch again. It's likely a new install will clean up a few things along the way anyway!

In other words...

[joe_cot]

Dear OEM distributors:

We screwed up. Please don't go selling Linux PCs this Christmas.

Regards,

Bill

Do it right.

[MBCook]

If you want a free copy of Vista, do it right. Just wait until you can buy a copy pre-installed on a new computer. With the new MacBook Pros out that's what I'm thinking of doing. By the time Leopard comes out my little G4 will be two years old. I can replace it, get a free copy of Leopard, and I'll have gotten a good use out of my current Powerbook. Plus there is always the chance of another speed/RAM bump or price drop by then.

But a "free" upgrade is a crock. You'll almost never get it.

I remember getting a "free" upgrade on a couple of laptops from 95 to 98 because of when 98 came out. You had to fill out the form and turn the in cash and wait. They filled one of two, and it was a huge fight to get them to fill the other one. None of this counts all the time it took to gather the proof, ship the forms to them, wait for fulfillment, etc.

If you want Vista on your new computer, just wait until it's pre-installed. It will save you time, and you'll probably get a better computer for the money too (thanks to the fact there is probably a new model/refresh at the same time).

You got the wrong idea

[suv4x4]

As always. The point isn't to go out and start buying WinXP PC-s so to get free Vista.
The point is if you need to buy a PC, you don't need to wait for Vista, but buy it now with XP, and get Vista later for free.

As you probably imagine, quite a lot of people are holding hardware purchases, waiting for Vista pre-installed machines. What Microsoft does is keep the market going versus stifle sales right during the Holiday season.

In fact, it's a very sweet deal if you ask me, since Vista is gonna be crap until SP1, and you get to enjoy worry free XP experience until Vista is stable: then upgrade for $0. Best of both worlds.

Re:You got the wrong idea

[mamer-retrogamer]

and you get to enjoy [a] worry free XP experience

So this coupon fixes XP?

Re:You got the wrong idea

[suv4x4]

So this coupon fixes XP?

Yes, it does. So what comeback do you have now?

Hardware costs

[arielCo]

This article, previously linked here does refer to HW costs and such (I was ready to denounce the post as a dupe).

The Beginning of The End

[Jane Q. Public]

I really do think that Vista will be the beginning of the end for Microsoft as a major player in the OS wars. There are subtle signs that they are starting to lose. Not commmercially -- not yet -- but their pricing and licensing models no longer work. I would have thought that even they were finally coming to realize this, but their pricing, licensing, and marketing (4 major versions) of Vista says otherwise.

I expect Windows to hang around for a long while yet, but I expect that this is where it will begin to actually decline. Their business and marketing models have been pushed past the point at which their products will continue to carry them: they have no technology advantages anymore (most of those they had before, they bought or stole), they are pricing themselves out of the market, and they have been making both installation and use of their products more difficult rather than easier. The only advantage they have had has been a stranglehold on market share and thus hardware vendors, but they have begun to lose that leverage as well. Given their heavy-handed (and monopolistic according to the courts) business practices, I doubt many people will really suffer very much from their passing. After all... their major competition is actually free.

Re:The Beginning of The End

[Joe The Dragon]

It apple would suck it up and release mac os x86 for non apple hardware then we will see windows start to fall apart fast.

Re:The Beginning of The End

[im_dan]

Careful, nothing is ever free. I live by the old adage: "Linux is only free if your time is worthless" Things have improved beyond recognition but it will be just as long before another operating system replaces Windows.

Re:The Beginning of The End

[nikclev]

I disagree. I don't think windows will decline in the near future. What competition does windows have? Linux? My mom can't even spell it. My nephew has heard of it, but can't play HL2 on it so he won't get it. My brother (who is resonably tech savy) can't use MS office under linux easy enough to be worth the bother. My dad buys what Mom wants because if she can't use the computer, he's going to have to buy two... These are personal examples, yes.. but how many of them apply to your family and friends?

Even in the easiest Linux install I've had to do, I end up on the command line for something. Not that *I* mind this... but aside from us tech saavy, everyone will just say Linux is broken. with a select few vendors you can get linux pre-installed for a commodity system, but ask your mom, your nephew, whoever it is that is looking for a computer.. Where are they going to buy it from? Not one of those vendors.

Until there is a clear competitor to windows, windows will stay. Until either MS makes an active decision to allow a competitor in(why would they do that!?), or the various court systems force them to, windows will stay. Hell, symantec and others are having to throw a tantrum and threaten lawsuits just to get MS to let their software work with Vista.

They aren't pricing themselves out of the market, they ARE the market. I hate microsoft as much as the next guy, but I think the only way to get microsoft out now is to break the company up into competing pieces. (and what a nightmare that would be!)

Re:The Beginning of The End

[Guppy06]

"Linux is only free if your time is worthless"

It may not be worthess, but it sure as hell ain't worth $400 per freakin' reinstall!

Hell, the EULA fiasco is making me switch back from XP to 2000. I don't need Microsoft getting any bright ideas about using WPA and WGA to retroactively enforce the Vista license on XP ("But, gee, that's what the EULA always meant, we just clarified it"). So if Linux gives me similar functionality to 2000 without putting up with end-of-life problems, I'll be satisfied.

Re:The Beginning of The End

[Jane Q. Public]

It may be that nothing is every "free". (BTW, that truism is just as true as most others, which is to say, only sometimes.) In any case, I have to spend a lot of time maintaining Windows! In fact I have done so professionally, for years. I am "Microsoft Certified". And I can say from experience that it needs more maintenance than Linux does, while at the same time giving the user less control, and costing A LOT more. So you have Linux, which you say is not free because it takes time, and you have Windows, which costs too much and takes even more time. Which is "more free"??

Re:The Beginning of The End

[hazah]

I love how your entire post tries to scare the non 'tech saavy' into thinking that what you're actually saying is worth anything. Fine... you ended up at your command line, and you have an ignorant family (and you can play HL2 on linux). See, the problem is the assumption you are making, and that is: Windows is easier. Excuse me? 'Easier' is a relative term, and in this context, you are using it a bit too loosely. I would love to see what happens to your 'oh so easy to use' system after about 6 months, a year maybe... what kind of state would it be in? Format often? Defrag? Reboot? Of course it's easy and not time consuming. How could I have missed the logic behind this argument when I heard it so many times... I just don't know how. Bah, you piss me off.

Re:The Beginning of The End

[Jane Q. Public]

I think you missed my point. Of course Microsoft is "the" market. In fact, they are almost the only company that is in that market at all. Linux does not "compete" with them in the same market; it has its own kind of "market", which works differently. OS X does not compete in the same "market", because it is not commmonly available (yet) for PCs. Other OS vendors also work in different markets (or market segments, if you prefer). IBM and Sun, for example, have concentrated on things like internal corporate servers.

Facts are facts. The "market" does not define how many machines in existence today run what operating system. At the office, if we needed another server quickly, do you think we went out and spent a couple of hundred dollars or more for yet another "licensed" version of MS? Hell no! We took an old Windows box, slapped Linux on it, and had a server going for a fraction of the time and money.

Most Internet servers today -- a very large majority -- run Linux. Why? Because those who truly know what they are talking about use the tools that work best for their job. And that tool is Linux. And they are not all big special-purpose machines, either... many of them are simple PCs running one or another flavor of Linux. They stay up longer, they take less maintenance, and when it comes to user-friendliness, Linux has been rapidly catching up to Microsoft.

So, yes, I honestly do see a trend.

Re:The Beginning of The End

[Anonymous Coward]

You contradict yourself when you say "that tool is Linux", especially when you say right beforehand that "those who truly know what they are talking about use the tool that work best for their job". There is nothing set in stone that is the right tool for the job!

With "Internet servers", I'm assuming you mean database, web servers, etc? in this case Linux might be better. But in an enterprise network where you need directory services to manage thousands of objects on huge networks, it is hard to beat Microsoft's Active Directory.

Re:The Beginning of The End

[Ash-Fox]

But in an enterprise network where you need directory services to manage thousands of objects on huge networks, it is hard to beat Microsoft's Active Directory.

I have seen such networks actually use Linux systems infront of the Windows domain controllers and so on because they couldn't get 'enough' performance out of the windows servers.

Also some other reasons for doing so include the fail-over heartbeat systems that exist on Linux platforms that generally work with any TCP/IP services (a similar feature does exist under Windows clusters, but -- it has it's problems).

Admittedly though -- I haven't seen anything handle client connections to Exchange-sort of server yet. I've also not seen a huge enterprise setup with my own eyes that completely replaced the Windows servers with Linux.

Re:The Beginning of The End

[pandrijeczko]

I do fully agree with your point that Linux (at least as it stands today) will not displace Windows from the desktops of Joe Average users. To be perfectly honest, if Joe's computer usage consists purely of playing games, working with a few household documents, maybe printing and editing a few family photos and all that kind of stuff, then he's probably no need to ever run Linux - and if, when Joe buys his next PC, he's still able to do all of those things, then it won't matter to him whether or not he's running XP or Vista.

Additionally, although a confirmed Gentoo-only user myself, Linux distros are getting friendlier and easier to install, plus the process of installing updates is pretty straightforward. Where the real issue comes is with brand-spanking new hardware where the Linux kernel drivers have possibly not caught up with their Windows equivalents - in other words, if you're going to run Linux on a PC, you probably need to do some research first to make sure that all of the hardware in that PC is supported by a kernel or external driver. Again, this is a process Joe Average wants nothing to do with - he just wants to buy his PC and off he goes.

However, there are also a few of your points I disagree with. Assuming that we're again talking about Joe Average and that Joe has a fully working XP PC and a fully working Ubuntu PC in front of him, I would argue that to maintain and use the Ubuntu PC takes a lot less time than the XP PC *if you do it properly*.

For starters, on the XP machine, there are Microsoft updates to apply fairly frequently (although I admit Microsoft Update is pretty automatic) but then there's the weekly virus scans, adware scanners, maybe some kind of disk cleaning and registry cleaning tool to run, and possibly a disk defragmenter on top of that. With the Ubuntu PC, it's maybe a few RPMs to install pretty much automatically because none of the other XP tools have any relevance to Linux.

Then if Joe Average writes a few letters or documents, maybe keeps a spreadsheet for home finances, these are all perfectly doable on OpenOffice at the level (and far beyond) he needs to do things. Just because Joe hears everyone else talking about MS Office, it does not mean he uses anything more than about 10% of its features.

Another of your points I object to is Microsoft "allowing" competitors. Linux exists "despite" Microsoft, the whole free UNIX and GNU thing has been there long before Microsoft ever thought of Windows and Linux is used because, for certain applications and for certain people, it does things *better* than what Windows does. For example, if you're prepared to learn how to script a little (Perl, Python, shell-scripting, whatever), you can have hugely powerful automated tools that will have finished doing their job before the equivalent tool in Windows has even started its GUI. So please don't believe that MS has any power over Linux, or the other free UNIX-like OSes, because it doesn't - the GPL and similar licenses ensure that.

If you and other people in this world want to do something constructive for all computer users globally, then encourage Joe Average to use open alternatives to Microsoft's (and others) closed source tools. Don't forbid them to use those tools, just get them to try Firefox, Thunderbird, GIMP, GAIM, OpenOffice, etc. on Windows and explain to them why it's important not to be locked into one vendor and why issues like DRM are important.

The other advantage of this approach is that if Joe Average gets to like these free tools, then if he does one day decide to give Linux a try, he'll have those same tools on his Linux desktop meaning that the shock to his system will be lessened considerably.

Re:The Beginning of The End

[archen]

Windows is easier. ... Format often? Defrag? Reboot?

Actually I've found that people do think that's easier. Instead of investing the time to think out problems everyone simply just starts over from scratch. Hell before I knew much about computers I got pretty good at reinstalling windows 95 myself. But you find many examples of this everywhere: people doing many times the work because they don't want to find a better way because that takes mental effort.

I've noticed this trend a LOT on message boards where people have a problem with a computer. Sometimes I try to offer a bit of troubleshooting advice, but it's actually sort of sickening how many people always say "reformat the drive". And not even reinstall, reformat the drive!

Some people ask me what I use, and I say FreeBSD (or sometimes Linux to make it simple) and they say they don't have the time to learn Linux. That's fine, because I always drop computer conversations as fast as possible. But then it's strange that they always ask ME about their problems with Windows that they've been "fighting for a long time". I just answer "I don't use windows, I don't know". And on occasion I find later that someone told them to reformat their drive. Guess that's the easiest solution =)

Re:The Beginning of The End

[jackbird]

How about "free as in roads?"

Lots and lots of entities contribute smaller or larger amounts of time/salaries to building it as a right-of-way for all. Need to go somewhere the roads won't take you? Pitch in and get the road built. Want someone to fix a particular pothole? Pay 'em to do it.

Re:The Beginning of The End

[ElephanTS]

I agree with you Jane Q. Trouble is though that I've been thinking that way since around 2000/01 and I still haven't been proven right. (Apart from if you look at MSs share price since 2000 - that tends to back up my belief) I'm of the opinion that *nix has won the OS wars and can be the only sensible way forward. If the world could agree on a general OS to use things would be so much easier for everyone. Standardizing on Win was wrong because MS are a company out for profit and not necessarily for the benefit of mankind. Open source code is the only way that the computing experience can continue to grow properly.

MS are basically being overwhelmed by complexity (as has happened to many huge systems in the history of engineering) and will not be able to overcome this. My prediction is MS has about 10 years left before it crumbles to pieces - once they lose the monopoly advantage they will fall very quickly. It is really the only advantage they have as everyone else does stuff much better than them now.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=MSFT&t=my&l=off&z= m&q=l&c=

Worth looking at this chart to see my point.

Re:The Beginning of The End

[hazah]

Ok, this doesn't really make anything easier. I know what you're trying to say, and I have seen this time and time again. But this is hardly the description I would use for 'easier'. Again, this is relative. It is easier to do repetative tasks than to learn something new. It is also much easier to not have to deal with the same problem twice, and by extension, once you've learned how to handle a specific problem, it's much easier to solve it the second time around. Also, do not forget that reinstalling the OS means reinstalling every single app that you need to be on there, again. Frankly, I don't know of any credible source that would claim Windows to be 'easier'. This is a double edged sword and you know it.

Re:The Beginning of The End

[nikclev]

Ok, to start with, my earlier post is (in retrospect) a bit trollish. I didn't intend it to be. Oh well.

MS Bends over backwards to make their OSes easy to use. By easy, I meant in the way that they hide what is going on "under the hood" so to speak. Of course it's easy to use, you can't change many of the options in a MS box that a typical Linux box requires you to set at install. I don't think this is a good thing, but it is what many computer users want. Fixing your car would be far "easier" in the same regard if you just couldn't do it. Buy a new one! Thats easy in the same way that Windows is easy to use.

To me, and most of the slashdot crowd, using the cli isn't hard, its actually easier for a lot of tasks. But to alot of computer users, it may as well be greek. I have no problems using RPM or apt-get to update things, but alot of computer users just want to push a button, make whatever problem they were having go away, and not come back again. I don't think anyone that puts out a Linux distro intends to try to make a replacement for windows XP/98/whatever. (mabye lindows/linspire.. never used it though) Thats just not what the typical Linux user wants. Just the research needed to see which hardware works with which Linux distro is more than most users want to mess with. Most computer users don't want to have to think while using their computer, at least not think *about* using their computer. Linux (IMHO) isn't a good choice for those that don't want to take a little time to understand what it is their computer is doing and why. Most of us have personally seen obvious instances of malware on windows computers that the computer owner was just as happy to let it do it's thing, as long as they could still use email/play a yahoo game/browse the web.

As far as MS "allowing" competitors, I didn't mean that in order for Linux to exist, or be an excellent OS MS "allowed" it to. Far from it. By "allowing" competitors into the market, I meant that MS would have to do things like open the source for Windows, allow the user to change the way component parts of Windows work, unbundle the browser from the OS, etc. I don't think that MS will do that unless forced to by a court, and the US court system at least has a poor track record when it comes to forcing change in MS.

You make an excellent point in your first paragraph: "... when Joe buys his next PC, he's still able to do all of those things, then it won't matter to him whether or not he's running XP or Vista." Beacause the vast majority of computers come with windows pre-installed, too many computer users associate Windows with the computer itself rather than a separate part that can be replaced by different OS (Linux, for example) that can do whatever they wanted to do better and faster. That mindset is what would have to change in order for MS to have any real decline in their market share.

Re:The Beginning of The End

[tehcyder]

their major competition is actually free

Last time I looked you still had to pay for Apple software.

Re:The Beginning of The End

[archen]

I agree, but all I'm saying is that the term "easy" is in the eye of the beholder.

It is easier to do repetitive tasks than to learn something new

I wholeheartedly believe this is the reason that Windows has the marketshare it does.

Re:The Beginning of The End

[Jane Q. Public]

You have a valid point. My comment was aimed at open Internet servers. However, you bring up another interesting point. Tell me: where did Active Directory come from? Could it be that Novell scared Microsoft enough that they basically reverse-engineered Novell's technology? Other than some interface specifics, I am still trying to sort out where Microsoft has had any original ideas.

Re:The Beginning of The End

[Jane Q. Public]

I too have been frustrated at how long it has been taking for this inevitable downfall... but I have been feeling the same way about the Bush administration since the beginning. I guess it just takes the "average American" a while to realize such things.

Pfft free.

[Jrabbit05]

Alot.

Resolve later

[Gunslinger47]

5
4
3
2
1
Resolve later.
I'm very happy with my cur–
5
4
3
2
1
Resolve later.
...with my current copy of XP, thank you.

Computer "Upgrade"

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing I leaned about computers:

Buy the stuff best for you TODAY.

With the rate at which computer stuff progresses, paying extra for future upgrade is almost never worth the price. By the time you want to upgrade, it costs almost as much as buying a whole new setup, more complicated, and even after upgrade, it'll be far inferior to a whole new setup.

Computer lifecycle is not like TVs in the 50's (or even 80's or 90's). Trust me - I have old P5s and Sparc pizza boxes that I use as router and file server, but the electricity and space they take up costs me more than the prices of new low-end boxes (hence I'll be dumping them shortly - eh, I'll keep the pizza boxes for nostalgia).

Re:Computer "Upgrade"

[saveonweb]

It was good this "Free Upgrade" issue is on. I am having difficulty in deciding about buying a Mac in which I got interested after viewing the keynote presentation for Panther OSX. If I buy a Mac now, it will have Tiger OSX which will be replaced by Panther OSX in less than a year. Will this upgrade be free?

You forgot the ponies

[leamanc]

What about OMG Ponies!!!!?

Hey

[Anonymous Coward]

I've already taken the goddamned survey! Quit asking me that Slashdot!! (nowhere else to say that)

Huh? It's the same price as always...

[QuantumG]

your immortal soul.

add the drivers to your xp disk

[Joe The Dragon]

You can even add the drivers to your xp disk
http://www.driverpacks.net/DriverPacks/index.php/D riverPacks/

Re:add the drivers to your xp disk

[modecx]

You can even add the drivers to your xp disk

Yep, I've seen that, haven't tried it yet... But I will be trying this soon because my XP install is getting rather bogged down.

Been There, Done That

[Pinky3]

I bought a new Dell just before XP came out and got a coupon for a free upgrade to XP. What I got were upgrade discs, not straight install discs. Later I needed to reinstall XP. First I had to reinstall the original OS, then do the upgrade to XP all over again.

If the Vista upgrade is not capable of doing a clean install, I would stay far away.

Re:Been There, Done That

[k3vlar]

You didn't have to do that. XP Upgrade disks will allow you to do a clean install provided it can verify your original media. You will only have to install first if Dell never gave you Windows ME or 98 disks when you first received the computer.

The same will probably be the case for Vista as well, unless they removed that feature for fear of piracy (ooh scary!).

Re:Been There, Done That

[Anonymous Coward]

Lies

The XP upgrade CDs, even first version, were able to ask at the beginning of installation for you to put an older windows CD into the drive so they could verify the integrity of your upgrade.

Win2k and WinMe did it the same way.

Just insert the CD for validation...

[WoTG]

I have a an XP Pro upgrade disk kicking around the office. All I needed to do when re-installing is to put a qualifying OS CD in the drive. The XP installer then browses the CD to validate the hash or something on the CD. Then it asks for the XP Upgrade disc back. This all happens early in the XP install. There's no need to install the previous OS. Perhaps the Dell OEM disks work differently.

Re:The two-drive solution.

[WaltFrench]

...spend a few extra bucks on a 40 GB drive over at Newegg and throw the OS and programs on one and your docs and files on the other.

Perhaps all your software doesn't care if it loads onto the D: drive, and that key files, perm files, library support files, configs & inits, likewise can go into any drive you like. Maybe you can put all these into a "shared" user file so you can get them from different user configurations so your coding doesn't screw up other apps. Maybe your hardware doesn't come with drivers that assume a C:directory, or that your preferences go there.

If so, you are a very lucky person. Or perhaps you don't use any of the top ten vertical apps for the investment management business. Maybe you don't really use Win much at all, and assume because Linux has a rational directory metaphor, every other Modern OS must have somethng at least pretty close.

Microsoft loves their money

[Wiarumas]

1 billion dollars!

Free as in dom

[Anonymous Coward]

I just upgraded. Purchased a Mac.

Re:You are a fucking moron

[Jane Q. Public]

I strongly dispute your judgment, since my comment was on-topic, relevant, and an honest opinion. You do not get to label as "troll" anyone whose opinion you do not like, and your own comment is a strong indication that you are the one who is off-base here, not me.

Someone who has actually installed Vista, thrice

[kendor]

The typical Slashdot commentary is particularly worthless on this article. Maybe I can rescue it with a little bit of signal. I've installed Vista three times, going on five, and here's the report.

I installed Vista Beta 1 on a Dell XPS II laptop, shortly after I saw it demoed at Tech Ed 2006 in Boston. Beta 1 was intesting, buat on my laptop was slow. The showstopper for Beta 1 and the utility of my tricked out laptop was that headphones didn't work, which sucked. Laptop went in closet.

Around Oct. 10 MSFT released Vista RC2, and I pulled laptop out of closet for the install.

Folks, as far as I'm concerned, Vista is +done+. It runs faster and better than XP. It is miles ahead of the first beta, which I guess shouldn't be too surprising. The search is great, the compatibility is great, my headphones work, my Canon EOS Rebel XTi is recognized, Visual Studio and Flash 8 and DW and Photoshop CS2 and all my other apps work without fail. The multi-monitor Remote Desktop feature (mstsc /span) is extremely nice. No lockups or slowdowns. Unreal Tournament (the original, anod best, from 1999) and Morrowind: Oblivion run smoothly. Vista's graphic design is "pretty."

After installing Vista RC2 on my XPSII for a few days, I was sold and upgraded my primary work laptop. I've been running with no troubles for a few weeks now. Shortly I'll upgrade my primary static workstations in two places I commonly do office-ey things.

The article questions what Vista will cost. Personally, I'll pay Microsoft their money. It's a great upgrade that solves a lot of problems.

BTW, if threre's anyone in the Costa Mesa/Newport Beach/Huntington beach area with a external USB DVD, I'd appreciate it if I could drop by and borrow it for two hours. I have a Fujitsu 5020 TabletPC that I'd like to upgrade to RC2 prior to an adventure in Ireland starting Dec 2. I have the Vista disk -- I'im on MSDN -- but I'm travelling without an external DVD device. Anyone?

Windows isn't that bad

[ScottCooperDotNet]

(for what reason would an OS not come with PS/2 generic mouse drivers?)

XP includes them, so how did you have trouble here?

I'm convinced one part of the horrible nature is that even today it seems that EVERY driver, EVERY re-configuration demanded a reboot though in my wildest imagination.

You didn't have to reboot after installing each driver, just when you're done installing all the ones you need.

(oh, yeah, about 100+ XP updates -- the CD was pre-SP1, go figure)

This sounds like the source of most of your issues. You're using a years-old copy of XP with a new system. Were you reusing an old license? Even small shops would at least give you a CDR of the OEM version of XP with SP2 on it.

The one thing you didn't mention is XP often requires a floppy disk with drivers on it just for setup to see the SATA drives. If you used an XP disc with no Service Packs, how did you get past this step?

I'm not looking forward to Vista either, thankfully my company is still largely using Windows 2000. We'll look at Vista once SP1 comes out.

Any computer company that discounts it....

[kinglink]

is really actually making a good business move.

Think about it this way. Assume XP gets 3 teraflops out of your machine. Comparing the stats between the two OSes, you'll see XP is about half the specs or so. So in theory it will do twice as much, Vista will then get around 1.5 Tera flops.

Of course this isn't the way it works, double the specs just means double the requirements, so it might be more 2 tera flops vs. 3 tera flops. But the point is any computer running Vista will only last a fraction as long as a computer running xp. It could be 3/4ths as long, or 1/2. We really don't know, even those who have seen vista can't tell you, but an assured fact is Vista is more power intensive so any length of time Xp would last you, Vista will last you less.

The simple answer is Vista won't really cost you more if you take this option... But assuming your the type of person who buys stuff from dell, you'll be buying a new computer sooner the next time around because you're working on Vista.

This is all assuming vista is as secure as XP, If Vista works worse, then the company can make money off of tech calls. If Vista has more ability for spyware to attach... but in the end the bottom line is these people will be lookung for a new computer earlier.

Bought a Dell and had similar XP install problem

[Quevar]

My lab bought 4 Dell machines a couple years ago and for various reasons we reinstalled XP. It was an unpleasant experience for many reasons, one of which was that there was no ethernet card driver installed. This was on the XP CD that shipped from Dell with the computers. There was no ethernet driver on any of the CD's - XP only said that it would like to try to download the driver. See the irony? This and the rest of the problems I had with this installation is here: http://kylereed.com/opinions/Dell/Dell.html

Huh? 64-bit XP exists.

[gvc]

The reason your machine has 32-bit XP is because Microsoft made the (misguided, in my opinion) to make XP-64 require 64 bit drivers, and your favorite dollar-store device doesn't come with one. Had they implemented some facility for for XP64 to use 32-bit drivers, we'd all be using it by now.

How does Vista change this?

Bargains this Christmas season on XP machines??

[the_rajah]

How long will we be able to buy machines with XP pre-installed? I'm about due for a new desktop Windows machine here at home to replace the venerable Athlon 1.333 GHz that has been my work horse for about four years, but I don't want to go to Vista. I'm thinking there will be some good buys to be had in a couple of months.

Yes, I do already have Linux boxes under my desk hooked to the 4 port KVM switch, SuSE, Ubuntu and Freespire. I'm thinking that, hopefully, I'll never feel the need to use Vista since Linux just keeps getting better and better.

Re:'Vista' happily overwrites MBR to stop Linux bo

[Nefarious Wheel]

etc...Bet they still have the 'default share' backdoor...etc

You know, I was going to dismiss that as a troll, but it's really quite a delightful rant. I can't help imagining how that would read as rap music though.

Vista costs

[Anonymous Coward]

Vista ultimate $400
Vista ultimate again because you changed your hardware $400

Shrink bill from dealing with Billware $2500

Proctologist bill from being fucked up the ass by MS Vista DRM $10,000 (not covered by your insurance because you did this to yourself).

Re:Vista costs

[cralewyth]

....Not buying Vista at all: Priceless.

:D

Not sure but

[codepunk]

Not sure about vista but I upgraded my amd 64 umbuntu desktop at work from breezy to dapper and then dapper to edgy today and all it cost was a little bandwidth. On top of that I was still working
using the desktop I was upgrading "talk about productivity".

How much does a Vista upgrade cost?

[QuantumFTL]

Too much.

Re:How much does a Vista upgrade cost?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. Food isn't free. Water/energy/life are getting more expensive. In saving costs, I've recently discovered that a 6 year old laptop can do everything a brand new computer can do. In a couple more years, I will be discovering that an 8 year old laptop can do everything a brand new computer can do.

Re:'Vista' happily overwrites MBR to stop Linux bo

[Achromatic1978]

This is the share that adds a dollar sign to every partition and file on any windows system that windows can reach and the result is its undeletable and unmodifiable share name.

Yeah, unmodifiable.

My Computer > C Drive > Sharing and Security > C$ > "Do Not Share This Folder"

Fuck me, that was hard.

(Now, an argument about it being enabled by default, that would have a lot more merit.)

Then, however, I read this:

New hardware is assumed to be contaminated with windows' hardware spy routines in the firmware and in the BIOSes, so where possible we reflash all the bioses with open source BIOSes. This includes vidcards, harddrives, etc. where possible. Also new hardware never sees the internet until it is 'trusted' by US! That basically means that only linux machines ever see the net. Windows machines only see the back wall of offices never to be connected to the net inasmuch as we have to use windows at all.

Where's my tinfoil hat? Not to mention those open source BIOSes for my Asus laptop. And the open source BIOS for its ATI Mobility Radeon X1600. And the open source BIOS for it's Samsung 120GB HDD. Oh, man. Ye gods. What do you when you get home from work, write missives about the black helicopters and how John Lennon is working as a CIA agent?

But of course, you wouldn't be writing that on MS Office, of course:

We put in Win98 if it has to be a windows machine and use pre97 Office products that do not report all your letters, fone numbers, credit card numbers, etc to Redmond for exploitation and resale to shady characters around the world.

Congrats, AC, I sprayed Mountain Dew with laughter.

I plead the Chewbacca defense

[Nefarious Wheel]

Larry: Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, Linus's attorney would certainly want you to believe that his client wrote "Linux" ten years ago. And they make a good case. Hell, I almost felt pity myself! But, ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, I have one final thing I want you to consider. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about it; that does not make sense!

PJ: Dammit!

Linus: What you say?

PJ: He's using the Chewbacca Defense!

Larry: Why would a Wookiee, an eight-foot tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of two-foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense! But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with PS2 drivers? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense! Look at me. I'm a lawyer defending Santa Cruz Operations, and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca! Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense! None of this makes sense! And so you have to remember, when you're in that jury room deliberatin' and conjugatin' the Emancipation Proclamation, [approaches and softens] does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests.

Kubuntu Experience

[chriso11]

I tried using Kubuntu, because I like KDE - not easy. First off, the default screen resolution was 640x480, which isn't a problem except that some of the windows that open during install are larger than 640x480, so you can't read or click on several buttons. Then, you can't actually use the normal KDE configuration menu, because you don't have a root account - so the screen stayed at 640x480 even afterwards. Oh, and Grub wasn't setup right, so (being the lazy sort), I had to use the install disk to boot the system, then select OS. I found a tip on a website that showed how to add a root account password, so I could use the KDE config tools. Then, getting mp3 playback and other stuff was a pain.

It wasn't all bad - getting my dual monitor setup to work was a snap. Kubuntu was fast, responsive, and stable. Notice I said 'was' - that is because I finally gave up - it looked like getting WINE on a 64 bit install is a pain, and plus my NTFS disks wouldn't mount. So, back to Win2k for me. Maybe next year I'll give it another shot.

Re:Kubuntu Experience

[dknj]

i'm going to let you in on the biggest reason why OSS will fail at revolutionizing the desktop.

lack of Quality Assurance.

I mean seriously, Fedora, Ubuntu, et al don't even come CLOSE in terms of usability compared to Windows. Mac OS X does. BeOS did. Linux still is and always will be a hobbyist OS. I happened to find out today that the SCTP vulnerability in the linux kernel (back in 2.6.14 days) exists because of lack of standard checks in the kernel that were outlined in the draft proposal (read: lazy developer let things slide because of the 640k-ought-to-be-enough-for-anybody mentality).. I mean seriously.. if you fail to see that problem then you're also going to fail to see why X is the worst idea for a desktop environment (hint: BeOS, heck even SkyOS and AtheOS/syllable have tight windowing systems.. why are we still pushing X?)

if only i had money to quit my job.. i'd help the oss world in ways never seen before (thats not a promise, thats a threat)

Re:Kubuntu Experience

[Ash-Fox]

I mean seriously, Fedora, Ubuntu, et al don't even come CLOSE in terms of usability compared to Windows.

You need to explain how. Because I cannot determine how Windows comes more usable than Ubuntu (And who the heck uses Fedora?).

Mac OS X does.

How?

BeOS did.

How?

Linux still is and always will be a hobbyist OS.

Except there are people using it on their desktop for work and businesses right now. Including huge companies even making money off commercializing it. You can't call that a hobby.

I happened to find out today that the SCTP vulnerability in the linux kernel (back in 2.6.14 days) exists because of lack of standard checks in the kernel that were outlined in the draft proposal

Oh nos! My world is dying! This is even more dire than anything we have ever faced under Windows!

(read: lazy developer let things slide because of the 640k-ought-to-be-enough-for-anybody mentality).. I mean seriously..

Yeah.. seriously.. that's a urban myth.

if you fail to see that problem then you're also going to fail to see why X is the worst idea for a desktop environment

It's not a desktop environment, KDE is a desktop enviroment, Gnome is a desktop enviroment.

(hint: BeOS, heck even SkyOS and AtheOS/syllable have tight windowing systems.. why are we still pushing X?)

I have yet to find a real reason in my everyday use of X not to use it.

I honestly can't think of anything, it works well, it's fast (hell, windows games are faster under Wine for me than under Windows, and that's with all the wrapping directx functions to opengl non-sense), it's networked (I have use for older laptops -- they're powerful desktops - I couldn't get the same performance off remote desktop) and it doesn't even attempt to lock me into any UI widget systems or anything.

Re:Kubuntu Experience

[dknj]

Yeah.. seriously.. that's a urban myth [wired.com].

i would like to point out it was a statement that was made by someone. and you prove that the mentality exists.

Re:Kubuntu Experience

[Ash-Fox]

i would like to point out it was a statement that was made by someone.

Fascinating.

and you prove that the mentality exists.

... And you still haven't addressed any of the real questions or evidence I have given that contradicts what you have said earlier.

And then..

[Kankraka]

There's people like me who bought their new PC now because they didn't even want a chance of Vista being pre-installed on their new computer.

Re:The two-drive solution.

[EvanED]

Perhaps all your software doesn't care if it loads onto the D: drive, and that key files, perm files, library support files, configs & inits, likewise can go into any drive you like.

Almost ALL of the software I have installed is on D. I haven't yet found anything that gives a choice of installation directory that doesn't work there. There's occasional software that puts stuff on C though -- most recently and notably because of the size of this installation portion, VS.Net 2005 Express Editions. This sort of stuff almost always goes under windows\ somewhere.

Though I haven't done it, I'm under the strong impression that you can if you like relocate Documents and Settings\ to another directory, which would move most of the config stuff that's stored in the filesystem. There are issues like registry configs which aren't stored in the filesystem at all though, so saying that you don't have the choice of directories is a red herring. You can make a good argument that there should be a revision to the registry for reasons along this line. (Like right now it's essentially impossible to backup an application's settings if it's stored in the registry unless you know where in the tree it's located and know that it's isolated to that spot. Even if you have this information, it's a pain.) The registry has, IMO, a number of benefits over flat config files, but in its current implementation there are severe drawbacks that go along with not being able to store your config information by zipping ~.

Maybe you don't really use Win much at all, and assume because Linux has a rational directory metaphor, every other Modern OS must have somethng at least pretty close.

Just FYI, without you specifying what makes a directory metaphor "rational", I'm guessing that you mean you can mount partitions and such whereever you want. Oh, guess what? Just because Windows doesn't do this for you by default, you can still create mount points and such for partitions. So if you want Documents and Settings on another partition, you can do that even without changing the path from C:\Documents and Settings. So if you've got a stubborn program that requires a specific path, you've got as much flexability in your partition layout as you would with a similar program under Linux.

NTFS also supports links (true links, as distinct from "shortcuts", which are a broken implementation), though doesn't yet expose a decent interface for using them. (I dunno about Vista.)

Re:Someone who has actually installed Vista, thric

[kendor]

Well, that's just weak: modding my parent post down in the first five minutes it's up as "overrated." Guess you didn't like whatever truths I offered in my own experience of Vista.

-KF

Re:Huh? 64-bit XP exists.

[Anonymous Coward]

I Vista 64 they require that drivers are 64bit and signed. So wait for better times. :P

No, they've lowered it...

[BiggerIsBetter]

It's now your first born son.

Re:Someone who has actually installed Vista, thric

[Almahtar]

"Personally, I'll pay Microsoft their money." By which you mean "the money they owe to the countless poeple owning the patents they've infringed to get thus far"... Not that GPL has any merit...

A Solution...

[Anonymous Coward]

There will be Christmas next year. Microsoft can delay releasing Vista until October 2007. That might also give Microsoft enough time to fix some of the bugs. Who would really notice...aside from the analysts? Does anyone actually want Vista that badly?

One glaring one you missed:

[The Wooden Badger]

6. Imagine a Beowulf clus- Oh, crap. Nevermind.

Re:One glaring one you missed:

[Anonymous Coward]

We're doing well. "Imagine a Beowulf cluster" now shows slashdot for over 50%!! Whoo ho!

Whorf?

[cp.tar]

This doesn't sound like something Benjamin Lee Whorf would say...

*scratches head*

Re:'Vista' happily overwrites MBR to stop Linux bo

[daverabbitz]

YOU ARE A DUMBASS.

You *can't* get open source firmware for HDDs, and I doubt you can get opensource firmware for Video Cards.

The password for the hidden shares is the password for Administrator.

You can't spell, you display blatant factual errors, and you imply that you have a job(US), but I seriously doubt that someone with as little knowledge about reality as you could accomplish such a feat.

XP dual boot file

[wild_berry]

You could put GRUB4dos in your C:\ drive, reference it in the C:\boot.ini file and manage the menu.lst of OS's using WinGRUB.

Re:'Vista' happily overwrites MBR to stop Linux bo

[Anonymous Coward]

That piece of trash that stops me from using Linux

No it doesn't. What you do, is you build a computer, install Linux, and you're away. It stops you dual-booting Linux, but based on your tirade, you don't even want to do that. In fact, I would recommend it, just so you don't post unmitigated piles of shit like this again.

I mean, you've come out with such gems as:

"We put in Win98 if it has to be a windows machine and use pre97 Office products that do not report all your letters, fone numbers, credit card numbers, etc to Redmond for exploitation and resale to shady characters around the world" which is not only LESS secure to begin with, but also completely completely unprovable and tantamount to libel;

"the result is its undeletable and unmodifiable share name" which shows a mere lack of knowledge, and

"windows' hardware spy routines in the firmware and in the BIOSes" which is just plain not true.

I can't decide whether you posted all that because you actually believe it or because you wanted to spread unverifiable bullshit to the geeking world, but either way all you did was show what a pathetic waste of space you are. They should give your job to someone else who isn't a complete and utter fucknut.

FUD

[daniel_howell]

If it's free you don't want it. It'll be buggy, it'll lack focus, customer support will be lacking and you'll end up having to pay far more to get someone to sort it out than if you had paid for software in the first place. Free software is a false economy. Free software is UnAmerican. Free software destroys decent hardworking mom-and-pop all-american companies. Free software causes acne. Don't buy free software, pay through the nose for our good old, secure, reliable microsoft products. Errr, hang on...

Re:'Vista' happily overwrites MBR to stop Linux bo

[cortana]

I think that the share comes back after you reboot...

just...

[Tom]

How Much Does a Vista Upgrade Cost?

The usual: Firstborn son, soul and many nights of cursing, pleading and finally resignation.

Re:'Vista' happily overwrites MBR to stop Linux bo

[Ash-Fox]

Yeah, unmodifiable.

My Computer > C Drive > Sharing and Security > C$ > "Do Not Share This Folder"

Fuck me, that was hard.

It's re-enabled automatically at next boot. Windows XP Pro (not home) can disable that though through a registry key.

So, in Microsoft's own words...

[Phatmanotoo]

...it is free only if your time is free.

Redefine FREE

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Redefine FREE.
2. Give away crapware FREE.
3. Profit!

Why bother?

[Eriky]

This is the perfect time to switch to OSX. I'm waiting a bit more until Adobe has ported it's products to the Intel based macs, but then I'm saying farewell to Windows. XP will be the last version of windows I will use and only because of the few games I like to play. Once my pc is getting obsolete Windows will be something of the past, like DOS. Something I will laugh about when drinking beer with my fellow geek friends.

It doesn't seem to work.

[pizzach]

I tried emerge vista-bin today, but it didn't seem to work. Maybe it's still hard masked. I'm probably better off without the binary blob anyway.

Needed to be said

[HangingChad]

You are seen as a cost center, when your contributions can be very useful to an organization.

Too bad the people who really need to get that message wouldn't be reading /. Here's another one. You actually practice kaizen in IT. Constantly improving your business processes, getting your organization down to the very minimum of people, shaping your business practices to provide maximum service to the customer. Over the span of a couple years you are able to move one person to another job, then another. Demands increase but you still manage improvements and hold or reduce costs. You are profitable as a department.

The reward for all that hard work? One day someone sticks their head in the door and says, "We need to cut IT staff by 20%." Just like that.

It's all quite insane.

Re:Needed to be said

[umghhh]

no it is not. It may seem to you this way but in fact it is part of natural process. Your job can be done by sombody else so you are either replaced by this somebody or you let yourself being blackmailed into working longer for less etc.
This is all part of efficiency program. We all know that this program is never complete and our jobs can be done more efficiently - always. Either we do it or somebody else will. You may quit and go somewhere else i.e. search another occupation, choice is yours.

If they want to outsource your job to India to save costs let them do it and go self employment way - I tried and prosper.
If I read this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/5409252.stm
(and other stories) correctly they will be severly disappointed if they do anyway. OC your job will be gone till then and your smart CEO will get golden handshake in worst case.

Such is life and whining here will not help. //

Re:Needed to be said

[Mateo_LeFou]

"If a PHB perceives that your job can be done by sombody else so you are either replaced by this somebody or you let yourself being blackmailed into working longer for less etc."

FYP. Neat story:
http://thedailywtf.com/forums/post/96909.aspx

A guy with some insight can write a bit of code that saves five digits' worth of hardware investment, but it means dick if there's a manager around who measures success by how much of the company's money heshe spends.

I am going to wait till vista comes installed

[majortom1981]

I am going to wait till vista comes installed on the machine until I buy a new computer. That way I know the machine can handle it. Also upgrading my current pc to vista is not worth it.

Non-standard my shiny metal behind

[remmelt]

If you didn't have support for your USB keyboard or mouse you had non-standard components. Albeit rare, some are out there.

I have a Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 and a Microsoft Laser Mouse 6000. I'll bet they're non-standard, but they are made by the same company that makes the OS. Still, I had to dig up a PS2 keyboard and go mouseless until I had my USB driver installed (which didn't even require the motherboard disk, just the Windows one...)
And did I mention the unrecognised SATA disk? That needed the floppy drive attached?

Slashdeja-vu

[jpellino]

From Oct 5...

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/05/142 2224

It's only free if money is free, like Bill's....

[Anonymous Coward]

Or your time is free..
Or your hardware upgrade is free..
Or your freedom isn't worth jack shit...

Re:The two-drive solution.

[Admin_Jason]

Who said anything about loading software onto the non-boot partition? I was referring to setting up files and docs (spreadsheets, databases, word processing docs) on it's own drive. In response to the above post, you can and should relocate the My Documents folder in Windows - been doing it for years. I also can't begin to relate how many times I've looked like some sort of hero because I had to re-load Windows on a box for someone and they were freaking out because they thought they lost the docs and everything.

After performing a network install, and pushing down all the apps and updates, I mapped their My Documents folder back from the network location (or a slaved drive if a stand alone PC) and presto change-o, their docs and everything are right where they were prior to the OS failure. That's just common practice in a network environment (at least it should be) - and for anyone who knows anything about computing with any kind of exposure in the industry.

Anyone who has been reluctant to have their My Docs folder set up as a network storage share and insists on having it locally, I always give a speech to the extent of the following: "Just so you know - if Windows craps out or your hard drive crashes for any reason, all we can do is re-load the OS and network apps. We will not be able to recover any files stored locally. So...if you insist on storing your docs and such there, you'll need to sign this release stating that you acknowledge the risks of working in a non-supported environment." At that point, they usually grumble "fine" and either let me put the PC into a best practices setup, or sign the release and mosey on their way. Either way, I know that they are either in compliance, or if they are not, they have acknowledged that there is no support there for them if anything ever happens.

See, this is why I like FreeBSD...

[jonadab]

With FreeBSD, my upgrade is free. All I have to do when I want to upgrade to a new version of something is portsnap fetch, then portsnap upgrade, then portupgrade -r -R packagename. Then, when other random applications and/or my desktop environment break because of some library that was upgraded that isn't binary compatible with previous versions, all I have to do is run pkgdb -F a few times, manually fix all the stale dependencies, then portupgrade -a -f -k and check in on my computer every few hours for the next several weeks to answer the little "Do you want to enable such-and-such component" prompts. Sure, my CPU is maxed out the whole time so I can't actually _use_ my computer until the process is completed, but that's a small price to pay for having the latest version of Inkscape, or whatever...

(Sorry, I'm not usually this sarcastic. But the FreeBSD Gnome team recently decided to change the install prefix on half the ports in the tree, so my computer is a mess at the moment and I'm just a little grumpy.)

Re:Huh? 64-bit XP exists.

[Paco103]

Vista 64 changes this by allowing 32 bit drivers to run. Unfortunately it's a pain to get unsigned drivers to install (every boot you have to select the special boot option). I've run several 32bit-XP based drivers in Vista 64 RC 1 build 5728 with no problems, except sound and video which require vista-specific drivers due to the new subsystem anyway.

Windows is hard to install on whitebox systems

[Slashdot Parent]

In either 2000 or 2001 (I don't remember at this point), I built a pretty simple machine that I wanted to dual-boot between Windows and Linux. So I put the thing together, shove my W2k disk in the drive, boot 'er up, and it blue-screens.

So I google a bit, I google some more, tweak some BIOS settings, and boot 'er up again. Blue screen. At this point, I say, "You know what? I don't have the time and patience for windows. I'm just a home user, and things shouldn't be this difficult." So I plopped my Debian CD, and it installed without a hitch.

My conclusion: Windows is a sonofabitch to install because OEMs do the installing, not end users. Linux is easy to install because it has to be. No end user would have the patience to suffer through an installation as error-prone as a Windows installation.

re: upgrades and licensing

[King_TJ]

Yep! I've also found that in a corporate environment, repeatedly trying to "save money" by purchasing MS product upgrades (which require a "qualifying" previous product to be present in some form in order to install) is a BIG hassle down the road.

If and when you're asked to do a software audit to prove everything is legal, you end up in a THICK paper-trail. Instead of just producing proof of purchase of your existing OS, for example, you're stuck proving the complete record of how you got to point Y from point X.

Worse yet, if this process happened over several years and you weren't even working at the company when the first products were purchased, sometimes it gets really difficult to figure out how the whole thing went together. I remember years ago, for example, MS offered a program where you could use a copy of Microsoft Works as a "qualifying product" to buy an "upgrade" version of MS Office. A company I used to work for took advantage of that, because they had 50 or 60 Dell Pentium towers that came bundled with MS Works '95. Of course, someone tossed out the old MS Works CDs and keys a couple years later, figuring nobody was using THAT product anymore.... Well, around comes Office 2000 and again, we want to buy the upgrade version to save a bunch of money on the upgrade from Office '97. Then we qualify for Office XP since they've got the "upgrade advantage" MS "insurance" policy providing free upgrades while you're enrolled in the program. NOW - I'm supposed to do an audit and make sure all the copies of Office XP we've got are legal. Fun times!!

How much for a regular upgrade

[szembek]

How much is it to upgrade windows xp pro to vista if you have an older version of xp?

Re:Huh? 64-bit XP exists.

[InsaneProcessor]

Better times? Less compatibility, more bloat, the virus they call DRM. How is that better? And at a higher price of $$ and time whos is this better? M$ is the standing king of "Nothing New Invented Here". Stay away, if you know what's good for you. Use XP with Symantec AV and Adaware it works just fine and runs EVERYTHING for windows!

It will cost zero, based on its own feature set.

[gelfling]

I'm pretty sure that by the time I'm forced to abandon XP, desktop *nix of some kind will the only rational alternative. I think Vista is headed for the corporate supported OS/Suite arena. If my employer wants to supply it to me, fine. But I don't think it will have anything much to offer in terms of features or compatibility that are locked in.

Possible Reasons to Upgrade and Legacy Apps

[StarWreck]

Disclaimer: I have an insane number of machines. Meaning that I am probably insane.

There are lots and lots of possible reasons to upgrade from one operating system to another. I'm just going to lull on 2 of them: "New Hardware Support" and "Eye-Candy".
I'm going to go all the way back to my first operating system that was stored on a hard-drive, Windows 3.0 on my IBM 386 massively huge tower (50MB HDD). I upgraded from Windows 3.0 to 3.1 as soon as I could because 3.1 made it so much easier to add Networking Cards, Modems (AOL 2.0 yeah! Oh wait, I mean BOOO! AOL SUCKS), CD-ROM's, and... SOUND CARDS!!!!!!!!

Naturally, when I upgraded to a 120MHz Pentium with a good 16MB of RAM and an jaw dropping 1.6GB HDD I got Windows 95 with it. Not only did Windows 95 have more eye candy than Windows 3.1 but it had better support and support for newer versions of everything mentioned before plus it added the possibility for adding 3D accelerators. I played Interplay's SpaceFleet Academy, StarCraft, Quake, Doom, Duke Nuke 3D all on that machine for the first time.

Following that I upgraded to Windows 98 with my 500MHz AMD K6-2, 64MB of RAM, and 10GB HDD!! Windows 98 only added a little bit of eye-candy and its new hardware support seems smaller but was very important - USB for the first time and vastly improved 3D accelerators like the TNT2 on which I played Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament for the first time.

I skipped over Windows 2000 and ME and went straight for Windows XP because I naturally had to have the newest thing when I built my computer based around an AthlonXP 2100+. XP added quite a bit of eye candy compared to Windows 98, especially when you tweaked it with "Style XP" but at first I didn't really notice any additional hardware support. (I'm pretty sure AGP video cards run just as well in Windows 98). Service Pack 1 finally added USB 2.0 support, even though my motherboard had USB 2.0 for months before Service Pack 1 came out (my USB 2.0 scanner, plugged into a USB 2.0 port stopped working when SP1 came out because I was using a USB 1.1 cable). Most of the games I played could also be run in Windows 98, although generally they were just easier to get running in Windows XP.

The next few years sort of blurr together: I discovered Linux and trampled through dozens of flavors and versions, appreciating them for their awesome eye candy and usually good hardware support. I also became part of a corporation and havn't had time for even 1 minute of video game play in over a month, and hardly have time to play with my toy computers

Now I run OpenSuSE 10.1 on my primary machine and experiment with some others like Gentoo and Ubutnu and Knoppix on some of my extra machines.
I have WindowsXP on a standby machine for what I now refer to as "Legacy Apps"
I discovered Windows 2000 can do anything Windows XP can except for Style XP so I have that on a few of my older machines.
I've got Windows Server 2003 on my dual 550MHz Pentium 3 machine with a bunch of 10,000 RPM SCSI drives just for playing around.
I need to put Windows 98 on a decent machine for really old "Legacy Apps" like the video game Star Trek Judgement Rights that won't run on XP or 2000.
I physically swap 500MB HDD's on my 133MHz 486 (yeah, thats right... a 133MHz 486) with 64MB of RAM to switch between Windows 3.11 and Windows 95 - although thats mostly for playing.
And finally, I also run Contiki on my Commodore 128 just so I can go onto IRC and say "Why yes, I am typing this from a Commodore 128".

Now about Windows Vista. Windows Vista has a TON of new eye candy over WindowsXP but I'm already getting that from Linux and I expect rapid improvements from what I've been seeing already. The only new hardware support I've noticed in Windows Vista is for DirectX 10. Not only are DirectX 10 cards way down the road but I don't have time for video games anymore because I'm a corporate drone. So I really don't have any time for Windows Vista besides the copies of Vista beta

*Whoosh*

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to recalibrate your sarcasm meter.

And a new launch song

[A_Non_Moose]

95 had "Start Me Up" by the Rolling Stones.

Vista should have "Heart of Glass" by Blondie, or perhaps "Welcome to My Nitemare" by Alice Cooper.

Either way.

I read the cheers and jibes of the Mac-heads at the bottom of the article, and IME each "update"
to OS X was faster if you installed over the previous, but a wipe and reload reached the "OMG, wow!"
threshold. The key is "on the same hardware".

Vista, OTOH, needs massive upgrades to be run at full speed with all the bells and whistles active
from some of the reading I've done (boss asked about it even tho 2k3 works very well, as do our
Linux servers).

I'll hold out as long as possible and likely use 2k3 in a workstation config as a stop-gap, unless
XP SP3 does materialize (unlikely considering the pattern of "new SP coming soon. Psych!! New OS is
the SP and we can't back-port, sorry (insert Cheshire Cat like grinning)").

I just hope when the "sound of inevitability" comes around, that the next machine I build (not buy
from $oem) will come with several license of Vista for each disk in the array I plan on putting
in. So when Vista_license#1 craps out, insert different DVD and get on with life.

this VISTA thing is costing more people than MS!

[AdamGott]

How much is this Vista upgrade costing computer manufacturers? I have been putting off a new computer purchase for literally YEARS because I don't want to have to cough up $100 (or more) for the next version of the OS.

Huh?

[zodar]

Seems like the open source community is a bit hypocritical here. For a long time, the argument Microsoft and its afficionados used against open source was that "it's only free if your time isn't worth anything." I remember the vehement denials against this notion and people here on /. saying they'd rather spend the time to get a good OS. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, it seems folks are changing their tunes, to mix a metaphor.

correction

[geekoid]

"I'll pay Microsoft their money."

should be

I'll pay Microsoft with my money.

Asuming someone else deserves your money will cause bad purchases.

I don't live in huntington beach anymore, otherwise you could use mine.

Everything you mention about Vista works on 2000.

Re:Huh? 64-bit XP exists.

[nEJC76]

Exactly!
I've had XP64 installed at work but downgraded because I couldn't get anything to work!

I only have 1 machine with 64bit OS, and only that because app running on it needs all the RAM it can get...

Dell upgrade costs

[Mulligan417]

First, notice that Dell has also upgraded almost all of its standard system configurations to machine meeting the reccomended specs from Microsoft to run Vista, yet base configuration prices have not risen by much.
Second, and more importantly, note that the $45 upgrade it actually a downgrade---any machine shipping with Windows XP Media Center receives a free upgrade (less $10 for S&H) to Vista Home Premium. Any system shipping with XP Pro receives a free upgrade to Vista Business. The $45 is for Vista Home Basic.