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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?"
1. Does it run Linux? ...as in beer.
2. It'll cost me nothing because you can't upgrade *nix to Win*
3. Profit!
4. I already read this on digg.
5.
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.)
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.
My dell came with windows XP and a free upgrade to linux !
\u262D = \u5350
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.
Why bother.
"Free" as in Vista.
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!
1. Making lists of what the standard slashdot responses are.
Dear OEM distributors:
We screwed up. Please don't go selling Linux PCs this Christmas.
Regards,
Bill
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.
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.
6. Imagine a Beowulf clus- Oh, crap. Nevermind.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.