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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?"
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.)
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!
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.
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...)
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+