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Consumer Vista Upgrades Moving at Snail's Pace
Chester Freeze writes "During the holiday season, many shoppers bought PCs with the promise of quick, free Vista upgrades. The reality has been something else entirely: many Dell and HP customers are being told that they won't receive their copies of Vista before April. 'One source at a major OEM who spoke on condition of anonymity said that the real issue is that OEMs are still not sure which PCs are really ready to support Vista, and which PCs aren't... Customers who qualify for an Express Upgrade also qualify for OEM support for Windows Vista, even if their machines came with Windows XP. The last thing a Dell, Gateway, or HP wants to do is start sending out upgrades to customers who might have video cards that do not have particularly stable drivers yet (or sound cards, or RAID controllers, etc.). This could be a support disaster.'"
well, they sold it. Sort of comes with the territory. I know if I sold a promise to upgrade and received payment for it, I am pretty sure I am obligated to provide it! Sort by law I believe, although IANAL, so I could be wrong.
Clever or not, I got nothing...
I bought a Toshiba A100-TA9 laptop, with the promise of a free upgrade. When I go to the upgrade site, after I select the country (Canada), I am presented with blank drop-down boxes to select the current version I have. I assume this is due to multiple language versions (English and French) in Canada. Email to support is entirely unhelpful.
At the beginning of January, the form was working, but the server would time out at the very end.
Aero is the feature that most regular users associate with Vista. If they don't get that, then why do they even want Vista now? It's not like there are a whole lot of compelling reasons to switch to it at this point. And there are definitely a number of drawbacks. So if their PC can't run Aero, most people probably couldn't care less about getting Vista.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
It comes down to marketshare. Microsoft KNOWS they have the market share, and are FORCING users to seek their new Windows ME 2007 (aka Vista)...I'm not biting this time. And I will use my last professional dying breath to tell everyone to stay away.
I keep telling customers and clients to stay away from Microsoft. Their response is "What else is there?"
I spout off about 4 or 5 good, stable, and secure systems, including Apple. They tell me they are not graphic designers. I then tell them that I can't help them unless they think outside the MS box.
I am treating Vista like a plague. And everyone that has a lick of technological expertise should be on that bandwagon.
Brainwashed is EXACTLY what they are.
Time for Linux to step up to the plate. There is such a NEED for a "Super Wine" project to take a big bite out of Microsoft's ass.
The upgrades might be going at snails pace but every new pc being shipped is shipping with vista. It wont be long before there are more installations of Vista than Firefox.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Please, lord, let it be this time... raise thy noodly appendage and smite they foes!
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
The people with a 4 year old machine with those specs are in the upper 1% of PC owners. I know of no one with a one+ year old machine who isn't a high end gamer or code developer who already has 1GB or more on their machine. And you answered your own point vis a vis the video card. If that's the target for Vista upgrades then it's going to be a cold cold winter in Redmond this year. You'd be amazed I think at how few people will chuck $180 for a new video adapter just to run an OS for no other clear reason. You have got be subsidized by someone else if that's how you think.
After all, that's what MS partisans say about Linux when it lacks driver support for something...
Prompting people to accept every little action does not a secure Windows make. XP is fine by Windows standards. Vista is garnished to seem safer, but annoys you with so many dialogues requesting you to double and triple check what you are about to do as to desensitize you into paying attention to the actual warning in the first place.
I've had few if any truly horrid security problems with my Windows. Those that I know which have had done so by running that which they shouldn't, trusting untrustable content or just simply acting irresponsibly. Vista can't change that. It can only look prettier as it's failing.
Linux loses for me since I do not want to spend the time to fiddle with it
Anyone who trots out this tired old line hasn't tried Linux in a while. Ubuntu, Mepis, Fedora, hell if your time is so valuable paying for Linspire is an option, all install just about everything you need out of the box to get work done.
Oh, playing games? Not on a Mac, at least not that many and my guess is that's not what you mean.
The only other thing I can think of that may take time to get setup on Linux but not on a Mac is audio/video. Not sure about what a Mac comes loaded with out of the box and what you have to download and install yourself but all of the distros I listed above have quick, painless ways to install codecs and players in minutes*.
So, um, yeah, Vista sure is pissin' off people and OEMs...
* assumes broadband connection is available.
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
Upgrade Versions of Vista are Poison.
Of course, this has always been true of Windows Upgrade versions, but not to the extent of Vista.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.