Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Didn't MS say openly that every $1 of Vista represents $18 of NEW hardware? I think they did. So it's no surprise that there would be a lag. I'm sure that in by the end of the year, all PC's will be moved to Vista and once MS abandons XP the upgrades will fly off the shelf. I was in Staples today and the price for XP Home upgrades and basic Vista was the same. So if you're smart enough to read the box, why would you buy Vista for an upgrade on a machine that's more than a year old and can't run it?
I was working at an "experimental" call center. Place was called Stream and the client was Dell. The objective was to figure out if the customer had a simple problem or if one that required level 2 support. (Bit more complicated than that, but that's the jest) I was working there between the great Windows 95 to Windows 98 upgrade. It was miserable for ANYONE with one of those damn USR Robotics modems. It got to the point where we would NOT send out a replacement modem unless the customer did a complete reinstall, from scrach, not with the rebuild image. It also didn't help that most of our techs had a 75% turnaround in three months, couldn't speak English well, and that we told the customer we would call them in 48 hours to "help" them though the reinstall. Gezz. Thank god I work on Dell Servers now. Dell afford to piss off their consumer customers, but not their enterprise. PS - I remember the trainer telling me that Dell is for "quality" and would never sell a computer under $1,000. Even when he said that, I laughed. (1998-1999 was when he told us)
I upgraded to vista, but I have to disable my sound card in the device manager before rebooting or Vista will not start up. The sound card driver is provided by MS from Windows Update. Why would they provide a driver that crashes the system, and even alerts you that it is not made for vista?
I wrote about it here, if anyone cares.
Maybe they learned from their mistakes? Give them a small bit of credit, at least.
Dell actually recommends the exact upgrades "for an optimal Vista experience". So if you're using the exact configuration that they recommended for Vista(they even set aside a page listing out which upgrade areas where you lack the recommended parts), how is it that they still can't be sure that my laptop is ready for Vista?
They also keep a support sticker on the bottom so they know exactly what hardware is inside when they look up the support sticker. They also require that support sticker when registering for the vista upgrade.
I don't think Dell's problem is that they don't know who would be ready to get the upgrade. I just think they had no plan at all for processing all the discs they promised to send out.
How about a lawsuit disaster? IIRC it's fraud if you make a material statement that convinces someone to make a purchase ("this machine will run Vista") and that statement is false. Hell, that's not only a lawsuit disaster, it's a criminal activity disaster too!
No kiddiing, especially with Dell, we needed computers with XP because our Apps are supported on XP and our users are trained on Office 2003. We expressly told them we wanted XP and not Vista and not Office 2007.
The quote even specified it.
The computers show up and they have Vista and Office 2007. We have to spend > 3 hours getting it arranged for them to come pick up the computers.
He who said 1,000,000 monkeys on 1,000,000 typewriters would eventually type the great novel, never saw an AOL chat room
I am not going to say who I work for, but I will say I am a tier 2 support tech. for one of the largest PC vendors.
Support for Vista is already a disaster. Customer complaints are rampant, mostly with video problems that are directly a result of bad drivers. In the past, at least we had enough knowledge to get our job done. We could have confidence in newer drivers and we could be relatively sure the machines could support Windows XP. Today, Microsoft has changed the game so much that we are fucked. Troubleshooting this system is almost an entirely different game, so we are forced to play wack-a-mole all day. On the bright side, our product lines are getting a decent overhaul with more standardization. In the mean time, you guys are playing a crapshoot, the result of slapping the Vista logo on anything we can to meet our marketing promises.
When Vista becomes dominant in the mainstream, all of you can expect loads of problems unless Microsoft and the hardware vendors straighten things out. Sure, we should have platform standards. We all know Windows sucks largely because of how badly drivers are written, but they are doing it by screwing with us, the hardware vendors. My group knows what the hell we're doing. We would not be as big as we are if we didn't, but Microsoft are making our lives nearly impossible because they do not consider in the least what we need to support our products.
My advice: do not think you can buy either Dell or HP or from any of the other big vendors soon and expect Vista to work entirely as advertised. Wait a year. Stick with XP or buy a Mac.
I know why people will give it up... DRM, or more specifically the hoops you have to jump through to install Vista. Many people are trying to not pay the license fee now, and Vista will only push them farther toward trying Linux. Hey, the price is right, and it does all that they want to do anyway, so now is the time to drop MS products.
Sure, businesses will still find the money and time to upgrade, but most of them will do a forklift upgrade with a business maintenance plan on the desktop machines. This is a luxury that home pc owners do not have. The only real choice is to switch or suffer the pains of upgrades, license fees, support issues, software headaches, and the continued use of an OS that is the malware hackers preferred target.
This isn't trolling or Linux fanboi-ism, just an observation of what I'm seeing in the general populace.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
I'm not running an apple ; mostly because I have a pc right here in front of me so why pay more money. But is there any reason now NOT to run an apple? Microsoft would have done better to not release vista ; they're ensuring people hate them and try the competition.
If I were a shareholder, i would sell sell sell.
I think it's a safe bet to say every shareholder should short-sell before every major release of windows. They do this every single time. Hype it up, stock goes up, release it, disappointing everyone, stock goes down, holding pattern, start all over again.
---
SELL SELL SELL! | Sometimes I'm bored
Ace
I submitted for an upgrade waited weeks and weeks, and then sent an e-mail to the support email asking why I had not received it, and if I had somehow mad an error in the documentation and such that I had sent.
I got a reply that said "Thank you for submitting to customer service, your upgrade order has been cancelled per your request so that you can re-submit with the correct information."
So instead of verifying my order, they canceled it, and the page to do submissions are gone, and besides that the documentation said "no copies of this documentation will be accepted," but I had already submitted the documentation via physical snail mail. So I have essentially been SCREWED out of 200 bucks worth of software.
To put it mildly, I will never purchase Windows Vista, and I am sure the Pirate bay can help me get the software I was promised. I have never before had a request for information turn into such a fraudulent cancellation before, and since I already paid for it, I am not feeling under any obligation to purchase it again.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
Of course some people are having compatibility problems with their upgrades. This is no major surprise. Speaking as one who works in a large NIX shop (university lab), I must say that we've been evaluating Vista and I kindof like it. I still have a Mac and a Linux box on my desk, but I'm expecting us to support Vista by early '08. Also, I will say there is real pent up demand for upgrading both Windows and Office here in our shop. Windows users here are primarily fiscal admins, and I've had several ask me about supporting the Vista and Office 08. All the Mac users (me included) are looking forward to an Intel build for the next Office.
Vista may be having a slow start, but I think that within a year or so it will be a big winner. I like it (and I haven't had much good to say about Win since forever).
Joe Sixpack doesn't upgrade his operating system. Joe Sixpack doesn't know what an operating system is. Joe Sixpack will move to Vista when he buys his next PC with Vista preinstalled. This really should come as no surprise.
Windows XP Home Edition offered the stability and other improvements of Windows 2000 rolled into a consumer oriented OS. Compared to Windows 98 and (shudder) ME it was a huge improvement for consumers so it's no wonder more people wanted to upgrade to XP. What does Vista offer? A series of confusing versions to choose from, required hardware upgrades for most, software compatibility issues for many, annoying as all hell UAC prompts, Windows Software Protection Platform that can completely lock down your system if it thinks your running a pirated copy of Vista and the list goes on.
I can't think of one reason I should upgrade to Windows Vista. In fact, XP is the last version of a Microsoft OS that I will run on any PC I own. I've switched to a Mac and I couldn't be happier. I've got Boot Camp installed to play the occasional game but I find I'm spending less and less time gaming so I suspect by the time games appear that are Vista only it will no longer matter.
Dell probably isn't confused about what hardware is on which computer they sell.
That's what they DO know.
They don't know which piece of hardware Vista is going to cause to smoke and explode.
Remember linux drivers in 1998? This is worse... it's proprietary. And delayed.
Even if hardware is supposedly "supported" by vista doesn't mean it will work.
It just means it's supposed to. (Eventually)
Meanwhile, on planet Dell, the phones begin to ring nonstop for 5 years.
And 100,000 new customers choke on their tongues swollen from screaming.
Huh? MS has already released recommended specs.
It ran quite well on my old P4 2.6 GHz, 1 GB RAM and Geforce 6600 GT...
That is, far below what e.g. Dell has sold the past few years.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!