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Dell To Offer Win XP On Consumer PCs Again
phalse phace writes "With so many consumers still asking for Windows XP to be loaded on Dell's consumer level PCs, the PC maker has finally decided to offer that as an option. 'Like most computer makers, Dell switched nearly entirely to Vista-based systems following Microsoft's mainstream launch of the operating system in January. However, the company said its customers have been asking for XP as part of its IdeaStorm project, which asks customers to help the company come up with product ideas. Starting immediately, Dell said, it is adding XP Home and Professional as options on four Inspiron laptop models and two Dimension desktops.' The Dell models with the Windows XP option are: Dell Inspiron 1405, 1705, 1505, and 1501; and Dell Dimension E520 and E521."
I certainly don't. I'm testing it at work here on a 1.7 celeron with 1.5gb ram and a radeon 9550. Can't do anything without the cpu meter hitting 100 for a couple of seconds. Videos that played fine in XP stutter now and I had to turn off UAC cause it was driving me mad.
I think you're wrong here: as hateful as XP was, it was a relief compared to such gems as Windows 98 or ME. Frankly, if Microsoft was smart, given the relative acceptance of the latest iterations of XP as a stable and useful OS (in Microsoft metrics of course), they would have kept pluging holes and making it better one patch at a time until it was finally good. But of course this doesn't make them big bucks, so instead they embarqued on this stupid Longhorn fantasy and this is the result: people are happy enough with XP (and justly wary of any new Microsoft product) that they don't want Vista.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I think you are partly right. Vista is receiving much more hate than Microsoft and most PC manufacturers thought it would but I doubt Vista deserves or is hated as much as Windows ME was. The fact that Dell feels the need to sell XP again may indicate that Dell has lost faith in Microsoft's "Reality Distortion Field" more than anything else. Everyone talks about Steve Jobs' RDF while neglecting to mention that Redmond has convinced people that they always need to upgrade and have no choice but Microsoft for the last 12 or so years. People far from the fringes now know that both Apple, Linux and XP are viable options for many folks and that means Microsoft's free ride is ending.
http://nyamenation.org/
Your the dumb one.
Dell sells to a metric assload of businesses. Most businesses are not migrating to Vista any time soon.
Additionally, many users REQUIRE software that does not operate properly in Vista... thus they REQUIRE windows XP instead of Vista to have a computer of any value.
Sure they could choose not to buy new computers... but for a company on a strict 3-4 year lease rotation on their dell machines, or a business that is adding employees, or any number of other situations where waiting is not an option, Windows XP is a must in order to maintain uniformity.
For example, I have managed networks with several hundred machines broken in 3 groups... each group was on a 36 month lease, so over the course of 3 years, every machine would be replaced with a new machine. A software upgrade would never be done until 100% of our hardware was capable of running the new software... even if that meant waiting to rotate the oldest hardware out. With the new hardware demands of Vista, I have a feeling it will be at least 2 years before organizations that operate the way ours did has the hardware in place to perform a complete migration.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
Simply put, it only takes a few commercials from Dell about "the power of open source" to get people doubting Microsoft.
Wow, I never saw it that way. Of course Dell would need to grow a spine before ever doing that. That means saying. "Screw you Microsoft, I don't care paying a premium for your licenses.... Brand recognition will save us!" Not very likely to happen... Interesting none the less.
Same experience here. Pentium 4 2.26Ghz, 1GB RAM, NVidia 6600GT, and it chugs with just the Vista basic interface. The worst part is that it occasioanlly just goes off and starts thrashing the hard drive, and pretty much locks the system up. I think it's the indexing service doing that, but I've not confirmed that. I also run it on a Pentium M 2.0Ghz, 1GB RAM, Radeon X700 laptop system, and it feels like I'm working on an XT.
The only positive feature for Vista, so far, is the built in chess game. For the price, you can get a better one on XP.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
I bought a new machine about 3-4 weeks ago. Vista was the only option. I asked Sales before I bought it if I could get XP. No dice.
So when the machine finally arrived, I declined the licensing terms of Vista (I have my own licensed copy of XP) and I emailed Dell for a refund. Two emails later I got $27. This is about half of what the guy in Germany got from Dell Germany (plus he got $8 USD for Works, which Dell US didn't bother to comment on when I asked for that refund).
Just my $27 worth.
http://www.headsallempty.org/wordpress
Seeing as how we are sharing anecdotal stories. I have a Pentium M 1.3ghz, 1GB RAM, Geforce Go420 32MB, and it actually works fine (Aero basic of course). It's certainly not faster, but it's not much slower either. My only slow-down problem was a misbehaving 3rd-party driver, which still needs an update.
Anecdotes, anecdotes.
What I've found about the thrashing: It happens only at first boot, and when closing programs or otherwise freeing large amounts of RAM. Also: If you, Joe Fucking User, stop trying to fix the fucking computer and just use the thing, it will eventually stop thrashing.
After that, programs tend load fast. It's called SuperFetch, and it's supposed help[1]. Quit being paranoid.
[1]: Of course it seems like it's not helping, but that's not been Vista's fault in my experience. Rather, it seems to be a competition at boot time between SuperFetch intelligently trying to load data for applications that I'm actually likely to use, and those applications themselves doing their own foolhardy preload[2]. Since the hard drive head can only be in one place at a time, this presents a problem. It should be noted that Vista rather uniquely supports several priority levels for disk IO, and that SuperFetch appears to operate at low priority. It doesn't seem to get in the way at all, once you kill the third-party preloads and try to ignore the disk activity.[3]
[2]: OpenOffice is a horrible example of this, trying to push its bloated self into RAM at boot time by default. Other common offenders are, of course, Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat Reader.
[3]: Also: Almost all of this activity (including indexing) stops cold when running on battery, where runtime is generally preferred over performance. The whole thing is really pretty well behaved. Try it sometime. (incidentally, I get about an extra hour of real run-time from my Inspiron 6000 when running Vista instead of XP.)
Kid-proof tablet..