MS Offers Vista Upgrade Pricing To All

SlinkySausage writes "With a vague whiff of desperation, Microsoft is offering anyone who downloaded one of the betas or release candidates of Vista upgrade pricing for the full version. The 'special' deal is a sweetener for the fact that the betas will start expiring and becoming non-functional from May 31st. APC Magazine in Australia writes: 'Windows Vista is starting to look like those Persian rug stores which are always having a "closing down" sale... All stock has been slashed, save $$$, why pay more?'" Perhaps Microsoft is cognizant of straws in the wind such as a recent InformationWeek survey indicating that 30% of business have no intention of moving to Vista, ever.

Comments

ob

[Bloke down the pub]

those Persian rug stores which are always having a "closing down" sale... All stock has been slashed, save $$$, why pay more?

It's quite reasonable to expect a discount if the goods have been damaged with a knife.

Re:ob

[Anonymous Coward]

If they offer Vista for $3, and include Office, I might try it. But I'd need to know that the DRM wouldn't require me to use any special uninstall programs. I know that's a leading category of PC productivity software, but I just don't want to have to pay to free myself later.
Backed into a corner I suspect I would be willing to pay more to uninstall it than to get it though.

I think the plan for now is to move to Macs, triple booting OS X, Ubuntu and XP. With XP networking disabled it should be fairly safe to use and it won't really matter that they stop providing security updates. MS software is fine if kept properly litterboxed.

Re:ob

[Anonymous Coward]

or damaged by a chair

Re:ob

[Danga]

I think the plan for now is to move to Macs, triple booting OS X, Ubuntu and XP. With XP networking disabled it should be fairly safe to use and it won't really matter that they stop providing security updates. MS software is fine if kept properly litterboxed.

I take it this is not a server machine if it is setup to dual boot and if so why disable networking on XP? If you are not a complete retard then it is extremely easy to setup and run an XP machine to be safe connected to the net. You must be super paranoid.

Re:ob

[Yvanhoe]

why disable networking on XP? If you are not a complete retard then it is extremely easy to setup and run an XP machine to be safe connected to the net. You must be super paranoid.

Some people were network administrators during the Blaster surge. We are all super paranoid toward XP now. This is our own Vietnam syndrome.

Re:ob

[Danga]

I am not a network admin but I did experience the effects of the Blaster worm in the office I worked in at that time. MY machine however never got infected and I was connected to the main network at a large University. If I remember that worm correctly it required you to open an attachment and if that is so then blame your USERS. There also was a patch out for the vulnerability before the worm was spread so KEEP YOUR COMPUTERS UP TO DATE!

This making you paranoid of XP would be like the maker of the locks to your house telling you that they found out it would be possible for someone to create a skeleton key to all the locks they have made and that you should have all your locks replaced at the expense of the maker and then a month later someone actually does create a skeleton key and robs your house using said key and then having you blame the manufacturer. They warned you in advance and had a fix but you didn't take advantage of it. Sure, they deserve some blame but the fault is on you as well. All software has vulnerbilities.

I will reiterate as long as you are not a complete retard it is easy to keep an XP machine running safe and sound while connected to the net.

Re:ob

[Yvanhoe]

First, this was a humor attempt, but well... Second, no, the worm doesn't propagate through email. It uses a vulnerability in the OS that allows it to infect an unprotected host connected to Internet. Try installing a windows XP with no service packs and connect it without a firewall to Internet, it should take less than one minute for your PC to be infected. The policy to activate automatic windows update dates back from the Blaster surge. Before that, people had to balance between upgrades that were known to break some things without warning and a possible threat but XP was said to be more secure than all other windows OS and so many admins wanted to review upgrades before installation. After Blaster, a lot of policies changed. Even the SP2, which takes more than one hour to install, managed to be widespread.

What's the benefit?

[Colin Smith]

Same old, same old. But with a few extra hassles.

Mmmmm, compelling proposition there. Course, what they should have done is made sure that MS Office was subtly broken on XP. Well, you never know, now I've made that particular suggestion on this highly read web site we might well see that feature in future windows updates.

Re:What's the benefit?

[CastrTroy]

I think that would only have caused companies not to upgrade MS Office either. MS Office 2000 is probably good enough for most businesses (as is 97). With the amount of retraining that 2007 will take, I don't think than most businesses will want to make that move either.

Re:What's the benefit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Same old, same old. But with a few extra hassles. Well, there's an easier-to-administrate volume licensing model, built-in enterprise desktop management stuff and full-disk encryption (for the tinfoil hat VP types) for a start. Microsoft don't just do what the hell they feel like, they do talk to businesses and gauge what they want.

Re:What's the benefit?

[gEvil (beta)]

Mmmmm, compelling proposition there. Course, what they should have done is made sure that MS Office was subtly broken on XP. Well, you never know, now I've made that particular suggestion on this highly read web site we might well see that feature in future windows updates.

Well, they've got two weeks to put together their "Critical Patch for Office 2007: Fixes a major compatibility issue with Windows XP that allows a computer owner to take control of their computer. It is recommended that everyone install this update. A reboot will be required after installation."

Re:What's the benefit?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want full disk encryption it's a hell of a lot cheaper and easier to roll out something like PointSec onto your current XP machines than it is to upgrade to Vista and no enterprise in their right mind would deploy Vista full disk encryption in an organisation already using a different product (Because then you have two different tracking and management systems to deal with). It's hardly a major bullet list item that has enterprises scrambling to upgrade.

Re:What's the benefit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Powerpoint 2007 *IS* broken on XP. A huge step backwards from PPT 2003. Just when you thought Office had matured, the bugs are back, and they come together with bloat and sluggishness!

Can't say that it's not broken on Vista though...

Re:What's the benefit?

[sharkey]

Mmmmm, compelling proposition there. Course, what they should have done is made sure that MS Office was subtly broken on XP.

Instead of being overtly broken as has been the case since Word 1.0?

Re:What's the benefit?

[krbvroc1]

Microsoft don't just do what the hell they feel like, they do talk to businesses and gauge what they want. Like the RIAA, MPAA, BSA and NSA?

Re:What's the benefit?

[ultrasound]

Powerpoint 97 works fine on XP :-)

At least it will until the patch mentioned by gEvil earlier on is released.

Re:What's the benefit?

[vought]

Mmmmm, compelling proposition there.

A corporate flop sweat is compelling?

That's not what people were saying when Apple was desperately trying to foist System 7.5 on people in 1995.

Microsoft is very bad at poker when they're holding a shitty hand.

Re:What's the benefit?

[Arterion]

I don't think that's quite fair. The RIAA, MPAA, etc., are in the business of litigation, and seek to win in court. That's about all they care about. Everyone already hates them, but it doesn't matter because the law works whether you like it or not.

With Microsoft, they're about sales. So they're going to do whatever they can to get sales. Making a product people want to buy is close to the top of the list of how to get sales. Granted, Microsoft is a monopolist, so it's by far not their only strategy, or perhaps not even their main strategy. It's still an important part of their business model, though. I think Vista is going to be a stumble for them, unless the upcoming service pack changes the OS in a significant way (like SP2 for XP). Either they'll fix a lot of the problems people have with it, or they'll quickly develop the next windows, and Vista will turn into an ME. I do hope the misstep gives other OS's an opportunity to increase market share.

Re:What's the benefit?

[COMON$]

Microsoft is very bad at poker when they're holding a shitty hand.

Historically MS has been very good at poker, look at all the "shitty" programs/projects they have gotten the masses to buy.

Re:What's the benefit?

[loafing_oaf]

On XP, Office 2007 breaks the spell check in Outlook Express, which is ridiculously popular with Joe Average. Looks like Joe will have to go get Vista.

Re:What's the benefit?

[Elbowgeek]

Yes, I do believe that the businesses they surveyed asked for many of the new features in Vista, but I don't think they were bargaining for it to cause this much hassle. It's very likely that the reset to zero they did a couple of years back when the whole dot net thing wasn't working out caused much of the munging of current apps and all.

Re:What's the benefit?

[imemyself]

To an extent that might possibly be true, however, unlike Vista, Office '07 actually has some useful features that companies would benefit from. As far as the OS itself goes - XP is more than enough for most companies. And most of the problems that Vista addresses can already be solved with Windows XP, just by using some 3rd party software or chaning some configuration things. Meeting Space is interesting, but most companies aren't going to be switching to IPv6 anytime soon, and if you're close enough in location to be on the same subnet, then why not just actually meet in person? Office 2007's features aren't necessarily "must-have" but there are some things that are pretty cool, and do make it easier to create sharp-looking documents and presentations. (For example, Powerpoint 2007 has themes that actually look professional and well designed, graphically speaking, unlike previous versions. Charts in Excel look a lot better, and many of the themes can be used throughout the core Office applications.) Vista on the other hand is useless for businesses, and doesn't offer much for consumers either. Aero Glass is slick, but it isn't going to help business at all, and it'll get old after a few days.

Re:What's the benefit?

[CastrTroy]

My problem with the themes in Powerpoint is that they get really old, really fast. After sitting through 17 presentations using the same theme they all start to look just as bad. I don't think the themes in the previous versions were that bad, but after seeing them so many times, they start to lose their appeal.

Re:What's the benefit?

[imemyself]

Yeah, I agree. Especially that stupid theme with the notebook spiral type thing on it.

Powerpoint 2007's seem like they can be tweaked a little more than previous versions (like changing the background for instance - gradient, pattern, etc.). And so far, most people don't use Office 2007 so my presentations don't look like anyone else's (yet).

Granted, too fancy of themes could detract from the actual information in the presentation, but I think most of the themes that I've used do a fairly good job of that. This is one area that OOo Impress really lacks in (especially when compared to PPT 2007 or Keynote). The themes it ships with honestly suck balls, and while I have found some that aren't too bad on the web, they still aren't anywhere close to the quality of the ones in Keynote or Powerpoint 2007.

Re:What's the benefit?

[ozbird]

Microsoft don't just do what the hell they feel like, they do talk to businesses and gauge what they want.

Okay, 'fess up: which one of you asked for Clippy?

Re:What's the benefit?

[CastrTroy]

You could always tweak the themes or make your own. How does PowerPoint 2007 help with that? I tend not to use templates or themes when I use powerpoint/word, because it's really obvious when it's done, and I find it looks really cheap and that you didn't spend any time putting the presentation together.

Re:What's the benefit?

[Splintax]

One of the reasons I upgraded to Vista was because of Office '07. The UI is really slow under XP, and much more responsive under Vista. But then again, I really like '07.. and none of the problems with Vista have affected me significantly.

Re:What's the benefit?

[rtb61]

Perhaps you are just one of the vary rare users who are willing to use office 07. In Australia they are having trouble selling the full version rec retail $990.00 to uni students for $75. Office 07 and it's weird menus seems to be doing as badly, or technically even worse (seeing is they can't get the same oem default install rate) than Vista.

Re:What's the benefit?

[Splintax]

I do live in Australia and I'm familiar with the $75 Office campaign. In fact I'm running a copy of Office I got from this campaign. I will admit however that initially I was using a pirated version. I found the ribbon interface a pain in the ass for the first few hours of use, but after a short 'adjustment' period, I'm finding the new interface makes me more productive than ever. As a result, I bought the $75 student edition.

Re:What's the benefit?

[rtb61]

You did not buy a $75 student edition, you bought a full perpetual licence edition, at a university student discount. I was going going to try M$ on for an earlier edition at even a further discount, say like $25 but it would be pointless as I would still use Open Office and get free upgrades for the rest of my life with out changing the interface I have grown accustomed too.

As for adapting to an interface change in a few hours, after using an different one for years, I cry BULLSHIT !!!! I changed interfaces over the years and it takes months to finally stop reaching for what you have become accustomed to and the loss of productivity is huge over that period as well as enormous frustration when you didn't want or ask for the change.

I dare you to take a touch typing receptions qwerty keyboard away and give them a dvorak keyboard, and see which happens first, they adapt to the different interface or you end up with a keyboard jammed in your ear ;).

Re:What's the benefit?

[Splintax]

You are correct about the full-version vs. student-version thing. My mistake. As for changing interfaces.. perhaps I don't use MS Office as extensively as you, or something. Essentially the only thing I have to do is muck around with formatting and add footnotes and comments. I very rarely find myself doing anything with macros, or drawing things, but on the few occasions that I have had to do that, I've found the tools quickly enough (sure, not as fast as I would have had they been present on the old menu system, but it doesn't take long to adapt to a task you perform infrequently). QWERTY is different since you're using that the WHOLE time you use a computer, effectively, and also, typing skills are tightly ingrained in muscle memory, versus locations of options on menus, which are memorized and repeated rather than what is almost physical 'instinct' - for example, you won't find yourself losing much productivity when you alter the mouse sensitivity, even though this significantly changes the physical action required to achieve a given (mouse-pointing) task. The best thing about the Ribbon is that I think it makes some more 'advanced' features in Word (mainly styles and reviewing) more obvious and easier to use for your casual user of Word (who, going from extensive personal experience, usually doesn't even have a grasp of the difference between tabs and spaces, let alone the ability to easily adjust the style of a whole document without manually going through and playing with the Format -> Font dialog..). I look forward to receiving "cleaner" documents from others in the future. How long did you spend with MS Office '07? Unless you frequently perform some task which is obscenely difficult to do with the Ribbon, which I find hard to believe, I think you gave up too quickly. PS: Try mousing over the ribbon and spinning the scroll wheel. :-)

Re:What's the benefit?

[Splintax]

Ugh, sorry, forgot to put in

s. :(

Re:What's the benefit?

[indianseason]

Microsoft don't just do what the hell they feel like, they do talk to businesses and gauge what they want. Like the RIAA, MPAA, BSA and NSA? I think the parent post spelled "gouge" incorrectly.

Profit??

[faloi]

I wonder how much MS really makes off Windows, particularly at the consumer level, in terms of profit per unit. It's easy to see in some business lines where the profit really is (ink jet printers versus cartridge refills, concessions versus ticket prices at theaters, etc.), but it's a little blurry in software. It probably makes good business sense for MS to lower the price on their OS by $100 or so per unit and make it up in other lines of business. 'Course, I still won't upgrade until I get more or less forced into it because of DirectX 10 (damn you, gaming addiction!), but it might get them more actual sales.

Re:Profit??

[OffTheLip]

You don't just buy Microsoft, you buy _into_ Microsoft. It often is a life sentence.

Re:Profit??

[kimvette]

At $751 for the only version worth a damn, it's no wonder Vista isn't selling.

Re:Profit??

[Bedouin X]

Last I read, Windows and Office are where Microsoft basically make all of their money. The other units (I think there are three or four) were aggregate losers.

Re:Profit??

[Himring]

I wonder how much MS really makes off Windows

billions?

Re:Profit??

[peragrin]

MSFT makes roughly 400% profit on office and windows.

Every other product line is barely making profit or is losing money.

Without Window and Office MSFT would have been out of business a long time ago as those two product lines fund everything else.

Re:Profit??

[BigBadBus]

A friend of mine works in the computer games industry and several of his games have been published by MS. I don't know the figures, but most of MS's profits come from Office and OSes. Everything else brings in chicken feed.

Re:Profit??

[2nd Post!]

If you look at their quarterly/yearly earnings, each copy of Vista will net them about $40 bundled with a PC.

You will also see that about 1/3 of their operating profit comes from OSes.

So reducing the price by $100 would lose them money AND reduce their operating profit by half.

Re:Profit??

[Sancho]

What was it that made Ultimate worth a damn over Premium, again?

Re:Profit??

[westlake]

At $751 for the only version worth a damn, it's no wonder Vista isn't selling.

The Geek quotes retail list, for the ultimate boxed set, in whatever currency makes the numbers look most dramatic. Everyone else buys the OEM install, the academic version, etc.

Re:Profit??

[rlp]

> The other units (I think there are three or four) were aggregate losers.

The gaming division (Xbox, Xbox 360) has lost $5 Billion, MSN has never made money either. Don't know about whether their mice / keyboards earn $$$.

Re:Profit??

[montyzooooma]

But the price OEM system builders pay is far less than the OEM retail version or the retail upgrade version. ie OEMs aren't paying anything like $140 for a copy of the OS.

Re:Profit??

[Sancho]

Except that the cost to OEMs is significantly cheaper. Ever get a refund for not using the MS product? You get back something like $70. A copy of Vista Ultimate OEM from Newegg is $189.99. Of course, I'd imagine that Dell gets an even higher discount.

In fact, Vista Ultimate Retail at Newegg is only $378.99. I'm not sure where the article is getting their other numbers. Even if this is the upgrade price, it's already cheaper than the upgrade price listed in the article.

Regardless, with Vista's new pricing model, the difference in cost is even bigger. The extra cost to buy Ultimate over Home Premium probably isn't justified by the effort required to develop the extra pieces. It's probably pointless to speculate over what each version of the OS "cost" to develop per unit.

Re:Profit??

[baadger]

$751? You can get a retail version of Vista Ultimate on NewEgg for $380. Besides, you'd have to be a complete moron to buy the retail version when for the majority of people there are likely to be essentially three scenarios:

1) You're buying entirely new hardware and moving to Vista. Get an OEM version at $199
2) You're just upgrading the OS from XP with perhaps a memory and/or GPU upgrade to boot. Get an upgrade version at $250
3) You are buying an OEM PC in which case you'll pay the Vistatax, paying no more than you would have for XP.

So yes, Vista is expensive, but quit spreading fudd.

Re:Profit??

[644bd346996]

Well, for starters, you can't upgrade from XP Pro to Vista Home Premium. You have to do a clean install. And even though you can look up the differences yourself, I'll point them out: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsv ista/editions/choose.mspx?wt_svl=10033VHa2&mg_id=1 0033VHb2

The only one that seems really stupid is the "Fax and Scan" missing from the home editions. Where did they get the idea that home users never want to scan photos?

Re:Profit??

[Provocateur]

Vista is expensive, but quit spreading fudd.

The $751 he is quoting is the Director's Cut, featuring audio commentary, deleted scenes, multilingual subtitles, and alternate endings, such as failure to boot after the install process. Cut him some slack.
 

Re:Profit??

[MoTec]

The only problem with that is that only with retail versions do you get both the 32 bit and 64 bit versions. I built a new PC late last year and got a Windows XP Pro license (32 bit, OEM) with a free upgrade to Vista. I got my upgrade, Vista Business (32bit). There was no way for me to upgrade to the 64 bit version. I'm not quite interested in running 64bit quite yet but I want to do it in the future but unfortunately, unless I buy the retail version of Vista I'll be out of luck and the same will be the case for anyone that buys an OEM verisons.

Re:Profit??

[Sancho]

The upgrade path is crappy, but expected if they're actually dropping functionality.

Anyway, yes, I'm capable of looking up the differences myself, but I didn't ask for the differences; I asked for what made Ultimate the only one worth a damn (which is obviously subjective). I'm pretty sure that they're referring to an application for scanning images in rather than an API for scanning. I'm sure I can still scan photos into Photoshop or whatever paint program that supports grabbing images from the scanner with Home Premium. I'd also imagine that the same is true for Fax, and incidentally, I think that XP Pro has a fax application built in. Imagine buying an "upgrade" and actually losing a bit of functionality!

Aside from Fax and Scan, I don't think there's anything on there that I care for. The media center stuff isn't that useful unless I'm making it a dedicated media center. I wouldn't trust BitLocker farther than I could throw it. Backups might be nice for the home user, and I'm surprised that it's not in all versions of Vista, considering OS 10.5's much touted Time Machine. And remote access? Please, I consider it a feature that it's NOT included!

That's not to say that I think that the whole Vista version mess isn't ridiculous to begin with, but coming from the standpoint of the features they chose to include in the various versions, I'm not at all surprised at how their upgrade matrix worked out.

Re:Profit??

[archen]

Think I'd rather spend an extra $20 and get Windows 2003 Web edition.

Re:Profit??

[steveodawg]

I could be wrong, but I believe that you can request to get a 64bit disk.

Re:Profit??

[tftp]

Don't know about whether their mice / keyboards earn $$$

These products are likely to be profitable, given that a natural keyboard is sold for $75-100 and a regular MS keyboard is $30 at Fry's. However this revenue can't possibly sustain a company of MS size. If they sell a million of keyboards per year (which I doubt) the profit would be 10-20 million dollars, which is nothing on MS scale. Basically the division would be profitable and self-sustaining, but that's all.

Re:Profit??

[daybot]

The Geek quotes retail list, for the ultimate boxed set, in whatever currency makes the numbers look most dramatic

Yep. The UK is usually a good bet for that. Maplin sells Ultimate full version at RRP - £370 ($740) and Amazon has it for £310 ($620). These are typical prices here.

Re:Profit??

[baadger]

Well that makes some sense, *in theory*:

1. You're buying an OEM version therefore purchasing a motherboard and CPU.
2. If you're buying a x86_64 CPU and compatible mobo then you can get 64 bit Window's drivers for said hardware.
3. 32 bit application compatibility on 64 bit Window's will be perfect.
4. Given the above you should run a 64 bit Window's.

The only 'slight' hiccup's are that #2 doesn't take into account any existing hardware you may have, and that #3 just isn't true given the state of some Window's software out there. My point is pushing people buying new hardware to 64 bit isn't a bad thing and if you do your research before purchasing it is possible to have a smooth 64 bit experience on newly purchased hardware. I've been dual booting Windows XP "x64 Edition" with Linux since February last year and haven't come across a single 32 bit Window's app that couldn't be persuaded to work flawlessly.

I won't go as far as to say you made a bad choice choosing the 32 bit XP Pro license because even though, according to the Vista upgrade path webpage, as an XP x64 user you would have been eligible for upgrade pricing when moving move to a "better edition" of Vista (Presumeably Home Premium, Business or Ultimate) I've never actually seen XP x64 Edition on sale with a "free upgrade to Vista" coupon.

Re:Profit??

[Library Spoff]

Still cheap compared to the UK prices of Vista,
despite £1 buying you roughly $2 at the moment.

Amazon.com (amongst others) won't deliver Vista to the UK.

(and no Adobe, I've not forgotten about Photoshop either)

Re:Profit??

[markbt73]

I had that version of Windows ME. The bloopers weren't funny at all. Totally not worth it.

Re:Profit??

[Howserx]

My version cost 15$ on the streets of Bankok and came with a 13 year old girl.

Re:Profit??

[GuldKalle]

Ohh, deleted scenes! Is that including WinFS?

Re:Profit??

[danomac]

3) You are buying an OEM PC in which case you'll pay the Vistatax, paying no more than you would have for XP.

I've been hunting around for a laptop lately... and I have noticed one thing: the models with Vista are more expensive than their non-Vista counterparts. We're talking the same model here, and a $50-$100 difference. So I wonder about this statement.

And it's probably no coincidence that the XP models are suddenly no longer available (although they should be soon again.) Meh.

Re:Profit??

[TG-Apophis]

I have no issues at all with spending money for a quality product. I also have no issue with said company making a profit on the products that they sell. So why am I so hesitant to spend so much on Vista? The DRM stuff irks me, but not enough to prevent me from buying it. I do think it's a bit expensive, but I've paid more money for more trivial things. I also took part in the beta and had my machine dual boot with Vista and actually enjoyed the experience and flashiness of the new GUI.

I guess when it comes down to it, Windows XP still works for me. I feel like they're trying to push a product on me to replace a product that I still get along with.

I think if they did lower the price by $100, as you suggest, I would be more likely to pick it up and make the switch.

Re:Profit??

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you meant to spell that "Bangkok" and that 13-year-old "girl," well, we've warned you about shopping for software at Soi Cowboy. :) * * * * * This sig space for lease. Reach 200,000,000 disinterested Slashdot readers for only pennies per day!

Re:Profit??

[Anonymous Coward]

See if you can find the 64 bit oem version somewhere...and make you a copy. Your key will work.

Re:Profit??

[freeweed]

alternate endings, such as failure to boot after the install process

You mean that isn't the original ending?

Re:Profit??

[2nd Post!]

You misunderstand.

MS Quarterly earnings divided by number of PCs shipped by OEMs ~= $40 per PC

That is why I said each copy costs $40 bundled with a PC.

Re:Profit??

[rizole]

I got my 13 year old girl for 20$. Thankfully I was spared the embarrassment of taking a copy of Vista as part of the deal.

Re:Profit??

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

The only problem with that is that only with retail versions do you get both the 32 bit and 64 bit versions. I built a new PC late last year and got a Windows XP Pro license (32 bit, OEM) with a free upgrade to Vista. I got my upgrade, Vista Business (32bit). There was no way for me to upgrade to the 64 bit version. I'm not quite interested in running 64bit quite yet but I want to do it in the future but unfortunately, unless I buy the retail version of Vista I'll be out of luck and the same will be the case for anyone that buys an OEM verisons.

You can order 64-bit media for $10.

Re:Profit??

[Darundal]

If you didn't see the note, article prices are not USD, they are AUD.

Re:Profit??

[Sancho]

I did miss that, thanks for pointing it out!

Re:Profit??

[ady1]

You paid 2 dollars above the price. One dollar per year makes it 13$ in total or was the girl older?

Re:Profit??

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody has no sense of humor. Troll?!

Re:Profit??

[atrimtab]

Microsoft should pay customers to lock themselves to Vista. After all the operating system is the lock that allows them to sell you all the more expensive software that runs ontop.

The real question is: "How much should you pay to put on a collar and leash to be led around by Microsoft?"

The beauty of the current system is that Microsoft has customers paying for their own handcuffs.

Hmm

[El Lobo]

Repeating a lie a thousand times will not make it true. Vista may be selling slow, but not slowly than Ubuntu users are upgrading to the last Fety thingy (and THAT is free!!!!) , or not slowly than Borland^H^H^H^H^H^HCodegear users are upgrading to Delphi 2007....
Eventually it will become more and more common, but don't hold your breath. It won't go away.

Re:Hmm

[pallmall1]

...but not slowly than Ubuntu users are upgrading to the last Fety thingy

Linux users are not forced to upgrade like Windows users are.

Re:Hmm

[Apocalypse111]

Consider the following...

Windows ME

That is all.

Re:Hmm

[Goaway]

Actually Linux users are just as forced to upgrade, if not more so, than Windows users. Linux distros tend to go out of support far quicker than Windows versions.

Re:Hmm

[Sancho]

How are Windows users forced? Is a gun held to their heads? Is it in the contract?

My mother used Windows 98 for years after XP had come out. It worked fine and did what she needed.

Re:Hmm

[baldass_newbie]

Except for Slackware and Debian...yes.
Package maintenance, that's another issue altogether.

Re:Hmm

[walt-sjc]

... And Ubuntu Linux upgrades are free in any case.

Re:Hmm

[askreet]

It's feisty fawn, and I recall repos being almost unavailable due to the number of people upgrading...

Re:Hmm

[Meatloaf Surprise]

Well, forced because Microsoft will end support for their previous versions and focus solely on the current/future versions of their products. Home users aren't 'forced' to switch--well not right away at least, but businesses usually have to once support ends for the old ones. Being a software tester myself, once a new OS is released, there is probably about a year or so of overlap when we test the product with the new and previous OS. After that, it's the new one all the way. So, although you're not 'forced', it is wise if you want to get the most out of the new products, etc etc.

Re:Hmm

[everphilski]

Well, forced because Microsoft will end support for their previous versions

and like I'm getting support from the Linux community on kernel 1.0 ...

Re:Hmm

[BewireNomali]

how long do you expect a software firm to provide support for a previous version of software? this is an interesting point because as far as I know, Msft still provides support to some financial firms I consult for and they still use 2000 professional.

in my estimation the problem with MSFT hasn't been that they don't support previous versions. It's been that legacy support built in to newer versions of software causes bloat and problems. IMO their problem is trying to please everyone - staying with the times while holding the hands of those not interested in keeping up.

Re:Hmm

[Jerry]

Actually, neither Linux nor Windows users are FORCED to update to newer versions. Patching bugs or blocking holes isn't updating to a higher version unless the patch includes the new OS and necessary utilities.

At work I used W2K from its release till two months ago, when my new Dell Latitude D620 had its VISTA scrubbed off and replaced by XP Pro. The IT staff tells me they have no plans to upgrade to VISTA so it looks like XP Pro will be on my workstation for years.

THe SuSE Linux server in my office hasn't been updated since I installed it three years ago (even while being on line all that time) and has an uptime of 545 days.

But, I do enjoy playing with the many varieties of Linux even though my personal computer has been running MEPIS for over two years.

Re:Hmm

[Sancho]

Alright, let's look at this.

XP came out Dec 31, 2001. From Microsoft's website http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifepolicy:

Microsoft will offer a minimum of 10 years of support for Business and Developer products. Mainstream support for Business and Developer products will be provided for 5 years or for 2 years after the successor product (N+1) is released, whichever is longer. Microsoft will also provide Extended support for the 5 years following Mainstream support or for 2 years after the second successor product (N+2) is released, whichever is longer. Finally, most Business and Developer products will receive at least 10 years of online self-help support.

Consumers get a little less time:

Microsoft will offer Mainstream support for either a minimum of 5 years from the date of a product's general availability, or for 2 years after the successor product (N+1) is released, whichever is longer. Extended support is not offered for Consumer, Hardware, Multimedia, and Microsoft Dynamics products. Products that release new versions annually, such as Microsoft Money, Microsoft Encarta, Microsoft Picture It!, and Microsoft Streets & Trips, will receive a minimum of 3 years of Mainstream support from the product's date of availability. Most products will also receive at least 8 years of online self-help support. Microsoft Xbox games are currently not included in the Support Lifecycle policy.

Ok. Minimum of 5 years. Seems kinda short, I guess. What's Ubuntu's policy?

From their announcement https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-announce/ 2005-October/000038.html:

Ubuntu is a Linux distribution for your desktop or server, with a
fast and easy install, regular releases, a tight selection of
excellent packages installed by default, every other package you can
imagine available from the network, a commitment to security updates
for 18 months after each release and professional technical support
from many companies around the world.

18 months. Now for the price, that's exceptional, but your argument had nothing to do with price, and everything to do with version upgrades. If updates are your metric for determining whether users are "forced" to upgrade, look no further than the announced support cycle for Ubuntu 5.10.

They looked like they'd gotten better, no doubt. With 6.06, you get 5 years of upgrades--the same minimum guaranteed by Microsoft http://www.ubuntu.com/news/606released:

Ubuntu is freely available, including security updates for five years on servers, with no restrictions on usage and no requirement to purchase support contracts or subscriptions per deployment.

But wait. The 7.04 release of Ubuntu reverts back to 18 months--they say that the 6.06 series was a "long term support release" https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-announce/ 2007-April/000102.html.

Ubuntu 7.04 will be supported for 18 months on both desktops and servers. Note that 6.06 LTS is a long-term support release, and so users requiring a longer support lifetime may choose to continue using that version rather than upgrade to or install 7.04.

So we're back to 18 months. Microsoft's stated support minimum is more than 3 times longer than Ubuntu's, except for the aberration of Ubuntu 6.06.

So who's 'forced' to upgrade in order to keep support?

I mainly focused on Ubuntu because that's what the person you replied to was talking about. Redhat, arguably the best known Linux vendor, gives their cycle here: http://www.redhat.com/security/updates/errata/ They give you 7 years of

Re:Hmm

[trentblase]

And then?

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting as a coward because this is SO offtopic.

Tell you what lets see here were YOU there?
Most likely not. Now was I there? No. Too young.

Well my father was. He was in Europe for a good part of the war.
He was a no name grunt that carried a BAR. He was in on a camp liberation, he saw the walking skeletons and the piles of bodies and the healthy guards. He saw it all with his own eyes and told me about it.
He watched shindlers list and a few of the other movies and always stated that they did not even come close to the truth of seeing it with your own eyes. It happened all right. I have also met two camp survivors. One that was a child and one when I was much younger.
If you want to quibble about exactly how many died go ahead but if you really believe that the holocaust never happened....wow there is nothing to say there.

Re:Hmm

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

How was this flamebait? Repeating lies is very effective.

I'm not doubting that repeating lies is effective. The problem is that holocaust (and the denial thereof) is a very touchy subject, and the way your post broached the issue was without tact or humility. It is the kind of post that could incite a series of impassioned and inappropriate responses (known euphemistically as "flames"). That's why we call posts such as yours "flamebaits". All clear now?

Re:Hmm

[trentblase]

-1 Disagree. Yeah but ME was clearly beaten by 2k. Vista doesn't have another new MS competitor to contend with.

Re:Hmm

[Sancho]

She bought a new computer. If she'd kept her reinstallation CDs (an actual copy of 98, not an image) she could have transferred it, had she wanted to, and gotten a small, token refund from HP for the OEM copy of Windows XP that she wasn't going to use. However, as she hadn't kept her reinstall media, she had the option of keeping XP or buying a potentially illicit copy on eBay. Since she was going to be spending the money anyway, what's the point? She kept XP.

So.. what was your point? Are you about to argue that HP should have offered Windows 98 on her computer purchased in 2003?

Re:Hmm

[trentblase]

Uh no, I wanted to know what happened. You can't just say "My mom used to use Win98" and leave me hanging. Did she upgrade? Did a spider come along and frighten her away? Good story though. I know someone who just upgraded from Win98 to Vista for the same reason, so mine's a little better.

Re:Hmm

[Himring]

Much appreciate the response. Seriously. Afterwards, I thought much along the same lines.

Although it is a prime example of the practice of lies having effect, I do agree that I should not have use it.

Re:Hmm

[Himring]

Thanks for replying. Allow me to explain.

My point was to illustrate the effectiveness of repeating a lie. The event (not going to state the event due to volatility) did indeed happen. This I believe. But, there is a huge movement and influence in the world which says otherwise. This is due to the repeating of lies. You see, it was sarcasm I was using in order to prove my point, but using an inappropriate, and highly sensitive, example.

Yes, it did happen.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know how such a retarded comment gets scored as 3 and, even more amazingly, labelled as "insightful". Oh wait.. I do understand, it was a poorly though-out shot at a Microsoft product instead of an intelligent answer (commonplace on ./)

How about I try a better, more thought-out answer. Windows ME failed because it was a COMPLETE piece of junk that truly wouldn't boot during a high percentage of attempts on many machines! Windows Vista is not like that; we've had enough months with it to realize that. You may not like Microsoft or Vista, but it is NOT Windows ME. Not even close...

Re:Hmm

[u38cg]

Well, the 2.0 branch released 2.0.40 in 2004, well after 2.6 came out. The 2.0, 2.2, and 2.4 branches all have active maintainers. Given that 2.0 was released in June of '96, I'd say we don't compare too badly to the evil empire.

Re:Hmm

[Em Ellel]

and like I'm getting support from the Linux community on kernel 1.0 ... You CAN in fact get support for 1.0 kernel. The source is out there and if sufficiently motivated, ANYONE can make a patch and get something fixed even if Linus/RedHat/Novell/etc could care less. This is simply NOT the case with closed source like M$, where they basically have you by the short ones. Example, Windows Defender software recently claimed they no longer support Win2k. They said, if you want to use it you MUST upgrade to XP. A closer examination shows that they only reason this is the case is because they added a rule in the installer that says if OS is less than XP, do not install. Without the rule the software works great on Win2K but MS does not want you to use Win2k. Meanwhile the latest automatic upgrade to Defender definition causes all existing Win2K Defender clients to crash - forcing you to have to download latest version, which is XP only. So suddenly you are FORCED (there's that word) to upgrade to XP if you want Defender (no, whether you actually want it is a whole other story).

Now, I do believe MS has full *right* to do this, but just because you CAN be an asshole, does not mean you SHOULD be an asshole and does not mean people have to like it. It just goes to demonstrate the value of open source over closed.

-Em

Re:Hmm

[MarcoAtWork]

Linux users are not forced to upgrade like Windows users are.

you're kidding right? I was trying to compile something recent on FC3 the other day and ended up in rpm dependency hell (this needs that, which needs that, which needs that, which needs that, ...) and basically it looks like if I want to get it running without having to recompile half the system I'll have to upgrade to at least FC5. This is not the first time it's happened either, and it was fine when I was in university and had a lot of time to tinker and live on the bleeding edge, but now that I have a job and just want things to work in the least amount of time, it sucks having to do a reinstall just because of an application...

Re:Hmm

[Ajehals]

I know someone who just upgraded from Win98 to Vista for the same reason, so mine's a little better.

Just out of curiosity, I assume that that upgrade was coupled with a hardware purchase, althuogh correct me if I am wrong. Assuming that they had wanted to use their previous OS on their new hardware, would they have been able to? (not that I can see why they would want to). If their original media was OEM and came with the PC, then the answer is; not without buying an additional 98 license, probably from a somewhat dubious source.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

And nobody told you the nature of FC? I think you need to do your homework.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell? Did you know that Red Hat and Dapper Drake (6.06) use old as hell packages? There's a reason for the 18-month support cycle for non-LTS releases, it's for DESKTOP users. LTS releases come every 3-4 releases (Gutsy + 2 is a likely LTS). If you want to use old, crusty packages with a long release cycle, use Debian Etch. An upgrade to Ubuntu and Debian is as simple as 'sudo do-release-upgrade', you don't need a CD at all UNLIKE Red Hat and Microsoft.

You stupid ass, FUD spewing, know-nothing troll.

Re:Hmm

[ChatHuant]

Vista may be selling slow

Vista is selling slow on Planet Slashdot only; in RL, Microsoft just announced today the financial results, and it roundly beat analysts' expectations. Here is MarketWatch's take on this.

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because Vista boots doesn't mean it isn't a "COMPLETE piece of junk" either. Its major failings happen when you get in to the OS instead of before.

Re:Hmm

[trentblase]

Yes, new hardware. I have no idea what the Windows 98 OEM license is like... is it limited to the same motherboard? The same CPU? Are you allowed to upgrade the mouse? Such restrictions count as unconscionable in my book, and would probably be disregarded.

Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this bad

[blind biker]

I remember there were a lot of naysayers regarding Windows XP, back when it was introduced, but WinXP did well, in spite of the fact that Win2K already had what companies needed. Probably because WinXP at least wasn't a huge downgrade, compared to Win2K.

Not so with Vista. My impression is that is't a downgrade. What with the stupidly slow file copy problem, the increased hardware requirements (even if you disregard the graphics card), the DRM, the need for (some) staff re-training... This time the anti-momentum is stronger than with XP.

Massively Reduced, Prices Never To Be Repeated

[Anonymous Coward]

In case you don't get 'those' Persian rug ads where you are, there's a couple of superb 'Chaser' satirical sketches on it on Youtube.

*Until midnight tonight!*

If this was Apple...

[soulhuntre]

It would be spun as a tribute to how cool they are and how much they love users.

You know, people can write blog posts about Microsoft being dead, and Slashdot Zealots can spend ANOTHER (its been what, 6+ now) giving each other hand-jobs about how "desperate" Microsoft is... and it won't change reality a bit.

Welcome to the FUD zone!

Re:If this was Apple...

[Anonymous Coward]

FUD changes reality.

There have been whole wars started just because of words that turned out being FUD when it was too late.

The curse of Vista...

[Krinsath]

From what I've heard the major problem with Vista is that it was designed by committee with dozens of people involved in even the most minute aspects. The problem with that of course being that that more people = more compromise and a compromise is, from one viewpoint, simply a solution that leaves everyone equally unhappy. From my testing of Vista and reading the various feedback threads, I think that's been an excellent tagline for Vista thus far...the OS that will leave everyone equally unhappy with it.

The culture at Redmond simply looks like it's gotten so insulated from this "reality" thing that they're sliding into a world where they don't understand that most people do not like the OS. The OS is a required evil to get to what they actually want, which is the applications. The faster the OS gets to those applications and gets the hell out of the way, the better...for most users at any rate. Why this concept seems to elude OS designers is beyond me, but Microsoft needs to come to terms with the idea that when I sit down at a computer to check my email, I want to use my email program, not the OS. If I want to play a game, I want to play the game...not work with the OS. If I need to write something, I want to write...not deal with the OS. It's quite simple really, which is probably why they don't get it.

Re:The curse of Vista...

[MontyApollo]

As an average user, I really don't see what the complaints are about Vista. Average consumers really don't care that much about the operating system to begin with. As you said, they care about programs.

I recently built a new computer and went ahead with Vista because I could get OEM pricing now but maybe not in the future, and I already had copy of XP that I could dual boot. For routine everyday stuff Vista has been fine; I have XP set up in case I play around with any programming, but I find myself always using Vista. One of the main advantages I noticed with Vista is that for some reason the fonts are more readable on my 22" wide-screen in native resolution than they are in XP. It also doesn't seem to have the weird window re-draw problems. In general the display just seems to work better for me.

Like all versions of Windows, there is no reason for the average consumer to upgrade an existing computer - just wait until you get a new computer. The new computer will likely be equipped to better run Vista too. Vista will eventually take over because of this, like XP did. I have never understood why people would think a majority of average consumers will want to go out and spend money to replace their operating system that is working fine without going ahead and getting a faster, newer computer with all the latest hardware. Instead, it seems to be big news that people are showing some since and waiting.

Re:The curse of Vista...

[lubricated]

>> Like all versions of Windows, there is no reason for the average consumer to upgrade an existing computer - just wait until you get a new computer.

Windows xp over 98/me was a huge improvement and there were plenty of reasons to upgrade.
98 over 95 was a good upgrade as well.
95 over 3.1 was also a good upgrade.

This is the first time that there really is no reason to upgrade.

Re:The curse of Vista...

[MontyApollo]

There never has been a "must have" feature that compelled me to upgrade without waiting for a new computer since Windows 3.1. Among my friends and about 5 or 6 employers since then, I personally have not seen one case where the desktop operating system was upgraded without buying a new computer. Where I work now there are a lot of Win 98 machines.

For the average consumer, I think the main advantage I noticed was that there were more and more hardware drivers built in. XP will automatically recoqnize your digital camera, whereas Win98 requires you to load a driver. Each version made it easier and easier to setup a home network, but it is likely that if you wanted a network you would have already figured it out and not waited for a new version of the OS to come out.

I think it works that way in general - if your system is already working, then all the "easier" features in the new operating system doesn't really help you at the moment. But when you buy a new computer and have to get it on the network, hook up you cameras, etc.., the "easier" features do come in handy.

Re:The curse of Vista...

[Anonymous Coward]

What you say about design compromise may well be true, mostly. But there's one very important thing that Microsoft never compromised on in the slightest: DRM. Every time the needs of DRM conflict with sane engineering principles, the DRM wins, absolutely and unconditionally. That's what the famous Gutmann article is largely about.

Windows used to be an operating system, but now it's a DRM platform that still happens to have operating system functionality carried forward from previous versions. But the operating system's features, stability, modularity, reliability, flexibility and efficiency are subordinated to the needs of the DRM every single time.

Re:The curse of Vista...

[Alioth]

It's all about "user experience". I don't want an experience from using the OS - if I'm having an "experience", the OS is getting in my way. This is I think, user-interface wise, what's wrong with all Microsoft software - they want you to have an "experience" (and indeed, various MS marketdroids never shut up about "user experience").

Re:The curse of Vista...

[multipartmixed]

> There never has been a "must have" feature that compelled me to
> upgrade without waiting for a new computer since Windows 3.1

This happened for me with Windows XP. The compelling features were:
  - No requirement to reboot when changing DNS servers or IP number
  - Fast User Switching

(both of which, BTW, have been more-or-less available in UNIX for at least two decades)

Re:The curse of Vista...

[purpleraison]

I think this is the most accurate way I have ever heard the way an OS SHOULD work -- :D nice description. I would piggyback on your sentiment though by saying that the operating system should be:

1. a means to navigate easily to applications and/or documents/files I need to use - pretty much that is what a good OS does
2. invisible when users are using applications. What I mean by this is that (like you said) when checking my email, I should have all the tools I need to to so, with a method to leave that application when I am done. The OS shouldn't interfere or intrude on my activities.
3. fast and reliable - it should be able to perform all of its necessary functions well.

So if you really quantify what an OS should be, I would suspect that pragmatic people really just want to work or play, NOT sit and stare at or play with the OS itself all day.

Re:The curse of Vista...

[Krinsath]

It's quite true that most users and small businesses don't upgrade until they buy a new machine, and that is by far the wisest course of action when dealing with any new OS is to put it on the best you can give it. However, to put an OS out that only works well on a new computer is a very short-sighted strategy. We always spec our machines much higher than they need to be because we never know just how long a given box will be in service. Even the machines we were buying in 2001 would miss the current Vista requirements by 67Mhz on the processor and 512MB of RAM, which overall would be a minimal cost to upgrade if those machines were even still in service. However, the problem for most enterprises is the amount of that hardware that is being consumed (for little justifiable reason) by something with an intended purpose of being a facilitator between applications and hardware. If applications perform noticeably slower, there must be a reason to accept the lower user productivity and, to date, Vista has yet to provide that reason. That's not to say a reason does not or will not exist, just that it has yet to be uncovered to date in my own personal experiences.

Each previous Windows OS upped the requirements by a small, fairly acceptable degree. Windows 95 to Windows 98 was a small change, 98 to Me/2k hardly bigger and even the jump from 2k to XP wasn't that massive. To triple the requirements, even for an OS that was delayed as long as Vista was and accounting that technology changes much more in a six year span than a three year...it begs the question of "why?"

Does every modern Linux distribution share this jump? Does OS X have this requirements jump? Why does Vista bring with it such drastically higher hardware requirements for something that doesn't directly contribute to my computer being useful to me? Remember, the OS allows my applications to be useful, and hence it is indirectly useful to me. To have it consume that many resources when it's predecessors did not is what is causing people to take a very hard look at Vista and prompting people to ask why their hardware is being diverted to do things that have nothing to do with what they want to be doing. As MS discovered with DirectX, the best things Windows can do is get the hell out of the way. Really it feels a bit unfair to single out MS there because every OS could do well to learn that once the user has decided an application to run the OS should become largely transparent (much like a good waiter that leaves you to enjoy your meal, not one that interrupts you every five seconds asking if everything is ok)...but MS has clearly learned the lesson once and didn't retain it.

Re:The curse of Vista...

[rs79]

Win 3.1 (with trumpet winsock - like there was anything else) didn't require a reboot to change DNS servers.

I still use Win98SE. Oddly enough although it was markedky unstable in 98 the same installation disk used today yields a system that has an uptime measured in weeks on end.

I tried XP for 8 months and gave up. Not worth the bother.

Re:The curse of Vista...

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

As an average user, I really don't see what the complaints are about Vista.

Let me guess, you have a decent, relatively modern rig set up, right? One costing ~$1500 or so?

Re:The curse of Vista...

[PhoenixOne]

Its come up a dozen times in this thread already, but there was no reason to upgrade to ME when that was released.

Re:The curse of Vista...

[Jester@TheHouse]

No no, someone at microsoft must be a big star trek dork and believes in that every other release for the average consumer needs to be bad....

3.1 = just had to be there
TMP = Just had to be there

95 = good
Wrath of Khan = New Direction

98 = bad
Search for Spock = Needed to be there for the setup

98SE = good
The Voyage Home = There for comic relief??

ME = bad
The Final Frontier = Oh dear lord was this bad

XP = good
The Undiscovered Country = The one of the best of the old actors/code.

Vista = bad
Generations = Had to be there to drag us kicking and screaming to into something new?

The Parallels are a tad scary in my point of view.

Re:Cue Knee Jerk

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see any anti-MS people. They're not here to gloat because they know EVERYONE loses when people are stupid like this. If half of the people in the world wanted to use DOS, we'd have a major problem on our hands.

But how long will this go on for?

[rushmeat]

Because there is a "Carpet Liquidation!" that's been going on near me for over 2 years... Same stickers, same adds. I figured' they'd be out of business by now... Then again, Jobs probably thought the same thing...

Oh shit... Maybe I should buy some Capital Carpet stock now?

Re:But how long will this go on for?

[zehrila]

hmm, hopefully as long as all beta guys have purchased new license or when MS is assured they dont have any more bugs left in the os :D

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[Anonymous Coward]

XP made a killing on the fact that consumers were fed up with the 9x line. Particularly, WinME. The disaster to end all disasters, which was still probably worse then what Vista currently is.

One quarter using Vista?

[Deviate_X]

"One quarter of the 612 survey respondents said they were already using the new OS;" - i find that quote more interesting 25% claim to be already using vista seems to be a very high for something just released.

Re:One quarter using Vista?

[Askmum]

Especially when the same article mentions that Vista has a "2.04% share of the OS market".
If 25% of businesses were using it, than businesses would only attribute, what, 5% of the total OS market?
I find that very hard to believe.

Re:One quarter using Vista?

[greginnj]

You are absolutely right; that leapt out at me too. I thought it was much too optimistic, then I realized that whoever wrote the question was bending over backwards to make Vista sales numbers seem bigger.

My theory is that the 25% of companies who say they're currently 'using' Vista mean something like, "Brad Gladhand, VP Sales, called us the day after release and insisted he needed a new laptop with Vista installed so he could play DVD videos during sales presentations and not feel embarassed by out of date hardware... so yes, I guess we're using Vista already".

The real question that should have been asked would be something like "Is Vista currently the OS on your standard desktop build?" (i.e. that all new hires get, or that replacement machines come with). And possibly, "If it is not currently, will Vista become part of your standard desktop build within the next 12 months?". My guess is that the answer to the first question is less than 3%. Our shop is so conservative that we only went up to XPSP2 in the last 12 months; before that we just got SP1+targeted patches.

Re:One quarter using Vista?

[Anonymous Coward]

i find that quote more interesting 25% claim to be already using vista seems to be a very high for something just released.

If you actually read the article carefully it says that they will accept Vista in the forthcoming year!

By the way, I never trust these low number statistical polls/articles where they do not tell how the poll was taken.

Re:One quarter using Vista?

[GuyverDH]

They were Microsoft employees.... (No, I really don't know that.... Just thought... Oh hell, nevermind...)

Companies will can XP when it goes out of support

[davidwr]

The question is, what will replace it?

With projects line Wine and Mono, hopefully 5 years is enough time to eliminate all MS XP/Vista dependence for their home-grown apps.

At that point they can choose a vendor-supported OS based on price and the quality of the vendor, not vendor lock-in.

Within 5 years companies will want their OSes to be portable across hardware. If a generic-box-PC fails they'll want to take their HD out of the failing generic-PC box and put it in another generic-box-PC which may have a completely different CPU and motherboard. If you try that today with XP you run all kinds of risks and it might not even boot. In 5 years companies will use OSes that can tolerate this or put them into a "thin-layer" VM environment to make all their generic-box-PCs look identical enough to eliminate this problem. Think Southwest Airlines and the way they "dumb down" their newer 737s so the entire fleet "looks identical" to their pilots.

Nuts pricing

[pubjames]

I think one of Microsoft's big problems has they have overpriced the boxed versions of Vista. It is a crazy state of affairs when my local computer shop is selling complete PCs cheaper than the boxed versions of Vista.

Re:Nuts pricing

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe the strategy is this: convince you to go with pre-built hardware, which soon will come with Vista, rather than leaving you with your old hardware and choice of O/S...less people building machines and choosing their O/S means more people running Vista in the end

Re:Nuts pricing

[Phisbut]

I think one of Microsoft's big problems has they have overpriced the boxed versions of Vista. It is a crazy state of affairs when my local computer shop is selling complete PCs cheaper than the boxed versions of Vista.

But then, isn't that Bill Gates' vision of the future? Hardware will be free and people will only pay for software.

Re:Nuts pricing

[tshak]

It is a crazy state of affairs when my local computer shop is selling complete PCs cheaper than the boxed versions of Vista.


Why do you assume that there is even a correlation between software and hardware costs? There isn't. They're two completely different industries. Adobe doesn't lower the price of Photoshop because the price of RAM goes down, why should Microsoft?

Re:Nuts pricing

[blankaBrew]

The ram doesn't come with photoshop.... the pc does come with windows. You're talking apple's and oranges. There is a correlation between windows box pricing the cost of a pc with that same version of windows. The correlation is M$' OEM pricing which is significantly lower than the retail pricing only because of hardware. There's your correlation.

Re:Nuts pricing

[marcosdumay]

I keep asking myself how everybody* seemed to take such BS seriously by that time.

* Not by 2004, but I've felt for such kind of things by the late 90's. Maybe because I was young, but I'm not very convinced of that.

Re:Nuts pricing

[Weedlekin]

" isn't that Bill Gates' vision of the future? Hardware will be free and people will only pay for software."

Whereas what we've ended up with is one where an increasingly large proportion of the world's computer users happily buy their hardware, but pay either nothing or very little for software (piracy, FOSS, free stuff from the likes of Google, ad-ware, etc., etc.).

Re:Nuts pricing

[gnuman99]

Gates is right. Sooner or later HW consolidation will be that the CPU will run everything and have everything. Just see the world of microcontrollers. You've got your entire bus, memory, peripherals right on the chip. It is just a matter if time before Intel or AMD start to ship a CPU with
    * CPU
    * RAM
    * all of south bridge.

We have already seen the consolidation of the memory controller into the CPU by AMD. And current trend of putting a GPU as part of the CPU as well (ie. specialized cores).

Just add a HD. For network computers, like MS and Google and probably Uncle Sam are drooling over, just plug it in and you are done.

A computer will just be the size of the current USB network adapter where on one side you plug in the monitor and USB hub and on the other, the power adapter and RJ45/fiber. Laptop will continue to look like a laptop because you need the keyboard and monitor in one unit.

I'll give this 10-20 years, but it will be the reality.

Re:Nuts pricing

[Phisbut]

Gates is right. Sooner or later HW consolidation will be that the CPU will run everything and have everything. Just see the world of microcontrollers. You've got your entire bus, memory, peripherals right on the chip. It is just a matter if time before Intel or AMD start to ship a CPU with
* CPU
* RAM
* all of south bridge.
[...]
I'll give this 10-20 years, but it will be the reality.

Yeah, so? You expect Intel or AMD to give you such a chip for (almost) free? That's what Gates is saying.

Re:Nuts pricing

[gnuman99]

Free is a relative term. $50 is free. $2500 software packages that run on it are not. Even Vista at $200 or whatever is still more expensive than hardware.

Software and services is where the money is. Hardware might as well be free. That is what Gates was saying.

Re:Nuts pricing

[Phisbut]

Free is a relative term. $50 is free. $2500 software packages that run on it are not. Even Vista at $200 or whatever is still more expensive than hardware.

Give me a 4-core CPU with 2GB RAM and most of south-bridge for $50, and I'll be more than happy to... install free software on it. Although I do wish it will happen in 10 years, I still doubt it.

A couple of years ago, we thought the gigahertz race was over, and the price of chips would fall. Oh it did, and I can get me a P4-3GHz for well under $100 today. But the new thing is the Core 2 Duo, and the Core 2 Quad. And new applications will implement a whole lot of bells and whistles to make sure you "need" 4 cores. Then they'll invent a new type of RAM, and a new GPU technology... And we'll eventually have optical processors, or quantum processors, and the CPU+RAM+south-bridge combo you will get for $50 is gonna be way obsolete. Heck, even today I bet I can build a computer from pieces for less than the price of Vista Ultimate, but it won't be half powerful enough Vista won't run on it.

Hardware makers are not about to go broke. They will always sell older tech at very affordable price, but they will also always have high-end stuff at ridiculously high prices.

Re:Nuts pricing

[tshak]

The ram doesn't come with photoshop.... the pc does come with windows.

There are many operating systems that you can get for free for the PC (not just Linux). Windows happens to be a popular bundle. People don't want to install an OS themselves. Photoshop is too specialized to be bundled like this. On the other hand, Office, basic photo editing, and other types of software are bundled as well. Software is software, regardless of how a business decides to bundle it with hardware.

The correlation is M$' OEM pricing which is significantly lower than the retail pricing only because of hardware.
Wrong. An OEM license is cheaper because the license is in more restrictive, not because the hardware is cheaper. Remember, my original argument is that just because hardware is cheaper to produce doesn't mean that software is. Additionally, Microsoft does not provide support for OEM licenses. The support responsiblity is on the OEM.

Re:Nuts pricing

[blankaBrew]

The point is that there is a relationship between the hardware and the software by virtue of the OEM. You can't dismiss that.

Re:Nuts pricing

[tshak]

But the "cost correlation" is irrelevant. Computers could cost $10 and it wouldn't change the value of software.

Re:What the hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

This article is major FUD and bullshit.

This article is in AUD, not FUD.

Apartment buildings?

[coleopterana]

Are they perhaps more like apartment buildings always under the threat of demolition that sign you to nonbinding, shorter, cheaper leases because you never really know when the wrecking ball might be out front? The cheapest and, relatively, nonsketchy place we found to live in Mountain View was like this.

ZOMG

[Chicken04GTO]

Microsoft is adjusting prices to meet demand? Every sane business does this.

ZOMG get the torches and lets march!

Re:ZOMG

[markjo]

Microsoft is adjusting prices to meet lack of demand? Every sane business does this. There, fixed that for you.

Re:ZOMG

[westlake]

Microsoft is adjusting prices to meet demand? Every sane business does this.

True. But how many of Microsoft's core middle class customers download a RC or OS beta? Almost none, I would think. How many will upgrade to Vista with their next PC? Almost all, I suspect.

Re:ZOMG

[bcmm]

We're not objecting to that.

We're laughing at how low the demand must be.

Re:ZOMG

[Moofie]

And now Microsoft is doing it, which is why this is news.

Do you see what I did there?

Why buy new?

[eltoyoboyo]

When slightly used will do? This is the mantra of a local exercise equipment dealer here. You save a lot of money that way.

In the computer world, the question is Why buy the operating system, when you can get a new capable computer?

Amazon is listing Windows Vista Home Premium for $218, slightly less than the US$239 retail. For another $300 you can get a fully capable PC with it with 1GB of RAM and a suitable video card to get a 3.0 on the performance scale.

This particular market is skewed at moving PCs, not selling operating systems.

Re:Why buy new?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know I'm breaking the spirit of your post by saying this, but with that $300 computer, you could install XP and have it run pretty fast!

Re:Why buy new?

[RealSurreal]

Why buy new when slightly used will do?

Depends on whether you're buying toilet roll or not.

Re:Why buy new?

[Zenaku]

Except when the prices are this good! ;)

Re:Why buy new?

[AaronBrethorst]

damn, you beat me to it :) That guy in the second wind ads always drove me nuts.

holes

[iiii]

Hey, this Persian rug I just bought seems to have several holes in it!

beta close time frame doesn't sound right at all

[psbrogna]

"betas will start expiring and becoming non-functional from May 31st"

It's been my experience that MS Windows "beta programs" are actually over around 1 month prior to the next version coming out. I think that's why Windows upgrades leave a bad taste in my mouth- right around the time I've settled in to the latest version (ie. I can start using it profitably without having to combat immature code probs), they start asking me money for the next version.

Saw Vista For The 1st Time At The Weekend....

[pandrijeczko]

...after one of the relations bought a new laptop with Vista on it and asked me to help her set up wireless.

Okay, so I'm an experienced computer user who already finds the default XP GUI tiresome, bloated and patronising and therefore always puts on the "classic" Windows view - but I found Vista was even worse. Don't get me wrong, it's very pretty and once I found the applications that I was looking for, no different to configuring XP (at least as much as I could see).

However, whilst we got the wireless working fairly easily, there were too big unforeseen problems that my relation suffered:

1. She has a legitimate 3 PC student licence for Office 2003 and has used only one of those licenses on the family desktop PC so far. Vista would not accept the license key for Office 2003 no matter what I tried and in the end I had to tell her to call Microsoft to get them to sort it out.

2. There are no drivers for her Lexmark printer and Lexmark have no plans to release any.

So, overall, I cannot say I was particularly impressed with Vista - it's got some quite nice eye-candy but not a lot else going for it.

Re:Saw Vista For The 1st Time At The Weekend....

[Billosaur]

However, whilst we got the wireless working fairly easily, there were too big unforeseen problems that my relation suffered:

1. She has a legitimate 3 PC student licence for Office 2003 and has used only one of those licenses on the family desktop PC so far. Vista would not accept the license key for Office 2003 no matter what I tried and in the end I had to tell her to call Microsoft to get them to sort it out.

2. There are no drivers for her Lexmark printer and Lexmark have no plans to release any.

1. Well, Microsoft wants Vista users to upgrade to Office 2007, so this is no surprise. I suspect MS Tech Support will get it to work, though you can bet she'll be subjected to the "hard sell" the whole time.
2. That's Lexmark's particular problem. If true, it shows how short-sighted they are. Even if you don't like Vista, you have customers who will use it, and if you choose not to support you printers on Vista, you'll see those users go to someone else who will. Not good business strategy.

Re:Saw Vista For The 1st Time At The Weekend....

[Mortanius]

2. There are no drivers for her Lexmark printer and Lexmark have no plans to release any. Not to nitpick (well, okay, yeah to nitpick) this isn't (necessarily) Microsoft's problem, but Lexmark's.

Does Vista have no drivers at all for Lexmark printers, or just not for this particular model of printer? If they have none at all, then yeah, that kinda sucks, but if they just don't have the driver for a bleeding edge / stoneaged printer, that's not too unexpected. With Lexmark stating they don't plan on releasing Vista drivers for it, I would assume the printer is the latter, though that is based on absolutely nothing at all, so don't hold me to it. :-P

Re:Saw Vista For The 1st Time At The Weekend....

[azrider]

That's Lexmark's particular problem. If true, it shows how short-sighted they are. Even if you don't like Vista, you have customers who will use it, and if you choose not to support you printers on Vista, you'll see those users go to someone else who will. Not good business strategy.

HP found this out the hard way. Back when the original OfficeJet came out, my two operating platforms were OS/2 and Solaris. When the original died, I bought the upgraded OfficeJet+ (it cost just a little more than the repairs to the original). This was a WinPrinter (the *copy* function would not even work without Windows). It went back and I never bought HP again. Now, if you inquire about Linux support, they point you at Sourceforge and *suprise* the driver for *almost* all HP printers has been released by Hewlett Packard Research and Development Labs (i disremember whether it is GPL or not).

Re:Saw Vista For The 1st Time At The Weekend....

[Anonymous Coward]

So, when some printer doesn't work for Linux, it's a Linux distro problem, but when it doesn't work with Vista, it's the printer vendor's fault?

Re:Saw Vista For The 1st Time At The Weekend....

[CowboyBob500]

That's Lexmark's particular problem. If true, it shows how short-sighted they are. Even if you don't like Vista, you have customers who will use it, and if you choose not to support you printers on Vista, you'll see those users go to someone else who will. Not good business strategy.

There seem to be an awful lot of companies that are "short-sighted" as you call them - HP, Lexmark, Apple, NVidia, ATI, etc etc. So many that it can't be a coincidence. So many that they can't all have bad business strategies. So many that Occam's Razor basically says that it's more likely that Vista is very hard to develop drivers for, which ultimately is the fault of the OS.

Bob

Re:Saw Vista For The 1st Time At The Weekend....

[Billosaur]

Yes, you're correct... they are all short-sighted. Ok, so Vista has not got the clocks right now to bowl anyone over, but that's not to sy ti won't as it "matures". I seem to remember the same hew and cry when XP originally came out, but over time people were convinced it wasn't "half-bad" or their system shipped with it and they didn't have much choice. Now, you might wish to believe that the computer manufacturers can simply kill Vista by not shipping it on their boxes, but nobody really wants to push Microsoft too hard. After all, MS can drop support for XP anytime it really wants to, and can drive up the price as well. The relationship between MS and the computer manufacturers is symbiotic, bordering on parasitic.

Re:Saw Vista For The 1st Time At The Weekend....

[Anonymous Coward]

>>So many that Occam's Razor basically says that it's more likely that Vista is very hard to develop drivers for, which ultimately is the fault of the OS.

So it is Linux's fault for the shortage of Linux drivers. It's just too damn hard over these 10 years or so to come up with good drivers.

Re:Saw Vista For The 1st Time At The Weekend....

[Anonymous Coward]

>> So many that Occam's Razor basically says that it's more likely that Vista is very hard to develop drivers for, which ultimately is the fault of the OS.

Referencing Occam's Razor usually signals you are an idiot that cannot come up with a rational argument of your own...An equally valid argument would be that the driver developers focused on the newer hardware that they knew would be shipping with new machines, since only idiots would bother upgrading an old machine in the first few months of a new Win OS release. The drivers will come when the demand comes...business 101.

Re:What the hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to be quoting the student/educational prices. MS knows how to do differential pricing.

How pratical can it be to hold out?

[HighOrbit]

"Extended Support" for XP will be until April 2014. So that is seven years. But long before that seven years, some hardware (some with XP from 2001) will start to die. The replacement hardware will be sold with Vista. Even if the replacement is 'naked' or wiped and installed with XP, some of the devices may not have XP drivers. Also some of the user software that runs on XP will probably become unsupported or abandon-ware before 2014.

I think the talk of holdouts 'never' installing Vista is bravado. Sooner or later they will be compelled to start supporting Vista or its successor (Blackcomb/Vienna). Maybe they will skip Vista and go to straight to Vienna (provided Vienna gets out the door before 2014, IIRC it is currently scheduled for 2009), but they can't stay with XP forever. The hardware and software won't allow it.

Re:How pratical can it be to hold out?

[AnyoneEB]

You are forgetting something: ReactOS will be in beta by then according to their roadmap, "meaning a system which is suitable for every day use." At which point, users wanting to get off an aging OS will be able to move to ReactOS instead of Vista. Even if ReactOS moves slower than their roadmap predicts, it will be ready well before XP extended support ends in 2014. (You left out Linux, so I assume we are talking about Windows-like OSes. Significant improvements in WINE and the Linux desktop experience could nullify the necessity for a Windows-like OS, but that could be a long way off.)

Re:How pratical can it be to hold out?

[Opportunist]

Drivers for a system will exist as long as the majority of people run that system. No hardware vendor can afford to be incompatible with a sizable portion of his target audience.

Re:How pratical can it be to hold out?

[deanc]

My impression is that "never" meant "We are not going to upgrade to Vista as it currently exists." In a couple of years, Vista may be patched to the point where it is considered worth upgrading, but those IT survey respondants are implying that they're not going to make any plans to upgrade before that point.

In fact, I feel the same way about upgrading to Vista on my own window machines.

Re:How pratical can it be to hold out?

[codemachine]

Thanks to virtual machine technology, we will never truly have to upgrade for hardware reasons. As long as some other OS supports the hardware, we can run Windows XP in the VM.

Just think of how long Windows 98 has stuck around, despite the lack of new drivers and software support. And now with VMs, we could probably keep running it, and see it run quite fact actually compared to the hardware of its day (especially once 3D accelleration is added to VMs).

I think the upgrade path for those wanting to stay on Windows XP could be a move to Mac OS X with Parallels, or Linux with Parallels/VMware/etc. Or possibly even just Windows XP runnning on top of a thin OS layer that provides just the VM.

Though it is the lack of software support that will eventually get you, if you care about security patches and suport contracts. Though a large amount of new software still works on Windows 98 even today, I'm not sure that it has a supported browser anymore, now that Firefox will require 2K/XP or later. It still is handy for a VM though - a single user OS like Win98 that doesn't have a lot of network services is actually not that insecure when it is just a VM inside a real OS.

I think WinXP isn't quite as suited for that sort of task right now, but there is a lot of development work going into XP and VMs, so we could see XP hand on even longer than 98 has.

Re:How pratical can it be to hold out?

[zoomosis]

Apparently Firefox 2.0.0.3 will run under Windows 98:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/system-requir ements.html

- ozz

Re:How pratical can it be to hold out?

[HermMunster]

You are right. Microsoft wants to compel them to buy it. It is like compelling them into a glass room so they can be spied on and monitored. Get rid of that crap and we all might be more willing to pay the higher price. No more spying, get rid of the DRM and promise not to put anything like it back. One can envision Ballmer and Gates in a meeting all excited that they've pulled the wool over the consumer's eyes. They are all giddy that they have managed to get all this spying shit into the computer and have customers pay them to do it, albeit even if they aren't aware of that or how important it is to now allow such a thing to happen.

But your argument about compelling them is just a description of the fact that a monopoly like Microsoft can get imply there's no such thing as an alternative.

There is an alternative. OSX and Linux are two very viable alternatives.

Re:How pratical can it be to hold out?

[rs79]

"Just think of how long Windows 98 has stuck around, despite the lack of new drivers and software support"

One of the reasons I keep 98 around is there are no XP drivers for my very nice AGFA scanner.

Keep in mind China overall ironically is way behind the release curve. 3.1/95/98 are still very common there and as long as they end up writing drivers for their cheap hardware you'll see old versions supported. A few things are XP only but a very large amount comes with 98 drivers to this day.

Re:How pratical can it be to hold out?

[marcosdumay]

Why will hardware lack support for XP again? Why would companies stop including drivers if people are using it?

If we stuck with XP, nobody will create Vista only hardware... Never. It is more likely that they stop supporting Vista, that have huge requirements for driver writters and hardware designers. Won't it be nice if the protected paths of Vista are never fully adopted?

Re:How pratical can it be to hold out?

[reub2000]

Microsoft always has a bag of dirty tricks. Expect to see a lot of fud, lawsuits, and/or who knows what else if ReactOS gets to close to being a real competitor to Microsoft.

Re:How pratical can it be to hold out?

[atrimtab]

VERY. You can virtualize any Windows OS now and run it inside of Linux or MacOS X.

Linux can even act as a Windows Virtual Machine server. Serving multiple Windows VMs to desktops or a single VM to multiple users that rolls back to a known state when each user separately turns it off while preserving all the files they've worked on. See open source products like InnoTek VirtualBox to see how this can be done: http://www.virtualbox.org/

That path will cost you significantly less than upgrading to Vista and buying new Vista applications.

In the case of businesses that have developed in-house Windows apps this path makes even more sense. They won't have to re-write their apps for Vista. They can run a more secure and/or open operating system and preserve their existing software investment until *THEY* decide to migrate to something new.

Virtualization also makes significant sense for any existing applications that run on older Windows platforms that Microsoft refuses to support, like Windows NT4 and soon Windows 2000.

How about a name change?

[Spy der Mann]

Microsoft "hasta la vista" (TM) :D

Yet again, slashdot tries to have it both ways

[mumblestheclown]

People: it's time for a bit of intellectual honesty.

Either:

A. Microsoft is a giant evil behemoth that has created for itself a permanent and insurmountable monopoly that needs to be curtailed through government intervention and snide slashdot comments. Microsoft could shiat on a brick and most IT departments would have to buy it. The agreements that it makes with computer manufacturers to pre-install its product, which typically costs about 10% of the actual cost of the PC, is fundamentally wrong.

OR

B. Microsoft is a company that, despite the existence of free-as-in-beer alternatives, has nevertheless managed for many years to become fabulously wealthy by delivering products that seem to be what the market wants. However, as this episode shows, they are neither invincible nor infallible - like all of the software giants that have come before them, despite at one point building an enviable market position, they will erode through some combination of changing technology, bad marketing / product decisions, and so forth. Furthermore, as we see from Dell's (among others') recent actions, computer manufacturers can and will tailor their operating system offerings as they feel the market warrants - Microsoft can no more afford to lose dell than vice versa.

Re:Yet again, slashdot tries to have it both ways

[Anonymous Coward]

OR

C. Different people on Slashdot have different opinions.

Re:Yet again, slashdot tries to have it both ways

[DevNova]

OR

It's a combination of both. A company who started off by delivering what the market wanted and over time, found itself with agressive business models that took advantage of their position to further their market dominance.

Indeed, it was Windows that gave Microsoft the monopoly. It's very difficult to build a monopoly on applications, but designing a GUI for a prevalent OS where its success is more or less dependent on being universally adopted? Yeah, you're going to take some pretty ballsy steps to ensure that happens.

Re:Yet again, slashdot tries to have it both ways

[aegisalpha]

If it's A then it makes me wonder about the M$ adverts that have been at the tops of articles lately.

Hey look! A newspaper!

Re:Yet again, slashdot tries to have it both ways

[Coryoth]

Microsoft is a giant behemoth with a monopoly that is insurmountable in the short term. They are not invulnerable, and they can indeed make mistakes. Given their current position, however, it will take a long time for significant erosion of their monopoly, and a lot of legacy MS cruft will remain locked into the IT industry for even longer. Thus, despite their ability to fail, eventually, on their own, it makes some sense to demand (as the EU have) the opening of protocols to help avoid artificial lock in and allow competition on a more even playing field. Sure, it seems Vista is not selling well, but the reality is that at the end of 2007 MS will end XP licensing and all new computers will come with Vista. As badly as Vista seems to be doing, it will only be a setback and will still sell fairly well -- it might tarnish MS's image for a bit, and help promote alternatives, but MS can still ride their effective monopoly status to get it sold.

Re:Yet again, slashdot tries to have it both ways

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, "intellectual honesty," the cattle-call of those who can't seem to think past their own bubble.

Maybe, quite possibly, you CAN have it both ways if you allow for the passage of time.

1980s: Microsoft is a company that has managed to deliver products that seem to be what the market wants.

1990s: Microsoft is a giant evil behemoth that has created for itself a permanent and insurmountable monopoly that needs to be curtailed through government intervention and snide slashdot comments. Microsoft could shiat on a brick and most IT departments would have to buy it. The agreements that it makes with computer manufacturers to pre-install its product, which typically costs about 10% of the actual cost of the PC, is fundamentally wrong.

2000s: However, as this episode shows, they are neither invincible nor infallible - like all of the giants that have come before them, despite at one point building an enviable market position through coercion and monopoly, they will erode through some combination of changing technology, bad marketing / product decisions, and so forth. Furthermore, as we see from Dell's (among others') recent actions, computer manufacturers can and will tailor their operating system offerings as they feel the market warrants - Microsoft can no more afford to lose dell than vice versa.

The world is a complex place, my son, and intellectual honesty should be practiced by all, if they can.

Re:Yet again, slashdot tries to have it both ways

[marcosdumay]

So, MS creates a product so bad that people revolt all around the world... And we are still stuck using another, a bit less bad, MS product.

Yes, sir, that seems to be a very weak company. No, no need for government intervention... See? We can say NO to Microsoft, we just need to change to Microsoft!

Re:Yet again, slashdot tries to have it both ways

[jez9999]

I'm seriously wondering whether the received wisdom will start to falter if/when AMD dies, though. Never before has there been a market (modern CPUs) with such high barriers to entry, to the extent that the only competitor I can think would have the resources to fight Intel would be a large government, like the US or Chinese governments. Do you think that, absent of this, the Intel empire would stand a chance of falling? You can use OSS to defeat MS, because its distribution is incredibly cheap. The same can't be said of CPU production. It worries me.

Re:Yet again, slashdot tries to have it both ways

[Torodung]

And I assume this is an "either/or" because you are rhetorically challenged?

You *can* have it both ways. Despite the fact that there are currently major defections, and this will hurt MS, in 2 years, the monopoly OEM agreements and end-of-service status (by MS fiat) of XP will make MS Vista king by default, and we'll all be forced into a crap product.

So we can thrash all we like (option B) in the interim, but Microsoft has made defection VERY painful, by creating barriers to defection (training, proprietary formats) and arbitrarily declaring planned obsolescence periods (reality A).

That much should be obvious.

Less obvious is the fact that planned obsolescence is a necessary business practice when everyone uses the same thing. There's no reason to switch if there's nothing to switch to.

Totalitarian structures work because DESPITE the lively debate and all indications of competition, the authorities still win because there is no other place to go. The barrier to defection is too large.

I predict chaos for 2 years as another crap product creates a sense of FUD in the computer market, and MS's choice of either a) Extended XP Product-life, or b) fixing Vista, probably by reverting to XP API's and code. I suspect DX10 is a goner.

I think MS will choose (b).

As long as we accept that monoculture is necessary, MS is the only one making the choices.

--
Toro

Re:Yet again, slashdot tries to have it both ways

[Torodung]

Or deceiving and backstabbing a company, IBM, that had a richly deserved monopoly based on quality business products, typewriters, and then degenerated into a corrupt superpower, dependent on a bunch of crooks who claimed to be people who can write software.

(They *bought* PC-DOS.)

I just keep waiting for a Scandinavian to show up and kill everyone but Claudius.

But poor, mad Linux just keeps monologuing the "To be or not to be" speech.

It goes like this: "To free, or not to free..."

Hamlet too had an identity crisis, and look what happened to him! ;^)

--
Toro

Re:Yet again, slashdot tries to have it both ways

[Anonymous Coward]

...shiat...

mumblestheclown: it's time for a bit of intellectual honesty.

Either:

A. You can't spell shit for shit.

OR

B. You are a poseur with shit for brains.

Ignoring History

[ChaoticCoyote]

The same things were said about Windows XP. And look where we are today...

It might surprise the Slashdot crowd to know that *some* people like Vista. I do. I'm no MS fanboy, and I've cursed Bill Gates so many times its become a household cliche -- but the reality is, Vista is just fine. I use it every day, 10-12 hours a day, and my only complaint is the annoying slowness of file copies. Vista has a number of nice features that improve on XP.

Will I upgrade the other four machines in my office? Heck no. The Linux machines will remain with Gentoo; the Windows XP and MCE systems will not be upgraded any time soon. That doesn't mean I hate Vista, or nor did it fail because 80% of my computers are staying with their current OS.

Just like 2000 and XP, Vista works best on a new system; upgrading is always a mess, because vendors want to sell you today's tech instead of supporting what you bought last month. So the older systems stay with what works, and the new computer runs Vista (very well, I might add).

It's popular and trendy to hate Microsoft and Vista; heaven forbid you should think for yourselves.

Re:Ignoring History

[Omicron32]

My sentiments exactly. If I had modpoints, you'd get more than one.

I like Vista. I moved away from Linux to use Vista. I've recently been looking at the development tools on Windows and, compared to their Linux counterparts, they're impressive. Ballmer was a dick, but his "Developers, Developers, Developers" thing was quite right.

Windows offers some nice development tools and a generally consistent environment. It's much easier to develop for Windows than Linux and until that is fixed Linux isn't going to take over the world...

Re:Ignoring History

[Apocalypse111]

It's popular and trendy to hate Microsoft and Vista; heaven forbid you should think for yourselves.
No, there's plenty of intelligent reasons to hate Vista too - UAC, poor security, driver incompatibilities, file-copy bullshit, file access times, and performance issues to name a few off the top of my head. If you look you're sure to find plenty more.

Re:Ignoring History

[UnknowingFool]

The same things were said about Windows XP. And look where we are today...

I see a small difference between XP and Vista. XP require modest upgrades to function and there were significant changes that users would want. Vista offers small changes for most users on their current hardware. To get the maximum benefit, users would require major upgrades or new PCs. XP also benefitted from the people buying PCs for the first time. Five years later many people now own PCs and are not as likely to buy a new one when the current one works just fine.

Heavy system requirements may also be causing business and consumers to shy away from Windows Vista, at least for now. To experience all of Vista's features, PC users need a computer with at least a 1-GHz processor, 1 Gbyte of memory, and a 40-Gbyte hard drive. That's far beyond what's required for routine business computing tasks like word processing, running a spreadsheet, or sending e-mails.
By contrast, Windows XP Professional requires only a 300-MHz processor, 128 Mbytes of RAM, and a 1.5-Gbyte disk.

From what I remember the XP specifications were for minimal requirements. Good luck on actually running anything on a 300MHz with 128MB of memory with XP. By contrast, the minimum to run Vista is 1GB, 1GHz.

Re:Ignoring History

[OpenGLFan]

It might surprise the Slashdot crowd to know that *some* people like Vista.

Nope. Dude, the Internet gave birth to Furries. I am no longer shocked at what *some* people like.

Re:Ignoring History

[Opportunist]

The difference between XP and Vista is simple. XP was maybe not better than 2k, but it was not worse. It was shiny, it was teletubby'y, it was a LSD dream but you could turn it off and turn it into a "serious" system that way if you so desired. It was essentially as good as 2k, that's what people were bitching about: "Why switch, it's as good as 2k?".

With Vista, you have a completely different problem at hand: It's actually worse than its predecessor. It runs slower on identical hardware. It has less support and a lot of applications don't work. Which I can understand, developing for it is an obstacle course, filled with "wtf, that doesn't work? Why?" experiences.

If your experience is good, fine. Mine isn't. Vista does not offer anything meaningful while at the same time breaking stuff that already worked in XP. I have no idea why I should even consider upgrading.

Re:Ignoring History

[heinousjay]

Just in case you weren't aware, hate is never an intelligent response.

Re:Ignoring History

[PrescriptionWarning]

The wealth of tools available for Windows development can make some projects easier. Understandably sometimes linux can have issues regarding drivers, library files, etc, but I think in general Linux development is far more powerful and allows much more flexibility when programming. I believe this is why Ballmer was stressing the importance of developers, since so many are of the microsoft haters guild from being gilded in the past.

Re:Ignoring History

[644bd346996]

Running XP Pro on a 300Mhz processor with 128MB RAM and 1.5GB of hard drive space is insane. First of all, the security patches and service packs won't fit. But even if you do get those installed, there still aren't enough resources left over for something like Firefox displaying an AJAX page. Saying that XP can be run on such a machine is like saying that a 2.6 series Linux kernel can be booted on a PC with 4MB of RAM: theoretically possible, but it doesn't leave much left over for userspace code.

Re:Ignoring History

[painQuin]

hey, I hated Microsoft and DOS all the way back when it didn't support any of the fun things you could do in a posix style shell, like pipes and redirects and scrolling through your history, or (gasp!) color!

I also hated them when their telnet app repeatedly failed to meet the standards of every other telnet app out there

this is no fad. this is a deep seated hatred.

Re:Ignoring History

[nine-times]

The same things were said about Windows XP. And look where we are today...

At least for me, when Windows XP came out, I tried it and thought there were a couple minor annoyances, and I didn't see that it really gave me any huge benefit over 2000-- but I liked it. I found myself using it, and wanting to use it rather than XP.

Now I actually have a couple free upgrades to Vista because when I bought a couple licenses last year, I bought SA because I knew Vista was coming. I installed it, tried it out, and I find myself avoiding it. I like things about it, but everything feels more difficult. Just recently, after a few months of testing, I wiped out my Vista install and went back to XP, and I just feel so much better.

XP certainly doesn't really look as nice, but I've had fewer crashes, everything feels faster, and I'm far less aggravated.

Re:Ignoring History

[Shados]

The only difference between Vista and XP's situation is that XP has been around for so long, people got used to it. My 1 year old lap-top back when XP came out was at the minimum requirements, yes, but -barely-.

My 4 years old lap-top of today could run Vista Premium peachy, except it has a DX8 videocard, and I don't -think- thats supported. if it is, it can run it fine by the specs.

My 3 years old PC runs it easily.

XP's been out for so long that people seem to have completly forgotten about XP's launch, and people got used to running a 5 years old OS on a modern machine, so when they see a new one, they go ::gulp!::.

Re:Ignoring History

[StarvingSE]

Why do you think Vista runs best on new hardware? Because of the unnecessary bloat that it comes with. While I don't think that MS is in bed with the hardware manufacturers, I do think that they're software engineers get sloppier with each release. Why program efficiently when the hardware is just going to get faster? Vista should run at least as fast as XP on last generation hardware.

Vista does have some nice features, I will agree with you there. Are these features enough to justify the price tag of buying the software at retail and upgrading your current machine? Not a chance.

Re:Ignoring History

[StarvingSE]

Just as an FYI for myself, what development tools do you get with Vista? I didn't think any windows release came with development tools.

Re:Ignoring History

[ChaoticCoyote]

Every time I search for images on Google, I'm reminded why aliens have never visited this planet. :)

Re:Ignoring History

[zoomosis]

QBASIC? :-)

It would be nice if Python was supplied with Windows (as it is with Apple OS X), but it's not a lot of trouble to download and install. Having it not supplied by default may be a good thing as it will tend to stop people writing Python code for a particular version of Python, and eliminates problems upgrading the supplied version to a newer one (which I understand can be a bit of an issue with OS X).

Most people can freely download a whole stack of different devtools for Windows, eg. Bloodshed Dev-C++ (provides a GNU C/C++ compiler), Borland Turbo C++ Explorer, Turbo Delphi Explorer, Microsoft Visual Studio Express, Open Watcom ...

- ozz

Re:Ignoring History

[ChaoticCoyote]

My first experience with Vista was on a 2-yo dual-CPU Opteron box, running 1.6GHz procs, an ATI 1350, and 2GB of RAM. One of my customers wanted to know if their sofwtare would run on Vista. Vista ran great. So when I bought a new system, I picked up a nice Intel Core Duo 2 HP workstation with Vista pre-installed. Works beautifully.

I wouldn't think of putting Vista on my year-old 1.5GB 1.6GHz Turion laptop; if nothing else, the ATI graphics are too wussy.

Re:Ignoring History

[zoomosis]

I've heard of the file copy issues with Vista from a few different sources but haven't seen anyone try to investigate the cause. I'm curious about that. As I understand it, Windows Explorer uses the CopyFile() or CopyFileEx() functions to copy files (duh). I don't have a copy of Vista to test, but presumably it uses the latter, and perhaps there's some oddball copy-protection code in it like another posted suggested. Or maybe it's just some other weird bug. Either way, one simple thing to try out would be to test the performance of a file copy using your own code, only using fopen(), fread(), fwrite() & fclose(). Those I/O functions will map to lower level Windows API calls, but you will at least avoid calling CopyFile().

Having said all that, it's odd that not everyone has experienced performance problems copying files, so maybe it's a driver issue, eg. faulty DMA code.

- ozz

Re:Ignoring History

[tupletuple]

Hate to surprise anyone, but since XP came out I've had a landslide of friends and family asking me what other OS options there are. They didn't care before that. Some ask me about linux directly and without knowing that I know about linux at all, only knowing that I work with "computers". With Vista coming out, the questions have become much more persistant.

Re:Ignoring History

[petrus4]

This is true. If there is one overwhelming way in which the Furries have contributed to the rest of mankind, it is by virtue of the fact that once you've seen/heard of/been exposed to them, there are very few other things that will scare you. ;)

Re:Ignoring History

[ccp]

The same things were said about Windows XP. And look where we are today...

Mandriva 2007.1 ...

Cheers,
CC

Better deal....

[ivan256]

The CompUSA near me (Framingham MA), and many other CompUSA stores are closing. I was there last night. They had a cage, and another display packed full of Vista. All editions including upgrades, over 100 copies total, and they were 60% off. If you need Vista for some reason, a defunct CompUSA is probably your best bet right now.

Re:Better deal....

[sponga]

cha ching; thanks brotha
Southern California where we are at they have so much discounted stuff there that I have begun to price match at FRY's and others to basically get the stuff for free after MIR.

Got myself an employee discount after using a little barganing skills with the kid employee there to give me an employee discount; he gets a stack of blank DVD-R's set in the back of his truck and I get the discount on Vista Ultimate.

$41 out the door; nice now I can have an Ultimate version which comes with MCE and the DVD Authoring tools to make a perfect media box. Was almost about to buy XP:MCE but since Vista Ultimate comes with MCE, it makes it worth to buy and now that drivers for ATI/Nvidia have matured more it makes some perfect timing.

This isn't that big of a deal

[steelcobra]

Just Microsoft telling people who've clung onto the beta versions that they can keep using it without paying $400. And as to the 30% figure, there are a ton of companies still using Win2000pro.

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[fermion]

The thing I noticed the first time I used XP was it did not seem to broken. Some of the UI decisions were different than I would have made, but it did work. It was like the first time I used NT, except that NT was probably not consumer prime time game playing ready.

XP is a version of Windows that I could get behind, as it generally was OK. Just like Windows 95.

I am not sure if vista does anything interesting. The way it was promised two years ago was compelling. I am not surprised they were not able to make the dream come true.

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[daeg]

The retraining and hardware requirements were the exact excuses I used to start brining Linux into my offices, one computer at a time. We don't have any special software or anything (just Firefox and Microsoft Office, which I am gradually replacing with OOo). Instead of paying $1200 for a decent office computer that can run Vista smoothly, I can pay $600 for a computer with Linux compatible hardware and know I won't have to upgrade for a good long time. The training is going much smoother than I anticipated, actually, and thus far, I've had several employees ask if I could help them run Linux at home (pointed them at the local Linux users group, naturally).

Why buy expensive hardware and retrain everyone after paying over a thousand dollars per seat (Vista + Office) when you can buy a cheaper, more reliable computer? And the best part of the deal? All those shitty downloadable Windows "games" can't be installed!

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[Cygfrydd]

... and, of course, XP was terrifying until SP2.

Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Take your DRM and shove it.

I will not pay money for a product that puts a collar around my neck.

That is all.

Re:Good

[WhyDoYouWantToKnow]

I will not pay money for a product that puts a collar around my neck.

Well, I guess we know you're not into S&M.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

No, we just know what side they'd be on if they were.

Re:Good

[bmk67]

Well, I guess we know you're not into S&M. I am into BDSM, I just happen to get my sick kicks for free.

Re:Good

[Ajehals]

Please return all your shirts immediately.

Although I must say I agree with you, I wouldn't buy anything else that I knew was broken before I opened he package

Home Basic

[rlp]

It would be interesting to see what percentage of Vista sales were for 'Vista Home Basic' (i.e. the bare minimum default MS OS that vendors put on new boxes). It would be more interesting to know what percentage of those boxes get wiped and have XP or Linux installed on them.

Re:Home Basic

[Mr EdgEy]

Most of the Vista OEM PC's i've seen have had Home Premium by default simply because of the extremely crippled Basic.

(snif) you don't have predatory pricing with linux

[swschrad]

the only way to look at vista is DOWN...

Re:What the hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

UK prices, converted to USD

Home Premium : $440
Business : $560
Ultimate : $740

From amazon.co.uk, undiscounted prices. Looks like
the Aussies are being slightly more ripped off than
us Brits. Blimey!

Works for me :)

[NickFortune]

People: it's time for a bit of intellectual honesty.

Oh goody! Can we start with the false dichotomies, please?

Beta testers can upgrade?

[fusto99]

This doesn't make sense. They are offering upgrade pricing to anyone who downloaded the beta version of vista. However, they already gave a free, fully licensed Vista Ultimate copy to everyone who downloaded the beta.

Re:Beta testers can upgrade?

[Goffee71]

Incorrect, they were offering a free copy of Ultimate to anyone who was INVITED to join the beta program, not anyone who downloaded the RC versions.

Interesting move.

[ErichTheRed]

Microsft knows they're going to get people to upgrade. Unless there's _major_ pushback from corporate IT, XP and previous versions of Windows will go end-of-life on their scheduled dates. When that happens, you lose patch and fix support, which means your desktops are unprotected. Any IT person who runs Windows knows that's a dangerous gray area. There are still a couple of die-hard places running NT4, but it's not for general use and the admins keep tight control over the system.

So yes, Microsoft will eventually get their revenue. Dumping 17 years of Windows-based code and processes for Linux or any other OS is just too tough a sell in most large companies. I'm not a big Vista backer either, but you have to keep up with the times. I'm playing with it while supporting XP and 2003 in our environments. It would be foolish not to.

Re:Interesting move.

[drinkypoo]

I'm not thinking we're going to have mass defections or anything, but if Microsoft doesn't have Vista unfucked by that time - and frankly, this is a totally likely scenario given the stupidity and arrogance that Vista already embodies - I think we're going to see some significant departures from Windows-land. Some of them will probably go Mac - the fools! - but more will go Linux. One real problem with Vista is that it implies replacing the majority of your hardware. Some people will go ahead and go to Vista when they hit their next upgrade cycle, but corporations are overwhelmingly demanding that vendors continue to provide them Windows XP even when they buy NEW machines, so obviously that's not the only point of resistance (nor even the most significant!)

No way...

[Snotman]

I am not sure what business this article is talking about, but big business will update or move to another OS it can get support for. Eventually, Windows XP and 2003 will EOS and that will push corporations to move because they generally want support for everything.

A better statistic is how many desktops this 30% represents. I am guessing that this 30% of businesses does not represent 30% of business' desktops. That would be a better number, not this FUD. And I am not a MS fanboy as a Java developer.

I'd love to switch to Vista, but...

[ubuwalker31]

I'd love to switch to Vista, but I can't because Q-media, the company in charge of shipping Vista CDs for XP upgrades for Cyberpower, has taken my $10 shipping fee, and has not shipped Vista to me, despite a phone call and a promise to do so. What gives? Has anyone else tried to upgrade to Vista, but been stymied by 3rd party companies who aren't shipping disks?

Re:I'd love to switch to Vista, but...

[iperkins]

I had a similar offer through Dell's Express Upgrade on a laptop I (my company, actually) purchased at the end of last year. They actually shipped the upgrade DVD, but then DHL lost it (and admitted to doing so). A call to Dell vista Upgrade support got me an individual, probably in India, who could not understand why I had not received it. "It's their (DHL's) responsibility to deliver it to you". I had to explain several times that DHL LOST the fscking parcel. The individual finally took all the requisite information again to escalate the issue. This was 1 1/2 months ago and I cannot get any response out of whomever is running the Dell Vista Upgrade program. I cannot evaluate it if I don't have it and I flat out refuse to purchase any PC's preloaded with it until I can support my users. Never mind the application incompatibilities, such as certain parts of Microsoft's own Dynamics accounting package (formerly known as Great Plains). Sheesh...

Re:I'd love to switch to Vista, but...

[Alex_WGA MSFT]

iperkings, sounds wrong to me that you haven't received your upgrade. If you come to my blog and contact me through the email link in the upper left nav I might be able to help you get your express upgrade kit. At least I'll see what I can do. Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/wga

Re:I'd love to switch to Vista, but...

[ubuwalker31]

Wowzah, I complain on slashdot, and wowzah, Vista arrives in the mail today. Go figure.

Desperation?

[Jugalator]

Why is that indicative of "desperation"?

For those not introduced, the beta/RC's are about to expire, and that was the plan since at least a year back or so. Now they're announcing the plan the people affected by this can follow.

DESPERATION. :-p

The difference

[Opportunist]

When XP came out, I looked at it, considered it shiny, didn't care about shiny, looked again, saw that it was essentially as good as 2k and that I can turn off the shiny and still can get a few additional features out of it. It did not remove anything essential that I was used to in 2k, and it ran as fast as 2k, so I eventually switched.

When Vista came out, I looked at it, considered it bloated, cared about bloated, looked again, saw that it was worse than XP and that even with the shiny and bloated turned off, it's no better than XP and still slower. It did take away a few liberties that I came to enjoy in XP, and so I will never switch.

If XP doesn't work anymore, I will move on to another OS. Wine is hopefully ready to run at XP level by the time I have to go, so I know where my next home will be built.

Re:The difference

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

[Vista] did take away a few liberties that I came to enjoy in XP, and so I will never switch.

Like what, if you don't mind me asking? I've never used Vista, and I haven't actually heard of anything you cannot do that you could in XP, let alone things that anyone would miss. I must admit I'm rather curious.

Re:The difference

[Maxo-Texas]

Vista enforces DRM mores strictly than XP.

For example, it won't play some things unless there is a secure path to the output device.
It can invalidate software remotely that is identified as a problem by the vendor.
It can invalidate data remotely to make it unplayable.

Basically, everyone except you owns their data and software on your machine.
You still own your data-- but the tools are there to render it unusable too so the possibility of
forced upgrades are there in the future.

Re:The difference

[nogginthenog]

I've finally got Vista running like Windows 2000 here. One thing I miss is the ability to drag an icon onto a cmd window, previously it used to fill in the path but it doesn't work with Vista.

Re:The difference

[Mephistophocles]

If XP doesn't work anymore, I will move on to another OS. Wine is hopefully ready to run at XP level by the time I have to go, so I know where my next home will be built.

Ditto. I've been lazily avoiding Linux for a long time but when my XP installation no longer works, I will switch and use Mac's for anything that Linux won't do (or anything that I'm too lazy to make work in Linux). Hilariously, Vista could do more to destroy the MS machine than any court or open-license concept could do on its own.

Re:The difference

[Foolhardy]

I can think of a few things: the old backup program, ntbackup.exe, is no longer included. The replacement, sdclt.exe (Vista Backup) is a joke. You can't even select the files you want to backup, or put the output in a file of your choosing. It doesn't backup registry hives correctly and doesn't use volume shadow copies (both of which ntbakcup does). The ntbackup for XP or 2003 is incompatible with Vista.

Winhlp32.exe is no longer included (the file called winhlp32.exe is a stub that pops an error message telling you that a functional winhlp32 is no longer shipped), although for some reason its Win16 counterpart, winhelp.exe, is. Any program that uses .HLP files is broken. Some parts of the OS still use .HLP files for documentation (like the What's This? for the offline files share control page), so those links are broken now.

There are fixed promised, but OpenGL is still broken, or very slow with most video drivers.

The new sound system does not support any kind of hardware acceleration or features. Companies like Creative are scrambling to get game developers to adopt OpenAL with an end-run around the Vista sound system so that users aren't left with $300 sound cards equivalent to an AC'97. This does nothing for older games that depended on DirectSound for this.

Here's a list of more things.

Re:The difference

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried burning a DVD through RDC, and the latest Vista-compatible Nero refused, citing Vista as the cause.

I' more on the...

[Chris whatever]

"All stock has been slashed, save $$$, why pay more?'"

Why pay at all.....

Re:I' more on the...

[Goffee71]

If the system will let me pay in dollars rather than pounds sterling, I'd go for it, what with the 2/1 exchange rate at the moment!

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[justthinkit]

the stupidly slow file copy problem

I am going to go out on a limb and theorize that this "bug" is a deliberate act. It reminds me of IBM in the mainframe/terminal days, where they added delays to ensure that response time was always 2 seconds. And for average users it is good to have average response times -- if you give them a fast one for some things and a slow one for others, they will notice and whine.

In this case I think something much more potentially sinister is at work. Vista has introduced a "copy lag" that can later on (once we have all accepted the lag) be used to scan files for 1) malware, 2) DRM reasons, 3) do other things we don't want Vista to do.

Saying that I wouldn't put it past them is an understatement.

Printer drivers...

[cpotoso]

That is why one should stick to PS or at least PCL printers...

Re:Printer drivers...

[walt-sjc]

Exactly. The lure of $100 printers can be great, but you get what you pay for - a printer without a "brain".

I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

Does MS's warchest give enough investment return to pay for Windows OS/Application development? If so, then you could argue that Vista and Office are 100% profit: we've already paid for the development from past overcharging.

Re:I wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

Go punch your parents in the face for raising an idiot.

Re:Companies will can XP when it goes out of suppo

[Opportunist]

Don't get your hopes up.

Whether it works or not, whether it's more stable or not, no manager will jump into that cold pond. Let's look at a manager's brains (bring your microscope, kids!) and see how it ticks.

The manager will ponder what course to take. Should he buy Vista and accept the lock-in, or should he go Linux with Wine, take the road of liberty? This, dear reader, matters little to him. What matters to him is, that his superiors will never ever fire him for buying Vista. Because it's the tried way, and if it doesn't work out, hell, how should he have known? If he buys Linux and Wine, even the slightest problem that may occasionally occur will make his comfy chair shake, because he left the tried and true way of upgrading and decided that some unproven methodes are better.

Now, which path will our manager take?

Apple

[Nicolay77]

If I have to buy a new computer and leave XP then I will probably buy a Mac.

No need for Vista at all.

Re:Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

"If I have to buy a new computer and leave XP then I will probably buy a Mac."

That's what I did. I'm sitting pretty with a new Core 2 Duo Mac system and 2GB RAM. Add in the fact that virtualization is becoming more popular. VMware Fusion Beta3 is really cool. I have a bootcamp XP partition setup, I can either dual boot, or run the partition virtually inside of VMware which totally rocks.

Vituralization could really hurt MS bacause you can create a virtual environment that emulates supported hardware which could drastically extend the usefulness of XP past hardware failure. Add more crossplatform apps like Firefox which are making the O/S more irrelevant.

It's not a done deal, and I doubt we're going to be seeing MS bankrupt any time soon. But I doubt they're going to be selling as much and in the meantime more and more people are aiming towards solutions that break free of MS Windows lockin and vendor lockin in general.

They're sitting on so much cash, I don't understand why they don't take all the amazingly brilliant talent they supposedly hired and set them loose to build a new O/S ground up, fix the flaws, ignore backwards compatibility, and do something like Apple did with Rosetta where you just use virtualization/emulation to get old apps to run inside the new system.

Re:Apple

[infiniphonic]

Microsoft can not do these things because they make way too much sense. Pretty soon the company will be run by an angry bald middle aged guy who likes to throw chairs. How well do you think that will work out for them?

Re:Apple

[Yvan256]

They're sitting on so much cash, I don't understand why they don't take all the amazingly brilliant talent they supposedly hired and set them loose to build a new O/S ground up, fix the flaws, ignore backwards compatibility, and do something like Apple did with Rosetta where you just use virtualization/emulation to get old apps to run inside the new system.

Isn't it what Vista was supposed to be in the first place?

Re:Apple

[Steve001]

Nicolay77 wrote:

If I have to buy a new computer and leave XP then I will probably buy a Mac.

No need for Vista at all.

I think this is a reason for Vista's slower-than-expected sales: the impression that, right or wrong, you will need to new computer to get an acceptable experience with Vista. Due to this and the many other issues with Vista, I think that many people are now seriously considering moving to another OS. I would not be surprised that for many people buying a new computer is considered part of the OS upgrade process (my last two upgrades were as a result of buying a new computer).

I think it is too early to state with certainty that Vista will not succeed. OS inertia is a hard thing to overcome and is a reason that most users will stay with Windows. This will keep the percentage of Windows users high. I think what may happen is that a significant number of users will move away from the Windows platform.

Re:Apple

[Knara]

Perhaps that's what someone said it was supposed to be. I get the feeling that after going through the internal MS politics filters, it didn't end up like that at all. Sort of how Neil Gaiman says scripts end up in Hollywood: everyone gets their chance to pee on it, until it stinks so much that no one wants to touch it anymore.

Re:What the hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

And your being ripped far more than the USA as the prices posted above are the correct ones for the USA. Best Buy and Newegg.com both sale full retail versions for around $400 or less.

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[mpe]

XP made a killing on the fact that consumers were fed up with the 9x line. Particularly, WinME. The disaster to end all disasters, which was still probably worse then what Vista currently is.

I've heard Vista called "Windows ME v2" :)

Where does Bill want you to go today...

[ibm1130]

When Microsoft decides enough is enough they can force a changeover to Vista by making it impractical to continue with XP ro whatever version of their poison one is using. When Vista is all there is the cash will flow as it must. So says Bill....

The real problem

[hexed_2050]

The real problem with Vista so far is actually quite simple:

1. System administrators are currently testing the software with their environments. As of yet, not a lot of people completely understand the inner workings of UAC and the other nice, and not so nice gems that are new in Vista when it pertains to security and administration.

2. Businesses have learned their lesson with XP. Do not upgrade until the bugs are worked out and the hacks have been made public.

Do you really think that people are going to wait another 3 years without upgrading to Vista? Wait until the CEO plays around with the neat little side bar that shows him a constant slide show of his latest golf tournament in .

h

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[Kythe]

I'm sorry, but this runs counter to the standard MS fanboy's talking point that there's nothing to see here. Transitions to Vista are completely normal. Therefore, you must be wrong.

No intention of moving to Vista

[Jeremiah Stoddard]

"30% of business have no intention of moving to Vista, ever."

And we all know that the "ever" part means "at least not for another few months."

MS Stock price?

[darjen]

I wonder what kind of affect this will have on their share prices. Maybe if they go down enough maybe there be a buying opportunity in there somewhere...

About time

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah. So they are upgrading the pricing? I always thought it was priced too low. Now I feel much more inclined to try it out.

Absolutely right!

[Opportunist]

Considering the speed it picked up in China, market penetration should be reached in less than a million years. Provided it keeps going as strong as it started and China gets its population growth down to zero.

..shhh..secret..

[Mockylock]

I can't imagine why anyone would buy a full version, considering all you need is a burnt copy of XP to pop in when you're doing an install... then it does a full format and install.

Re:..shhh..secret..

[RalphP]

Err - no. It won't check a CD, but has to have a running qualified OS. Which can be the trial version of Vista ...

UBUNTU

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess it will be Ubuntu. I switched to it at home, I'm not 100% happy with it (big fonts, I want double click top left to close a window etc.), but its otherwise very similar to Windows and easily good enough. Fewer root kits is a big plus!

I'd already ditched Internet Explorer on Windows to use Firefox, so I'm using Firefox on Ubuntu too now and not really seeing any differences. Open Office was a plus, but I found I hadn't used MS word for so long now and don't expect to need OO much.

Video, again fine, I put VLC on it, I'd given up with the DRM laden Media player upgrades a long time ago. None of the media I want requires Media Player anyway. Printer was a doddle. For games I have a Wii & PS2 and didn't use my PC for those. MP3's play fine, flash drives, and my mp3 player and camera plug in without problems.

All very uneventful. I don't need Wine or Mono to run Windows apps, since the products I use every day (even Skype) are also available in Ubuntu.

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[walt-sjc]

The biggest difference was consumers. The consumer option was Win98se or XP. While 98 wasn't as bad as ME, it was hardly "stable" and XP offered a large benefit. XP also offers a little more than 2000, such as better USB, wireless, and power management support. BTW, many large corp. customers are still on 2000.

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[Nasarius]

There are actually a couple problems with copying files in Vista. The first is that initial "lag" as you mentioned. The second is the apparent fact that Vista's I/O scheduler seems to have been completely botched. No longer can I copy a few gigabytes of files around while playing a video. Huh? This worked just fine on XP, and it's obviously not a problem on Linux.

Add to this an overall sluggishness (has anyone been able to get folders in the new start menu to open smoothly? It consistently responds like utter shit on a C2D E6600 with 2GB of RAM, a GeForce 7900GS, and not much installed) and various strange software compatibility problems, and I can't wait to switch my Windows partition back to XP.

Maybe not like a Persian rug store...

[jejones]

We're throwing chairs at Crazy Steve's!

"We're slicing prices on @#$!@%! Vista Home Premium!" [chair crash f/x]
"We're slicing prices on !%!@#%! Vista Ultimate!" [chair crash f/x]

Crazy Steve's... his prices are insane!

Re:Maybe not like a Persian rug store...

[guruevi]

You forgot something:

[really, really fast non-understandable disclaimer voice]
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Re:What the hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just as well I don't use it then!

Leave it to MS...

[parvenu74]

Leave it to Microsoft to throw a price cutting party where for "only $495 (per TFA) you can upgrade to Windows Vista Ultimate!" How in the world does this make any sense at all when you can already buy full (not upgrade) OEM copies of Vista Ultimate for $199?

Upgrade to Mac OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

I just did. Life is so much easier now.

Did MS want Linux success?

[Vexorian]

Whenever you hear about Vista, you can hear plenty of things, including that it is a Mac OS/X ripoff . As a matter of fact that might be true, but I am starting to think vista is perhaps an MS satire about the competetion?

You see the awesome MS jokes about Mac OSX with that darker interface in comparison to Mac OS/X lighter one, and that search thing that is placed in a totally different position, we all love MS laughing on Mac OS/X additions like "Gadgets" and chess.

But is Mac the only victim of MS' convincingly put satire?

I would say not, since MS also incorporated features from another enemy, Linux. It is clear once you spend a week with Vista, you'll eventually notice that the different interface requires retraining, that there are almost no compatible drivers for vista and that Windows applications won't easily work in Vista either. And its performance issues will make it very hard to play any of the newest games

What's next you may ask? How about MS changing vista so you need to compile all your programs? That's "unlikely" you may think since MS is all pro closed source, but how about making .net compile code to a "semi code" that the user will still have to compile manually when installing to the computer? Don't underestimate microsoft, there are a lot of great linux they can steal.

Disclaimer: I love Linux. Don't kill my karma!

Re:Did MS want Linux success?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whenever you hear about Vista, you can hear plenty of things, including that it is a Mac OS/X ripoff . As a matter of fact that might be true, but I am starting to think vista is perhaps an MS satire about the competetion?

What universe are you from? Does Spock have a beard?

Re:Did MS want Linux success?

[Vexorian]

Dear Anonymous Coward.

I was trolling.

Want a cookie?

PARENT UNFAIRLY MODDED TROLL

[Anonymous Coward]

Its blunt, but he makes a good point.

Re:Companies will can XP when it goes out of suppo

[kinglink]

That is the very base of the problem. Nothing needs to replace it right now. XP works, nothing else is needed, and if Microsoft's smart they'll continue to support XP. What will replace XP should be the Vista's successor that gives all the usefulness of what Vista should have been with XP specs (will never happen).

And please tell me you don't think this is a sign Microsoft is collapsing. It's a sign that XP is an amazing OS that doesn't need replacing. Linux isn't going to jump up because people aren't buying Vista. People aren't buying Vista because they are happy with their current OS. Sadly Microsoft is going to see this as "XP is too good" rather then "Vista isn't good enough".

I think

[Sycraft-fu]

It's a hardware bug, driver bug, or something like it. I'm not saying people haven't had the problem, but I sure haven't seen it on our Vista systems at work. I've copied a ton of data too, shuffling around VMs and such. No appreciable speed difference between Vista and XP that I can see. Well when a problem happens for some people, but not for me, that tells me that it isn't something universally broken in the OS, but rather in their setup.

Re:Cue Knee Jerk

[Goaway]

You don't... see... any anti-MS people?

You're somehow managing to navigate the threads and reply to posts without actually reading anything in here?

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard the iPhone called "Newton 2.0".

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[Macthorpe]

I've heard Linux called "a pile of festering shit".

In other news, wishing doesn't make it so :P

Not all bad

[Crazy IT Guy]

I tried the RC1 of Vista and thought that it was horrible. It didn't like my computer and I didn't like it. Then when I got a copy from work I decided to try it anyway. As it turns out it isn't that bad. I turned off the UAC because of it asking many times "Are you sure you want to copy that file?" I turned off the sidebar gadgets too help reduce overhead. Yes, it requires a nice computer since at idle it takes up ~550mb of ram but if you do have such a computer it works nicely. It actually did save a laptop HD that XP could not see and no trial data recovery program could copy the Documents and Settings folder. I plugged in the HD (usb adapter) and Vista saw it was damaged, asked if I wanted to fix it, and after it was done XP could see and access everything on it. I know it will not work for many companies because of the hardware requirements but it is better than XP and will hopefully be better after the first big service pack.

Never say never

[trimbo]

"30% of business have no intention of moving to Vista, ever."

I think this claim is a media creation. Any IT person who says they will "never" upgrade, yet stay with Windows, is a crackpot. People threatened that for years with 2000 -> XP, and most gave it up eventually. Some people did hold out, and as /.ers will recall, the hold-outs just got bit in the butt by the lack of support for the new daylight savings rules. Which was more disruptive to their business, not upgrading to XP within 6 years or getting caught off guard by the DST thing? I guarantee the same 10% people will pay more attention to Microsoft's sunset date for XP this time around and will be on Vista far in advance.

Beyond holdouts, what are businesses going to do, rewrite their entire codebase to run on Linux? Few will. Those kinds of things sound good in theory, except for the fact that Microsoft's pricing is not stupid. It's usually going to be cheaper to stay on Windows compared to the porting costs, all office workers retrained, custom support costs, etc. There is an indeterminate value in not being vendor locked-in by using Linux (though you may be more distro-locked in), but convincing a boss of that who is not on the Linux train is going to be very tough.

Microsoft's got a really good thing going right now. Their platform is robust from mobile all the way up to servers/databases/etc, and the prices are just about perfect to keep anyone who thinks about moving off the platform. So either 30% of busineses saying they'll never use Vista are fooling themselves or this is yet another journalist trying to tap into the "Vista is DOA" hype.

Re:Never say never

[deanc]

I think this claim is a media creation. Any IT person who says they will "never" upgrade, yet stay with Windows, is a crackpot.

I think all those IT people who said they would "never" upgrade to WindowsME did well for themselves, don't you think?

I have no plans to upgrade to Vista until either SP1 comes out or, if that's still not an improvement, Vista's successor is released.

Re:Never say never

[RetroGeek]

Any IT person who says they will "never" upgrade, yet stay with Windows, is a crackpot.

Well then colour me crackpot.

I am about to buy my last Windows PC. It will be pre-loaded with XP. Once the service agreement runs out, and the hardware breaks, that is it for me and Windows.

Linux, ReactOS, MAC, or something, anything else.

And I am senior enough that the PHBs will not force Vista on me.

Re:Never say never

[trimbo]

Well then colour me crackpot

Ahem. I said: "Any IT person who says they will "never" upgrade, yet stay with Windows, is a crackpot."

As much as you might want to be labeled a crackpot, seems you're not included in that group. ;)

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[Sancho]

Fantastic point. If you have to retrain anyway (Vista+Office 2007), why not retrain to Linux+OpenOffice?

Mostly, it's because people think that money buys you something. They don't really know what it is (if you buy Windows without volume licensing or contracts, you're not getting much in the way of support). There's also the idea that the company will have some longevity, whereas with FOSS, there's the idea that if the main developer quits, the project is over, and you're screwed.

Basically, people buy MS for peace of mind. It's hard to put a price on that, even if it's misplaced.

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[drinkypoo]

It was like the first time I used NT, except that NT was probably not consumer prime time game playing ready.

Actually, you could get primitive versions of DirectX on NT4, and you could play any games that properly used the Win32 API just fine on NT. Before that there was the WING.dll (WINdows Graphics) 2d graphics driver layer, which IIRC also provided direct graphics memory access (as well as various drawing primitives? I'm not a windows programmer by any means) and which was used by some Windows 3.1 games.

sssh don't tell but I actually like Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

I find all of this criticism of vista to be interesting. I have been using Vista as my only operating system for about a month and I am actually all in all happy with it. I have at this point only had one problem with it and it dealt with a webcam driver. Vista tried to run the third party driver and crashed but it recovered itself and automatically disabled the driver and installed the generic windows driver and the webcam works great now. I guess I am a little confused why Microsoft gets so much criticism here when third party hardware developers refuse to release drivers or when they do release drivers they are absolute trash, what does that have to do with Microsoft. In the Apple world this doesn't happen because Apple won't let anyone touch their hardware. In the linux world people seem to think it is some sort of feature when they have to use an NDIS wrapper to get a piece of hardware to work on their system. I do understand that this is Slashdot where all things linux are from god and all things Microsoft are from Satan but it would be nice if we could get away from the childish bigotry and actually have intelligent and technically oriented discussions here.

The 'new Windows sucks'...is an old story

[dtjohnson]

Every time a new versions of Windows appears, the spin machines crank up about problems with it and how great the old version was. This happens so consistently that it seems like the M$ pr/astroturfing machinery is behind it. Windows is a monopoly and Vista will be a sales success and that's all there is to say about Vista...until the next version of Windows appears and then everyone waxes nostalgic about the goodness of Vista.

Re:The 'new Windows sucks'...is an old story

[pebs]

Every time a new versions of Windows appears, the spin machines crank up about problems with it and how great the old version was. This happens so consistently that it seems like the M$ pr/astroturfing machinery is behind it. Windows is a monopoly and Vista will be a sales success and that's all there is to say about Vista...until the next version of Windows appears and then everyone waxes nostalgic about the goodness of Vista.

That's because most consumer versions of Windows all pretty much suck. I mean look at it:

Windows 3.0: sucked
Windows 3.1: sucked
Windows 3.11 for Workgroups: sucked
Windows 95: sucked
Windows 98: sucked
Windows 98se: sucked
Windows ME: sucked so bad no one used it except for those poor fools who didn't know better
Windows XP: sucked, but surprisingly less than all other consumer releases

In my opinion, Vista is a repeat of Windows ME. It's sucked so bad no one is going to use it, except for those poor fools who bought a new computer with it installed. Windows ME had a few cool features, but its overall quality was horrible (like Vista). People will probably skip Vista like they skipped ME, unless Microsoft can really work some magic in their service packs.

I didn't include Windows 2000 (or NT or any server versions) because that was not a consumer OS. Though Windows 2000 actually didn't suck for a Windows release, it did have a problem of driver scarcity for a short while after its release (mainly because the NT series never had very much hardware support for consumer devices). But its the only Windows version that is decent enough to install in a VM. However, though Vista has a driver scarcity problem, its problems run a lot deeper than that (stability in general, software compatibility, performance).

I remember when XP was first released, a lot of people actually liked it and thought it was the best Windows ever. You don't see that with Vista, it's causing mostly pain for everyone trying to use it. Of course, a lot of users of XP had upgraded from the horrible piece of crap that was 98SE or even ME, so that may have something to do with it. The thing about XP was they actually got backwards compatibility mostly right. For those upgrading from 2000, there wasn't really any problems. Even people upgrading from 98SE didn't have too much to fuss about. The problems with Vista's compatibility are tremendous in comparison. There's just no excuse for this kind of shit. I didn't think XP was particularly great (crappy new GUI and bad security) despite its few good features (multi-user support and remote desktop), but at least it was usable for most people.

Vista is a home user OS

[flyingfsck]

Vista was not designed for business use. I don't see why businesses would want to use it. Vista was designed to be a game and movie platform - that doesn't make sense in a business setting.

Re:What the hell?

[ozmanjusri]

This article is major FUD and bullshit.

Recommended Retail Pricing (RRP) is as follows:

Vista SKUs Recommended Retail Price (AU)
Windows Vista Home Basic $385
Windows Vista Home Basic Upgrade $199
Window Vista Home Premium $455
Window Vista Home Premium Upgrade Academic $179
Window Vista Home Premium Upgrade $299
Windows Vista Ultimate $751
Windows Vista Ultimate Upgrade $495
Windows Vista Business $565
Windows Vista Business Upgrade $379

Ain't it great to have a monopoly?

Human nature

[clyde_cadiddlehopper]

Reading about MS-{u name it} on slashdot is like listening to chatter about dormitory cafeteria chow: 1) most folks gripe about the lack of choices but eat whatever is served anyway; 2) dorm food blandly satisfies daily requirements of the masses while neither killing nor thrilling anyone. 3) a few holdouts cook up their own stew on a bunsen burner (for "free as in beer" while taking on all of the shopping, prep, and cleanup);

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

And the best part of the deal? All those shitty downloadable Windows "games" can't be installed!

What about those shitty downloadable Linux games? Bugsquish, anyone?

Link?

[crossmr]

I know we're all pitchforks and torches when it comes to Microsoft around here, but if we're going to link to some blog with its biased editorializing, think we could link to maybe the Microsoft page on this? Heaven forbid someone actually want the information from the horse's mouth.

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[Phoobarnvaz]

What with the stupidly slow file copy problem, the increased hardware requirements (even if you disregard the graphics card), the DRM...

Was one of those who downloaded & installed the beta/RC's of Vista last year. The longest time I left it on my PC (2 GB of PC3200...3.08 Ghz P4...128 MB ATI card & over 500 GB of HDD space) was about an hour. That was even running down to one of the popular Tex-Mex restaurants to get something to eat & having my meal at the keyboard.

Even on my PC...it ran like I was attempting to run XP on a 386SX-20 with 4 MB of memory. Being asked if I wanted to make sure that I REALLY wanted to do whatever drove me crazy...as well as ATTEMPTING to find everything I could to shut off the eye candy to get some better response. The next thing I was waiting on was the Vista lady in the black dress with a ruler smacking my knuckles as I was trying to shut off something that Microsoft thought needed to be turned on. After that...was expecting to be pushed down the stairs in my chair...as the Vista lady glides back to her perch.

Perhaps the closest OS to running like Vista on my PC was any version of Solaris before 10.0. Nothing worked right...but I did have an enterprise-level OS to run a few pieces of software on.

Re:Companies will can XP when it goes out of suppo

[Anonymous Coward]

"Within 5 years companies will want their OSes to be portable across hardware. If a generic-box-PC fails they'll want to take their HD out of the failing generic-PC box and put it in another generic-box-PC which may have a completely different CPU and motherboard."
===
Really? Do you get paid for such predictions?
You sound like a Gartner slob..
Do you dazzle young ladies with such insightful genius while other morons mod you 'interesting'?

Sheesh!!

Hint:
Such functionality has been desirable for decades ever since the first IT tech swapped his first HD to another box and discovered.. "WTF?!?! I need new drivers???"

Case in point, right here

[Anonymous Coward]

I just received a brand new Sony Ultra-portable 1.3GHZ, 2GB ram, 100GB 5400rpm laptop with Vista Business loaded.
Here begins the bitchfest!!!!!

From pushing the power button, it takes 1min 30s to get to the log in prompt. From there, it takes 4 FUCKING minutes to log in, load ALL the default crap in the systray, and whatever onscreen windows it needs to display. Yes I know default OEM installs are bloated and usually have a bunch of junk that isn't needed, but THAT is HIGHLY unacceptable for ANY OS, much lest the 'Brand New Windows'.

I've used Vista a few times before, but getting handed a fresh machine and seeing VISTA in action from the get-go, is HIGHLY disappointing.

If I can't get this BRAND new install to a performance point that is equal to if not BETTER than what XP runs at, VISTA gets wiped and XP gets installed. Period.

The majority of my USERS are power users, and know there way around Windows better than most. I'm sure as hell NOT going to give them something that is going to hinder their productivity, and increase user complaints to my end. Upon first appearances, VISTA will do both.

Pay attention Microsoft. You may have just paved the way for 'Linux', and not even realized it.

/Linux, Windows, they're tools....
//I prefer to use that which is more effecient for my job. Linux.

Re:Case in point, right here

[fyngyrz]

Not to rub salt in the wound, but my Macbook Pro boots in about 20 seconds from power on to "do anything you want" unless it's just had a software upgrade and has to prod the hardware on the way to restarting. Something to consider, anyway.

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[slapout]

Windows 2000 was targeted at business. Windows XP was the first stable OS that Microsoft targeted at home users.

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Before you go overboard with your conspiracy theory, consider this:

This is Slashdot. Home to the world's IT experts, with access to the world's computers. IT experts that work for big businesses, and are responsible for hundreds (if not thousands) of potential Vista licences. They realise that there is no good reason to introduce delay (intentionally or unintentionally), especially when used in a business context, and the business would be paying a couple of hundred dollars per computer to upgrade. Such a move would be sheer stupidity, and Microsoft is not stupid (I gotta give them credit for that, at least). If, perhaps, you could have demonstrated that it only affected home editions of Vista, I might have believed that, but as it stands, it just seems an unfortunate symptom of some other problem.

XP is much better than W2K on laptops

[Werrismys]

XP vs W2K:
Using removable media is much smoother under W2k.
Much faster loading time for the system to get into login screen.
More reliable power saving modes.
Less NTFS corruption on certain models of laptops.

W2K is lighter than XP, but when you turn off all the extra bloat, now in 2007 XP SP2 is better than W2K for most tasks and the memory usage is about the same.

Every MS OS Is Still Being Used

[Ngarrang]

I would be far more interested in seeing a survey from every business sector of what old OSes are still in active use. I refuse to believe that my company is the odd duck with our DOS, Win95, and Win98 installs still running multi-million dollar machines. And the consumer PCs are probably just as fragmented with older OSes.

Re:Every MS OS Is Still Being Used

[Anonymous Coward]

In my network there is one Win98 box, and the rest of the company I think has at least one copy of every version of Windows there is besides 3.1 and ME. Our server room is all NT. I think.

I'm not the IT guy here, I'm just the "typesetter" who runs the cheap machines (mostly Mac 0S 8.6) that spit out the goods for our multi-hundred thousand dollar machines to run product (monthly inbound about a mil). Dunno if that's in parity with what kind of business use you're talking about. I am tight with our MIS guy, and have lots of fun making my network either work with or surpass all the stuff he's got going on (plus our outside vendors for website - dot net something). I do know that the switch to XP was painful and slow, only done when necessary (or when a manager wanted new shiny).

As for the average joe, I do at least listen when friends (and strangers) find out I'm a "computer guy" and they need help with their home system. I've seen XP mostly, but also a lot of instances of 98. Have yet to see any Vista in the home or in the workplace....

Re:Companies will can XP when it goes out of suppo

[infiniphonic]

Managers always take the wuss way out. Little to no accountability is the norm.

Ubuntu

[Das Auge]

I when through the same train of logic that you did...and I switched to Ubuntu four months ago.

I also purchased Crossover. Now, under Ubuntu, I run two versions of office (XP and 2003), Dreamweaver 8, Flash 8, Photoshop CS, and Amibroker (stock tracking). I was already using FireFox in windows, so that was a no-brainer.

In other words, you don't have to wait. :)

Oh man ...

[Bearpaw]

Just the thought of going to a CompUSA to buy Microsoft Vista gave me the sort of feeling I'd associate with wading through raw sewage in order to get a cheap hammer and a supply of nails to drive into my head.

I'd rather go someplace nice and use a nail gun, thanks.

irrelevant, forced OEM preloads = $$ gravy train

[Locutus]

financially, this means nothing to Microsoft and the press given to this is worth more than anything. OEM pre-installations of ANY version of Microsoft Windows is what continues Microsofts massive profit gravy train. The fact that OEMs are forced to put MS Windows Vista on most, if not all, shipped units is all that matters and any discussions(press, PR, etc) otherwise is just a peripheral expense to make it seem like it really matters. It took over 2 years before businesses 'accepted' MS Windows XP even though there was a huge hardware upgrade expense and the EULA changes gave Microsoft 'legal' rights to extract information from every MS Windows XP system.

So it is a waste of time/effort discussing if MS Windows Vista will fail or not and if there's any financial impact on MSFT as a result. They will keep extracting profits from OEMs for Windows Vista immediately and for Windows XP for the next few years. Only when OEMs and/or businesses start pre-installing Mozilla products and/or OpenOffice can there be any worthwhile discussions of Microsoft Windows productlines. IMO. Nothing else effects the monopoly control and gravy train as much.

LoB

Wow what a 'tard

[Anonymous Coward]

n/t

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[Anonymous Coward]

how do you handle centrally managed user accounts and email accounts?

Not quite true

[davidwr]

With all the bad press Vista is getting, it's not the safe option.

Until 2012, the safe option is to stay with XP.

Microsoft has a couple years to turn Vista into a safe option. Otherwise, managers will be left with the question "what tried and true option do I have to migrate away from XP before 2012?" and find the answer may be "none that are risk-free."

Re:Not quite true

[Opportunist]

Until that bad press arrives at a paper a manager would read, it is. As long as Wired and /. carry the story and not ... erh... well, whatever a manager would read, they don't even know the problem exists.

Yes, their techs will cringe and ponder the virtues of dropping from the window in... scratch that, it's no use jumping out of the basement, but managers often don't even know yet that Vista ain't the next big thing. It's not on their radar yet 'cause so far I doubt the business magazines have picked up on the issue.

Oooh, that hurt!

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

It's popular and trendy to hate Microsoft and Vista; heaven forbid you should think for yourselves.

Might I point out that it's also trendy to oppose authority and/or public opinion too? As in, "everyone believes X, so I'd better believe Y".

Source of information?

[Secrity]

What is your source indicating the upgrade rate for Feisty Fawn?

Re:Companies will can XP when it goes out of suppo

[PhoenixOne]

Why limit yourself to having to move the hard drive? I want to sit down at any PC, enter a username/password, and have my entire desktop show up exactly like I left it.

I remember being able to do this in the 1990's (workstation). I'm not sure why you couldn't do it better today.

Hint to Microsoft

[davidwr]

The technology exists to install "all base drivers" that are on the install CD and and/or service packs so you CAN do exactly this.

Base drivers means anything you need to get your or any other machine up and running with generic functionality, provided those drivers weren't too exotic or too new to be on the original CD. It includes basic-chipset/mobo stuff, basic video, basic keyboard/mouse, floppy, basic IDE, and for newly developed OSes common USB, firewire, and SATA/SATA-RAID chipsets. You can argue whether it includes LAN or WLAN functionality or not, I would say these days it does. It does not include fancy video, audio, or most other features that are not needed to get the system up and running.

Installing base drivers takes extra space and slows down the boot process as the system determines just which which USB driver or which LAN driver to load. If speed is a concern, make "probe all base drivers and load the right ones" a boot-menu option.

The technology also exists to prompt the user to insert a floppy or CD with additional drivers during startup time, if necessary for new equipment like SATA drivers or new LAN drivers on older OSes like XP.

If MS installed Windows XP so it included "all base drivers" so I could move my drive in any computer that is "out of the box compatible" with XP to any other "out of the box compatible," and the "F6" option for new device drivers did more than just disk drivers, they would be set.

just for clarification on the WTF question

[davidwr]

Such functionality has been desirable for decades ever since the first IT tech swapped his first HD to another box and discovered.. "WTF?!?! I need new drivers???"

"WTF?!?! I need new drivers???" isn't a problem as long as I can boot the machine, get online, and install them.

"WTF?!?! I get a BSOD" after you replaced a fried motherboard or moved a drive from a dead PC to a spare is a big problem.

More details, please!

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

For example, it won't play some things unless there is a secure path to the output device.

Under what conditions? Is it just if it has a recognised form of DRM on it?
It can invalidate software remotely that is identified as a problem by the vendor.Got any specific examples?

Re:More details, please!

[Maxo-Texas]

They've remotely disabled a DVD playing software (you must upgrade) because it was identified to have a DRM hole.

I'm not sure to the extent of their control

I do not think that I could use any open source dvd player under Vista like i could under XP or other OS's. If it uses certain system functions then it must be secure to use them. That typically means some kind of security certificate which means a small pile of money.

I do not think it limits software which is not part of the system however. So if you had completely divorced libraries, you'd probably be okay. However, I think support to lock out that software and those libraries if they were identified as a problem is present. I think this is unlikely unless it was egregarious but the possibility is there.

All of the security and DRM upgrades seem to be designed to block open source and to control my computer for the content providers. The claim is they are there for anti-virus but we had day zero exploits so I have to wonder if they were more serious about stopping me from playing a movie than they were about stopping viruses and botkits.

Re:More details, please!

[Maxo-Texas]

Here is one example:
http://forums.pcpitstop.com/lofiversion/index.php/ t134757.html
---
I get the following error when trying to play a DVD. My guess is an video driver problem:

Error Message Reads:
"Windows Media Player cannot play this DVD because there is a problem with digital copy protection between your DVD drive, decoder, and video card. Try installing an updated driver for your video card."

Re:More details, please!

[11223]

Yes; I have similar problems when I try to play a DVD over DVI-out to my HDTV from my XP MCE machine. When I use a component connection, everything works swimmingly.

I know about the protected content output path for "premium" content, but AFAICT no such content exists today, and it's unlikely that you'd be able to play it at all under XP. I haven't seen Vista do anything more to cripple regular DVD playing than XP already did.

thin clients have plusses and minuses

[davidwr]

You can do that today with a thin client or with a roaming profile in XP or a network-based home directory in Unix.

Both have their plusses and minuses compared to "one PC per user" setups. If network bandwidth is plentiful a network-based home directory is a good solution. If it's really plentiful and your servers are beefy enough, thin clients work wonders.

None of this matters

[simon_hibbs2]

I worked for Ericsson until the end of 2006 and all of their corporate desktops, bar a very few specific exemptions, run Windows 200 to this very day. They're not alone either, the big corps are extremely conservative about these things and frankly 2000 does everything they need just fine. This is changing, it's harder and harder to get maintained drivers for the latest hardware, but frankly what special hardware do 90% of corporate desktops need to support? Not much.

Is this a disaster for Redmond? Are they gnashing their teeth at this awful failure at Ericsson? Of course not, it's really no big deal. The corporations pay just the same for 2000 as they do for XP. MS does need to keep maintain a fresh and modern code base to stay competitive in many niches (games, multimedia apps, development tools, servers, new specialist hardware, etc) but the fact that Windows 2000 is fine for the vast majority of users is no pain for them because the revenues still keep rolling in anyway.

With Vista there is a new element and that's Microsoft's efforts to advance the API so that new compelling multimedia and advanced communications enabled applications will provide a new lock-in to Vista. This will probably work. Vista already has a vastly greater market penetration than all the Linux desktops put together, and if it doesn't already surpass the Mac (like the one I'm writing this on) it will soon, so windows developers will have no qualms about adopting the new Vista APIs.

Sorry, but it's the truth.

Linux for the win?

[Zoko Siman]

I think a key factor that unicies have in advantage over windows is that, you really don't have to worry about OS upgrades. You can have software from 1992 running still and be running YourDistributions newest version. Upgrades the OS and things still run. What IMHO throws business off from Vista is that they JUST probably got settled with with XP. You know how it goes, new OS comes out (XP) you spend time waiting for your software to get rewritten for it, and tested, then spend time deploying it, then spend time training on it, then spend time getting your users onto it. Vista comes out now and people ARE happy with what they have. In fact, the last thing I'd want as a sysadmin is to have to upgrade now. Everything is settled down, you would have to have a very compelling reason, more so than "We have aero, and sidebar, and DX10." As I see it, there is no compelling reason to move to Vista.

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[Strudelkugel]

Instead of paying $1200 for a decent office computer that can run Vista smoothly, I can pay $600 for a computer with Linux compatible hardware

I had to get a new sound card and NIC to run Vista on my six year old PC. Total cost: $50. I have run Linux on it as well. Total cost: Time to download an ISO. It's amazing how many people think Vista requires an expensive hardware upgrade. It doesn't. I'm not sure why you would have spend so much to upgrade your hardware to run Linux or Vista.

Those Persian rugs

[mikerich]

'Windows Vista is starting to look like those Persian rug stores which are always having a "closing down" sale... Unlike Vista, Persian rugs only contain a single flaw.

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[tftp]

In addition to that, XP could be set up to be indistinguishable from Win2K in practically all aspects, and it ran all Win2K software, and it contained some usable improvements (ClearType, more USB goodies, built-in firewall eventually, and some more.) Win2K drivers worked on XP, and there was no need to upgrade the hardware. There were only two versions of XP, clearly marked "for home" and "for work", easy to understand, and they left no room for a doubt. So there was a good reason to buy XP instead of Win2K if you were buying one of them anyway; but there was less of a reason to upgrade - and many people delayed upgrading for years.

Vista however is different from previous Windows OSes, runs fewer applications, has tons of broken drivers, has performance issues and requires hardware upgrades, and has new features that nobody asked for. XP does the same job faster, better and requires no retraining. There are so many versions, with different feature sets and prices, it creates a Buridan's donkey problem (a customer would rather buy nothing than to decide on what to buy.) Assuming that DirectX 10 is backported to XP (as it seems to be), the first and last theoretically valid reason for moving to Vista is gone.

MS should offer featureful stripped down version

[failedlogic]

There are some freeware packages that let you make unattended installs of Windows 2000, XP and 2003. Not sure about Vista. I've been able to get the Windows XP install CD down to about 200 MB using this. I've removed the installation of some of the Windows services right from the CD and my PIII 800 w/ 256 MB of RAM is running XP with under 50 MB of memory usage at idle. Why can't MS let you do this with XP without resorting to 3rd party software? And why can't they offer it for Vista.

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[3choTh1s]

As others have said, it must be a driver issue. I can move a few gigabytes around and play videos no problem(my video collection just never seems to be in the right spot for my tastes). Also my folders open very smoothly in the start menu although I don't use them that much since I'm used to just typing for the application that I want. And this is all on much less powerful hardware than you have. I'm using a Black MacBook with a C2D T7200, 1GB of RAM and a Intel GMA950. Smooth as butter. If there was incompatibilities with the software I was running then yes I'd still be using XP with it. But Since I don't have any, I'm very happy with the way Vista behaves.

$1200 came from?

[tknd]

Where are you getting $1200 from? Dell will happily sell you computers with Windows Vista Business (that's the version without the games or media center installed) for under $500.

Also I've given Openoffice a chance, I really have. But there are some compatibility issues when saving a document as a .doc (they don't appear as they should in MS Word) and there are an awful lot of lacking features. It's the same reason why I'm forced to use Photoshop instead of GIMP because Photoshop is always many steps ahead of GIMP. The same goes for office.

Re:$1200 came from?

[Seraphim_72]

Your $500 Dell + $400 + $600 = $1500, I would say he is being generous.

As for your OOo claim, here is a solution, save them in thier native format and send them on. I have never understood peoples fascination with *having* to save as a .doc file. I work as a .NET developer in a 100% microsoft shop, I even have Office 2k7 installed and do you know what, my boss gets my time sheets as an .ods file. Obnoxious? Maybe, but *having* to have it in an excel format is obnoxious as well, it is just an accepted obnoxiousness. The software to read it and understand it is free, send them a link, they are adults and can figure it out. Incidentally the only time my boss has ever said anything about the format - was the one time I used excel and sent it as an excel document, he actually called me to ask if I had sent the right document.

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[gad_zuki!]

>when you can buy a cheaper, more reliable computer?

A couple reasons:

1. You have incredibly simplistic needs (a browser and a basic office suite), most companies need a lot more.

2. Legacy apps. Inertia. Exchange,etc.

3. The money is there/has been earmarked.

4. Boss ignorance and fear of change.

5. Support contracts. Not to mention the lack of a 'standard' linux distro.

6. Retraining of developers, IT, etc.

7. Retraining of users.

8. Compatibiliy with proprietary file formats from external clients/partners.

9. pDA/blackberry support.

etc etc

Look, its great that a simple business like yours doesnt need the pricey wintel stuff, but its a little foolish to assume that if it works for you it should work for everyone.

You're skipping versions

[tknd]

You forgot 98se, ME, and Win2k. The correct order should be:

3.1, 95, 98, 98se, ME, Win2k, WinXP, and now Vista.

There's also the previous NT line (Win NT 4.0) mixed somewhere in there. In all cases except 3.1 to 95, there was little reason to upgrade. The only reason people were so infatuated with it was because people (then) liked shiny (if it was newer it was obviously better even though win98 ran slower than win95 in some tasks on the same machine). Now people are more practical and realize that shiny often means pain. I remember loading up win98 on the same computer with win95 and my immediate reaction was: it looks better but my start menu takes a lot longer to open.

Re:You're skipping versions

[lubricated]

win98se was just some downloads. Win2k was a different product line.
I didn't mention me, but it is as much of an upgrade as vista and didn't sell well either.

Microsoft has blundered badly

[fyngyrz]

With Microsoft, they're about sales. So they're going to do whatever they can to get sales.

Well then, they shouldn't have DRM'd their operating system with "activation"; they shouldn't have broken all those applications; they shouldn't have bought into consumer-unfriendly technologies, particularly in the area of media but also in hardware; they shouldn't have forbidden any of Vista's versions to run under virtualization; they shouldn't have made using Vista a nightmare of clicking away security popups; they shouldn't have insisted on proprietary, insecure solutions like ActiveX; they definitely shouldn't charge for development tools; and of course, the predatory business practices don't make them any friends, either.

Me, I jumped ship and I'm not looking back. XP's activation DRM was the last straw.

Re:Microsoft has blundered badly

[Danga]

they shouldn't have DRM'd their operating system with "activation"

I agree with most of your points but not the one above. MS has the most pirated OS on earth, what do you expect them to do? Just keep making it easy for people to run illegitimate copies? If you are in the software business then I would hope you undertand how big of a problem pirated software is at the consumer level (I am guessing you are not based on your view piont but I could be wrong). One of the things I work on at my job is a consumer level data recovery application for CD/DVD media and pirated copies of it can be found ALL OVER the internet as well as our forensic level products. If we just turned a blind eye to it and didn't try to increase the security of our applications to protect our software we would go broke. That doesn't sound fair to me. If you have a need for something I have put long, hard hours into then I would hope you would give me the decency and actually pay for it. That just does not seem to be the case with many, many people, they just think everything should be free. I wouldn't say we have hardcore DRM but we do take measures, including activation, to protect our software.

Seriously, what is the big deal about entering a code to activate software you have purchased? Does the whole 10 seconds it takes matter to you that much? As long as they do it right (ie keep it simple and don't lock out valid customers), which I believe MS has done, then I don't have a problem with it. It is very unintrusive, takes nearly no time at all, and even though it wants to revalidate 1-2 times a year the time it takes is minimal. Really the only people activation hurts is those who want to buy one copy of some software package and install it on as many machines as they wish. I am sorry but if you bought one license that describes it being only a license for one machine then don't bitch about not being able to run it on more than that.

The only thing I can think of that would make you happy yet would still help them protect their software would be instead of activation they would ship a USB dongle with every retail copy of Windows which you would of course need to have plugged in to let the OS run. Would that make you happy?

Get back to me when you have a good arguement about how the "activation DRM" is such a bad thing to have.

Re:Microsoft has blundered badly

[Merdalors]

I agree with your position.
On a separate note, wouldn't it be easy to manufacture counterfeit dongles?

Re:Microsoft has blundered badly

[jonbryce]

What I don't expect them to do is introduce measures that reduce the number of copies they sell. That is what they appear to have done.

Their duty to the shareholders is to increase the number of sales. Reducing the number of "pirated" copies is not an aim, and something they should only do if it increases the number of sales.

Re:Microsoft has blundered badly

[Danga]

On a separate note, wouldn't it be easy to manufacture counterfeit dongles?

I don't think it would be easy but of course I bet it could be done. It still would be much more difficult for the average joe to buy a counterfeit dongle rather than just get an activation key from somewhere. Thats what it is about, stopping the average joe, the hardcore people are not the majority so much less has to be done to worry about them.

There are some really good USB dongle makers out there that provide dongles for software protection. At my company we recently switched to WIBU Systems dongles for our forensic products and they are great. They can be used to encrypt/decrypt portions of the executables as well as to store encrypted data and are easy to setup so software will ONLY run if the dongle is plugged in. They are extremely easy to use as well. Check them out here:

http://wibu.com/wibukey.php

We previously had been using Rainbow Technologies Sentinel keys but they were a big headache. You had to have a file license tied to each individual dongle which caused many headaches when customers lost their original install discs among many other problems. Read about the Sentinel dongle here:

http://www.safenet-inc.com/products/sentinel/hardw are_keys.asp

Working with the Rainbow dongles really made me dispise dongles because people called in with problems ALL the time. After we switched to the other brand nearly a year ago I have only had ONE person call in with a dongle problem and it was because they had not installed the driver for it. My view of dongles did a 180 and I think they are great for software protection now. Another neat thing about the Wibu dongles is they can have many "slots" in them so that you don't need a separate dongle for all of the different companies software out there. If another company uses the Wibu dongles and you already have a Wibu dongle that has slots open then the new company can send you a file to reprogram your key so that it can be used for the new software as well. Granted, this hasn't really happened in my experience but at least the option is there. Another cool thing is if the software you are using is configured for it you can even "share" a dongle over a network and the licenses in it can be "checked out" so you don't have to hassle with carrying the dongles around.

Another thing is I have not heard of the Wibu dongles being cracked so they seem pretty secure in my eyes. I am sure if they were put into use at the magnatude of coming with every copy of Windows Vista that much more effort would be put into cracking them but I still think it could work since the majority of people would not hassle with ordering a counterfeit dongle and would probably end up just purchasing the software.

Re:Microsoft has blundered badly

[Danga]

How is activation going to significantly reduce the number of copies they sell? Okay, it might make them lose .000000001% of sales because someone is mad they have to spend 10 seconds typing in the activation code but other than those people I don't think it would result in any lost sales. It actually might result in increased sales since people who actually want to use the new OS but can't pirate it anymore will be forced to buy it if they want to use it.

I agree their duty to the shareholders is the increase sales but I also think their duty is to protect their IP. So by requiring activation it requires MINIMAL extra effort on the end user side while making it significantly much more harder to run pirated copies of the software. This in turn will force the people who really want to use the new OS to actually buy it instead of just getting a pirated copy which in turn will result in higher sales. The people who would have pirated it but never actually bought it will also be shut out and since they never would have bought it in the first place no sales are lost there either.

Re:Microsoft has blundered badly

[fyngyrz]

Seriously, what is the big deal about entering a code to activate software you have purchased?

Argh. I'm gonna rant here. It isn't directed at you, it's directed at the stupidity of DRM.

The big deal is that down the road, they may, for reasons of policies I have no control over, decide to deny me that activation. They may do so because XP has gotten old, just as they dropped support for Win98. They may do it because some asshat with a serial number generator has put my serial number out on the web. They may do it because I changed my hardware around too many times to suit them. They may not be around to do it because some better company - like Apple - or OS - like linux or OSX - arose and kicked their ass, or because they finally got destroyed in court for being ruthless, monopolistic, cold hearted business trolls, or because not enough people upgraded to Vista or Office Version 2732, and their other operations (like XBox) lose money, or because a sinkhole opened up and swallowed them, or because there was a huge earthquake, or because a meteor hit them, or simply because there was a mistake in their database / activation process, or even temporarily if their activation system is down or thinks I'm on one of the many government "unacceptables" lists.

If I give a company $$$ for an OS or any other program for that matter, I expect them to give me the OS and ANYTHING I NEED TO MAKE IT WORK and then never, ever, interfere again unless I (a) ask them to or (b) they ask me, and I say "yes." Activation is *bullshit* DRM and as such it is the very lowest form of subtly screwing over your customers. Piracy... the bloody pirates aren't inconvenienced in the least. They've got activation tools, cracking, hacking and whacking tools, all manner of leverage and time, and they could care less about the DRM other than as a source of much amusement. I'm a legitimate, ethical user, and I darned well BUY all my software and I neither have the time nor the inclination nor the comfort level to go scrabbling around for illegal tools to re-enable my LEGITIMATE software purchase if a company has any of the above issues or any of the no doubt myriad others I've not thought of.

MS has the most pirated OS on earth, what do you expect them to do?

I expect them to do exactly what I do: Arbitrarily treat the paying customers as people you can trust, require an initial gateway that you do your best to control that you open to them when payment is received, and don't do anything that costs your legitimate customers money (like developing activation) or time (like making them activate) or business, data, or worse (like FAILING to activate for ANY reason.) Does my stuff get pirated? Sure it does. It is powerful, highly useful software with broad functionality, so it is doomed to be pirated. You can find pirated copies, or the means to pirate, out there with a cursory look. Do I do anything to screw over the people who give me money for my app in a knee jerk reaction? No - because that would be STUPID. What I do is spend my time making my software more powerful than the competition, I make sure we keep the pricing affordable, and I never, NEVER, treat a paying customer as if he's a pirate, EVEN IF HE BLOODY WELL IS, because if you're NOT a pirate, and I treat you like one, then I am the asshole, and you know what? I'm not the asshole, the pirates are, and I have never been confused about that the way Microsoft, the music industry, the DVD industry, and large portions of the software industry are. And yes, I make more than enough money from my paying customers to be one heck of a happy camper, piracy or not, and even though I'm a very quiet competitor to Adobe with an application that is ver

Re:Microsoft has blundered badly

[thejynxed]

Certain Wibu implementations have been cracked:

http://www.woodmann.com/crackz/Dongles.htm
http://www.woodmann.com/crackz/Tutorials/WibuAnaly sis.zip (file contains a .pdf)

A cracking group offering their "services" to crack Wibu and tons of other stuff:
http://www.djvibe.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1685 (Advertised on this site and may others, they have a rather large catalog of cracked dongle-protected software for sale.)

Someone who took a peak at one of Wibu's dongle solutions and wrote a short paper on how to crack it: http://www.cobra-basket.de/e/Dongle.txt

Note though: Codemeter is considered "secure" even by some crackers still, as a real solution requires the presence of a legit dongle. Brute-forcing it in software would take too long by most people's standards. So to engineer a crack, someone needs the dongle to work off of.

The weakness with dongles will always apparently be the APIs, especially ones that interact with the MS Windows APIs and Registry.

This info was found doing a quick Google search. I am of the opinion however, that Codemeter has been cracked, but the people who have cracked it, make much more money their way (selling their services or cracked software) than telling Wibu AG how they did it and collecting on any bounty offered like during that "hacking contest" they had.

Re:Microsoft has blundered badly

[Danga]

The security using Wibu's system is all dependent on the person implementing it. Wibu does offer an "automatic" way of protecting your executables and I would not be suprised if that way is easily cracked. That is what appeared to be the case with that short paper you linked to. Basically how the automatic way works is you compile your executable and then start up some Wibu application which you aim at the executable, set some parameters, and let it run.

The basic protection basically ties what are called a firmware code (FC) and a software code (SC) to your particular application. Firmware codes are unique to your company while software codes can be set by the company so they can have a different one for different applications. The basic protection basically will only check if your dongle has the right FC and SC combination and if it does then it will let your software start up otherwise it won't.

The nice thing about Wibu keys though is they are very flexible and you can inject protections directly into your source code. However, you can compile your code so that certain parts of the executable are encrypted (for instance maybe the first 500 bytes (you can set it arbitrarily) of certain functions and you can make it different for any function) and they must be unencrypted before that function is called or else bad things will happen since random machine code would attempted to be run. This encryption happens on the dongle so unless they can crack how the encryption for the dongle works this would be very hard to defeat. You can arbitrarily encrypt parts of the executable all over the place and if you do that it would be very difficult to know when something is encrypted or decrypted as long as you always re-encrypt places after they are used. The dongles also contain some memory where you could store encrypted data which may be critical to allow your software to function correctly. It is also very easy to set things up so if a debugger is detected that the software will automatically shut down. WIBU does have an API that is pretty much freely available but even if you have that all of the encryption happens on the dongle so it would still be a very difficult task to crack software that is properly protected. You would basically need to track down every part of the program that is ever encrypted and decrypted as well as find out what is stored on the dongle to make a "dongleless" patch.

Sure, theoretically the software can be cracked but it would take A LOT of work and I would bet that a lot of those sites offering to crack any Wibu protected software would have a hell of a time with my application even if they had a legit dongle. You can't just emulate the dongle which would be needed since that is where the decryption occurs so you would have find and store the unencrypted version of all places that are encrypted.

The weakness with dongles will always apparently be the APIs, especially ones that interact with the MS Windows APIs and Registry.

Very true and that is why we ended up choosing Wibu because they don't do anything stupid like that. Another nice thing about them is they charge you a one time fee to get your FC setup and then you can order as many dongles as you want, when you want, without any annual fees. Another big reason we moved away from Rainbow (now SafeNet I think) is because along with being a PITA to support and use they wanted to charge something rediculous like $12,000 a year annual fee when it previously was like $10,000 less (not exact numbers but what I recall) which is a HUGE jump for one year especially when there is cheaper, better performing alternatives available.

I am of the opinion however, that Codemeter has been cracked, but the people who have cracked it, make much more money their way (selling their services or cracked software) than telling Wibu AG how they did it and collecting on any bounty offered like during that "hacking contest" they had.

I highly doubt it is cracked, the prize for the contest was $4

Re:Microsoft has blundered badly

[drsmithy]

The big deal is that down the road, they may, for reasons of policies I have no control over, decide to deny me that activation. [...]

IF that ever happens, then you have a point (not to mention grounds for a lawsuit).

I expect them to do exactly what I do: Arbitrarily treat the paying customers as people you can trust, require an initial gateway that you do your best to control that you open to them when payment is received, and don't do anything that costs your legitimate customers money (like developing activation) or time (like making them activate) or business, data, or worse (like FAILING to activate for ANY reason.)

How do you identify your legitimate customers ?

Re:Microsoft has blundered badly

[AaronLawrence]

IF that ever happens,

Isn't it inevitable? Do you really think that Microsoft will keep XP activation around forever? Especially once they drop "support" I would assume they would take the approach that activation is part of that. Of course they would be very sorry that you could no longer activate your software, but, well, it isn't supported any more is it?

How do you identify your legitimate customers ?

That's his point - he doesn't. He treats everyone like a legitimate customer, which is what he feels is ethically correct. I for one agree.

Re:Microsoft has blundered badly

[drsmithy]

Isn't it inevitable?

I see no reason to think so.

Do you really think that Microsoft will keep XP activation around forever? Especially once they drop "support" I would assume they would take the approach that activation is part of that. Of course they would be very sorry that you could no longer activate your software, but, well, it isn't supported any more is it?

I expect, they will keep the activation servers running for the entire support lifetime of XP (so, at least 2014) and most likely for some time after that (after all, I can still use Windows update to update Windows 98). Further, as outlined as indicated here, I expect at EOL a patch of some sort will be released that removes the need for activation.

The suggestion that Microsoft will use activation to "force" upgrades is supported by neither historical experience, nor reasonable speculation. It is the epitomy of paranoid fantasy.

However, even on the unlikely, slim chance they don't, I can't imagine there'll be many people trying to run XP in 2015+.

That's his point - he doesn't. He treats everyone like a legitimate customer, which is what he feels is ethically correct. I for one agree.

Sounds like a good way to get used. Although it's probably a reasonable course of action for niche and/or specialised applications. That hardly describes operating systems, however.

Re:Microsoft has blundered badly

[AaronLawrence]

The suggestion that Microsoft will use activation to "force" upgrades is supported by neither historical experience, nor reasonable speculation. It is the epitomy of paranoid fantasy.

Wow cool! I always wanted one of those :)

You have a point, about Windows 98. Still, XP is their first activated product so we don't really know. The end of life disabling of activation is only a vague comment so far - I guess it is not in their license?

Re:Microsoft has blundered badly

[fyngyrz]

IF that ever happens, then you have a point (not to mention grounds for a lawsuit).

And how do you sue a company that has gone out of business? How do you sue one that is compacted debris at the bottom of a meteor crater? What good does it do to sue one who has been attacked by a virus and no longer has the means to activate anyone? How do you sue them and win if your serial number gets out on the net because some hacker cooked it up on a serial number generator?

If you buy software that requires a dongle (which is what this is), if the company goes out of business and your dongle fails, you're out of luck. That program and whatever proprietary data you were manipulating with it are no longer available to you. In the case a CAD system, it would be all your drawings. In the case of an OS, it is everything you were doing. All your programs, all your data.

The point isn't just that Microsoft might elect not to support you, though that is certainly a possibility, the point is that you require them to support you because XP won't work without activation and anything that stops them from activating you not only kills the OS, it locks out all your apps and all your data. Aside from the fact that they put you in this precarious position on purpose, there is little enough reason to trust the company. They have clearly demonstrated predatory, not to mention corrupt, business practices.

Sure, everything seems fine now. Nothing electronic ever breaks, right? And, no company ever goes out of business or does anything that might inconvenience you. That kind of attitude is living in fairyland. We owe it to ourselves and our families not to give people that kind of power over us.

How do you identify your legitimate customers ?

What part of "Arbitrarily treat the paying customers as people you can trust" did you not understand? Also, was I unclear when I wrote about "treating my customers as if they were the people who did something nice for me"?

If those quotes really don't make the point, then bluntly, when someone gives me money for my product, I consider it my obligation to provide them with that product. No strings. No copy protection. No DRM. They can install it on as many machines as they see fit. They can use it all across the office and/or home. They can back it up. They can count on us, for as long as we are around, to back up their purchase for them if they lose the software for any reason. We ask them not to loan it out or give it away, and to justify this request, we explain that the more copies we can sell, the better we are able to support the product. In our turn, we try to make the product something that they want to see supported. We provide a good product, we don't threaten the customer, nor do we put them at risk. That's the basis for our relationship with our customers.

Why? Well, the customer pays with the idea that they fork over money, and in return, they get something they can use. That's the core of the implicit agreement between any merchant and their customers. I decline to presume that the agreement changes when the product at hand is software. Is there risk involved? Certainly. There is risk in any relationship. However, my customers are better served when I assume the risk that they might do something untoward with the software, as opposed to them assuming the risk that I might not be willing or able to keep their software working for them. And it is my strong feeling that serving my customers to the best of my ability is my job. If I can make money at it, then it's a good job. If I can't, I should be doing something else, rather than change the relationship to an adversarial one. As it turns out, it is a good job, so I have continued to do it.

Re:Microsoft has blundered badly

[fyngyrz]

...it's probably a reasonable course of action for niche and/or specialised applications. That hardly describes operating systems, however

It hardly describes our product, either. We make image and animation processing software. Like Photoshop, only with more features and capabilities.

Re:Microsoft has blundered badly

[drsmithy]

The point isn't just that Microsoft might elect not to support you, though that is certainly a possibility, the point is that you require them to support you because XP won't work without activation and anything that stops them from activating you not only kills the OS, it locks out all your apps and all your data.

XP will work for a period of time without activation. There's your "disaster recovery" scenario, Chicken Little.

Aside from the fact that they put you in this precarious position on purpose, there is little enough reason to trust the company.

Right. Because there are so many alternatives for protecting your investment in such a market.

They have clearly demonstrated predatory, not to mention corrupt, business practices.

I can't think of anything Microsoft has done, which other companies do not commonly do. The only difference is when Microsoft do it a hell of a lot more people are affected.

Sure, everything seems fine now. Nothing electronic ever breaks, right? And, no company ever goes out of business or does anything that might inconvenience you. That kind of attitude is living in fairyland. We owe it to ourselves and our families not to give people that kind of power over us.

"But what if..." is no way to live your life.

If those quotes really don't make the point, then bluntly, when someone gives me money for my product, I consider it my obligation to provide them with that product.

How do you identify them ?

(It seems such a simple question. Why is it apparently so hard to answer ?)

Re:Microsoft has blundered badly

[drsmithy]

It hardly describes our product, either. We make image and animation processing software. Like Photoshop, only with more features and capabilities.

In what universe is "image and animation processing software" not "niche" or "specialised" ?

Re:Microsoft has blundered badly

[drsmithy]

You have a point, about Windows 98. Still, XP is their first activated product so we don't really know.

No, we don't.

We can, however, make a reasonable, rational prediction based on past events, and that certainly doesn't encompass Microsoft turning off activation to "force" people to buy Vista.

The whole scenario is, after all, just a more-dramatic-than-usual example of the whole "forced upgrade" myth.

Re:Microsoft has blundered badly

[fyngyrz]

How do you identify them ?

(It seems such a simple question. Why is it apparently so hard to answer ?)

I've answered it twice. You're just ignoring, or misunderstanding, the answer: I identify them when, and because, they pay me. You give me money for my product, you become my customer. Prior to that, at best, you were only a potential customer, and probably not even that. All of my customers are treated the same. Get it now?

As for the rest, you are entitled to make those choices; I decline. As for alternatives, both linux and OSX do not saddle the user with "activation", and should anyone really need an MS OS, there is always Windows 2000, which is basically 99.9% of XP without the eye candy. Which, btw, you can run safely in a sandbox under OSX, without having to accept the risk of MS's continuing security issues.

Re:Microsoft has blundered badly

[fyngyrz]

In what universe is "image and animation processing software" not "niche" or "specialised" ?

The one we live in, of course. Anyone can use such software; because the uses begin with people who have an image they are interested in changing somehow such as removing redeye, cropping, or resizing, and they extend all the way to Hollywood setting someone's hair on fire in HD as they run down a hall, or shooting lightning from someone's fingertips. In between are a massive number of potential users and uses. So to describe our image manipulation software as "niche or specialized" is quite naive.

Re:Microsoft has blundered badly

[drsmithy]

I've answered it twice.

No, you haven't. In fact, you're *still* trying to dodge the question with semantics.

You're just ignoring, or misunderstanding, the answer: I identify them when, and because, they pay me. You give me money for my product, you become my customer. Prior to that, at best, you were only a potential customer, and probably not even that. All of my customers are treated the same. Get it now?

When someone calls up your support line, how do you identify if they are a "paying customer" ?

Re:Microsoft has blundered badly

[drsmithy]

The one we live in, of course. Anyone can use such software; because the uses begin with people who have an image they are interested in changing somehow such as removing redeye, cropping, or resizing, and they extend all the way to Hollywood setting someone's hair on fire in HD as they run down a hall, or shooting lightning from someone's fingertips. In between are a massive number of potential users and uses. So to describe our image manipulation software as "niche or specialized" is quite naive.

You obviously travel in very, very different circles to me if you find there are more than a handful of people lining up to buy software that offers more "image manipulation" capabilities than iPhoto, or the tools that come with pretty much every digital camera sold.

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[JonathanX]

You must be new here.

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[justthinkit]

Windows ME shipped with indexing turned on. This one useless change produced a dog slow machine, right around the time Windows 2000 was what they wanted you to move to.

It happened before. It could happen again. The reason is simple: it will cause people to want a faster computer. No, not /.ers. Average every day people. MS is more than happy with this share of the market.

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[aliquis]

Modded +5!?

Of course Vista will do decent, the only reason it won't is that the next version is so close and it's just a middle step just like WinME was, I think some poeple will stay with XP for now and upgrade at the next version instead, that is "the real" Vista.

Anyway of course it's not a downgrade, it seems much nicer than XP, who cares that it uses more memory? XP uses more memory than MS-DOS 6.22, I still wouldn't rather run dos. Memory are very cheap nowadays anyway, and I rather have the OS make use of it than have it sitting there unused.

Also remember that the OS will stay there for a while, so within two years or so the requirements are even more reasonable.

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[Ajehals]

How do you do that with Vista?

Serious point, for a single workstation Linux is easier to manage (as in centralised user management and single workstation mail etc.., I assume however you are talking about a large network or similar. a large and complex Linux environment is as manageable as any large and complex Windows environment, for the Linux environment you will have to work a little harder to get your point and click centralised GUI a la active directory with all the exchange components in, but at least you wont need to license another Windows OS to do it and you will need even less hardware to do it with. The only negative is that for the windows environment you *can* get away with badly qualified techs and support staff, on Linux you will need at least a few people who know what they are doing.

L2SUBJECT LINE TROLL, U MORON!

[Anonymous Coward]

No FUD here

[p7]

This is not FUD. APC in this case stands for Australian Personal Computing. Here is a link to a story about Vista prices in Australia http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/6154/53/

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[Foolhardy]

OpenGL was supported since around NT 3.51 (long before full Direct3d on NT). For games that used OpenGL + MCI for sound, NT was a fine platform for gaming. For example, the original Unreal runs great on NT 3.51.

Re:MS should offer featureful stripped down versio

[Anonymous Coward]

Becuase they would get sued and people would say how much of a big bad monoploly they have.

Oh wait, that happens on everything they do anyways....

Linux works better with older hardware

[gnuman99]

What is even more important is that Linux will work better with the older hardware as drivers are fixed.

I just got a $600 box to run Vista. It runs but Linux screams! (ok, not literally). Sure, I could add compiz to Gnome and have the weird 3D desktop experience, but that novelty wore off after 30 minutes. I prefer snappy Gnome than a jiggly, spazzing and refocusing Gnome. So, turned off compiz.

Vista, well, the great 3D effects are more annoying than productive. The only thing that is not a real problem is the title bar, the mini-windows in the task bar and windows switching (Alt-Tab). The 3D shuffle is next to useless - why not just have multiple desktops? If OS X comes out with similar, it is a great mistake.

And the programming API is screwed up (see Virtualized Registry and File System). Software designed and misdesigned for Windows 95 works fine. Software designed for Windows 2k and XP will NOT work properly. I don't know what MS was thinking of. All modern software now needs to be updated with their undocumented .manifest files. Manifest files that cause a BSOD on XP. Oy!

Anyway, Linux is a more productive environment than Windows, especially Vista. The 3D effects are distracting!!

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[drinkypoo]

OpenGL was supported since around NT 3.51 (long before full Direct3d on NT).

Sure, but Microsoft's software OpenGL was too slow to actually be useful for anything but a reference implementation, and if you had an OpenGL accelerator for Windows (a relatively rare beast back then, but they could certainly be had) then you weren't using Microsoft OpenGL anyway, you were using the OpenGL that was designed for your card.

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[Anonymous Coward]

"wintel"? the nineties called, they want their clever wordplay back

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[businessnerd]

And the best part of the deal? All those shitty downloadable Windows "games" can't be installed!

The thing is though, Linux has plenty of productivity sucking games. The kdegames package is just loaded with addicting little puzzle games. When I switched my girlfriend over to Linux, she was only upset about the fact that she couldn't play The Sims anymore. I was thrilled, because she couldn't play The Sims anymore. Except now she spends all of her time playing Atlantik and Klickety and a bunch of other weird sounding games with a "k" in front of it.

However, I'm assuming you are talking about all of the "games" that are really just viruses and spyware that will now muck up your precious corporate network. I say good riddance to that crap.

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[Nasarius]

I can't imagine what the "driver issue" could be, especially one that would cause folders in the start menu to take 2-3 seconds to open, but let me open random files without delay. It behaves this way from the moment it's installed. Let's be very clear: this is a Vista issue, not a third-party driver issue.

For the record, I'm using an ASUS P5W motherboard (Intel 975X chipset), and a few SATA drives. I'm entirely willing to believe that Vista is broken only on a subset of hardware, but broken it is.

They could always start spamming to sell it

[bl8n8r]

!vista, 100% legalz!
say no to more slow computer! crazy prices everything vista must go!
$$ all $tock$ ha$ been $la$hed $$, save $$$, why pay more?

-funny part will be the microsoft.com email address will be legit and the link will actually go to a microsoft website.

Re:Companies will can XP when it goes out of suppo

[Ant P.]

Why wait five years to test it in Wine? Why not now? If it's good enough for Google Earth why not everyone?

Re:Remembering the Windows XP days: it wasnt this

[neerolyte]

I dunno where the issue lies exactly but a bios patch on my Compaq laptop (low specs) fixed these issues for me. I suspect it's something to do with checking one of it's security things and having a lag/failure in the test.

Re:What the hell?

[mdhoover]

TFA is an australian magazine and prices are Recommended Prices in Australian Dollars

You touch on another sore point here, Australian vs US prices

Compare the following, AUD pricing converted to USD for apples to apples comparison
Window Vista Home Premium - Australia 378USD, Amazon.com 238USD
Windows Vista Business - Australia 470USD, Amazon.com 269USD
Windows Vista Ultimate - Australia 624USD, Amazon.com 359USD

NOTE: That is comparing full price to full price.

Lets compare Austalian Upgrade pricing to US full pricing
Window Vista Home Premium - Australia (upgrade) 248USD, Amazon.com (US full) 238USD
Windows Vista Business - Australia (upgrade) 315USD, Amazon.com (US full) 269USD
Windows Vista Ultimate - Australia (upgrade) 411USD, Amazon.com (US full) 359USD

Indeed, we aussies get royally screwed and pay MORE for the upgrade than you do the Full version

Re:Companies will can XP when it goes out of suppo

[Anonymous Coward]

The manager will ponder what course to take.

Spoken like someone with no experience but with an urge to pontificate. Politician or kid?

Here's the deal. The manager will not ponder ANYTHING. The decision will be corporate-wide and anyone with "manager" in his or her title will not have any input into it. Companies are not the wild west.

Paper cup.

[mutrax]

What 'll be next? A MS sales rep with a paper cup on the sidewalk of a computer store?

specific use vs. broad compatibility

[davidwr]

When it's done, Wine will have a declared set of API compatibility with Windows. It may not be 100% of what Windows {insert flavor here} does, but 100% of what they declare works will work just like a Windows programmer would expect it to work.

It's not there yet.

If my home-grown or store-bought applications use APIs outside the "we are working on it" set, then I'm pretty much toast as far as Wine is concerned.

If my home-grown or store-bought apps use APIs that Wine claims they are working on, then someday my apps should work just fine.

If, like Google, I'm using APIs that are already done or at least done enough that my app will work, then hurrah I can start using Wine immediately.