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Microsoft to Simplify Downgrades From Vista to XP
castrox writes "Microsoft has noted that many corporate users want to run XP instead of Vista. They are now simplifying the downgrade process for top OEMs. Currently, all OEMs must call Microsoft whenever a downgrade is done. After the new procedure is put into place, OEMs may submit batches of keys to Microsoft online. According to the Microsoft blog on ZDNet, the 'downgrade software' will still need to be supplied by the end user. The deal is rather perplexing — it does not seem like you can convert the license since the only eligible versions for downgrading is Ultimate and Business. The company has more details available in a pdf document online."
In our case, atleast with XP/2000, we were a 2000 shop at the time, but OEMs shipped with XP. So, basically, we would get a computer in, clear it and install 2000 instead. Same deal here, just a generation later. Not really sure what the big deal is though, atleast in Canada, an XP license allowed you to downgrade to 2000, as an Office 2k3 license would permit you to install 2000 if you preferred.
We are talking about non-enterprise customers here who do not have a volume license key. So, they have to wipe Vista off the PC, install XP and activate it. In order to activate it, they need individual keys from the OEM/Microsoft for each system. We have an Enterprise agreement with Microsoft, which makes the process much easier. We just image the new PC with an XP image that has our VLK.
why don't corporations just install XP?
If I read TFA correctly, the deal here is that you are buying Vista, but you get to run XP until you are ready to move the machine to Vista. If you just bought XP you'd have to buy a Vista upgrade later.
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
I will shortly be doing the experiment and trying to convert an old PC to Vista (an old Dell with a 1.7 Ghz P4 that came with Win ME). I upgraded the ram to 768 MB when I upgraded it to XP SP2. It has a nice LCD monitor as of 3 months ago when the 17" monitor I got with my Win 95 box finally died. I have ordered a copy of Vista Home Basic, which has all the security functionality of the full Vista versions. I will set it to optimize for performance and I will have my wife and children run as normal users only.
If you are using marginal HW with Vista, turn off the sidebar and under advanced system properties set it to optimize for performance. This will blow your UI back to a 2K/XP classic look, but it helps a lot. I have been running Vista and LongHorn server beta builds on old HW since pre beta 1 days.
My friends tell me that what the summary reports is accurate:
This is true for home users. Your Vista license can not be used for XP, even if you simply upgraded. When you transfer your XP license to Vista, M$ won't give it back to you with their "Please let me use my OS" validation page. So, if you make the mistake of "upgrading" XP to Vista, you will have to buy XP again if you don't like Vista. Let's just say that people have not been happy with that and hope that M$ fixes it real soon.
Business users, I'm sure, get the usual double M$ tax. They pay the M$ tax when they buy the computer and they pay it again when they buy the OS and actual software, assurance plans and other nonsense.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I work for a university in the US -- this doesn't affect us one bit. No matter what the machines come with, we wipe the drive and drop our XP image to it (a lab/classroom image or a faculty image, depending on where the machine will end up).
.img file that is called by isolinux/syslinux from the UBCD4.0 custom disk I also created) to add the .DOS driver and PCI ID string so the NIC detection works properly.
When I build the image, any new models we receive have their drivers added to the image with this as part of our sysprep. We use Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 2.x (we use the DOS based DeployCenter to actually drop the image from our central imaging server to the workstations). I also have to modify the DeployCenter boot floppy (stored as an
I kinda went off topic there, however, the point is we have a MS Campus agreement for ~2000 seats (we are somewhere around 1600 to 1800, actually) for XP/Office2003/Vista/Office2007, so no matter what the computers we order come with, it's wiped and replaced with our own image (without even allowing the OEM drive to do its first boot).
The only people I see this affecting are businesses that use the machines as they come in, loading software on a one-by-one basis. It won't affect LARGE businesses (or those in the same situation as the university).
bork bork bork!
DX10 shaders?
Actually, if you read the PDF, it says this:
It's the Vista Business and Vista Ultimate vesions. Get it right, Slashdot.
The Vista downgrade process is horrible beyond words and we've had cases where it would of have been cheaper to buy an oem XP than pay for our time.
What the current process is - and I have a "manager's manager" (a guy somewhere in North America) on tape with this - is that you install using any legit media and a legit xp cd key.
Then, when the PC fails activation (which it will, if you've used the same key a few times), you call in, do the song and dance with the crap voice recognition system, talk to an Indian and hopefully* get an activation key.
This method will no doubt cause us problems in the future with genuine advantage, etc, but there isn't a damn thing we can do about that.
*I say hopefully because Microsoft reps don't know what the hell they are talking about and different call centers will get you different answers / route you to the wrong people. We've had a call where 2 managers were yelling at each other in Indian in a very heated argument while we sat wondering "wtf". Getting a key normally takes about 2 hours although we've got them in as little as 5 minutes after we've passed through the pointless activation voice system. The process is generally quicker now, although we dread calling. Oh... and we've gotten completely conflicting information - although MS is not supposed to generate xp keys, I've had several keys generated for me (if you bully the female Filipino csrs, they generally do stuff they apparently shouldn't)
Of course, for customer satisfaction, we've written most of this off - it totals in the thousands of dollars at this point. We've been pleading with Microsoft (we have system builder status, but we usually act as resellers) to get us a better process, because this is a waste of our time, but nothing has happened. False promises, missed deadlines, et al. OEMs were supposed to have a policy in place months ago, but as far as I know, not a single large company (from Seanix to HP to Dell and Lenovo) has the capability for their phone technicians to generate an XP cd key to solve this problem.
We're especially hit hard because we mainly deal with small businesses - usually under 75 people (we're in a fairly small town, so those businesses have slowly grown to get that "big"). If our customers were bigger, they'd use volume license agreements. As it is, they don't and we can't exactly say "fuck it" and install a corp edition w/ a wga crack which is what I've heard some of the smaller companies around here are doing.
Furthermore, I worked for Vista support for a few weeks during the rollout (if anyone wants a shitty, low paying job, head up to Sutherland in Vernon, BC) nobody knew what they were doing and we got conflicting information during training. When we were sitting on the line during the downgrade process, none of the indian csrs knew what was going on.
From what I understand from my contacts there, nothing has changed.
I'm assuming that Microsoft can reach all their outsourced call centers and provide them with the correct information (they have a centralized call logging application).
The fact is that that they have had several months and they haven't. CSRs are still giving out bad info and managers still have no idea what the hell the process is.
I don't want to say that Microsoft is intentionally making the process difficult, but I can't see any other explanation except for mass incompetence.
I know for sure that we haven't heard the good news or the new process yet... Maybe people in Canuckistan have to wait a bit for the news to filter down...
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