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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."
...will probably be named:
Turbo Debuggerer
Solomon
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
Because I'd bet that you'll still have the great benefit of paying the hugely inflated prices for Windows Vista (especially the ultimate version) rather than what the XP license used to cost.
Oh, the joys of working with Microsoft software.
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
This is a good start. Microsoft had to start somewhere in learning to be responsive to their customers.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Only Microsoft can make otherwise simple activities into tortorous affairs.
Why do the companies have to tell Microsoft everytime they "downgrade" a PC from Vista to XP? Does the company receive some sort of credit for being forced to buy an OS they don't want/need?
Why can't they just buy the PCs with XP already on them without having to uninstall Vista, then re-install XP, then beg for Microsoft's forgiveness, THEN apply all the hundreds of patches - each of which also requires a reboot, and then...
Is a huge reason we dread getting Vista here. Compatibility isn't too much of an issue, we have been doing preliminary testing and found a reasonable expectation with it to work with our software.
However, having to set up an activation server, have users log back in every 180 days... is just idiotic.
If we get audited, we get screwed anyway. So why make it so difficult?
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
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.
For environmental reasons, Microsoft should continue development and support of Windows 2000 and XP. Older machines will keep running longer and so stay out of landfills, and they could eventually give these operating systems away free to benefit the penniless basement-dwellers of the world who keep typing "F1R5T P05T" at the start of every thread.
technical writing / development
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.
So if MS is letting businesses do this, can the average consumer call up and say "hey I'll mail you the original CD + key, send me back an XP disc + key"
Because as the new hardware arrives, drivers for XP will be scarce. This only matters on older corporate computers, not new ones.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
I'd consider it an upgrade.
Yeah, they're missing an opportunity here - if they admitted it was an upgrade, they could charge for it.
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
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.
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!
Actually, if you read the PDF, it says this:
It's the Vista Business and Vista Ultimate vesions. Get it right, Slashdot.
Downgrade from Vista to XP? Naw, Upgrade to Ubuntu.
Free Software means never having to tell anyone what you want to run on your computers...
I knew Vista might be a bust when Bill Gates told John Stewart on the Daily Show that it would allow parents to more readily monitor their children's onlilne activities. If this was the best sales-point that the marketers at MS could come up with, it wasn't really offering much to the home user. Now it seems it isn't doing much for the pros either. Well, memory of Edsel has been fading, time for something more 21st Century. Phrank
I was bored and actually READ the licensing information (well, most of it) when I first booted my new Toshiba laptop that came with Vista Home Premium.
A section in that document specifically stated that THIS license may also be used to run a previous version of Windows, and I think it specifically stated Windows XP and Windows 2000.
I remember thinking "Well, that's nice to know," but so far have not run into any major Vista problems to worry about.
An AC says:
Corperations that have a volume license and buy a dell witha license sticker on it are incredibly stupid. They are intentionally paying Microsoft twice on every laptop and PC they buy. The director of IT should be fired for such wasteful purchasing practices.
It's not stupid if you don't have a choice because the vendor won't sell without the M$ tax. Companies will sell discarded boxes to their employees at "cost" and the price is around $200. It includes no software, but that does not mean that $40 of that $200 cost was not originally M$ tax - a fee paid per each computer sold regardless of OS installed. Nor does it mean the Vendor did anything more than pull the computer out of inventory, complete with home use software and a license sticker on it. Each computer that big dumb companies buy have to be wiped and loaded with the corporate licensed software.
You are right about how wasteful this is, but it's not always the fault of the person making the purchases and it's never the fault of the poor person who gets to do all the actual work.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
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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Which sounds good, but is wrong when the Laptop and all it's non free drivers are Vista only. The point of these abusive practices is to force people to buy Vista.
Great, I'm sure you'll be able to name at least 2 major OEMs who do this today.
I propose that Slashdot add a category for 'downgrade'. They have one for 'upgrade' so why not 'downgrade'?
I'll add my story to that guy's, however mine involves 2000.
.NET 3.0 apps (MS has locked out XP SP1 & below for its new VB language).
My four-year-old R40 was dying or so I thought, USB ports falling out & so I figured it was finally time to dive headfirst into the brave new world of WGA Activation and DRM. Also wanted to try out some sexy new
I *scored* a new R60 Core 2 Duo T5500 for less than $500, had XP Pro and Office 2003 preinstalled.
Well to make a long story short, XP Pro broke half our legacy apps. More broke after Windows Update. The finale straw was that XP Pro on a core 2 Duo is no faster than 2000 on a Centrino. What's the point of upgrading, except to shovel money at the manufacturers & software upgraders.
In the end I returned the R60, spent $250 to get the USB ports soldered back on & decided I'm getting off this upgrade train at the next stop. If I have to write / buy new apps might as well be for Ubuntu, which we have set up an old laptop and are experimenting on already.
Maybe the ability to downgrade to XP is the killer app that will drive people to the top tier Enterprise and Ultimate Versions of Vista?
Hey, get in line, they need to apologise for DOS 4.0 first...and then Windows ME...
Vista is bad enough in an office where everyone is used to XP, but the ultimate disaster for productivity is Office 2007. People who are used to previous versions of Office will be hopelessly lost. All the pulldown menus are gone, replaced by those confusing tabs. They really went out of their way to fix something that wasn't broken, creating something that is. The cost of ownership would be higher for Office 2007 than 2003 even if Microsoft was paying you to take it off their hands. The good news is that Open Office has a lot more of the look and feel people are used to, and is free.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
How about this? When you buy a PC with either Vista Home version, call the manufacturer and say you cannot accept the terms of the EULA and want to return Vista for a refund. Use the refund to buy XP home.
That would work great, except you will have to spend $100 to get XP, which won't have drivers for your shiny new laptop. With M$, your options are, deal with a buggy Vista install or use preinstalled 7 year old software or don't buy a new computer.
The only way to know for sure if your hardware is going to work though Bill Gates' sabotage, is to find a GNU/Linux vendor or try it out yourself. Bring a live CD to a local computer store and boot it. If it works, buy the laptop. If not, keep looking.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The interesting fact is that in some (many?) companies where OpenOffice.org was tried as an alternative to MS Office, the experiment was terminated because employees complained that they were not familiar with the program, they knew everything about MS Office, and the time required to learn the new program would be worth more than the price difference.
So, it would be cheaper to buy MS Office than to use OpenOffice.org for free, just because of the training issues.
I wonder what those folks are going to do when Office 2007 becomes widely deployed. Something tells me that they are just going to adapt to it, book their time on some random project activities, without ever raising the same issues they did with OpenOffice learning curves.