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Microsoft to Allow PC Makers to Downgrade to XP
mytrip pointed out a News.com story about a new Microsoft program to allow PC makers to downgrade from Vista to XP if they so choose. They're still pushing the new version of Windows very hard, but the option now exists for PC resellers to offer the now venerable OS. This is especially interesting as the article points out that OEM licenses for XP officially run out at the end of January. "Hewlett-Packard also started a program in August for many of its business models. 'For business desktops, workstations and select business notebooks and tablet PCs, customers can configure their systems to include the XP Pro restore disc for little or no charge,' HP spokeswoman Tiffany Smith said in an e-mail. She said it was too soon to gauge how high customer interest has been. 'Since we've only been offering (it) for about a month, we don't really have anything to share on demand.' A Microsoft representative confirmed there were some changes made over the summer to the options computer makers have with respect to XP, but the representative was not immediately able to elaborate on those changes."
Users are permitted to upgrade from Vista to XP.
See, fixed.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Why do they insist on calling it a downgrade?
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
I'll downgrade to XP in the same way I'll "downgrade" to a first-class airline ticket or a supersized meal.
On the other hand though, it is Microsoft making a correct move by giving consumers what they actually want while keeping the marketing in line with their "forward thinking."
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
Originally, Dell switched entirely to Vista just like everyone else. Then after a month or two they strong-armed M$ into letting them offer XP to their business customers. (I would love to have been a fly on the wall listening in to the conversation that got that concession out of M$.) This is just M$ offering the same thing to other vendors, who are probably losing a lot of business to people who want XP and can only get it from Dell.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
See, I know MS develops buggy code. Even their license generator stop working!
I understand the plight. After setting up Vista for the first time the other night I could not believe the amount of GUI changes in Vista. Especially when it came up on a cable modem PPPoE. Took me an hour to figure it out, it though we had a DSL dial up. Don't look for properties any more in the OS, they are now calling it "Settings" and is where the help used to be on many screens.
People would have less learning UI if they loaded Fedora 7 or RHat.
Sure glad I bought my last PC when I did. Still had XP on it with a promise of a free upgrade. Have the new disks. Just never applied the upgrade. Will not be applying any time soon either.
I need to buy a new system (current motherboard got damaged, might as well upgrade), and I've been weighing my options. Vista is simply not an option at all. XP Pro 64-bit is orphaned, with virtually nonexistent driver support. XP is 32-bit, and I already was running Win2k with 4GB of RAM (well, as much as it will use of that) and need to grow.
After all these years of Windows desktop and Linux here & there on servers and VMs, I'm going to finally make the jump the Linux desktop, VMWare'ing Windows where I need it. I don't play PC games anymore (besides minesweeper), I'm going to get a quad CPU with 8GB of RAM, and Microsoft simply isn't offering anything viable for that configuration.
Sorry, I know a lot of people think it's better than Vista, but when did XP become venerable?? Is there some secret meaning for that word that I don't know?
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
The news is that computers will be sold with XP installed. Thats a huge difference to getting a recovery disc and doing it yourself.
HTTP/1.1 400
I waited an extra month or two to purchase my new Dell XPS M2010 just to get Vista since it was on the horizon and as far as I could tell all my hardware/software worked for the most part or new drivers were already in beta for one of my Epson printers. I would have not waited six months for Vista, nor do I have any plans to go out and purchase it for any of my other machines, but I can't say I'm unhappy that I waited a month to get it on my new-ish system. The Vista Media Center is EXCELLENT and in my opinion is unmatched by any other software or dedicated box. Microsoft could dominate the PVR market if they released a Zune TV device that basically booted straight into WMC without the Windows UI anywhere to be seen. Let me sync recorded shows to a Zune 2.0 device and Apple's hold on the handheld media device market would begin to wane. Some of the adjustments to Explorer and the Start menu are nice and improve the usefulness of both a little bit. My biggest problems with Vista aren't Microsoft's doing, they are the third party developers who dragged their feet even knowing full well that Vista was coming out and they knew what they had to do to make their software compatible. There really is little Microsoft can do to get developers to use user accounts properly (which have been a apart of NT from the start, Vista is the first time Microsoft has enforced their use). I really don't see the need for anyone other than corporate customers to downgrade to XP.
This just goes to show you that Joe Consumer out there will use whatever he is comfortable with. I know several non-technically-inclined people who took advantage of an "OS version revision (not a downgrade necessarily)" to XP just because they don't like how slow their new computers were running and they didn't like the San Quintenesque security of Vista.
I also know several people who still use Windows 98 on their home machines just because they like it. Sure they can't get new Windows Updates and finding new software is damn near impossible but they like it.
On the other hand, I do know a handful of people who like Vista and actually prefer it over XP. Not for the security, but for the "WOW". Of course their systems are superlative in every respect to performance.
This "use what you like" thing may be why Mac OSs do so well. I mean, what really has changed from UI, performance and security perspectives that can be easily seen since OS 10.0?
Change is a bitch. I know. I know. Get off my lawn.
The game.
I thought this was a joke and then looked it up and it's actually true: The post-Vista version of Windows in development has been dubbed "Windows 7. So it's really true -- the Windows OS is finally catching up to that revolutionary MacOS from 1991, System 7. Windows users will finally be able to take advantage of such innovations as QuickDraw and Balloon Help Congratulations Microsoft!!
Or Xp = Slurm Classic?
Brett
It boils down to the fact that XP is simply not mature enough yet. I run 2000 Pro and am happy with it and I have no intentions of switching to XP anytime soon. Now in a year or two when it's up to service pack 4 AND you can run DOSBox AND software compatibilities are a thing of the past because XP is the target not 2000 then I'll upgrade.
And this old 2000 machine will probably become a Mandrake box then.
Last evening, I met with the IT chief of a large transnational bank, for whom we develop Enterprise code. I asked him about what software platforms are envisaged in the long run, and the process behind evaluation. He said, "Basically we have a Red-Amber-Green colour scheme for software."
.Net; I was surprised to learn that Visual Studio as a whole is 'Amber'! SuSE and RedHat Linux are both green, so is PHP, RubyonRails, Eclipse, Websphere etc. Interestingly, he said the IT staff of several banks get together and discuss matters affecting common issues like this.
Under this scheme, Vista is Red, so is IE7, ActiveX controls, Visual Basic and Visual Basic
So I guess it's the OEMs who are FORCED TO OFFER XP and XP-compatible hardware, drivers and support to their biggest customers. This isn't some gift of charity from His Billness or the new acting Chair-man from Microsoft. Nobody sane would like to willingly downgrade to Vista - simple as that.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
He should have just concentrated on useful new features like the ability to get a commmand window at any folder. If that's the most compelling reason to upgrade, it's not surprising that things aren't going too well for Vista. I'm sure that was a "PowerToy" ages ago.
> He should have just concentrated on useful new features like the ability to get a commmand window at any folder.
/e,"%_CWD"
Agreed.
In the meantime, snag 4NT.
Command Prompt -> Explorer
alias x=start explorer
Explorer -> Command Prompt
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/files/OpenCommandWindowHere.zip
Business users can see that Vista will:
a) Cost them millions.
b) Most likely cause a lot of incompatibility problems.
c) Not increase their productivity one bit even when they finally have it all working.
It's a lose-lose proposition for them.
No sig today...
It's the natural evolution of a market. Frankly, it took a perversely long time, most likely due to Microsoft's monopolistic hold on pre-installed operating systems. They can't complain. They made a few bucks while it lasted, and are making more still.
"Take a look at Mac OS X. The interface is pretty much the same for more than ten years. "
Um, OS X hasn't even been around for ten years. It was introduces in 2000 or 2001..
And OSX's interface is just as different from that of its predecessor, Mac OS 9, as Vista's is from XP's. There was plenty of whining in the Mac community over the "step back" that OSX 10.0 was. (It was indeed very much slower than Mac OS 9, but I think it's interface blew away Mac OS 9's).
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
and hated it, unstable and buggy to say the least. Installed Vista Business x64 last week and I'm very satisfied. It won't boot Fedora 7 off my main machine, but many of the issues are being ironed out. It is different and requires some re-learning and discarding of old habits/notions, but it isn't the junk that so many make it out to be. Too many people on tech forums have begun to sound like old women to set in their ways to learn something different.
Quote: "... I also feel my stomach turning upside down seeing what they did with Vista as a whole."
As others have suggested, maybe it is better to skip Vista completely, the non-drug method of curing stomach upset.
Dr. Death has arrived. After only 3 years, requiem for an OS: Bill Gates is software's Dr. Death, ready to kill software prematurely that customers want to use. He has decided that Windows XP will die soon: January 31, 2008.
The huge number of bugs in Windows XP before SP2 was very expensive for us. If I remember correctly, Windows XP SP2 fixed more than 630 bugs, and some of the fixes were not documented. The really major problems in Windows XP stopped only after SP2 was released, on August 25, 2004. That means we have gotten only 3 years of good use from Windows XP.
Rule number one in dealing with Microsoft: Unless forced by circumstances, never move to a new version of Windows until the second service pack is released. Let other people have the grief.
(Someone said that rule will just cause Microsoft to release service packs much more often. If that happens, it may be necessary to change the rule to "until the X service pack...")
It has been 3 years since WinXP Service Pack 2 was released, even though updating Windows XP from an SP2 CD requires downloading more than 170 Megabytes of files, a difficult problem when there is no internet connection or only a dial-up connection. The Windows XP updates of just August's Patch Tuesday were more than 20 Megabytes. Microsoft seems to have delayed releasing an SP3 for Windows XP to try to discourage people from using Windows XP.
New versions of Linux are released to make a better OS. New versions of Microsoft Windows seem to have the purpose of 1) killing the old version and 2) using more CPU power so that it is necessary to buy new hardware. When you partner with Microsoft, you partner with a company that may sometimes choose to be your enemy, in my opinion.
It is not only the vulnerabilities that are expensive. Microsoft's adversarial behavior is expensive, too.
Sure XP is just as shitty as ever, but compared to Vista, XP is not just good, it is 'venerable'...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I purchased a Dell for a customer a few days after Vista was launched in Australia (Jan 31st?).
I specifically asked for XP, which they gave at the same price, but also gave an opportunity to download Vista Basic for around $47.
Now that was interesting for me, as I would of been one of the first to demand XP.
I also refused their offer of a widescreen 19" and went for a standard 19" instead.
By the way, Dell Sales still have no idea that their onboard sound chip drivers are crappy and buggy.
I dunno what MS is going to do, but the sales of XP stickered 2nd hand machines here are going to skyrocket, as those who want legal Windows OS that's NOT Vista are going to be hard pressed to find one after Jan 2008.
Here, you can get a 2nd hand Lenovo/Dell/HP on auction sites for around $200 (Intel 2.4-3.4ghz) with XP productID stickers on them. That at least is worth $150+.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Including the XP disc will not show in their numbers when figuring their deployment of Vista. They will claim every downgrade as a Vista sale because the Vista sale already happened. They will be much happier than if a PC shipped with XP installed. It's just about apparent market share. That's why Linux advocates who dual boot are probably fairly ineffective as the footprint of Windows is much more visible on the web.
According to MS's Windows XP Pro lifecycle page, "mainstream support" for XP lasts until April 14, 2009 and "extended support" (which includes security updates and paid support) lasts until at least April 8, 2014 (the same dates apply to XP Home). That's actually a heck of a lot longer than any other OS AFAIK.
The really major problems in Windows XP stopped only after SP2 was released, on August 25, 2004. That means we have gotten only 3 years of good use from Windows XP. Since XP will continue to get security updates, paid support, and free knowledgebase support until at least April 2014, you should be able to get at least a few more years of use from XP. If you need a bunch of additional licenses, order them before January 31 (to be safe). If you only need a few additional licenses, it should be easy to find old stock after that date.That said, Linux distros have gotten a heck of a lot better since XP was released nearly six years ago. Also, desktop versions of Ubuntu LTS guarantee 3 years of support, which is pretty darned good for a free download that's updated every 2 years (LTS versions).
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Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...