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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:[.]
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.
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.
Or Xp = Slurm Classic?
Brett
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....
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...
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.