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PC Makers Offering a Bridge Back To XP
The Telegraph is reporting on efforts by PC manufacturers to give customers buying systems pre-installed with Windows Vista a much-sought way to downgrade to Windows XP. ( A few months back we discussed Microsoft's similar concession for corporate customers.) "It took took five years and $6 billion to develop, but Microsoft's Vista operating system, which was launched early this year, has been shunned by consumers — with computer manufacturers taking the bizarre step of offering downgrades to the old XP version of Windows."
"It took took five years and $6 billion to develop"
:P
Who's took? He must've been a genius to develop Vista with only $6 billion!
"It took took five years and $6 billion to develop" Yep, and it took me FIVE DAYS to decide to dump it off of my machine, and go back to XP Pro.
My wife doesn't listen to me either...
Everyone should be running the newest of Windows, which is Windows Vista! People who still get by with XP are uncool and stick-in-the-muds. Windows Vista on a Wacom-enabled Tablet PC is the way to go! And Windows Vista to me seems much faster with the new wallpapers! I love Microsoft and everything they do. Products like Vista and Office 2007 are brilliant. I really have a mancrush on Steve Ballmer, too.
Anonymous Coward Sig 2.0:
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I love Microsoft! I want a job at Microsoft!
All of the parties will provide various slightly off-topic and apocryphal anecdotes and statistics to support their position.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Is that 6 billion in excel dollars?
According to some excel functions, that's really only 3,932,100,000.
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
Shopping with my mother for a new display to replace the broken one on Sunday, my mom pointed to a "Works with Vista!" sign attached to a LCD monitor and said "I heard that's (Vista) not very good". I was quite proud, and a little shocked, that quite possibly the most technophobe and technologically backwards person I know (my mother) was even aware of how bad Vista was, even if only through the grapevine.
That said, even with that kind of bad PR, Vista will no doubt make headay in to the market in 1-2 years time. It took at least that long for XP to really have good market penetration.... and by that time, computers should be able to run Vista reasonably.
moox. for a new generation.
It's a good thing I decided not to pirate Windows Vista. That would have been embarrassing.
corrected the subject for you.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
the new Edsel.
Oh-oh. It's not good when a desktop OS's rep gets to the "mom can't e-mail" stage. That argument is usually employed against Linux distros (and rightly so, IMHO).
There's even a potential bumper sticker/T-Shirt market: "Even your mom knows Vista sucks."
Man alive, if that anecdote's even remotely true, it flat-out trumps the more technically oriented reports in indicating that Redmond is in serious trouble.
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Toro
(I also saw that 612 several times so perhaps it is a magic driver timeout number for Vista?)
Of course. 612 seconds ought to be enough for anyone.
Man, that is one slow machine.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Not too long ago I heard Windows Vista referred to as "XP, Millennium Edition." Pretty much summed it up right there.
John
It makes good business sense for the PC manufacturers.
If they're seeing squawking clients in the valuable before-christmas season, they should do something. And if a downgrade to XP is what it takes... then so be it.
The manufacturers might be partners with miker$of when it is convenient, but a friend-coerced is a pretty fair-weather friend. I imagine that business arrangement works both ways and miker$of is under some pressure from stockholders to sell their product.
For the record to someone that mentioned a PC on which XP wouldn't run... I recently had to reload a spanky-new gateway *shudder* PC at the office. It had linux on it (which ran like a champ as a SERVER for HUNDREDS OF USERS (database, app server, web server, samba, DNS, and so on) and we were reloading it for a developer to use as as desktop. I know it will barely run Vista and make his life miserable.
XP won't run on it because Intel doesn't make (a working set of)drivers for the board's SATA controller. Not for XP. I tried Professional, Home, and even Server 2003 to make sure. Won't run. Bluescreens before you see the GUI. Tried both pre and post DRM versions (Original, SP1, and SP2 ++DRM). No XP "love". Looked on their website and they sorta support XP, but couldn't find a way to order one with that OS. (I was going to order one, clone the HD's magic partition, and take it back.)
The company didn't want to buy a PATA drive to put on a single chain with the UDMA66 DVD-ROM. I don't blame them.
I poked around both intel's and gutway's sites (which is kind of like sticking your hand in a public toilet by the way...) for an hour or two to no avail. Google-is-evil-ified the motherboard and SATA controller to see if anyone had other ideas. Lots of problems and no solutions later I ditched this idea.
Intel provides Linux support, why not XP? They have an XP driver listed, and I tried all 3 choices (which loads the same driver *sigh*), but still I get the friendly BSOD I know so well.
I won't rule out the idea that I might've missed something, but the probability is sliding fast towards nil.
I didn't have a copy of vista, and won't be having one. A glance at the side of the PC says that it is for Home Premium Two-Steps Left or some such version. Gutway doesn't do recovery CDs, putting the image on a recovery partition at the front of the disk for the client to burn. It evidently got erased before I received the PC.
as an annoying sidenote, the thing doesn't have a floppy drive, so I had to open the side of the case and connect a floppy before I could mash F6 to load a driver from floppy.
Anyway, I won't give the developer vista as he's already had the black feather pointed at him (the only one in the shop, because some of our clients downgraded to vista). He just looks pitiful when someone suggests he might be getting vista again. Everyone in the office has stopped teasing him about it because... well... it is meaner than tasering a mental patient in a wheelchair.
CE.
did you go on vacation after installing?
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
I wanted to upgrade from Vista to XP when I bought my laptop a few months ago. Where was this offer then?
This offer was still around, it was just only available through Bittorrent.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Downgrades?
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
No, that sounds about right. For some reason, nothing ever works quite right in my dreams. Any piece of tech, from computers to cars to iPods to airplanes, seems to do something quirky and wrong in my draems, usually in front of others while I try desperately to cover up for the fact and pretend everything it normal. :|
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Increased usefulness?
So the ultimate Upgrade is Win2k? I already knew that. I just wish they would release the damn 64-bit patch instead of keeping it Enterprise-only.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
Like a dirty only man that hides behind my sofa wanting to tickle my private bits, DRM lurks in Vista. Vista ya filty pervert, stop it, oooer.
Why not replace the machines from group 1 with the machines from group 2? Everyone will be happy!
c++;
MS gets the "Ballmar Quantity" discount for chairs at Costco. Buy one, throw one free!
I much prefer "ME2", which associates with both Windows ME and the taint of AOL.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?