Lenovo Announces ThinkPads Preloaded With XP

BBCWatcher writes "Lenovo just announced new ThinkPad T61 models preloaded with Microsoft Windows XP. Ironically they're called ThinkPad T61 'TopSeller' models. Lenovo says they're aimed at small and medium-sized businesses. The XP TopSellers are available immediately, and the part numbers are 6465-03U, 7658-04U, and 7664-06U (PDF links). "Lenovo recommends Windows Vista Business"? Not so much."

Comments

who cares?

[Adolf Hitroll]

What we really want is real boobs!

Re:who cares?

[__aaclcg7560]

You want a laptop equipped with a baby bottle?!

Re:who cares?

[Adolf Hitroll]

Here's a penis: it's not as tough as mine but it will do well for boyish gay-repressed nerds like you.
Get a life!

Re:who cares?

[Almahtar]

Not me. I would look like a freak if I had boobs. I have facial hair.

Re:who cares?

[chawly]

So shave - this is slashdot

XP makes sense

[stoolpigeon]

Hopefully not too many will be DOA like this one was.

The last 2 laptops I bought were from Dell, and I had to contact customer service to get a link to the xp machines available under my companies discount deal with them. But they had it right handy, so they must get the question a lot.

Re:XP makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Top 5 Star Trek jokes

Why did Kirk stop letting Spock see the Captain's Log?
Because he sometimes spelt 'enterprise' wrong.

What time of day is the best on the Enterprise?
Bedtime.

Why was Scotty angry with Kirk?
Because he thought he could fix the engines by pouring orange juice in.

Why was Spock confused by Uhulu?
Because he thought she was an alien (she is black).

What is the difference between the Enterprise and Uranus?
Uranus is a planet, the Enterprise is a space ship.

Re:XP makes sense

[Frosty Piss]

For the most part, the bitch at the link you posted is that there is a 2 or 3 second delay opening IE7.

I'm sorry, maybe I just don't drink as much strong coffee as you, but that's not something that would motivate me to spend the time to write a review at Amazon. A 2 to 3 second delay in opening IE7? Terrible productivity issue for sure!

Re:XP makes sense

[Keyper7]

He said at the end that there was a 3 second delay for opening each tab.

This is not an absurd productivity issue, but it's certainly annoying.

Re:XP makes sense

[dollar99]

The end of the Amazon post states that Lenovo refused to provide next day service even though it was clearly purchased. Ironically this also happened to me. I clearly bought next day service and they claimed to have no record of it.

Dell too.

[RandoX]

When you pull up their laptop page, there are two links. "Customize with Windows XP" and "Customize with Windows Vista". Same price.

Re:Dell too.

[PlatyPaul]

Easier than that: if you want an XP-loaded dell, just go here.

They're hardly pushing it (see quote below), but it's still very much an option.

Windows Vista® is the latest Operating System release from Microsoft. Windows Vista® Home Premium1 & Windows Vista® Ultimate1 offer great features like Windows Media Center which allows you to easily manage your photos, videos, & audio files and the cool interface of Windows Aero is designed to make your computer experience dynamic and fun. All versions of Windows Vista® offer new security options such as Parental Controls and integrated Anti-Spyware which help protect your family when accessing your personal data or information from the Internet and new tools such as integrated search which help enable you to get work done faster.

The choice is Yours. Dell is offering Microsoft® Windows XP on the PCs below.

Re:Dell too.

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, Vista downgrades you!

Re:Dell too.

[whoever57]

All versions of Windows Vista® offer new security options such as Parental Controls and integrated Anti-Spyware

Well..... Microsoft's Windows Defender can be installed on Windows 2000 -- all it takes is a minor edit to the MSI file to remove the OS version check and it installs and runs fine. No such editing is required to install on XP.

So how is the "integrated Anti-Sypware" new?

Re:Dell too.

[Anonymous Coward]

So how is the "integrated Anti-Sypware" new? By "integrated" they mean their anti-spyware software, Windows Defender, is part of the default installation of Windows Vista and is part of Vista's Security Center. On Windows XP, Defender is not even a "Recommended" download when Windows Update is run (but it is free).

Re:Dell too.

[MojoStan]

RandoX commented:

Dell too.
[snip]
When you pull up their laptop page, there are two links. "Customize with Windows XP" and "Customize with Windows Vista". Same price. PlatyPaul replied:

Easier than that: if you want an XP-loaded dell, just go here. Just to make things clear, Dell have always (since Vista was launched) offered Windows XP as an option on almost all of their configurable PCs on their "business/education/government" sites. Only their PCs on their "Home & Home Office" site have typically offered Vista as the only OS option. They recently started re-offering XP on some of their "home" PCs due to customer demand.

I think most Slashdot readers would prefer Dell's "Small & Medium Business" site better, anyhoo. Latitude "business" notebooks are better in many ways than Inspiron "home" notebooks. Optiplex desktops and Precision workstations are better than Inspiron/Dimension desktops. Their cheap Vostro business notebooks and desktops have no shovelware/crapware. Latitudes, Optiplexes, and Precisions come with better North American based support.

Also, as others have pointed out, I've always noticed XP as an option for configurable ThinkPads. Most PC makers have always offered XP on their configurable "business" PCs. I guess XP seekers aren't looking in the "business" sections of PC web sites. Unfortunately, most "brick-and-mortor" stores, even big "office supply" stores, don't stock XP PCs.

This is news?

[inphinity]

Maybe I'm missing something, but we've been buying T61's with XP for months now, without any difficulty at all.

And we're not some large megacorp either -- we buy maybe 2-3 computers every 6 weeks.

Re:This is news?

[UnknowingFool]

Yeah, I always thought that businesses had more choice when it came to the OS. They're had the option of XP ever since Vista came out.

Re:This is news?

[Anonymous Psychopath]

I just bought one last week and had the choice of Vista or XP. I think the news is probably that they have now have canned SKUs for XP where maybe they didn't before? As in, you could always go on and customize a laptop to have anything you want, but companies buying in large quantities probably just use a canned SKU that has the bundle they want with everything, to save time. Just guessing, though.

Re:This is news?

[Hawkeye05]

I bought one for myself a few months ago with XP, its nothing new.

Re:This is news?

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes this news is that the company (Lenovo) is equipping their laptops with windows XP instead of the supposedly superior Vista which they recommend as per Micro$ofts wishes. Vista sucks and this company knows it so they are allowing their customers a choice of operating systems included on the machines. Which until recently most companies were not. Almost everyone I know has either not upgraded yet (myself included), or has downgraded once they adopted Vista to get the bad taste out of their mouths. XP>Vista. At least for now.

Re:This is news?

[syd02]

This might be how they became "TopSellers."

Re:This is news?

[petermgreen]

big companies would be stupid to select XP IMO (assuming there is no price difference between XP pro and vista buisness which there probablly won't be). Vista buisness comes with dowgrade rights to XP pro which big companies can excercise easilly using thier VLK media. If they bought the machines with XP they would have to buy some kind of upgrade (probablly "software assurance") later when they wanted to put vista on them.

Re:This is news?

[Anonymous Psychopath]

There might not be price differences but there may be functional differences. For example, some companies have homegrown applications with a GUI that makes your eyes bleed, and it just barely functions, but it also does something critical that can't be lived without. The guy that wrote it was killed by a speeding beer truck three years ago and his workstation with the source code was wiped to turn it into a "Super Wiki Mashup Web 3.0 Second Life" server, because management read somewhere that that's what all the kids are doing now. And it won't work on Vista for some damn reason.

Re:This is news?

[s13g3]

Well, if you don't want a piece of junk whose components are almost entirely made in North China by slave labor that learned how to solder last week, with memory that no one will take credit for manufacturing (much less warranty) and a HDD drive brand with the highest failure rate on the market, then you don't want a Dell. Lenovo *seems* to be keeping up a reasonable level of quality so far, but, as someone who orders 2 - 3 laptops every week, and has accounts with the largest electronics warehouses in the country, I can tell you that XP-based laptops have become exceedingly rare and difficult to obtain - at least on the east coast of the US, considering that nothing is made here any more and has to be shipped in via the west coast, where they have to filter what is left over from orders there to the eastern US. If I place an order well in advance with no hurry or time-frame on delivery, I can get some of the warehouses to set some aside for me as soon as they come in, but that's about the only way. There's a few models floating around, but those models certainly comprise the lowest number of shipped units, and by the time they make it to the east coast, there's only a few left. We certainly need a lot more market pressure to force Vista out like the polished turd that it is.

I tried to order an XP-based Lenovo just last week - there were none to be had in stock anywhere. Same with HP's, Acer's, and (my favorite) ASUS'. I refuse to sell Dell, I don't really fool with Gateway's, nor any of the cheapo crap that seems to be flooding the market right now. Microsoft is trying their damnedest to to make XP go away, and they've fairly successfully convinced the big manufacturers to focus on Vista sales, which is only now slowly changing due to market demand, thank providence. MS' marketing campaign was rather overwhelming, and had a lot of end-users and sales houses convinced it was going to be the only way to go as they attempt to recoup and justify their $4.6Bn USD failure, but continued news of manufacturers and suppliers offering more and more XP machines again or "downgrades" (let's face it, it's an upgrade) to XP lends some hope - a light at the end of the dark intestinal-tract tunnel that is Vista. Even better is the signs of more and more people switching to Linuxes like Ubuntu (now THAT is an upgrade... or more like "Upgrayedd", with two d's for a double-dose of pimpin') to the point where even Dell is offering to ship PC's pre-installed with it.

Regardless, Vista needs to be thrown out, bathwater and all. I'm just hoping their stock sinks them before the cybernetics revolution comes... I'm damn sure going to be choosing CerebrIX(TM) over WinDome(TM) for myself, but people are stupid enough as it is - the last thing we need is a 50-car pile-up on the interstate all because someone BSOD'd while driving due to a HAL.DLL failure.

CerebrIX(TM) and WinDome(TM) are property of the poster. (come on, laugh!)

Re:This is news?

[petermgreen]

Did you actually read my post?

Most big companies are going to reimage anyway. If they buy with vista then they can easilly downgrade to XP without paying any extra but if they buy with XP then when they want to put vista on them (which they probablly will evenutally) they will have to pay to do so.

Re:This is news?

[smith me]

Not new, Dell Hp do the same

$1200 to get a real video card

[Anonymous Coward]

Is better then apple $2000 is needed there.

had to go back to xp because of IPX/SPX

[Anonymous Coward]

Offtopic but it's going here anyway.

I still play a ton of older games that only allow ipx/spx for lan play. Yes everyone can get on the net and play but that doesn't work too well when you only have dialup available (yep, no cable, no fios, no dsl).

I've seen the hack for ipx/spx in vista 32bit but Red Alert 2 still doesn't show a network available and there seems to be no hacks to get it to work with 62bit vista.

Anyone know of a way to tunnel ipx/spx over tcp/ip maybe? Without an internet connection?

Re:had to go back to xp because of IPX/SPX

[RandoX]

It doesn't work because you're missing two bits.

Re:had to go back to xp because of IPX/SPX

[Anonymous Coward]

there seems to be no hacks to get it to work with 62bit vista. You should upgrade to 64 bit Vista.

Re:had to go back to xp because of IPX/SPX

[Fx.Dr]

He really needed that shave and a haircut.

Re:had to go back to xp because of IPX/SPX

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent can has +1, funny?

Re:had to go back to xp because of IPX/SPX

[Anonymous Coward]

>Anyone know of a way to tunnel ipx/spx over tcp/ip maybe? Without an internet connection?

You don't want to tunnel, you want to bridge.

Try this:
http://www.morpheussoftware.net/git/

As a start - it looks like it might do what you're looking for.

XP/Vista

[MM_LONEWOLF]

Personally, I'm just happy that they aren't jumping on the bandwagon and shoving Vista down our throats.

Consumer demand..?

[ricebowl]

So the news is that a company selling computers is selling something that the consumer's been asking for? Who'd've thought it? While I'm glad that another company, following Dell and some others, has bucked the Microsoft line, I'm not sure that it's particularly astounding.

On the other hand though, kudos to them for doing so. Now if only they'd lose the '$Company recommends Windows Vista $model' branding I'd be even more impressed. Why claim to recommend something that you fairly obviously don't? I'm aware that there are provisos from Microsoft for supplying lower-cost OEM software to these companies but, surely, at some point the marketing/PR departments are going to realise that trying to play on both sides of a particular game isn't going to look too good for them?

Ah, me and my optimism...

Re:Consumer demand..?

[Entropius]

Selling what the customer's asking for *is* astounding in today's world. It shouldn't be, but it is.

Re:Consumer demand..?

[CastrTroy]

Let's look at a car analogy. If I was a car manufacturer, I could advertise that I recommended automatic transmissions, but that wouldn't mean that I wouldn't sell manual transmissions to those who wanted it. For some people, XP has advantages, for others, Vista is better. Same with automatic and manual transmissions. No one product is right for everyone, so they are selling both.

Re:Consumer demand..?

[ricebowl]

Selling what the customer's asking for *is* astounding in today's world. It shouldn't be, but it is.

I hadn't thought about that; me and my amnesia...incidentally if I was able to mod you '+1, insightful' I so would.

Re:Consumer demand..?

[ricebowl]

So...wouldn't that also lead to the removal, or at least qualification, of the '...recommends Windows $model'?

While I accept that there are situations and needs better addressed by Vista as opposed to XP (accept but can't think of one, but that's more my lack of familiarity with Vista than any objection to it for its own sake), but if that's the case why not simply go with '...recommends Windows'?

At least then they can support the claim by showing their list of installed-OS options.

Re:Consumer demand..?

[darthflo]

AFAIK '$Company recommends Windows Vista $model', if printed everywhere, gets 'em many dollars from Microsoft. It's like with ads in magazines; the advertiser (in this case Microsoft) buys some space (and, in this case, a "recommendation") for lotsa money.
With all the OEM discounts and marketing aid going on, I imagine that little line may be worth half the ad, so the marketing department damn sure won't remove it.

Also, I don't think it's doing too much harm. Those interested in not getting Vista will usually be versed enough to find the XP/Ubuntu models and ignore the recommendation, those interested in large quantities get matching offers anyways and those not caring about what they're getting won't bother to look for alternatives (blindly accepting the "recommendation").

Re:Consumer demand..?

[BeanThere]

So the news is that a company selling computers is selling something that the consumer's been asking for? Who'd've thought it?

You know, pretty much every news event in the world can be similarly derisively portrayed when distilled to its more abstract or generic form. For example, if a plane crashed killing hundreds, you might say "So the news is that some plane crashed?" - there's nothing insightful about saying "Gee who'dve thought it?" (cynical remark != intelligent remark); just because it's well-known that planes sometimes crash, doesn't mean it's not interesting news when it happens. Likewise for pretty much anything, e.g. troops getting killed, terrorist bombings, mall/school shootings, etc. - their generalised forms are all well-known to occur already; it's not the underlying concept of an event that interests people, it's particular instances of such events. (I'm not saying this story is actually interesting, of course, but your reasoning as portrayed doesn't cut to the cause of its boringness.)

Re:Consumer demand..?

[CastrTroy]

Maybe they are recommending Vista, because although XP works better for now, what happens when MS doesn't support it, or what happens what happens when some new program comes out that only works under Vista. IBM could have any number of reasons for recommending Vista over XP. And saying that they "recommend Windows" isn't much better. Which version do they recommend? Windows 3.1? Now they have to say, "Recommends Windows XP or Vista". But then why recommend anything, because you're recommendations are just a list of the available options.

Re:Consumer demand..?

[irtza]

at some point the marketing/PR departments are going to realise that trying to play on both sides of a particular game isn't going to look too good for them?

Well, that may be true, but when the finance department tells the marketing department that the MS advertisement rebate which finances the marketing department is higher than their profit margin/machine and keeps them in business is dependent on that phrase appearing on their site, the marketing department will look the other way.

MS may not be able to demand X dollars per maching, but they have a whole slew of other dirty tactics to use.

dislaimer, this comment is unresearched and an unfair accusation, but doesn't it feel good to bash MS with an intelligent and plausible comment like this one? I bet if this disclaimer wasn't here, some people might actually believe it.

Re:Consumer demand..?

[christurkel]

Dont get excited. january 2008 is when MS will stop XP sales and preloads.

Re:Consumer demand..?

[zhenya00]

They only 'recommend' Vista because they, like every other large computer manufacturer, are required to in the terms of their agreements with Microsoft in order to keep their OEM pricing model. If they 'choose' (and I use that term loosely) not to 'recommend' Vista in their advertising, their wholesale prices will go up, and they will be unable to remain competitive with the ultra-slim margins that most computer companies operate on.

Re:Consumer demand..?

[jamstar7]

IBM could have any number of reasons for recommending Vista over XP.

Lenovo isn't IBM.

That being said, I have an antique T22 that runs Ubuntu nicely. What I'd like to see Lenovo offer some time in the future, when my T22 finally dies the Real Death, is an option for some flavor of Linux on a new Thinkpad out the door.

Re:Consumer demand..?

[Zymergy]

I agree with your sentiment, however, the automobile transmission analogy is not necessarily the best one... This is a tough sell for the manufacturer's marketing departments because the situation seems to require some snake oil marketing tactics.
That is, unless you mention that the 'Engines' (CPU/Video/RAM) for these cars which use the 'Automatic Transmissions' (Windows Vista) would have to be much more powerful (and expensive) to achieve the same performance levels as a car which uses the 'Manual Transmission' (Windows XP).

We all know that *real* cars with automatic transmissions do cost slightly more to purchase (vs. a manual transmission) and there are slight efficiency decreases with automatic transmissions (vs. manual transmissions), but this cost/efficiency difference is NOT anywhere in the same order of magnitude as the case with 'Windows XP performance' vs. 'Windows Vista performance' all other things being equal.
The car analogy implies that the ONLY difference is the transmission.
A Windows Vista installation requires a heavier V8 engine (CPU/RAM/GPU) with a larger fuel tank and a greater hardware purchase purchase point (price tag) to appear to operate as fast as...
A Windows XP installation which requires a less powerful V6 engine (CPU/RAM/GPU) with a more modest fuel tank and a less costly hardware purchase point (not counting that over 5 years worth of CHEAP XP-compatible 'parts' are readily available).

For the record, I use 2 hard drives in removable OEM caddies (one with XP and the other with Vista) for my Laptop as well as a dual-boot XP/Vista on my desktop (moving a LVD-SCSI cable between two U320 Drives).
Vista certainly *appears to me* to NOT BE faster than Windows XP (with all hardware being equal). I could spend more money on *new bleeding-edge* hardware to make my Vista performance approach my XP performance, but, why? For DX10? Bahh..
Disclaimer: Yes, just about any recent build of Linux will blow both of my XP and Vista 'experiences' right out of the water with speed, efficiency, and boot times (but I am a FPS gamer). -Z

Re:Consumer demand..?

[Sgt.Modulus]

As I see it a consumer that wants to buy a machine that is prebuilt always comes preloaded with M$'s OS and normally nothing else. Now, I myself have not bought a preloaded machine in years since I build my own and install Linux and WinXPPro on it to dual boot so I really don't know all the options out there. I am glad Vista is having such a hard time in the market and that large companies like Dell are offering other options like Linux on the desktop. But for the most part everyone has just the option of M$ OS. My last job was to work as a tech support guy at a social services company that was non-profit. I supported the mainly supported the staff. For the most part they had to use internal web sites that would only work with IE6 and other crappy and obsolete proprietary software that required Windows. We could not use anything Linux based and the pointy haired bosses had a very closed mindset. Anytime I mentioned a Linux alternative or the word Linux they would get a bit angry. Sorry to get a bit off topic but I think you get my point....

Re:Consumer demand..?

[petermgreen]

MS moved the end of retail and big brand OEM availibility to the end of june 2008 so there is a bit of time yet.

The end of system builder (whitebox OEM) availibility is at the end of january 2009 as originally planned.

There is nothing stopping suppliers stocking up on retail copies and whitebox OEM packs. I don't know if that can be done with big brand OEM too.

And finally vista buisness comes with downgrade rights to XP pro :)

Re:Consumer demand..?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll be happy when it hurts M$ bottom line (investor relations, stock etc.), I don't hardly care about Linux on the desktop, I'm much happier to watch an abusive monopolist fail at indoctrinated consumerism. (this would change so much in modern business theory) burn M$FT burn baby burn.

Re:Consumer demand..?

[JohnBailey]

Dont get excited. january 2008 is when MS will stop XP sales and preloads. Didn't they extend that a few months to keep the "element" that has yet to see the value inherent in vista happy? Something like a 5 month extension sa I remember. The big question is will they extend the extension...

yes but...

[Anonymous Coward]

...does it run linux?

Screw Vista, screw XP. If they offered a Thinkpad with Ubuntu pre-installed and everything working right I'd buy it tomorrow. The Dellbuntus are great but their hardware options aren't very broad.

Re:yes but...

[Anonymous Coward]

If they offered a Thinkpad with Ubuntu pre-installed and everything working right I'd buy it tomorrow.

Sure you would -- just like the other 6.4 million loud-mouthed Linux zealots who suddenly vanish when it's time to back up those big words with big action. If even 50% of you guys actually put your money where your mouth is, Linux might matter.

Re:yes but...

[Anonymous Coward]

If they offered a thinkpad with any other distro other than Ubuntu I might consider it. Honestly, you Ubuntu fanboys are worse than the Apple homos

Re:yes but...

[pipatron]

So they are supposed to offer their computers with each different distribution pre-installed, or just your favorite?

Re:yes but...

[WeeLad]

I'd be happy with a "No Operating System" option.

Re:yes but...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be happy with a "No Operating System" option. Insert parts supplier of choice here.

You can buy a pre-assembled car with the options they have, or you can order one with only parts you want, but it will cost more. The other option is to buy all the parts yourself and build it yourself. The exact same situation with computers.

Re:yes but...

[WeeLad]

... and that's what I do with Desktops. However, this week I bought my first laptop in 8 years (A Dell with XP). Building a laptop from parts is a little beyond me.

Re:yes but...

[hullabalucination]

If even 50% of you guys actually put your money where your mouth is, Linux might matter.

Conveniently ignoring the fact that for each and every one of the 20,000 folks who flooded their online survey saying they wanted Linux, Dell has sold 2 systems by all accounts (Dell won't confirm publicly, but word is out). In the first 100 days.

You know what? Even the quality of the trolling has gone downhill since the Waggener Edstrom subcontractors started hanging around here. Why are they here? They must not be getting enough traction out of MySpace or Digg or something.

* * * * * *

Buying the right computer and getting it to work properly is no more complicated than building a nuclear reactor from wristwatch parts in a darkened room using only your teeth. —Dave Barry

Re:yes but...

[Shao Ke]

That also conveniently ignores the fact that the Linux offerings are more expensive and older technology. When I went to buy a new Dell I did the math and ended up just buying a Windows machine and blowing away the Windows install and putting SuSE on it.

Re:yes but...

[ThePromenader]

Great claim, but just how can Linux offerings be "more expensive"? Are we talking home computers, or are you just re-using the MS 'cherrypicked fact' ad concerning server technology?

Re:yes but...

[Shao Ke]

That was my observation when I looked at Dell's web site several months ago. The linux.dell.com offerings were inferior and more expensive, at least for laptops. Probably why Dell hasn't gotten many takers.
And no, I'm not an MS fanboy. I've been a continuous Linux user for ~14 years.

Re:yes but...

[loraksus]

Linux configured laptops, etc, were more expensive on the Dell website.
IIRC, prices were more or less the same between the windows and linux versions, but the linux configs got you less ram, hard drive space, etc.

Re:yes but...

[notagain.was.notagai]

Ask Dell. How could the Linux offerings be just as or more expensive than Windows?

But run their "customize options" pages and get a comparable machine. I recall finding that the 1420 with Ubuntu or Windows came to the same price, but the Windows version had some extra bells and whistles. Bettor off buying the Windows version and stripping it - anyhow, I'm sure that Dell pays per unit so you're paying the MS tax either way - they're pro-rating it across their entire line.

Re:yes but...

[ThePromenader]

Wait a second here - are you talking about "cost" according to a retailer's offerings - not the value of the computer/OS itself, but how he chooses to sell? If I understand the above, the retailer is in this case choosing to configure his hardware - to the OS? Sure, there's some "readiness" involved (preparing for a more cumbersome OS), but really. The thought of someone being obliged to buy an OS he doesn't want just to get better/cheaper hardware is frankly ridiculous. And if I do do that and return the unwanted OS, would it still be more expensive? I think not. I fail to see the logic in this.

Were it a question of good 'ol quality/price fair-marketing and the table really level, no such manoeuvering would be needed. Why not just directly sell me a virgin machine (of my choice), without the OS pricetag, and let me install my own flavour/distribution of OS?

Re:yes but...

[notagain.was.notagai]

You got it. It's the "market cost" not the wholesale cost. And since they'll sell you a sub-par system without Windows, you'd better be ready for a huge fight if you want to get your money back for Windows - they'll simply argue that they have a supported system you should have bought.

If it was an actual free market, there'd be close to no advertising, so you can tell how close we are to that!

Re:yes but...

[ThePromenader]

Although I don't agree with the practice, I'm glad to see the facts laid out so clearly. I'm not so sure about the advertising part though - but I suppose that's another discussion : )

if they came loaded with choice of linux distro...

[Anonymous Coward]

with working wi-fi drivers, we'd buy some.

poor linus is being made to look inept due to wi-fi driver squabbling.

Exactly yesterday

[El Lobo]

I've got my Lenovo Topseller R61. And yes, it comes with Vista preloaded, so they may be "top selling" both versions.

And no, no "top seller" version has Linuzzz preinstalled in any shape and form.

Why Won't MS Do Dual Licensing?

[BigAssRat]

I am surprised that MS doesn't allow you to purchase a Vista license that allows the use of XP if you would rather. I bet then they could really beef up their Vista sales numbers, even if only on paper. Who would be able to say that 75% of users purchased Vista but installed XP instead? Looks like they could "win" the numbers game.

Re:Why Won't MS Do Dual Licensing?

[GottMitUns]

That's kind of deal I got last year - buying XP PC with free Vista upgrade. HP delivered on its promise, alas Vista did not work out for me it's still unregeistred, and I always boot to XP.

Re:Why Won't MS Do Dual Licensing?

[Tranzistors]

They do - for business and ultimate versions:
The OEM versions of Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Ultimate include downgrade rights to Windows XP Professional, Windows XP Professional x64, and Windows XP Tablet PC.

From here

Re:Why Won't MS Do Dual Licensing?

[DeeQ]

I doubt they care enough about the numbers. They are what they are and people will continue to buy microsoft,wether it be Xp or Vista (most likely Xp) giving them more money.

Re:Why Won't MS Do Dual Licensing?

[archen]

Well think about it. How can Microsoft leverage all their windows bundled software they've been trying to develop for 5 years if everyone just sticks with XP? The next release of Windows isn't just the next release of Windows, it's a progression of Microsoft's marketplace strategy (like Windows Live, .NET, etc). It says a lot about how Vista took so long, Vista ended up so crappy, and how MS continues to try to push Vista despite how crappy it is.

Re:Why Won't MS Do Dual Licensing?

[ChunderDownunder]

For my laptop I forked out about $20 for Toshiba to send me a Vista CD in the mail. Just in case I'm forced to use Windows at my next job and they go Vista.

I'm content with Kubuntu and NEVER boot into the XP that was pre-installed.

Re:Why Won't MS Do Dual Licensing?

[Cancel-Or-Allow]

There was a time that you could get Vista Home 'downgraded' to XP MCE 2005.
I've done it once, but no dice on further attempts.
Just for fun I tried to get Gateway to ship me a working XP Product key sticker because the Vista one was defective. Didn't work either.

This is the end I tell you!

[Toreo asesino]

Haha! Microsoft will surely die now, what with all these companies choosing Windows XP instead of Vista!

Wait a minute....

Re:This is the end I tell you!

[Constantine XVI]

Actually, staying on XP does, indirectly, have a negative impact on MS. Since Vista went over so poorly, shareholders get irritated that all that money they spent on R&D isin't making much of a return, and thus don't want them to take a risk like this again. Vista must succeed for the shareholders to be happy.

Re:This is the end I tell you!

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there room for growth? Always. But I think shareholders are happy with MSFT regardless of Vista, considering they have revenue of US $50-60B/year and an operating income of over $20B/year a year. If Vista ends up being that big of a failure, they can always fall back on XP and continue maintaining and improving that. One of their big cash cows, the Office suite, seems to be doing great with many people rolling out Office 2007 on a large scale.

Re:This is the end I tell you!

[suyashs]

They should pull a Centrino. Just acknowledge that their latest sucks and go back and optimize and refresh XP. Use what they learned from Vista's development and not make the same mistakes.

Re:This is the end I tell you!

[Anonymous Coward]

I agreed, until I thought about it. If open source has to continue to chase updating Windows versions, it will never be as good. If all commercial programs from here on run on XP, the being XP compatible is enough. The difference between a stationary target and a moving one.

Re:This is the end I tell you!

[BUL2294]

What impact? Microsoft's shareholders don't care what the company does as long as the dough keeps rolling in... And it's rolling in--but for XP and not Vista. Case in point, how much money has M$ made on Internet Explorer? NONE. IE has been a total loss! Nobody ever bought a Windows PC "just to have IE". (Remember that as recently as 2000, IE5 was available for Macs, UNIX, and even Windows 3.1x!) To add, IE has cost M$ hundreds of millions in legal fees and EU sanctions... By definition, the shareholders should be revolting--but they're not.

M$ has many other products like SQL Server, Exchange, Windows Server, and Office that bring in the dough, even if Vista totally fails...

Re:This is the end I tell you!

[Anonymous Coward]

> money they spent on R&D isin't making much of a return,

No, wait. MS sell millions of OEM copies to Dell, Gateway, etc. Buyer then buy a retail copy of XP to install.

MS have _doubled_ their return.

Making Vista crappy deliberately has paid off massively in retail sales (of XP).

Re:This is the end I tell you!

[damsa]

8 years is an eternity in computer terms. And yes people do buy Windows to use Internet Explorer. People buy windows or dual boot specifically to test Internet Explorer.

Re:This is the end I tell you!

[BUL2294]

Fine, maybe I shouldn't have said "nobody" but the number of Windows licenses issued to "those testing Websites on IE" is miniscule. Until M$ decided to drop all non-Windows IE development, you didn't even need a Windows PC for this purpose... And with VirtualPC, VMWare, etc., you don't even need PC hardware.

Siiigh

[BlueParrot]

I wish legislators would just get off their ass and prohibit Microsoft from charging different prices for the stand-alone OS and the OEM versions. Sure, if Microsoft were playing nice they should have the privilege to set prices as they see fit. Problem is that they haven't been playing nice, rather they have used their OEM discounts and other bribes ( yeas that is what they are ) to force suppliers into installing Windows on every machine.

The consequences should be obvious, if they abuse their privilege to set different prices for different customers, then they should lose that privilege, end of story. You don't even have to force the vendors to unbundle windows, if there is a demand for machines without Windows it will sort itself out once you stop Microsoft from preventing it. Simply put, if they can make a profit selling the OS to OEMs for X then they are abusing their monopoly if they demand 2X from regular customers.

Re:Siiigh

[Entropius]

Microsoft has already done things far more worthy of prohibition than this, and were convicted in court for it ... and then the Bush administration conveniently dropped the case when they were appointed. I wish legislators would get off their ass and enforce the judgments that already exist.

And?

[z0M6]

At first I didn't really see the point. It is a laptop with windows XP. How was that news-worthy? Then I kind of remembered that vista is the new ME and it seems a lot of people think so too.

Re:And?

[socz]

At first I didn't really see the point. It is a laptop with windows XP. How was that news-worthy? Then I kind of remembered that vista is the new ME and it seems a lot of people think so too.

Psst! Didn't you get the memo? Winders ME is "it that shall not be named" - ever!

Vista to XP - upgrade or downgrade?

[jkrise]

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/VSTA-DWNGRD.html

The only downgrade from Vista to XP is the price.. .and hassles besides. Why does everyone insist XP is inferior compared to Vista? As far as the user eXPerience is concerned XP is way ahead of Vista, so it is an Upgrade.

Re:Vista to XP - upgrade or downgrade?

[mgblst]

Some people actually like the new flashy stuff. Some people at my work. These are more the "decision" types, who don't actually have to use their computer for anything important, don't really now much about them, but still feel that they have earned to right to make decisions affecting us all.

Re:Vista to XP - upgrade or downgrade?

[Donniedarkness]

But vista is NEW! And... SHINEY! And... it's got this cool bar that lets you put widge...errr... gadgets on it! Totally worth your RAM committing suicide.

Re:Vista to XP - upgrade or downgrade?

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

These are more the "decision" types, who don't actually have to use their computer for anything important, don't really now much about them, but still feel that they have earned to right to make decisions affecting us all.

Like, for example a bunch of computer geeks panning an OS they've never really tried before?

Oh yeah, I hate Linux. What do you mean distro? No I mean Linux. I hate it. All it has is DOS and it doesn't work with any modern computers. It's impossible to learn how to do the simplest stuff with out a 1000 page manual. It also won't play games or run Office. How screwed up is that?

Re:Vista to XP - upgrade or downgrade?

[Godwin O'Hitler]

I had the misfortune to buy a Toshiba compact laptop three weeks ago pre-loaded with Vista Home Basic and a shitload of Toshiba stuff. And the WOW factor was well and truly there ... as in "WOW what a load of shite!"

After using (or trying to use) it for a couple of weeks, I can confidently say Vista is not just inferior to XP; for any serious work at all, that machine is to all intents and purposes unusable. It reduced my productivity by a factor of two or three.

This week I was forced to give up and install XP on it instead. I had no real choice. It was a struggle to get it on but now it's done it's been well worth it and it's back to business as normal.

Vista? What's the point? What IS the point? It's a sad, sad product. I did look for a computer without Vista on it but found nothing (apart from Macs which with all due respect don't provide what I need from a computer).

I hope for other buyer's sakes this upgrade to XP gathers momentum fast.

Re:Vista to XP - upgrade or downgrade?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does everyone insist XP is inferior compared to Vista?

Are you kidding? All I see on Slashdot is irrational hate towards Vista and how much better XP is. Yours is the same as all the other comments.

I have one since September

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a T61 (exact model is ThinkPad T61 7661-A12 ) since late September... best laptop I ever had, flying fast.

2K to XP again..... ?

[jabjoe]

Has this happened before, a mass downgrading from the latest Windows to the previous version? Have to say, not to my knowledge. Many people have said this happens with every new version of Windows. Really? I personally wasn't happy with going from 2k to XP because XP didn't add anything and was all cute/telly tubby and was a bit slower. Like many, after being on 2K became a problem I moved (on work machines you don't always have a choice), I moaned but that was it. Once I turned off all the crap I was fine. From 9x to NT even though it was a big step I don't think there where many people thinking twice. NT was without question much much better/stable. But with Vista things do seam to be happening differently. As a programmer I'm noticing lots of min operating system : Vista for API calls in msdn that would be useful, so there is good stuff there. But there is the huge shadow of compatibility and poor performance which means work isn't even thinking of moving. Personal users fear the DRM and anti piracy tech, not to mention bad performance. The only thing I can see to resolve this is MS starting to take the stuff users don't want out. That already seams to be happening with the removing of the kill switch.

I just....

[Creepy Crawler]

I just bought a Thinkpad in the last 3 months.

XP Professional was on many of the laptop configs. Just ask your salesmen if it wasnt. I just got the crappy Vista (home basic... whatever) and installed XP Pro and Ubuntu after fixing the partition map.

I think the only place NOT to recommend XP are the touchscreen models, as Vista has better touchscreen support.

Been using a ThinkPad with Vista for half a year

[felix9x]

I been using a ThinkPad X60 with Vista Business for six month. Generally I had no major issues and like how Vista works. Here are a few notes though:

1. By default the CPU is set to run at half the speed. My notebook came with a 1.8Ghz Core2 Duo, but by default the power settings are set to run it at 900Mhz. In fact thats the only speed the laptop does not get hot as hell. Even at the lower speed most desktop apps work fast enough.

2. I did a few tweaks myself like disable shadow copy and windows defender. I decided to leave the indexer on since I actually like what it provides.

3. With the most recent updates I think a few annoying things got fixed. The laptop comes out of sleep faster and copying seems to be faster.

4. Wireless networking sometimes is flaky. I don't know if Vista is responsible or its due to the interference where I live or its the lenovo wireless utils that are sluggish.

5. I really like the minor UI improvements in Vista like the new resource monitor. I don't see why it cant be back ported to XP.

How is this news?

[Junior J. Junior III]

You could always order a CTO Thinkpad T61 with Windows XP Professional preloaded. It cost a bit more than Vista Home Basic, but the same as Home Premium or Business.

Heh great name

[iminplaya]

But I will tell you this. The thinkPad is one of the few machines that run pretty well with Vista. It's damn near tolerable. I kid I kid. Actually I'm becoming a convert as I learn the system. Some parts are really silly, but boy, what a beautiful face! It is unfortunate that so much time is spent uninstalling the crapware and disabling some "services", if that's what you call them. Don't know who they serve. And the ThinkPad still comes with that "button" mouse which beats the hell of a trackpad. The only to fly.

Re:Heh great name

[geekoid]

Like any relationship, it takes more then a beautiful face to live with someone day in and day out.

Re:Heh great name

[iminplaya]

Think of it as a new, really hot girlfriend that doesn't speak your language. Or can't get it through her @#%$!)(@# head that the roll of toilet paper should be put with the paper coming out over the top!

Re:Heh great name

[grcumb]

Think of it as a new, really hot girlfriend that doesn't speak your language. Or can't get it through her @#%$!)(@# head that the roll of toilet paper should be put with the paper coming out over the top!

I could take all that and more... if she would just stop shitting in the bed.

Re:Heh great name

[iminplaya]

Sounds like your girlfriend is a bit younger than I would like to know about.

Re:Heh great name

[grcumb]

Sounds like your girlfriend is a bit younger than I would like to know about.

It's more a case of arrested development. Apparently, she was hit over the head with a chair.

GNU/Linux preloaded?

[Anonymous Coward]

Till the choice of GNU/Linux pre-loading is not available on 99% of the personal computers around the glob... not a chance for the free desktop.

Re:Try a regular store

[BlueBat]

Try looking for XP in a regular store. You will not be able to find it. I have asked about having XP placed on the computer instead of the crappy Vista and was told that it was impossible. If you want XP preloaded on a machine anymore, you need to go to a website based business it appears. By the way, it was Circuit City that told me it was Vista only. I told them no way, I would go with Linux long before I would go to Vista. They told me I could get a Mac in that case and I told them I wasn't made of money it was XP or no way. They said no way.

yes

[geekoid]

Dos 4
Windows 2
Bob
Me

Re:yes

[jank1887]

please, let's not make this about you...

Re:yes

[theskunkmonkey]

That would be

Me
Bob
Dos
Windows

Bob is a window washer!

But...

[Bazman]

Can I buy one with neither and how well does Ubuntu run on it?

We just bought a Sony laptop with Vista and poor techie had to spend ages upgrading it to XP... Yes, I do mean upgrading... Seems Sony don't do XP graphics drivers for this model, you have to use Win 2k ones with a modified .inf file or something...

Re:But...

[BCW2]

Check out Emperor Linux, they have T60s and T61s preloaded with a custom kernel so everything works out of the box. Been around for a few years and have had very good reviews from Linux Journal and others.

Try http://www.emperorlinux.com/mfgr/lenovo/toucan/

Re:But...

[shutdown -p now]

For everything there is to know about running Linux on Thinkpads, you should check ThinkWiki. In particular, here's the page on Ubuntu on T61.

From personal experience with Thinkpads, they are quite Linux-friendly. My old R51e has full hardware support in Linux. The latest version of Ubuntu works fine, in particular, and so does Debian.

Re:But...

[JonathanErnst]

Ubuntu runs perfectly on my T61. I have even managed to get a refund on my XP license.

Re:But...

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no way, that I know of, to get one with neither although I find it nice to have XP dualboot for a few reasons. However, I bought an X61s (as I learned afterwards, don't bother with the 's' - it's a waste of money) and Ubuntu runs fine.

You get a solid experience "out of the box" (i.e. everything works, and you could be quite happy leaving it 'as is') but you can improve it quite a bit by doing your own tweaking. There are a few minor wireless issues, and the fact that GNOME's "screen brightness" doesn't adjust the backlight but rather just the display pixels (!!). The latter is remedied by installing 'xbacklight' although you lose the friendly Ubuntu/GNOME interface.

Happily, the intel wireless (iwl4965) has good support (open source driver except for a microcode chunk you put in /lib/firmware) and I've not had any problems with the i915 video. It's nice to not have to bother with restricted drivers and I've not had problems with compiz desktop eyecandy except for power consumption and reduced productivity.

I've spent a few hours hacking with PowerTop to get the battery life under ubuntu up from 5h15m to 6h15m with wireless; under XP I still get an extra hour or so. The next kernel should improve a lot of this; who knows when Ubuntu will package it... The wireless also sometimes has an issue on suspend/resume, unless you disable it explicitly in Gnome before suspending (nice ui for this), or patch up the suspend scripts in /etc/acpi. Not as big a deal as it may sound.

The only thing I'm having trouble with atm, is the automatic accelerometer-based hard drive parking. I have the sensor working (tho you have to compile the module yourself), but I can't get the HD-parking daemon to work.

The only serious problem under linux with no "reasonable" workaround seems to be with flashing the BIOS - there are some convoluted ways around it (see below), but I am happy to have my XP partition for this...

Everything I know, I learned here: http://thinkwiki.org/wiki/ThinkWiki.

Re:But...

[TechyImmigrant]

> Thinkpads, they are quite Linux-friendly.

1) Intel builds most of the interfaces in a Thinkpad, since they make the chipsets.

2) Intel wrote much of the Linux driver code for their devices. Even for the stuff they didn't write, they have teams of people making sure the drivers work with their silicon.

3) All Intel employees are issued Thinkpads (except for the few with Macs). They have been for years. So anyone in Intel responsible for driver support for an Intel chip is going to experience it on a Thinkpad first and get it fixed if its broke.

That's why Linux works well on Thinkpads.

Re:But...

[Abcd1234]

Well, let's not exaggerate. How well Ubuntu works varies widely depending on the hardware config. In the last few months, Ubuntu has supported the wireless, video, and audio chipsets, which have traditionally been problematic, out of the box on my nVidia-powered T61. However, among things that *don't* work:

* The display brightness settings only work in the console, not in X.
* Other hotkeys, like sleep mode (Fn+F4) sometimes work, sometimes don't (in the current rev of Gutsy I'm running, they don't).
* Hibernate doesn't work (though sleep mode does).
* The SATA chipset must be run in legacy compatibility mode, which is apparently slower.
* Power consumption has only approached Vista after some *serious* tweaking with the help of powertop.
* I still haven't got proper ultrabay support working (ie, I can't hot insert/eject my CD drive).

I'm sure there are other issues, but those are just the few off the top of my head. In short: yeah, Ubuntu works. But I definitely wouldn't say "perfectly". And definitely not well enough for those unwilling to do some hacking and tweaking to get things working right.

Re:But...

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that it will be Linux preinstalled, but also come with a Windows license, so you're still not buying one with 'neither'...

Re:But...

[shutdown -p now]

Hm... dunno, but my particular Thinkpad has an Atheros wireless card, and Radeon Mobile video card...

OEM agreement

[HPNpilot]

The marketing line is part of the OEM sales agreement. This is just like "We recommend Duracell batteries" which was required to get into the best pricing tiers. I don't know the exact deal Lenovo or Dell gets from Microsoft but I would say that if you were them you would probably do the exact same thing. When you become a publicly owned corporation your duty is to the shareholders, not to follow some ideological path which may or may not have some future goodwill benefit. Placing that line in the marketing materials has a tangible financial result yet does nothing to persuade anyone who has done due diligence to buy Vista.

Already upgraded.

[binaryspiral]

I ran with the factory Vista Ultimate image on my T61p (Core Duo 2.4Ghz 2GB Ram) for a month, and couldn't take the performance hit compared to XP on my R52 (Single Core 1.8Ghz 2GB Ram).

After reading about the 1% perf increases of Vista SP1, I decided that wasn't good enough and nuked Vista, and installed XP - it's like I've weighed anchor and hoist ye misen mast.

Re:Already upgraded.

[Anonymous Coward]

...and hoist ye misen mast.

Arrrr, hands off me mast, 'n stay away from me poop deck too while yer at it.

Re:Already upgraded.

[evilviper]

couldn't take the performance hit compared to XP

And I couldn't take the performance hit of XP, compared to 2000...

In fact, I still miss NT4, but there's just too much software that doesn't work on it anymore.

Re:Already upgraded.

[binaryspiral]

And I couldn't take the performance hit of XP, compared to 2000...

In fact, I still miss NT4, but there's just too much software that doesn't work on it anymore.

Interesting, XP SP1 was when I converted from 2k and didn't notice much after turning off the themes, menu transitions, and transparency options in the windows.

But I can say without a doubt, I don't miss the BSODs of NT4.

Re:Been using a ThinkPad with Vista for half a yea

[pete.com]

Wow...... underclocking what a concept!

Posted from a T61

[norbac]

I just received my brand new Lenovo T61 preloaded with Vista home basic. What a disaster... but not because of Vista, but instead because of all the pre-loaded junk. The taskbar had 7 icons in the notification area in addition to the ones from the OS, plus a useless battery power gauge that took up another big chunk of real estate (this side-by-side with the already existing Vista power gage, so I'm getting duplicate data). I actually took a screenshot since I couldn't believe it. I did a quick registry check and counted 30 executables set to auto-start on login. On every log on I got nagging pop-ups about turning on some lenovo software. Launching IE brought up two tabs, one set to always load the lenovo page. It was a slow, annoying mess...

I flattened the machine and installed a fresh copy of Vista Ultimate. With the all the cruft gone, things are now flying on the machine, and I'm quite happy with the OS. The difference is astounding.

All these negative comments I kept hearing about Vista make sense now, but it's clear that at least some of the disenchanment is misdirected. Don't OEM's actually use the machines they send out?

Re:Posted from a T61

[afroborg]

That has always annoyed me too. Why can't you buy a laptop with plain old windows installed on it? Why does it have to have a dozen irritating utilities, all of which insist on having a taskbar icon, and most of which simply duplicate functionality that already exists within the OS?

Why would I need a branded wireless LAN config utility? The OS already does that
Why would I need a "Modem Helper" utility? The OS already knows how to work a modem
Why would I need a sound mixer utility? The OS has one already
etc...

And so many of them are bundled / built in with the drivers for the hardware, so you can't even get rid of them!

Re:Posted from a T61

[Chysn]

> What a disaster... but not because of Vista, but instead because of all the pre-loaded junk.

Lenovo must be buckling under some sort of pressure. I bought an R60 (with XP Home) a little more than a year ago, and I was impressed by how much restraint they showed with the pre-loads. There was practically nothing. I did need to remove the stupid battery icon that you mentioned, and I actually started to LIKE to ThinkVantage stuff. But there were no free AOL trials, no irrelevant media players.

Somebody must've got to them...

Re:Posted from a T61

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Most crapware is there because the vendor gets paid to install it, meaning that you should at least get the system a bit cheaper, but device-specific system tray utilities like these tend to be mostly useless, eat resources and have horrible interfaces - so why do they exist? Perhaps their is vendor demand for them based on the idea they add some 'branding' and customisation as opposed to a normal copy of XP, but the kind of user sophisticated enough to know that such differences even exist is fairly likely to know they're worthless ...

Re:Posted from a T61

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't think you already do get the computer slightly cheaper because of all the paid crapware installed?

Are you really that naive?

Re:Posted from a T61

[dacut]

Don't OEM's actually use the machines they send out?

Not really. It's like junk mail, inserts in newspapers, and "special advertising sections" in magazines. They're not putting these there because it benefits the customer; they're in there because the companies are getting paid a ton of money to do so.

Re:Posted from a T61

[MythMoth]

Don't OEM's actually use the machines they send out? Honestly, I think the answer's "no" to that.

When I got my R60e (bottom of the line, but still a nice bit of hardware), it was literally unusable. It was thrashing so badly that I couldn't get anything done. And that was with XP - after a reinstall (of XP) from my own disks it was absolutely fine. The task list went down from 90+ processes to fewer than 30.

Could they afford to sell the R60e at the price I bought it for without all the shiteware? I don't know, but if I had been an unsophisticated customer they'd have ruined the Thinkpad brand for me for life. After all, why buy a Thinkpad if it's as slow as a Dell?

Re:Posted from a T61

[Adambomb]

Seems to me to be mostly the importance of propagating your brands presence, getting your damned logos into peoples brains as common coin.

I wonder how many kilowatt hours of processor energy get wasted on this effort entirely to have a spare splash-screen reminder to customers of what they've bought.

Re:Posted from a T61

[grotgrot]

Lenovo actually make it rather easy to address. They have a piece of software known as base system administrator http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/TVAN-ADMIN.html#TBSA which when run puts a config file in the recovery partition saying what packages you actually want. You then do a recovery install and you'll have exactly what you wanted.

Re:Posted from a T61

[AbRASiON]

Vista, flying? on a laptop with a slow laptop hard drive? (even the fastest are slow), never seen Vista fast on a laptop.

Wow, just incredible, I can only guess you've either opted for 4gb of ram, got an insanely quick laptop drive (solid storage?) or some kind of raid / dual hard disk solution, perhaps with the swap file on the secondary disk.

Alternatively, your definition of 'flying' and my definition may be vastly different.

Re:Posted from a T61

[pimpimpim]

Same experience here, not much crap on an IBM bought about a year ago. Still: even under XP there were about 10 IBM programs started at boot, with cryptic names that make it look like a virus (googling helps there). As for quality: The IBM program to select between normal and presentation view is one of the better ones around. One of the disadvantages: As usual for IBM, the programs look like they weren't changed since they were first written in 1993.

Re:Posted from a T61

[Hangly Man]

The taskbar had 7 icons in the notification area in addition to the ones from the OS, plus a useless battery power gauge that took up another big chunk of real estate

You don't understand. In the Land of China, clutter is beautiful. More icons > fewer icons.

Don't believe me? Check out a few popular Chinese websites

Re:Posted from a T61

[evilviper]

And so many of them are bundled / built in with the drivers for the hardware, so you can't even get rid of them!

If the OS doesn't execute them on startup, they can't do a thing. If you remove their "Run" entries from the registry, Windows doesn't know anything about them.

I suggest downloading and installing Startup.CPL as the first step on any machine, and removing any and all entries you don't want run, or even any you just don't recognize (almost nothing actually NEEDS to be run at startup).

http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml

Re:Posted from a T61

[IntlHarvester]

A lot of the IBM/Lenovo stuff I think only exists for historical reasons. They had some of those same craplets running under Windows 3.1.

Re:Posted from a T61

[Anonymous Coward]

The taskbar had 7 icons in the notification area in addition to the ones from the OS, plus a useless battery power gauge that took up another big chunk of real estate (this side-by-side with the already existing Vista power gage, so I'm getting duplicate data). I actually took a screenshot since I couldn't believe it. I did a quick registry check and counted 30 executables set to auto-start on login. On every log on I got nagging pop-ups about turning on some lenovo software.

I work for Lenovo. There has actually been a dedicated team formed recently to specifically address those issues. The upper management is listening and take this very, very seriously. Also - we DO use the machines that we ship. What else do you think we would use? :)

Launching IE brought up two tabs, one set to always load the lenovo page.

This is Microsoft. The MS tool bar launches one window, the other is your home page.... Remove the tool bar, and that second window will disappear. Posted anon for obvious reasons.

Re:Posted from a T61

[tuxicle]

That may be why Lenovo/IBM charge so much more for their laptops than other vendors who do include such icons on their default install.

WHER TEH LUNIX!?!?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

IM MAD DAT I KANT GET TEH LUNIX ON TEH LENOVIO1!!!!!11 OBYCOTT TEH IBM UNILZ DEY GETS TEH LUNIX ON TEH LAPTOPZORZ!!!!111!!1one

On a side note, Vista's installed base exceeded the combined install base of both Lunix and Apple after the first week it went on sale. So if Vista isn't succeeding... what does that say about Apple and Teh Lunix?

Re:WHER TEH LUNIX!?!?!?!

[ThePromenader]

Boy, that's a lot of frustrated people. Thank god they've never tried any other OS, otherwise they'd REALLY be sore.

I know it's been said before

[jacquesm]

but how on EARTH is this news... in all the years that I've been on slashdot I can't recall a single posting of mine that actually got accepted (I stopped trying a short while ago), and just about every day there is at least one article that simply should not have made the cut. it seriously pisses me off, even though tfm says that there is no point in griping about such things because it's normal. I think that if it's 'normal' that something is wrong.

Re:Mod parent up!

[grand_it]

+ informative

Vista Business and Vista Ultimate licenses allow a cost-free downgrade to Windows XP. Other vendors are shipping PCs with XP preloaded and free upgrade to Vista (Maxdata/Belinea for example).

That is actually a Windows Vista Business license for wich the vendor pre-applied the *DOWNgrade* option. I'm pretty sure that those machine are counted in the Windows Vista market share.

Linus is right

[Anonymous Coward]

I am with Linus on this one.

Multi Boot makes sense

[twitter]

Bill Gates might regret doing everything he could to make dual booting difficult. Ha ha.

Re:Try a regular store

[polaris20]

The "brilliant" sales associates at Circuit City probably don't even know there's a difference between XP and Vista.

Re:Been using a ThinkPad with Vista for half a yea

[metalcoat]

We have 4 Laptops with 2 different wireless cards (N and G) and both have problems with associating with wireless networks. I believe wireless networkings is seriously broken in Vista.

youN FAIL it?!

[Anonymous Coward]

disturbing. If you Can connect to m4rket share. Red is the ultimate our cause. Gay deliver. Some of have left in The goodwill

Now if only they would offer GNU/Linux that way.

[Erris]

They already offer GNU/Linux preloads on select models but all of the vendors could do more. It would be nice if they offered a GNU/Linux certified option that gave you peace of mind and let you avoid the M$ tax on every model that had 100% free driver support. Imagine that. It also gets around the age old excuse of extra costs to the vendor. Models sold that way require nothing more than certification and would probably sell better than Vista. I hate giving people money for software I have no use for, M$, XP and Vista fall into this catagory.

Wow, how friendly.

[Erris]

You get to chose one or the other. Forever.

Imagine you could just move the software you have already purchased from your old computer to your new computer.

Imagine you could dual boot or run things in virtual machines.

Imagine Vista worked at all. Opps.

M$ has made all of the above difficult so they can continue to sell you the same thing again and again. I'm supposed to be impressed by one time use "downgrade rights"? Directions on Microsoft got this one right:

The whole concept that you have to buy an upgrade so you can downgrade to an older version is perverse anywhere but inside Microsoft

Re:Wow, how friendly.

[petermgreen]

You get to chose one or the other. Forever.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/f/4/5f4c83d3-833e-4f11-8cbd-699b0c164182/royaltyoemreferencesheet.pdf

"Q. Can end users return to Windows Vista
Business or Windows Vista Ultimate software
after they downgrade?
A. Yes. End users who downgrade may reinstall
the original software when they are ready to
migrate. For example, an end user who
downgrades to Windows XP Professional may
later return to Windows Vista Business software
provided that the end user deletes the Windows
XP Professional software from the PC."

Re:Wow, how friendly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Opps

Re:Wow, how friendly.

[Erris]

Great, but why make it hard? Why force the deletion of one or the other instead of a smooth migration or -*gasp*- allowing both systems to access the same user data via dual boot or virtual machines. Mac and GNU/Linux pull this off.

MODERATORS: Inconsistencies?

[Anonymous Coward]

You sure link a lot to this person's journal. Who in fact just posted to this same article.

It's interesting how both accounts use the same writing style, do the same "M$" thing and even misspell the same words consistently.

Are you posting to Slashdot with two accounts? Is that even allowed?

Re:MODERATORS: Inconsistencies?

[Anonymous Coward]

no one gives a shit how hard you suck twitters dick, fucktard.

Re:MODERATORS: Inconsistencies?

[Anonymous Coward]

thanks for your input, twatter.

Re:Been using a ThinkPad with Vista for half a yea

[pyrr]

Actually, that's probably just SpeedStep or whatever they're calling it now. When the mobile CPU isn't being taxed, it'll drop to half-speed or less to save power. As soon as you throw a load at it, it'll dynamically scale upwards to full speed. It's easy to monitor this on Kubuntu, a mouseover on the power manager icon shows what speed the cores are running at with a glance, at idle it'll show the current speed with half of the bar graphs filled, when it's being hammered, the bars fill up and the display shows the full core speed. Windows does exactly the same scaling, it's just hidden.

I would also note that you could disable SpeedStep in the BIOS on older Thinkpads (and likely other makes & models too). Doing so would fix the processor at the lower speed (lest you think you're going to get it to run full-tilt all the time), but avoided some of the serious performance problems associated with the way Windows was managing SpeedStep, I don't know if that issue has since been fixed.

You mean your RAM being used as it should be. n/t

[sid0]

n/t

You know what I'd like to see?

[slapout]

How about one with both OSes installed that you can just dual boot from? Or maybe throw Ubuntu in there and tri-boot.

My Thinkpad came with Vista

[InlawBiker]

My work issued T61 came with Vista, but the I.T. guys wiped it for me and put XP on it instead. Getting XP pre-loaded would have saved us a bunch of time. I don't want to use XP and I.T. doesn't want to support it. Looks like everyone's happy.

Re:My Thinkpad came with Vista

[InlawBiker]

Bah, I meant to say I don't want to use Vista and I.T. doesn't want to support it.

News ?

[Teisei]

Many stores were selling computers with XP away with discount so that they could start selling the same computers with Vista on them. And now, let me guess, they are doing the same with Vista computers, so that they could start selling XP preloaded computers again? Micro$oft really screwed things up with Vista, it seems. Anyway, many people don't really care which Windows comes preinstalled with the computer. Linux these days is a very viable option as well. The laptop I'm using now, Lenovo ThinkPad T60, came with Windows Vista Business. I didn't like it very much, so I installed Ubuntu and have been happy with it ever since.

hopefully in the future too

[mako1138]

I hope they still offer XP when the Penryn notebook platform comes out.

Finally some pushes back MS.

[Neanderthal Ninny]

Several months ago I had to buy a system from a store because the old system was dying but that system was preload with Vista and the application was running on it wasn't Vista compatible yet so I had to buy XP. I wanted a system preload with XP but they don't have that because MS was strong arming the hardware vendors to preload Vista and sent a ugly compliant to hardware manufacture and store. I wish that more hardware manufactures would allow the customers to buy the OS they wish on the system they want.

As it should be?

[Anonymous Coward]

Vista uses as much memory with a single user as Mac OS X does for two logged in at the same time.

And yes, that's not counting cache/inactive memory.

Re:As it should be?

[Macthorpe]

So what?

Seeing as it frees that RAM up when you want to use it for programs, I don't see the problem.

Canadian Lenovo with XP

[Ragica]

A few weeks ago i purchased a T61. The Canadian Lenovo website is horrible. There are very few options available (compared to the US site). Still I managed to find a sneaky little link off to the side which contained a very unorganized list of a bunch of T61 package permutations, and found one that suited me closely enough. There were two listings with identical options (not placed side-by-side) I found for this. One with Vista and one with XP. I seem to recall the XP variation cost $30 more. I took it (albeit bitterly), despite that.

A few days later the Canadian Lenovo site changed, and that link was gone. Worried in case my order may be affected I called the number they provide. After getting forwarded to 3 different numbers (the last one of which didn't work at all), no one could find any trace of my order on their system. I tried emailing the .ca customer service email address and got no response for days.

This was *extremely* frustrating. Finally many days later I got an email response confirming my order... and informing me that I'd selected a non-standard configuration so it would take 3-4 weeks to build. Frustrating. Very frustrating. I'm extremely tempted to cancel my order. I want to cancel, very much! But I also want the laptop... sigh. (And i don't want to think of the stress that'd be involved phoning them again to try to cancel the thing.)

Re:Try a regular store

[treeves]

Same thing for me at Fry's three months ago. Vista was the only option when I went to buy a new desktop for home. My wife uses it primarily, so I left it as-is.

No wonder customers want XP

[axb2298]

XP is faster than vista http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/11/windows-xp-serv.html/

I have a new T61P with Vista

[jhw539]

It is currently serving as a stand for my XP based T40. Vista Business has been a disaster for me in terms of billable hours lost troubleshooting stuff that just works in XP (hibernate resume and wireless)(yes, compared to Vista XP's wireless is rock solid). The wireless networking has a nasty intermittent failure that takes reboot/reinstall driver/manually configure wireless network/sacrafice a goat to resolve, temporarily. As the T61p is a recent purchase, I have little more than Firefox and Putty on it on it, so at least it is relatively painless to wipe it (again, but last time I foolishly reinstalled Vista) and install XP. The only good thing I can say about Vista is that it's remote desktop works as well as XP's. Based on this experience, I have pointed my parents firmly at a Mac Mini for Christmas and am planning to clear out the few MS stocks in my retirement account. Vista is not a WindowsME level screwup, we're talking more like the love child of Microsoft Bob and Clippy on the aggravation scale.

Re:Been using a ThinkPad with Vista for half a yea

[felix9x]

I thought this too but now I am not sure. For a long time the wireless took forever to reconnect after the laptop has woken up from sleep but recently it has been much faster. Its possibly that issue was resolved by updates.

Special Rates for Well Qualified Buyers!!

[cbsx1]

'Lenovo customers that have Windows Vista Business or Windows Vista Ultimate "qualified systems" may purchase a Windows XP Recovery CD until July 31, 2008. Fees may vary.'

My T61 has been on back order for three weeks and just shipped yesterday. Now the wait and the 'variable fee' to upgrade.

-- Is it just me or does the new Recycle Bin look an awful lot like a shot glass. For some reason I feel as though I need a drink....

STFU, kid. Seriously.

[Anonymous Coward]

Um... no. Please provide a source to your ridiculous claim. Oh wait, you can't. But I have some.

Vista's sales were 60% less than expected (comparing to XP's first week sales in October 2001), and 50% less than predicted by Microsoft. However, 30% of first week sales opted for the $400 Vista Ultimate, bringing the dollar value up to $207.13, 66% up from the initial selling price of XP. It should also be noted that PC sales were up 67% from the same week the previous year, making Vista sales look even worse.

As for actual total desktop market share, that's a tougher thing to measure. Linux users don't have to buy anything, meaning we can't judge them by sales numbers. You can't even look at download stats because the same disk image could be used throughout an organization (I myself have used the same CentOS disk on more than *200* machines). The numbers people quote most often come from advertising statistics, but that has it's own problems, mainly to do with a little something called an ad blocker. In 2002, only about 1-2% of users had adblocking software; in 2004, 21%; in 2006, 53%; and by the end of 2008, 80% are expected to have some form of adblock installed. That means that less than half of people's computers are actually reporting data back to advertisers for these OS market share statistics, with a disproportionate amount using something besides Windows. Meaning that Linux and Mac users are again shown in less than actual percentages.

Anyway, here are the numbers for the month of December 2006 from netapplications.com (the most quoted source):

XP - 85.30%
Mac - 5.67%
Linux - 0.68%
Vista - 0.37%

Other factors to keep in mind concerning advertising statistics are the large and growing number of dual boot and VM configurations, not just Linux-Windows, but Linux-Mac and Mac-Windows and the fact that most advertising statistics are usually limited to one country or even just major cities in a country. Also the fact that these numbers only account for (some) desktop systems, not servers or most embedded devices (of which Linux now boasts 20+% and 49% market share respectively as of April 2007).

Sources:
http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9011360&intsrc=hm_list
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=10&qpmr=24&qpdt=1&qpct=3&qpcal=1&qptimeframe=M&qpsp=95
http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT7065740528.html

Wow. That ended up WAY longer than I thought it'd be. Sorry. :p

Oh, one last thing. If you go to the second link I gave and look up the stats for last month, you'll see that Vista is already at 9%. Not bad, but not great, either, considering how hard Microsoft's been pushing it for the last year (think about all those stories about retailers selling XP since no one with half a brain tech-wise wants Vista).

How's Lenovo doing, anyhow?

[schweini]

Sorry if this is kind of off-topic, but i remember that when IBM sold it's PC department to Lenovo (even though Lenovo was actually producing the machines before that, anyhow), folks were very afraid that the great ThinkPad would fall in quality and robustness and all the things that make ThinkPads great - does anyone have anectodal evidence whether this actually happens, or are ThinkPads still the laptop-of-choice for the people that value quality over the bling-factor?

Re:How's Lenovo doing, anyhow?

[toddestan]

My experience is that they aren't quite as durable as they used to be, but are still a step above everyone else (excluding the more specialty stuff like the Toughbook, of course). I also like the styling, and a 5 year old Thinkpad looks like a Thinkpad, and won't look dated like silver paint with blue LEDs or white (and yellowed) plastic is going to look in a few years.

Re:Been using a ThinkPad with Vista for half a yea

[aws910]

I have a lenovo that had to be "rescued by the penguin". Before that, I was "using" the Vista Business preload, and I wholeheartedly agree with you. I had problems connecting to any network, wired or otherwise, and the search never worked right for me. Say what you will about that, but I actually found it easier to get things working in Ubuntu(but still hard as hell). If Vista is trying to copy the Mac's "It just works" claim, they have a long way to go.

The right thing to do.

[mdigiac1]

They need to admit vista was a huge disaster and cut their losses and start from scratch. Vista wasn't close to a fresh start. What happens when u put crap and a fancy sheet on a pile of crap? u get a bigger pile that looks nice but still smells.

Re:Been using a ThinkPad with Vista for half a yea

[notagain.was.notagai]

I'm sure it is. I used an HP Pavilion with their Broadcom card. After the first few connections, it refused to take dhcp from the server. But running under Linux with ndiswrapper (same exact driver), I had no problems at all. And this was just a few months ago.

Google it and you see endless "advices", and multiple unclear tech-notes.

And people complain about wireless on Linux - makes me laugh! With little manufacturer support, you can get it to work, but the million that are thrown in by MS and device manufacturers and they can't get the kinks out for Vista.

Re:Try a regular store

[Anonymous Coward]

By the way, it was Circuit City that told me...

Well, there's your whole problem right there.

Hehe

[Hangly Man]

I was part of the committee to make sure the "Lenovo recommends" blurbs were included on every page. As you might imagine, it's done for the discount, nothing more.

Re:Hehe

[Hangly Man]

Oh, and I should add, I don't think that particular blurb is compliant. It needs to contain the word "genuine" in there somewhere, and I don't believe Vista has quite earned it's circle-R yet. The ® should be on Windows. Lenovo recommends Genuine Microsoft Windows® Vista Business.

Microsoft OEM prove Vista's failure daily

[Serindipidude]

I run Vista on my HP Compaq nc8430 but I had to buy it with XP because Vista had only been out for a few months. Apparently 5 years and a few months notice wasn't enough for HP to get it ready in time. I ordered another one yesterday and I still can't buy one with Vista. I have to get XP and pay an upgrade license to run Vista. To recap this situation, HP knows Vista sucks and won't supply it despite recommending it (for the discount only). I pay Microsoft extra to run Vista because it sucks! HP get a better profit margin with their discount for recommending a sucky product. I wish my boss would pay me extra for screwing up and turing out work that's late and sucks! (P.S. It my job to run Vista and work out when its ready for corporate deployment. There's no way I want 250 people ringin me up with the kind of crap that I put up with from Vista bugz. Vista SP1 had better be something outa this world!).

Just bought one...

[Eil]

Although I wish they'd follow Dell's lead and offer Linux as an OS option.

I had been looking at a ThinkPad T61 for months but finally splurged because they recently dropped by price by about $300. I've been using it for a couple weeks and man, this is a nice laptop. It reeks of thoughtful engineering and quality construction. It runs Linux perfectly, as long as you choose the right wifi and video cards. The best part? A midrange ThinkPad actually costs less than their competitors' flimsy equivalents. I don't mean for this to sound so much like an advertisement, but I just really love this machine.

Re:Just bought one...

[tuxicle]

They supposedly have, I remember reading about Lenovo's Linux support in 2006. I've waited for a long time for them to ship laptops with Linux pre-loaded, but so far they haven't. Apparently, it only works if you are an OEM.

Re:Try a regular store

[vuffi_raa]

yep- I was lucky when I got my lenovo at a comp usa (one of the few in store core duo xp laptops at the time)- it was a sealed box return, so it couldn't go back to the distributor to be swapped for a vista machine- I got it for less than cost- $450- everything else at the time was vista in the store

Toshiba's power management utility is good though

[Rob Simpson]

Most of such utilities are crap (autoruns usually takes care of them), but the one that I've found to actually increase functionality is Toshiba's power management utility, which is a lot more useful than the default XP one.

No, the shareholders *are* revolting

[zooblethorpe]

By definition, the shareholders should be revolting--but they're not.

Well, I think that might be a matter of individual taste. Personally, I find them pretty revolting, supporting a company as morally bankrupt and actively obstructionist as Microsoft.

Cheers,

Pain of Going Back and Forth.

[Erris]

Going from XP to Vista is hard. Going the other way is a huge pain in the ass. No, you can't dual boot. Information does not move smoothly. This is by design, so they can force people along and create the illusion that moving to free software is even more difficult.