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Dell Will Offer XP Past Cutoff Date
Dionysius, God of Wine and Leaf, brings news that Dell will be offering Windows XP pre-installed on their computers past the June 30 cut-off date. Computers purchased with Vista Business or Vista Ultimate past June 30 will come with a copy of XP Pro. Dell plans to simply install that copy upon request to save users a step. Perhaps this will help Microsoft officials make up their minds about another extension.
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Don't people just rip a copy off and install it ?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I couldn't help but notice that the submitter, a commercial entity, currently has four articles on the front page.
Linux, Mac OS X, or Windows XP?
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
Could a fervent Microsoft Windows user please explain what drivers them to beg their vendor for features and support for products which they have paid, and in different ways, continue to pay for? is it just a state of mind? I don't fully understand it.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
I applaude this decision and will do my best to support them if they continue selling XP.
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
There is no XP community support?
They'd be better off just rewriting all the stuff that's old and sucks in XP and leaving everything else like the basic design and functionality and call it XP2 instead of just extending XP. Then at least they could make some money. Or they should just give up except then people would probably be dumb enough to use macs instead of Linux and I think we all know that would be worse than anything Microsoft could ever put out.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
It's what they're customers want. I can't roll out Ubuntu where I am because it doesn't support Outlook, at least in a fashion that I would consider stable. It's that simple. I don't want Vista when I get new machines, I want the operating system that I know is proven reliable.
Step out of your Linux bubble for a second and accept that XP is still in demand by a lot of businesses.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I was just going to comment on that also. I think he meant patch support, but I believe that software vendors are required to still support "retired" operating systems for at least a few years after they end-of-sale them.
WTB [sig], PST!!!
LOL, irresponsible ? support ? who still needs Xp support ?!
Here in the Gov 'o' Canada we are just starting to migrate to XP.
A lot of US Defense is just migrating to XP as well...
We have our own Support staff, and any user that chooses XP over
"supported" Vista obviously has a support route or has abandoned
the parachute knowingly. Remember that this is "By request".
PS: I'll have the porterhouse
End of Line.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
XP has support into 2014. Wiki.
It's my understanding that the only thing changing as of June 30 is that Microsoft is going to stop selling XP. XP will be supported until something like 2014, IIRC.
June 30th this year is the cutoff date for new OEM sales, not the EOL of support for Windows XP. That'll be somewhere around 2012.
Good luck with that. Companies like to have someone to blame when the software stops working. With Linux you have no one to blame becuase (for most cases) you aren't paying anything for it, so you don't really have much leverage.
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"why not instead redirect the customers to their Ubuntu offerings instead?"
Maybe because they are going with XP Pro? The OS that Dell's business customers are already using and still demanding? The OS that Dell obediently stopped offering back when MSFTs product rollout originally demanded that Vista go on all new machines more than a year ago. The OS that Dell started putting back on new machines as soon as it was discovered that Vista BROKE "mission critical" business applications left and right.
Maybe Ubuntu is no more capable of handling those same mission critical applications that Vista. Is it's Dell's reponsibility to guarantee that Ubuntu is going to seamlessly slot into any and all of their business customer's IT infrastructure and run the myriads of customized internal and thrid party apps run by those customers?
Why the heck would Dell put a "kick me" sign right over their corporate cojones by offering another useless OS to their business customers after having already been on the steel toed receiving end of the backlash over Vista?
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
There is simply no reason for Dell to be offering XP other than their customers are demanding it. I'm sure Dell will include some sort of disclaimer regarding the product being un-supported.
They could redirect customers to the Ubuntu offerings but if customers are asking for XP then it's a no-brainer for Dell.
I've been a Vista user for over a year now, and am somewhat satisfied with the OS. Compared to XP it is worlds above in both stability and usability. It almost even comes close to KDE for a decent UI.
What are the reasons people want to stay with XP?? As it is, I manage 1200 users, and we are happily switching all to Vista (as well as SLED) as we roll out new machines. (This is approximately 400/year.)
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
It's awesome to see a vendor giving M$ the finger, it should give the M$ top dawgs a bit to chew on. Vista is turning out to be the ME of the new tech generation, and figuring out that not all their customers are going to take the new OSs immediately after their release should teach them to pay attention to what people really want. Microsoft OSs are not iPods, but it sounds like they base their strategies around retarded customer demand. (iProduct?) As far as Dell's deal goes, Is this going to effect the price of their Vista Machines? And if you decide to reimage to XP, do you get to keep your Vista License? It sounds like Dell might be using this as a chance to pocket a bit more off supply/demand...
But clearly you have something better to say...
It's not after the cut-off date for security fixes, it's after the cut-off date MS has set for sales of XP. Just a few days ago SP3 was released, and security updates will be created for a long time still.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
1. The cut off date is for sales from large OEMs for Desktops systems. XP will still be available for small notebooks like the EEE and from small PC builders.
2. The cut off date isn't for support.
3. Microsoft says that it's customers don't want XP and are all happy with Vista... Well maybe this will be a nice wakeup call.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Everybody needs support for XP that is still using it.
Support in this case doesn't mean "How do I find the Internet?".
The support he is talking about is for things like drivers, and security patches. So yea everybody does need support.
Of course Microsoft isn't cutting off security updates for XP anytime soon.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Don't people get tired of the same Anti-MS ranting and Linux Fanboyism? It's been 10 years for me on /., and frankly, I expected some better discussion. Yeah, I must be new here.
:-)
Despite that, let's talk about taking advantage of the situation, beyond the opportunities for mockery.
So, here's some discussion questions:
1. Whatever one's opinions/philosophy on XP/Windows, it's getting old. With Vista receiving such a poor welcoming, what would cause people to move to other systems?
More specifically, what do people need that other OSs don't supply well enough?
Exchange comes to mind. What else?
The intent is to build a To-Do list for global desktop domination
2. Would it be preferable to push people to a specific OS (Linux, MacOS, etc), or to make the specific OS less relevant? If there were easily available, high-quality, drop-in replacements for applications that keep people on Windows, is it better to let people make their own preferential choices on OS?
Here, my intent is to discuss a movement to attack Windows on all fronts simultaneously. Instead of putting all our eggs in a Linux or Mac basket, how about a basket-independent egg that fits wherever?
Some people should really be on a solid Unix (Linux/Solaris) workstation, others on a Mac, and others with essentially an oversized PDA.
Sadly, this may involve some Java.
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
One of the things I'm wondering about is whether a freshly-installed XP can be activated after the cut-off date.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
Microsoft probably doesn't care what OS Dell installs or ships, as long as it is a Microsoft Operating System. They will still make their money.
Sure, I'll replace the most important app for 1000 people with " couple of Linux projects which at least claim to support that."
You'll pick up my mortgage and other expenses when I get canned, right? Please be slightly realistic in the Linux fanaticism.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Businesses don't run based on ideals, they run based on productivity. If applications like Open Office fail to open an Office document even 1% of the time then they're useless if that document is really something you need to open. Gimp still isn't a satisfactory replacement for Photoshop. Sound in flash still doesn't work correctly out of the box on Ubuntu systems, there's no mp3 support by default, nor does Quicktime really work. There's still not a decent movie player.
This doesn't even begin to take into account that most businesses I've come across use some kind of custom industry application. CAD applications, specialized accounting applications, lending an loan applications, guess what they're all written for? Windows. Linux still doesn't work for those customers.
If the Linux community wants to advance they're going to have to give up on some of their ideals and actually provide what people are looking for, which is a stable operating systems that run applications people actually want to use with a consistent look and feel everywhere. I ran Ubuntu for over a year and reverted to XP because I couldn't deal with the slowdowns for no reason, application crashes, incompatibilities, mystery feature additions and removals based on the whims of the developers (what's pigeon going to include or disable this week!), and decisions that were made purely for philosophical reasons (no mp3 support by default? please.)
Most of my machines still run some kind of Unix (mostly FreeBSD and OSX) but when I need Windows, I really need Windows and nothing else will do.
Besides, Outlook is still the best email/productivity/calendaring application out there. Nothing I've seen on UNIX even comes close, especially when I need to share data with others.
And just because XP will be end of lifed, the security updates for it will continue for a few years, which is all anyone really needs. If 75% of the market is still on XP, developers aren't going to move to being Vista only any time soon because it'd kill their sales.
1) Dell already offers ubuntu under certain conditions, it's not like offering or not XP is linked, to the people affected by this(I keep referring people to the dell website, and people come back with the impression they can only get a pc with vista now, despite the fact that its still sold.
2) WinXP will have "support" long past the cut off date. The end of support date for Windows XP was announced before the end of sale date, I can't rememnber what it is right now, but I believe its in 2010 sometime.
3) Even if they didn't have "support" from microsoft, Dell was already handling some of the support for their XP machines, so it's not fair to say it's unsupported, just "unsupported by vendor"
On the other hand, why not just reverse engineer the cut off date from the end of support date Microsoft? if you're going to stop supporting XP by Jan 2011, the only cut off date that makes sense to me to stop selling is is June 2010, not something in 2008.
OK OK... I know, I'm on slashdot, and expecting Microsoft to make sense, when will I ever learn?
I do like and use Linux.
But there are just some programs that you can not get on Linux yet. Some of those programs you may absolutely need to run your business.
And before you say the classic dumb answer of just pay for someone to write it for Linux and open source it or do it yourself. Not everybody has the time, talent, or money to write code or start a FOSS project.
Not to mention that you may need it TODAY.
Oh and Wine just isn't that good yet.
I sure wouldn't run Solidworks under Wine.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Why is Slashdot crowd concerned how long Microsoft is selling and/or supporting Windows XP all the sudden? I thougth it is common understanding here that Vista sucks and is bringing MS down to bankcruptcy or whatever. So why shouldn't stop selling XPs, in your point of view?
You don't know what you don't know.
Out of curiosity, what do you think Microsoft would do if you blamed them when the ______ virus causes downtime or chkdsk corrupts your harddrive?
It drives me crazy when people bring up this point, especially when people are arguing for a soon-to-be unsupported OS like XP.
Selling a computer with XP past the Microsoft cutoff date is pretty irresponsible.
This isn't really dell being irresponsible - this is sanctioned by Microsoft. Both the Vista Ultimate and Business licenses give you the right to 'downgrade' to XP Pro. Dell are just helping their customers out with the mechanics of doing the downgrade.
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
2012!
When Microsoft stops supporting Win XP, the world will crash!
It was predicted: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012
-Alex. http://bit.ly/1iVPtfA
Sigh. This will probably make MS happy as it will boost the Vista sales stats - especially since the two Vista "versions" listed are the most expensive.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Well done Dell, you just made a lot of money.
Next PC I buy, I'm going back to Dell (HP Screwed me recently on a repair).
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
I have 2 Vista laptops (1 from Dell, 1 from Lenovo; bought with Vista B & HP installed).
... until the next time.
Both laptops suffer from the constant (Not Responding) bug.
Simply put you will be working away and suddenly your App (any App) will go into (Not Responding) for 5-30 seconds. Then it mysteriously comes out of that state and you can do work again
Don't give me that "drivers" BS. The drivers are up to date.
The Green Bar of Death is another wonder to behold.
Finally, after having the V-Bus laptop for a little over a year. Explorer.exe stopped showing me the contents of folders.
Remember when you used to have to re-install Windows about once every 18 months? That pretty much stopped when Win2k came out. Well, it appears to be back.
PS:
Since drivers were mentioned. WTF is with changing the printer drivers model? Has printing changed drastically in the last few years? Can I print in 3D holograms now?
Look if driver models need to be changed due to technical advances, I am all for it. But if I am working with the same technology we had sussed out 20 years ago (or at least 15), leave it the fuck alone. Especially when HP refuses to update their drivers.
Christ, at worst write an emulation layer. All I am doing is putting dots on a piece of paper.
They are begging XP/2003 users to see Vista as a compelling upgrade. And we don't. Because it isn't.
As far as XP/2003 users, most of us never have to beg. These operating systems have been reliably running our apps forever. Most people never have to beg MS for anything. We simply want windows updates and vendors to be able to keep selling the operating system we find perfectly acceptable.
If ubuntu or whatever got the app support that windows has, people would be willing to migrate. Until that happens people will be perfectly happy to run XP/2003 until MS gives us a truly compelling upgrade. Contrary to many of the more zealous, MS does not lead us like cattle.
Lightning works for sending invites for meetings. It's an add-on to thunderbird for email-related calendaring. For example, last summer at my part time job I was able to receive and send meeting requests from my boss who uses outlook. There's also sunbird, which is more heavy-weight then lightning. Sunbird's a standalone calendar app.
:/
I'm not sure how well they do with exchange, but they are able to work with Apple's iCal, since they both use the same file format. It's a shame that Windows has such a dominance. There'd be so many other options if it didn't have to be a Microsoft solution.
Oh, and I should note that lightning improved greatly from Spring 2007 to the summer. Before then, it was really not helpful. Being able to receive/send invites makes it usable for people who only occasionally need to set up meetings. They may not be there yet, but Lightning and Sunbird are worthy of watching. They seem to be constantly improving. It's especially nice having the same basic interface when switching between Windows, Linux etc.
Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.
Selling a computer with XP past the Microsoft cutoff date is pretty irresponsible. At least Ubuntu has community support, whereas XP will have no support? Is it really Dell's place to oversee microsoft's business decisions? Because no one wants Ubuntu, they want XP.
Sorry to be so blunt, but there it is. Dell sells Ubuntu, but it is still a niche, and suggesting that Dell just drop XP altogether to try and force people to use Ubuntu for... no good reason makes little sense.
In other news, I wonder if this will force Microsoft to continue to support WinXP. It's pretty well known that Dell has a lot of pull with Redmond -- it's said that their objections about the "No XP for YOU!" nonsense that Microsoft tried when Vista came out is one of the major reasons Microsoft backed down, wonder if this will change much.
Selling a computer with XP past the Microsoft cutoff date is pretty irresponsible. At least Ubuntu has community support, whereas XP will have no support? Is it really Dell's place to oversee microsoft's business decisions?
What support are they going to need? It's not like MS is going to turn off the "update" link altogether. Even though *official* support is supposed to be long gone, I believe they still post major bug or vulnerability fixes for Windows 2000.
XP, like 2000 is pretty much "stable" so unless you're going to upgrade to a software that doesn't work on XP, they don't need to upgrade. And most companies don't really need to upgrade past what they have now. So when they buy a new computer, they're going to want to have everyone on the same OS. Where I'm working they're still on Win2000, Office 2000 and IE6. Missing a few bells and whistles, but it works just fine.
A business switching to Linux is going to go with Red Hat or some distro with years under it's belt. Ubuntu is the hot thing now, but will it have longevity? That and businesses are not going to be able to rely on "community" support. They're going to need techs well-versed in Linux, either on-site or available for emergencies.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
We've told Dell we want XP longer... and I'm glad they are doing this. We'll skip Vista and wait for the next Windows... hopefully it will not suck.
Everyone that use to slap XP around are now among the group of anti-Vista people that are making XP into a legendary OS.
The weird part, this is a win/win for Microsoft. (Ever hear of Classic Coke?)
So do you really think MS cares? If they cared, the WPF/desktop search and other 'user' level aspects of Vista would never have been back ported to XP. The only things not available on XP from Vista is the architectural changes that includes the WDDM that handles GPU virtualization and GPU multi-tasking at the OS level that DirectX 10 requires, because future games will expect the OS to handle this for them when they release a TRUE DirectX10 only incarnation.
I personally think from an OS Engineer viewpoint, that Vista is a Superior OS in virtually every measure, but hey if the world wants to rally around XP, to the point even the anti-MS OSS world rallys around XP (like I see today on Slashdot again), then so be it, maybe some of the anti-MS crowd will give XP a second look and realize it is nothing like Win9x when they left the Windows world and moved to a *nix.
Slashdot news - making money for Microsoft by hating Microsoft. This is so freaking weird that I wonder if this side effect is shocking to even Apple's marketing con artists, as they have been a part of making this happen by accident as well.
It's only responsible if they mislead their customers about it.
If you buy some gasoline and severely burn yourself, is your first response to blame the gas station?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Are you really that stupid? Try blaming MSFT when exchange crashes. you can't. The most you might get if you pay for it is help restoring the old data, and reinstalling the system.
Not only do you have to pay MSFT for software, you have to pay extra for the privilege of getting help when it fails.
Save your self some money, and only Pay Novell, Red Hat, Mandriva, etc for help when the software fails and get the software for free.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Name them please, if you would be so kind.
---- Liquid was a patriot ----
So pay for it then. Plenty of companies out there will take money off you for supporting linux.
In fact, if you pay for linux support, you're in a better position than if you pay for Microsoft support, as you have the resiliance of choice in the market. You don't like what Oracle are doing, pay Redhat instead. You don't like what Microsoft are doing? Tough.
There is nothing interesting going on at my blog
http://www.mhall119.com
I have always loved this argument for one simple reason. If you name and itemize the last 20 times something went wrong at your company, how many of them were something the vendor did wrong, or something the vendor had to fix for you? How many were end user issues, networking configuration nightmares of your own creation, configuration management that someone at your company messed up? Misapplied patches or patches you 'forgot' to apply?
In truth, support from the vendor does little for you UNLESS the system they supply is so fscking locked up that you can't do anything with it in the first place, and are FORCED to call for help because you can't do anything with it.
Where I work, we are slowly writing code to work around 'no longer supported' binary processes. If there is no 'community support' we just learn how to do it ourselves or write code we can understand to take its place.
When you want to point that finger of blame it still will take 4hours minimum to get the pointing done. In that time I will generally have already fixed the problem and be working the code to avoid any such occurance in the future.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I work for Dell as a Prosupport Agent, and I get all kinds of software calls that we try our best to fix for people. 90% of the time they start out the call with "I called Microsoft and they said to call you..."
I don't mind those. I accept that Microsoft has gotten away with pushing support away from them to cut costs for so long that it's a given.
It's the "I called my ISP and they said that the DSL modem is connecting, and to call you to fix my Internet" calls that really grill my bacon. Seriously, your L1s can't even do netsh int ip reset log.txt or basic TCP/IP T/S? (Ping, check gateway, etc)? Seriously, what's the problem guys?
So is Dell offering MCE as well still?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
http://www.mhall119.com
(sorry, I couldn't help it...)
Make that irresponsible.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I've lost track (mostly during the mid to late 90s) of the times I've had to use a Mac to read and resave a PC formatted MS Office document so the stupid PC could read its own damn file. Not so much anymore, but your point is still pretty valid.
Speaking of "reverse engineering", people seem to be forgetting that Dell /already has/ Windows XP source code and can do patching and support themselves.
I get tickled by people saying, "I'm running Vista and it's just fine." As if millions of people are all hallucinating issues. People do the same with Linux. "My distro found all my hardware!" Congrats! Vista has enough issues that Microsoft itself is considering extending the life cycle. No, they're not doing this to piss you off. They're doing it because customers are pissed. If they do extend it, it will be a new course for Microsoft, actually doing something customer-centric. It's not wonder they're agonizing over it.
Does anyone remember Windows ME? Did anyone "upgrade" to it. Vista seems mildly familiar with a whole lot more momentum. The major exception is MS realized it was a mistake and admitted it was a stop-gap between windows XP and 98.
When did Cannonical stop supporting Ubuntu?
XenoPhage
Technological Musings
Selling a computer with XP past the Microsoft cutoff date is pretty irresponsible. At least Ubuntu has community support, whereas XP will have no support? Is it really Dell's place to oversee microsoft's business decisions?
Considering all the business and home people that would like XP Professional rather than Ubuntu. I'd say this a great business decision for Dell.
They aren't required to support anything, except what you've paid them to support, and sometimes the contract/license terms don't even require that.
It's the whole reason the Linux/BSD market took off. NO ONE can tell you you can't fix that version of Linux 1.0.18 if that's what you REALLY want to run.
I applaude this decision and will do my best to support them if they continue selling XP. Microsoft has stated XP will be technically supported until 2014.
KDE's got better for what people actually use. Outlook had something to offer nine years ago but it's been outclassed big time since. The only thing Outlook really had going for it was device sync but most people gave up PDAs when M$ conquered the market. The things were an expensive toy and people did not buy new ones when their old ones got broken.
Just...wow. How can you even try to have a reasonable discussion with someone like this ?
I remember, once, doing L2 support, where I got a caller who'd called in with the same difficulty four times and was finally escalated. The first tech had picked the wrong "resolution," and the next three had blindly followed the same wrong set of instructions without ever asking themselves why it would work this time. Clearly, they all suffered from the Bullwinkle syndrome. I, OTOH, looked at what had happened, realized that they'd gone off in the wrong direction and did something that not only was different, but was The Right Thing. In fact, what I did what what should always have been the L1 tech's first line of attack. (I went through the network settings and corrected them instead of removing and replacing Dial-Up Networking Yet Again.)
Good, inexpensive web hosting
I have yet to see anything open source that comes close to the reliability and uptime of Outlook-Exchange. Believe me, I despise Exchange, it's a behemoth that, when it works, you can kind of forget about, but when it doesn't, it's the worst kind of nightmare. I dislike Outlook even more, but if I'm going to go to my manager and say "I want to replace Outlook and/or Exchange with this open source software" it had better work as reliably, because the bigger aspect is going to be retraining. Thus far, my experience with open source scheduler software is that it's the shits.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
If it's for Exchange support, there are a couple of Linux projects which at least claim to support that.
I can claim to be God. It doesn't mean that I am.
Just because a random Linux project claims to support Exchange doesn't mean that they'll actually have what we consider Exchange support when we need it. Do you have a 100% complete drop in replacement/compatible with Exchange? If not, it's not viable for many people, right now or even for the next say six months. Heck, folks delay upgrading exchange because it's sometimes a nightmare. Do you really think they'll switch products if they aren't 100% sure that their data will convert over in perfectly usable fashion?
I hope that Microsoft realizes that if they don't sell Windows XP, we'll steal it. And by "steal" I mean make fair use of a product not being sold. Copyright exists to protect commerce, not property rights. If someone refuses to sell a copyrighted work, a defense against copyright infringent is to point out that you're making non-commercial use of a work that is not being sold.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
The end of the sales for XP does not mean the end of support so they won't be selling something unsupported and even if MS quit supporting it tomorrow then Dell would still provide support.
Besides the fact MS already plans on selling XP home for some time (to cover the laptop market) means they're not going to give up XP support until at least they quit selling that.
Wow. Community support. I'm sure that has tons of SLAs associated with it. As long as I've got the cash, Microsoft is gonna support XP, even if I have to pay for the calls/issues.
No troll, serious question: can Outlook run with Wine, on Linux? Has anyone tried this?
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Ever been to the USA? The answer to your question is "oh hell yeah, I'm'a get me a settlement!" ... at least, judging by what one sees on the news. People don't take responsibility for anything anymore.
Windows isn't the answer... it's the question. NO is the answer!
There is always Lotus Notes which isn't perfect but neither is Outlook and I personally prefer Lotus Notes.
Also, you may mock Open Source, but it's just as viable as anything MS does and in fact I've been noticing Open Office cropping up more often and it's no surprise that the security firms I've dealt with seem to mainly use Linux and other Open Source products.
Dell will be offering Vista with downgrade rights all the way through Dec 2010. What that means is that you buy Vista but you will get XP pre-installed and a Vista CD to upgrade the pre-installed OS.
"In God we trust, all others must bring data" - W. Edwards Deming
This isn't about OpenOffice. For the most part I could probably get away with it (although we do have a contact management program that integrates tightly with Office that might have some problems). It's Outlook. Evolution's integration with Exchange is shaky and I've had numerous problems with the scheduler crashing. It's simply not stable enough for me to drop it in. Believe me, I'd love to. A huge chunk of my most recent software budget got eaten up with Microsoft licenses.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Uhh, not all Linux is free.
You can buy a commercial Linux distro that comes with actual support (as opposed to what you get from Microsoft).
Reality > You
True, but the open source community can do something... try to create a perfect open-source clone of Windows.
Like ReactOS.
(Although it's FAR from perfect right now...)
Well, the GP was slightly wrong. People don't care if programs have a consistent L&F with each other, they care if they have a consistent L&F with Windows XP and Office 2003. (Note that I said Office 2003 - the user interface is the single largest reason why the company that I work for isn't migrating to Office 2007.)
i recon since they started offering ubuntu laptops, all of thier geeks have switched and now they sit around the office all day thinking of good ways to piss off balmer, (like any good slashdotter/linux user). Dell are definatly too big for M$ to try and fsck with.
In terms of buisness they cant afford to pin themselves to ubuntu, without support for outlook, too many business users would phone up dell support saying i ran install-outlook.exe and nothing happened, and too many home users would say i ran install-outlook-cracked.exe and complain. Even if they could they shouldn't for years OSS advocates have been asking for OEM neutrality, not OEM exclusivity, forcing ubuntu on users is a terrible idea, offering no default OS is terrible for noobs as is offering every OS. Hopefully dell will keep pushing ms and as ms cant retaliate, all their systems will be offered with vista(default),blank (+ optional XP cd) and those will all linux hardware will have novell(buiness) or ubuntu too. But even as a ubuntu users i would hate to see OEMs start offering only ubuntu (although in fairness as its free, im free to remove it and stick whatever i want on it)
Alternatively they're running low on office chairs and are hoping for a balmer-by some time soon to restock.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
I assume they are pre-installing a copy of XP Pro without a key, which is totally legal AFAIK, since the software is not functional at that point. This saves customers the time of installing XP, yet allows them to re-use their current licenses from the machines they are scrapping, or buy used licenses from other vendors.
When you get out of your mom's basement you'll probably understand why your post is misguided to the point of being downright ridiculous.
Yeah, but we aren't talking Windows. The software doesn't stop working!
I understand how businesses need things to work 100% of the time, but is XP really that choice? Microsoft products love to crash on me for no apparent reason. Ubuntu doesn't slow on me except on start-up on occasion, and even at it's worst it still loads quicker that XP did on average. As for lack of MP3 support by default, what a whiner. It's a simple one-time fix that takes 30 seconds [at most] with an active internet connection, and all you have to do to trigger it is try to play an mp3 file. It's like complaining that XP doesn't have firefox installed by default.
The problem isn't that Linux doesn't work for customers. It's that software and hardware developers work for Microsoft. And until more businesses are brave enough to step outside Microsoft's box, that won't change any time soon.
As a kubuntu user i have to say the only option is to walk away :(
Ive been using Kmail and i can fairly say i wouldnt want to put it in a production enviroment just yet. home enviroment sure, geek enviroment go for it, but it has a few too many bugs for putting into your corperate network
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
Companies like to have someone to blame when the software stops working
That's what administrators are for - and good luck with trying to collect from M$FT for costly outages due to defective software. Read the EULA.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Not having seen this mythical thing, I have no idea what it is like.
However, as a user of Firefox and Thunderbird in an organization which uses Exchange and Outlook calendaring extensively
See, the Outlook calendaring feature is so embedded in most organizations, that you can't seriously be offering up a solution to it. Believe me, if I could figure out how to NOT have to bit the bullet and use it, I would.
The reality of it is, there just isn't a replacement for that stuff that you could have any hope in hell of getting a large organization to adopt. The 2000+ people multinational organization I work for sure as hell isn't going to do it. You can't book a frigging meeting room in my company without inviting it to a meeting, and that's all Exchange/Outlook.
Sadly, I think that is one application that FOSS will never be able to kick out out the enterprise.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I *do* mock Linux fanboyism. Open Source stuff is often quite good and should be considered when looking into options for new projects. But mindless "Why do you need Outlook anyway?" type opinions don't help OS at all- they make the serious advocates look like idiots. Replacing Outlook&Exchange even at the fairly small school I currently work at would be a nightmare of the first order- you'd have to deal with issues ranging from permanent archive/storage/retrieval of the president's email to syncing with the dozens of brands of smartphones we have around campus. It would involve a monsterous amount of planning, testing, education and endless help desk calls even if everything went perfectly.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
All you Linux/Mac zealots need to go sit in your tiny corner and STFU.
In a business environment, you don't choose the applications to fit the OS, you choose the OS to fit the applications. I've never been in a job where at least one business critical application was Windows only.
Sure there are some Linux/Mac equivalents, some are on par, some are better, but most are so infintial in their development (for years) or lack support they have no chance of even creating a user base and getting bigger.
I'm not talking a dime a dozen office productivity apps either.
Linux has decades to go or more if nobody develops software for it;
usable, affordable CAD, usable, affordable Point of Sale and a number of others.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
I've heard of folks getting Outlook 2000 running under Wine. I had no success with it, but even if I had, I simply don't think Wine is a stable enough platform to roll out in a business/organizational setting.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
What'd even be better in my opinion is a machine with Ubuntu and XP, with Ubuntu set up in a similar manner to OS X with VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop. Basically make a Ubuntu version that is an "upgrade" path for XP users, where all of their XP apps will run and integrate into the environment, via virtualization.
Since Dell still has an OEM deal with MS for XP, and a partnership with Ubuntu, all they'd be missing is the virtualization and the integration bits to make it seamless. On the XP side, that'd mostly be just Windows drivers and some preloaded software, which they already know how to write. On the Linux side, it'd be a matter of having features in the VM to aid in Desktop integration, and perhaps some customizations to the Linux Desktop itself to make it more seamless - to make it feel more like an upgrade to XP.
Though I know people will have differing opinions about marketing Linux as an upgrade to 'XP', and whether it is a good idea.
http://www.mhall119.com
Just another twitter sockpuppet Seven accounts and more on the way.
Thanks for the heads-up. Is anyone keeping a list of sockpuppet accounts ?
This is absolutely ridiculous. I honestly do not understand why people are so in love with an old crap OS like XP. I've had more stable installations of Windows ME. Actually, I never had a bad Windows ME installation. I felt it was more stable than XP. I also feel the same way about Vista. I love Vista. Sure, there were some annoying issues... 14 months ago! But I have 0 issues now. Don't get me wrong, I like XP better than any Linux distro I have ever tried (including the newly released Ubuntu 8.04, which I installed on a machine earlier today), and I've been using them off and on for years. And don't even get me started on Macs (though I somewhat like OSX). Hardware issues have never been an issue with my getting Vista to run on a machine. That includes on P3s and a 6 year old P4 I have at home. I only keep XP around for development testing as I know too many people are afraid to upgrade because of all the negative hype. My take is that all the Vista haters were/are probably Windows 2000 lovers, which is, in my honest opinion, the worst, absolutely most unstable, operating system the world has ever seen... but I digress. Windows XP is well past its prime, and I see nothing in SP3 worth delaying an upgrade. Vista has been OEM'd for 1 1/2 years now. I find it inexcusable that any company would not have updated their software by now. And I no longer feel that hardware issues are a viable complaint anymore (well, at least not by the end of this year), either. Especially for those buying new machines. Most any current machine is plenty powerful for Vista. And, when you buy a new machine, you should really consider future proofing yourself, by purchasing a better machine than is "necessary". And realize, that computers should be routinely updated. Every 3 years is more than long enough. Even if that means only more RAM or a better video card, that could easily push out most machines to the 5 year mark. Anything older than that and you have no right to complain. And this is coming from someone who has a machine that old that I still use for everyday computing. My laptop is 2 years old and only a "Vista Capable," but I still make it work. I have that machine dual booting XP & Vista with Vista as my primary. Many of the complaints about Vista are that it requires "too new hardware." Well, I'm sorry, but if you are saying that you expect an OS to not take advantage of current graphics technology, then I have nothing but the deepest sympathy for your obvious mental deficiency.
Outlook uses RPC/MAPI to connect to Exchange while most opensource products rely on IMAP or POP. MAPI is the native API for Exchange interfacing and supports feature rich options that IMAP can not support (shared calendars, public folders, etc.) Additionally, Outlook has a wider base for third-party applications and a tight integration with Microsoft Office (duh) that provides options that are hard to resist. Replacing Exchange isn't that easy either as we have a mobile phone environment to support for syncing via "push" (windows mobile) and a PBX that utilizes Exchange's Unified Messaging. Believe me, I tried to find a comparable open source product as I do, and do mostly successfully, with most of our applications, but in most business environments there still is not an Outlook or Exchange killer.
I'm a virgo and on Slashdot. Coincidence? Yes.
I guess I am. And taking my offtopic mods while I'm at it :)
Mactrope (clever play on Macthorpe)
gnutoo
inTheLoo
Erris (oldest one)
willeyhill (the joke's on me)
westbake (clever play on westlake).
Hard to keep up.
The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.
Seems to me the issues here are 2, for why this XP is still desired. 1) OEM installs- most new computers enter consumer hands with a pre-installed XP, which, setting aside the security/privacy issues of the OS, is just fine for most users. 2) Exchange.
Let's forget #1.
Why isn't there more than a few OSS Exchange-type solutions? Why are there countless OS distributions, but hardly, if any, Mail/ Calendar/ Scheduling replacements? Why hasn't the OSS community, which apparently abhores Microsoft, and other lock-in proprietary vendors, focused on a viable Exchange replacement solution? They've duplicated every other Microsoft software functionality, usually within days or weeks of its inception, but Exchange elludes them? I understand there's at least one alternative out there, but I heard its pretty difficult to implement, but I just can't get my head around why the arguably single most usable/functional/essential Microsoft technology escapes OSS.
I see OSS devs as Supermen heros... but it seems like Exchange is their Kryptonite, and they are powerless against it.
The Admin and the Engineer
Microsoft Action: Set a date to stop selling a product years before you intend to stop supporting it.
Slashdot Answer: Why the hell would you stop selling it if you are still supporting it? Stupid Microsoft. I would sell it until the same year as I stopped supporting it, this is just a ploy to get more Vista sales by scaring people.
Microsoft Action: Stop selling a product only a few months before you intend to stop supporting it.
Slashdot Answer: Its so irresponsible of Microsoft to be selling a product they don't plan on supporting! This is just a way to milk more money out of the consumer and force upgrades when their OS becomes suddenly outdated next month.
Microsoft Action: Donate $1m to "Save the Kittens" foundation.
Slashdot Answer: What about the mice? Microsoft is subverting the poor mouse by an illegal and monopolistic process of buying out a 'charity' that directly kills mice.
If you can't find a real troll, just mod down whoever you don't agree with!
XP still has quite a few years of support left on it though it will soon be moving into the extended support phase (which means: no new features, non-security hotfixes cost $$$ and you always have to pay for support calls)
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Hey, using the vast amount of extra money that I make using Linux in business environments, I'll just buy your house after the foreclosure with the extra disposable income that using Linux affords me...
No they can't. The license under which Windows source is provided to the mega-companies and governments that get it is for internal use only. If Dell were to actually distribute any source or object code from that to their customers, Microsoft would crush them like a bug.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
And once you have multiple of those programs, you are out of luck when you try to switch. Doesn't really matter if it is to Linux or just to the next Windows version.
At the moment at work we are stuck in Windows. Windows 2000 Server on Citrix terminal servers to be precise. Because some of the software we use we can't get to work in Windows 2003 correctly. Microsoft is blaming it on Citrix, Citrix is blaming it on Microsoft, and we are stuck in the middle.
Thank God everything I wrote in the last 5 years or so is pretty much cross-platform compatible (Java, Oracle PL/SQL, Perl) so I can sit back and watch the whole mess with a bucket of popcorn.
The aforementioned companies who care about having someone to blame have a support contract with SLAs to the hilt. Let me tell you, if I log a Sev.A call with Microsoft, they damn well better have a senior tech onsite in two hours (at any time) or we bash them with SLA breach penalties.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Outlook runs fine on Vista, or at least it's supposed to. What does this have to do with XP?
Furthermore, if your mortgage depends on monopolistic vendor lock in with no resiliency if said vendor changes things on you, like they have a track record of doing, that's just bad business that you should correct now before it gets even worse.
No, 2014. That is when the XP patches from Microsoft will end. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_xp -- under "support lifecycle"
Google Calender is used internally at Google (among other places) for exactly what you're describing, right down to the fun of inviting rooms to your meeting (and being notified that they won't attend the meeting if you didn't check the room's availability and tried to double-book). I found it to be an excellent solution, with great usability and GMail integration, and as a web-based app, it runs happily on more or less any modern OS. Once the corporate inertia starts wearing off, I think I know where all the Outlook customers will be heading.
...around that time I worked for a company that used Novell GroupWise. Overall, I liked it better than the Outlook version I get to use on my current job. And it runs on Linux (too bad that Novell supports only its own SUSE Linux Enterprise for the server. For the client, they at least support RedHat in addition).
:-)
I have never tried Kontact, but there are certainly alternatives to Outlook
C - the footgun of programming languages
I live there. Of course, out of the several hundred people I know, none of them are currently involved in a law suit.
I do know someone who sued someone after they got t-boned. (that's a kind of car accident, the party that got sued drove into the side of the guy's vehicle, turning it up onto its side and totaling it, the guy got hurt pretty bad.)
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Microsoft created that capability only with Windows XP Professional, Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Ultimate. Windows Vista Home Basic and Windows Vista Home Premium are unable to downgrade to Windows XP. So, basically this downgrade option will not be available with x86 machines that default to coming with Vista home Premium, and the other versions of Vista besides Business, and Ultimate. Hmmm. Seems like a large chunk of Dell laptops default to Vista; Home Premium http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/xpsnb_m1530?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs Am I right?
I agree here. Part of the problem is that as computer users at our jobs, we do not have any control over some of the applications we use. We MUST use Outlook. At home you can decide to use Firefox, Kmail, or Sendmail with cat, but at the corporate office you won't last long by working off of the grid.
If you get rid of Outlook/Exchange requirements, then I suspect most departments could switch to Linux or BSD or Macs with little trouble. For that reason, Microsoft will never make it easy for apps to talk to Exchange without going through the proprietary Windows-only MAPI/RPC protocol.
Exchange is an ugly bastard, but it's an incredibly versatile ugly bastard, and there really isn't anything that compares to it. Our major area is scheduling/calendaring, and I looked at all sorts of alternatives, trying to escape having to use Exchange.
There's some interesting open source groupware out there like Citadel, but I would still have a hard time convincing people to move from Outlook to a web app.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I'd say give it a try. I'm not going to say it's perfect but if I needed to use a calendar system on my personal machine it is 'good enough' for me. Here's some screenshots.
Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.
"extended support phase to Windows XP will take effect in May 2009. In Microsoft parlance, extended support is the period when all support is fee-based and non-security hotfixes are produced only for corporate customers. Until April of 2009, Windows XP Home and Media Center will remain in what is called mainstream support, which offers some no-charge support and free updates that donâ(TM)t deal with security issues."
I'd imagine that pretty soon (if not already) there will be dedicated websites to supporting XP (including custom patches to any security issues)... and if Microsoft is smart, they will allow them to do this... I dont think it would really impede on their business (much) because most business would probably contimplate "upgrading" to Windows 7 or at least Vista by 2009... and if anything, the XP "Community" would still be promoting Windows potentially saving Microsoft the loss of some customers to Linux and/or Mac who might be willing to upgrade (stick with) Windows later on... Windows 8, or Win7 SP2...or whatever...
"Microsoft has stated XP will be technically supported until 2014."
I've always thought that somewhat misses the point.
The fact is, solely to make more money, Microsoft has claimed that its earlier product will die. The death is completely independent of customer demand.
Who would want to partner with such a company? Because that's what you are doing when you buy an operating system, you are partnering with the OS supplier. You are betting that the supplier will be a true partner and will care about your needs, and not choose to be adversarial.
Even though Vista is just Windows XP with new features, Microsoft expects to be paid as though it is an entirely new product, with no relevance to the earlier version.
It seems to me that Microsoft is the Chief of Grief, software's Dr. Death. Other deaths:
Declared dead: FoxPro database programming language
Dead soon: PlaysForSure was corporate-speak for "we will kill it and destroy access to your music any time we want". Apparently the reason Microsoft executives wanted to reassure buyers by saying "Plays for Sure" is that they knew it was not sure.
This is connected with the rise of 3-year-old thinking: "I can do anything I want. You have no power."
The U.S. government is worse: "We can take your money and give it to weapons and war suppliers. You have no power. All laws we don't like are invalid."
Did you hear that? It sounded a lot like a joke going over someone's head.
Let us not become the evil that we deplore.
Amen on the "Retraining" part. So far it looks like Office 2007 might be finally a possibility to push OpenOffice in a few years in my workplace, when a switch to either will mean retraining anyway.
Uh, both Shared Calendars and Public Folders are supported by IMAP.
(Has anyone else noticed that MAPI and IMAP are anagrams of each other?)
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
I doubt that they are going to change it again. Because, basically Balmer would have to admit Vista is a failure.
This has more to do with making up to Dell (compensating them, giving them an opportunity) the loses they suffered, when they shoved Vista down their customers throats earlier this year.
He who said 1,000,000 monkeys on 1,000,000 typewriters would eventually type the great novel, never saw an AOL chat room
You ever actually tried to call Microsoft for Tech Support? The first words out of the Indian tech's mouth will be "Is this an OEM machine?" and then "Call Dell, we don't support you. *click*"
Right, one of the reasons that OEM copies of windows are so much cheaper than retail is that the OEM takes over the support role.
note: a little backdoor, if you buy more than a certain (relatively small) number of system builder packs you can register as a system builder and get support that way.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Yep.
People think that Office is the ultimate lock in tool. They are so clueless.
VisualBasic is the best lock in tool ever. Just about every company on the face of the earth has some silly but vital piece of software written in VisualBasic.
If FOSS just created the perfect VB clone you might see many companies migrate to Linux.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Look, I'm not a Microsoft fanboi, and don't introduce me to one unless you're prepared to deal with intense gamma radiation.
That being said, let's look at it from a business point of view.
I don't know how much of a large business's revenue goes to computers and related things; does 5% sound reasonable? It doesn't really matter if it's way off, so let's use it. Heck, go with 10%.
Now, how much is going to be saved by leaving Microsoft products and going open source? Licenses aren't the only IT cost; there's also hardware, people, networking, and so on. Suppose that half the computer cost goes to Microsoft and other proprietary software companies. Suppose, then, that converting to free software will cut the computer-related costs in half.
That's a maximum of 5% savings on the upside, and I think I'm being optimistic here. That's a good chunk of money, and most businesses would like a chance to save money like that. It isn't enough to force a change; businesses that aren't in particularly competitive fields often have worse inefficiencies than that.
The downside, of course, is that the free software doesn't work for some reason, and revenues drop off the cliff until the old Microsoft stuff can be re-installed. It may not be likely, but managers will worry about it. Or it may not work well enough for an organization's needs, and introduce inefficiencies that overcome the savings.
Therefore, Microsoft is insurance. For a stream of money the organization can afford, Microsoft provides more or less reliable business functionality. The opinion that Microsoft somehow stands behind their software, or will take responsibility for it, is naive, but the opinion that Microsoft software will usually work well enough is justified. Microsoft cannot do otherwise and stay in business for long. Microsoft is the safe choice, at an acceptable price. As far as internal business politics goes, a CIO who goes with Microsoft is unlikely to lose his job for it, while one who introduces free software on a large scale is endangering his or her career. If something goes wrong, the CIO going with "best industry practices" (i.e., mediocrity) will be largely immune from blame, whereas one going with something innovative is going to be out on his or her ear.
Yes, this is stodgy, unimaginative thinking that likely costs the enterprise a good chunk of change. That's the way large businesses work. They don't want to change a support function that works well enough. It's far better to put creativity and energy into a business's core functionality, the stuff that sets the business apart from the competition. Innovative product design, marketing, and sales will pay off more, and aren't as risky. It makes sense to pay insurance to Microsoft.
This doesn't mean that businesses will use Microsoft forever. It does mean that Microsoft is firmly entrenched, and is not likely to be dislodged by people who don't realize why. It will be dislodged by people who are able to explain to suits why what they've got is better in terms the suits will understand, and with assurances the suits feel they can rely on, and who have software with capabilities the suits like.
As a geek, I don't have to like this situation, and I don't. I do have to live in this world, though, and pretending it's something it isn't is not going to help me in the long run.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
1. Microsoft gets to "sell" a Vista license with all of these new computers.
2. Dell gets a bundled Windows XP "downgrade" license and just installs XP on the computer instead of Vista.
3. Microsoft gets to brag about how many millions of people have bought Vista and how successful it is.
4. Profit?
This is all a shell game for Microsoft. They can't polish the turd that is Vista so they'll just continue to sell XP but make it look like Vista on the books, so that Wall Street is none the wiser.
And before you think I'm an anti-Microsoft, I just bought a copy of Vista Home Premium SP1 64-bit so I can run a few games in DX10. It runs slower and crashes more often (even with nothing installed I get regular MS error reports) than XP on the same hardware. Right now I find I'd rather boot back into XP SP2 and run most of my games, even though I can only use 3.2GB of memory, than reboot into Vista and endure slower framerates and random shit popping up and crashing all the time...
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
drivers generally come from the hardware vendors. They will presumablly keep supporting XP as long as there is demand for it.
and as you say security updates still have a long time to run (5 years from the end of mainstream support or 2 years from the release of windows 7, whichever comes later).
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Because I have, and in my experience it results in a reply of "What's an SLA?"
Yes but my point was.
Everybody that runs XP needs support.
and
XP isn't going to be supported for a long time.
Security updates == supported.
Unsupported == no security updates.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
because for better or worse many of us have to use or support windows.
So with vista generally considered to suck the details and timespan of XPs death are quite important to us.
This announcement from dell is good news for those who want to continue using XP. The fact they will be shipping XP downgrade media with thier vista buisness/ultimate machines means two things.
1: Some customers will save the need to telephone activate to excercise thier downgrade rights.
2: Dell will still be providing drivers for XP.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
(Has anyone else noticed that MAPI and IMAP are anagrams of each other?) The protocol may well have the facilities to support both.
Now go and find a client and a server which support them as cleanly as the Exchange/Outlook combination does, and a migration plan for existing installations.
2) WinXP will have "support" long past the cut off date. The end of support date for Windows XP was announced before the end of sale date, I can't rememnber what it is right now, but I believe its in 2010 sometime.
I think it leaves mainstream support sometime in 2009.
After that it will be in extended support (no new features, no free support calls, paid support still availible, pay $$$ for non-security hotfixes, security hotfixes still free).
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
It's their not they're. Sorry, it just made me twitch while reading it for some reason.
I've literally had MS Word documents saved by Word 2003 that wouldn't open with the same version of Word 2003. To this day, I don't understand how that is possible. I opened it with OpenOffice.org, and while it didn't keep the formatting, it was enough to recover the document.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
twitter, I read this three times trying to make sense of what you're trying to say, but I gave up.
The empty semantic gyrations you seem to enjoy so much completely give you away whenever you try to pretend you're someone else.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
You little *nix twit. You can't CHMOD the world.
-Windows 2003 server enterprise 25 seat license $5000
-System Admin to run the box $45K a year
-Help desk person to reset password $23K (english as a second language even cheaper)
-The ability to get a truck driver to use the box because everything looks like the AOL at home. (priceless)
Linux cheap. Open office just as cheap. Finding a 24 tech to run the OS is expensive and you have to deal with the elitist attitude. KDE can not match M$ Bill's efficiency with user interaction. How many clicks/key strokes does it take a *nix box to pull a file from FTP source, edit, copy, paste and forward to your orders department via email? Winders duz it betterz for the rest of the planet that still drags their knuckles when walking. Now go back to your basement room and finish turning your USB beverage cooler in to a stirling engine. I'm gonna go play with a Cisco 3550 and dream about a freaking GUI with help file.
is the money-grubbin' big business bastards that started this whole forced-obsolescence game in the first place. it's a friggin conspiracy between microsoft, intel, hp, dell and other major players.
Wow, that is just a coward's MOD right there.
A truck driver, in north america?
Those guys/girls are well paid, they probably own a macintosh by now, which runs OS X, i.e. a flavor of unix.
Sorry, but the company that brought you XP brought you Vista.
If your business decision is to bitch and moan about instead of seeing the error in building a company around monopolistic vendor lock-in, I wish you all the best when your company collapses.
I don't feel like writing up a big migration plan for free.
But there are multitudes of clients, and quite a number of servers that do the job.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
This should be modded +5 insightful.
If they do read that regularly, one wonders if they'll actually read their own story and reply.
I think that only the imaginary property guy does that. At least, I haven't seen anyone else respond like that.
The funny thing is, XP Home will be receiving security patches from Windows Update long after Vista Ultimate according to current Microsoft roadmaps.
They planned to have 5-year lifetimes for their consumer OS's but Vista wasn't ready in time, so XP Home got extended to expire when XP Pro does in 2014 - which is more than 5 years after the release to retail of the consumer editions of Vista (Home Basic, Home Premium and Ultimate) which are scheduled to be killed off in 2012.
Of course, it's possible that Windows 7 will be as late as Vista was, and they'll have to extend the home versions of Vista too...
Remind me again why I should "upgrade" this machine's OS ?
I'd say actions like this from vendors like Dell will simplify the issue for Microsoft. Dell can't sell XP. Dell sells Vista and gives away XP. Microsoft tallies another Vista sale, Dell sells a new computer, and the buyer gets XP. If the hardware vendors will pick up the slack, Microsoft has no reason to extend sales of XP.
Just say you created a really good VB clone.
If companies tried it, they are most likely to think 'ooh, looks good, I see its a clone of a microsoft programming language, and oh look, it's included in product X that we already pay for'.
Microsoft win, end of story...
See, that's a bad story, there wasn't even any sex.
You can't compete with Microsoft by cloning their stuff. You have to be so much better then them that the Microsoft stuff looks bad in comparison.
I read about this on Dell's website, and if you read the fine print, Dell will install the image for you, but if you need to reinstall from the XP disk they provide you, they won't support what you installed, only what they installed. Only the pre-installed image at the factory can be supported. However they will support Vista fully if you upgrade. This is a sneaky way of making XP fans happy, but giving them a time limit.
"Businesses don't run based on ideals, they run based on productivity."
No one will disagree.
Now, convincing ANYONE who has to use Windows that they are being productive while running virus scans, enjoying deadly blue screens, reloading Windows for the nth time -- THAT is going to be more difficult.
Perhaps because people want Windows XP? Joe Public would probably be just as riled to have Ubuntu forced upon him as Vista.
(Actually so would I - I like my USE flags!)
Nobody else has this sig.
Dude,
1% of the time MS Office doesn't open MS Office Documents. So freakin' what?! I use Open Office at home and if it came to it I would install it on every computer here at work. There is no problem with Open Office.
Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.
Try subscribing to Enterprise RHL.
thanks to the people who are taking moderation hits to warn people about what you're doing, while you can afford to ruin as many accounts as you want because nothing more than a crapflooder and a troll.
Does the world not have enough computer geeks anymore? The only time I've ever called Microsoft was to do the manual activation.
The people that will use Ubuntu know where to find it. This is also another red herring. There are simply far too many windows programs and far too many linux issues for Ubuntu to get anywhere near the install base as windows. I personlly don't think Linux will ever be "on the desktop" as the zealots proclaim.
"Official Support" is incredibly over-rated.
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
For those wondering :)
If you buy Vista Business or Ultimate, you have the option to upgrade to XP Pro or Windows 2000 instead, this only requires you to have a single license install media for the older OS but it doesn't have to be unique.
So dell simply brought a 1 user mass license for XP and give it out with that nifty "pre activated" thing, to everyone who gets vista business.
This process was explained to me by a MS OEM sales rep, sounds stupid imho, why not just keep selling XP?
...
True, but then you'll have to convince companies to break said silly-but-vital piece of (usually undocumented) software to migrate.
And no, quoting FOSS benefits will not get you change approval. Not even me (runs linux on desktop + server at home, has BSD based network monitoring servers under my management at work) would let that one fly.
indeed, take wine for example, an implementation of windows libraries, complete with bugs for compatibility
Oh god, I cringe just thinking of Solidworks under Wine. For being so essential to the work I do every day Solidworks is often a disaster even on a well running Windows box. People ask why I don't run Linux on my main box, I say Solidworks, they nod and leave me alone.
You gotta find first gear in your giant robot car
Strangely, if you get the PC shipped with Vista and downgrade it yourself the XP is unsupported. If you get the downgrade preinstalled, you get support for both.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of cats. MEOW!!
And how wonderful that calendering is, the daylight saving changes have screwed our calenders that much that the users have to accept that their appointments could be up to an hour out, but sorry not much can be done to resolve it. If that had of happened with our old mail system we would have been drag out of the IT department and stoned, but with Outlook users just accept the second rate product with all it's faults.
I just don't get it!
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of cats. MEOW!!
Yes, but it is hard to come by the clients and servers without similar licensing restriction or TCO.
If you're going to spend money on something, might as well be the product with the widest base for support. If there was a free, opensource Microsoft killer, I would gladly implement instead and purchase support as needed. The problem is that the products available unfortunately do not provide what Microsoft does, e.g. unified messaging, public folders, mobile syncing, etc.
You can combine products to get similar functionality, but now instead of three or four products by Microsoft you have eleven or twelve across multiple vendors. Thats the problem.
I'm a virgo and on Slashdot. Coincidence? Yes.
Well, that depends on how many bugs you count for Windows... http://dell.com/open/
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
It's a benefit for Dell, because it means that Dell is still selling XP-based computers to consumers who want it. When word gets out that Dell are the only ones selling computers with XP on them, and that not only is it pre-installed, it's going to be supported by phone-in tech. support....
You're right. MS gets to book it as a Vista sale. Because technically, it *is* a Vista sale. But the end user isn't going to care that they have actually bought a copy of Vista, they're going to care that their nice, shiny, brand new computer still has XP on it. It's going to mean more sales for Dell.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
Agreed which is why I suggested the paid solution Lotus Notes first. ;)
To be fair to fanboyism, none of it is as bad as a high paid CEO throwing chairs and making school yard threats against Google.
> I'm suspecting that they've put together a bunch of sock puppet accounts voting things to the top of the Firehose, and that the "editors" aren't looking carefully enough at what they're doing to notice.
I don't think they care that much about the Firehose. I've seen more than a few reds go through and never get posted. Though sometimes they show up days later, if they're decent enough and it's a slow news day.
And to the other guy, if you want submissions, post normal stories. Ask Slashdots rarely get posted because most are crap.
There is a clone of Windows, it's called reactOs . It's in alpha.
not enabling mp3 support by default is, in most cases, less an issue about ideology, and more a concern about being sued into oblivion by Fraunhofer over the patents on mp3. Since most linux distros aren't sold, the maintainers cannot afford to pay a licensing fee for every copy downloaded.
Let me put this another way: Web browsing is, more and more, an essential app. Would you consider replacing IE with Firefox? If not -- maybe you have some ActiveX shit that you can't get rid of -- was it at least a sane question?
If Firefox is a sane proposition, why isn't Evolution or Kontact?
And all of this is assuming you need it to talk to Exchange. There are several projects -- again, I'm not going to do your homework for you, but at least one with commercial support -- which will run on a Linux server, and have stable and mature Linux clients.
The reason I can't give you specifics is that I did this research at least six months to a year ago. Turned out that the boss didn't want to even risk the possibility that people would have to learn a new UI -- even if it was mostly the same UI. I'm talking about differences on the order of Firefox's keyboard shortcut for "back" being alt-left instead of backspace -- this was a problem (though now it has backspace anyway).
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
IMAP can easily support public folders.
iCal can support shared calendars.
All of the components are there. The reason Microsoft doesn't use them is -- well, go read the Halloween documents. They are actually deliberately using proprietary standards, rather than open ones. Doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to put it together when Gates said so explicitly.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
There's at least one that supports Linux groupware (Kontact, Evolution), and I think there's one that supports Outlook itself.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Oh, and it's easy to find clients and servers with open licenses. Things like GPL, BSD, MIT. How does that restrict you?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I just got a Dell Ubuntu laptop. Along with the expected Ubuntu CD was a DVD for Vista Home premium: "Already installed on your computer". Yeah, right. I wonder if it counts as a Vista sell. Anyway, does anyone need a Dell Vista Home Premium DVD? For sale on ebay *cheap*
"Be grateful for what you have. You may never know when you may lose it."
exactly.
finally a non-ideologue that understands.
and with the introduction of Vista and the attempts to shove it down everyones throat unwanted,
there has been a breach of that confidence and people are desperately looking for alternatives.
barring legal intervention (the forced open sourcing of windows 2000 anyone?)
the next best thing is starting to look like mac to many people in the corporate world. the aesthetic wont do of course- its not blue, but there is this searching look in the IT managers eyes...
You hear many people saying this is all routine, everytime MS comes out with a new OS you get a lot of people complaining that the new OS is inferior to the old OS. Nothing new there, but there is something new this time,
MS made a big mistake by delaying 7 years, managers got the chance to buy their people new equipment which cost less and made their people more productive. When Vista came out, the hardware tax you paid for it was glaring. People said they didn't need it.
Now this time we are seeing the same old thing, "Vista doesn't support my old hardware", "Vista doesn't run all my old apps", "Vista is much slower", "XP is good enough". But there is a difference, the people saying it are saying it much louder.
But the loudest thing is not the complaining. It's the quiet. The silence of the crowd as they do not adopt Vista and stay with XP.
The big financial news today, MS announced it's income is down by about 20%. Analysts are puzzled because Intel claims it will announce profits up. They say this is a sign that a recession is coming. ( One probably is but this has nothing to do with it.) They miss the obvious. People are buying hardware but not software. Any idea why?
I call bullshit
background virus scanners do sap a bit of performance but you can find ones that don't get in the way too much. Virusscan enterprise has always seemed pretty nice, so has AVG free though I hear AVG 8 is shit (haven't upgraded any machines to it yet and am reluctant to do so). Norton is a bloated peice of shit.
If your machine is BSODing (or spontaniously rebooting which I belive is now the default instead of a BSOD) regualarlly enough for you to notice then you probablly have a hardware problem.
And whereas in the 9x days I had to reinstall on a fairly regular basis since moving to XP I have only had to do one reinstall.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
And so it shall be, paid for with your "redundant" karma it would appear ;-)
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
We take SLA's very seriously. After all they are an army...
In are honesty though, I've not been involved with MS SLA's directly, but I have been involved with Compaq (prior to HP buyout and HP after). We had exactly 2 breaches of SLA. Both during the merger. The first one was fairly serious, but we let it slide with an official apology, promise never to do that again, etc. and internally chalked it up to merger pains. Second breach of SLA (incidentally for the same app), we pounded them for monetary damages, and *new* replacement equipment rather than repair/refurb as in our SLA.
Didn't have a third breach...
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
I've been an IT Manager for a few years now and this is a catch phrase myth used to try to summarize what techs think management wants.
What they really want is something that works and that they're comfortable with. The shops that Linux has had the most success on the server side are the ones whose techs have convinced management they can support it so that they get that warm fuzzy comfortable feeling.
The desktop is a whole new ballgame because the support side is only half the equation. Users have to feel comfortable with it too.
I should also add that if the WINE crew gets sufficiently far enough that stuff just works (and it doesn't right now), then it will become infinitely easier to justify Linux on the desktops. Hint: You don't have to replace all your software and hardware because Vista is being crammed down your throat.
Ubuntu does the same two things to me. Gnome windows will fade out for no reason for a while (with Compiz on) or not respond without it, then a min later work fine. This is on my dual-core desktop with an nVidia 7900 card, 2GB high end RAM and a 10k HDD
And occasionally Nautilus will refuse to show me the contents of even the root filesystem as well as other mounted drives.
Don't get me wrong, I use Linux all day at work and only use XP at home for games. Just saying
No sig for you!!
Only companies that don't actually do anything will be able to move.
Real companies are stuck with things like AutoCAD, Pro/E, Catia, and a whole host of FEM, FDM, tools for a variety of domains, ray-tracers and other design tools, graphics manipulation tools, simulation tools, etc.
An unsurprisingly small number of which are based on VB, and many of which do not have sufficiently sized design teams to support more than one platform (some of which don't really have enough to support even that.)
The good news (though not perfect, mind you) is that I'm saying web apps, largely written in PHP (that's the not perfect part) taking the place that VB once held. It's still a nightmare so far as trying to maintain the horrible crap that A+ certificate types who pretend to be programmers spew out before they leave, but at least it's largely cross-platform shit.
I'm doing some work on an incident reporting system written in PHP. It's a godawful nightmare, but at least I can toss it on Apache, or with a few changes, on IIS, and won't have too many problems getting it running.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Support is not provided by Microsoft, support is provided by the OEM.
i don't see why he should pick up your mortgage. you got yourself into this mess of being totally dependent on the whims of a convicted monopolist. you can get yourself out of it.
The grand parent wasn't saying that was how he decided, but rather that is how companies decide. I agree with what you're trying to say, it is stupid for a company to buy into a worthless support contract because legally the software vendor is not responsible for any problems that occur or are they even responsible for providing a solution. Support contracts are basically there so you have a number to call and whine to when shit hits the fan, and when your boss comes around and asks "why isn't it working," you can say, "well it's proprietary software vendor's X's fault." Which sounds a little better than "it broke."
I know how useless support contracts are because we just canceled one. We had an annual "support" contract with an old and dying vendor with some old and dying software. One day we decided to actually talk to them to see if they could fix our issue. And their answer was "pay us more money and we *might* fix it." We replied "nevermind." A month later I figured out what the issue was after dumping their junk software into a test environment and playing with the inputs we had access to. Eventually I found that it had a shitty algorithm for doing something stupid and we happen to have data that ran into the algorithm's worst case run-time. Altered how the data was being fed and the problem went away. I saved the company ten's of thousands of dollars that day.
Next when it came time to renew our annual support contract with this vendor, we decided to not renew it because not only did we know they were trying to leech huge amounts of money from us, but we also had plans to eventually retire the aging system. Bam, thousands of dollars saved for the company again.
Don't think that MS is the only "bad guy" when it comes to "support" contracts. Every big software vendor does it and everyone makes sure to cover their butts. If you honestly think you can save your company a lot of money just by terminating support contracts and ensuring that you can take the responsibility for supporting the software then by all means do it. But there are some support contracts that I think are stupid, but others that I think are essential. The easy way to figure that out is if the system fails, and you can't bring it back up in a reliable amount of time, then you probably shouldn't take that responsibility because you'll probably lose your job.
For mp3 support and all this other bullshit out of the box, remember how much support DOS gave you 2 decades ago? None. Technically, we have grown complacent and allowed the PC to emulate every portion of human lives, including sex. PCs used to be glorified typewriters and spreadsheet printers. Now, if it doesnt have a neat look or feature you have seen elsewhere first, it is "unacceptable" and "garbage" to laymen.
... people cringe when they see a generic type.
The immense variety of things heaping beyond our old DOS simplicity, from high-end gaming to Family tree software allows certain brands to throw wrenches in progress' way. It is like chosing between generic cola and "Coca Cola" during pre-soda periods... As time passes, other Colas are made, in a growing market and maybe non-Colas
Now, back to the OS example, people are looking for Word and Office on every PC and know where to look for pirated versions even in countries where there are heavy legal penalties. They arent looking for "word processor" anymore. Ubuntu is not forced to support it, but till they license MP3 by default or reinvent the functionality somehow, they are behind the curve.
Our own damn fault for letting the products that we own dictate our ownership of them.
Anyway, yes, killer applications own us. They didnt really exist 30 years ago. Now, imagine Ubuntu or whatever Linux trying to recreate a new DOS to Windows-level adulthood when user demands, hardware, APIs and coding tools keep changing.
Look at it this way. If there were only ONE flavor of Linux, there would be more vendor support. Look at mac apps. There are quite a few out there, because macs are monolithic but Linux cannot be, due to its fluid open source nature. Microsoft still releases Office for the mac, though not every application (this is more monopoly related than technically induced, and was the reason they wanted to split MS into competing OS and software branches.)
Windows has been doing things and allowing itself to grow while others copy it. Platforms and APIs are easy to copy, but programs running on them cannot be copied due to copyright or closed source issues. The day a PC stops feeling like a PC and more like a dumb single-task box again will be the day when Linux can begin to catch up functionality wise. Sadly
Yeah, MS loves this move. They continue to provide XP to those who want it, except post-switch they get to chalk up every XP "sale" as a Vista sale, keeping adoption numbers presentable. The OEM eats the support/inefficiency costs of this hack, and the consumer eats the price increase of Vista license vs XP license (whatever it is at the uber-OEM discount level; probably not very much.)
... and decisions that were made purely for philosophical reasons (no mp3 support by default? please.) Not true. The mp3 codec isn't included by default because it's illegal to do so in some countries.With FOSS you can pay anyone you feel competent to do the change.
With MS software you can pay Microsoft (hahahahahaha!) Sorry, couldn't help that. So when MS don't listen or don't care, who do you go to?
The problem is, it would have to be absolutely perfect.
Good luck with that -- I'd put better odds on being able to run the Windows VB environment under Wine than reimplementing it ourselves.
In any case, VB should be discouraged, right? I'm assuming that when you said "lock in tool", you meant that people can't switch because they have existing stuff in VB, not because anyone sane would use it for a new project.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
"Nobody has a right to be forced to surrender anything they produce."
When I produce a copy of WinXP, I acn be forced to surrender it.
When Real Property is abandoned it can be taken by anyone. Y'know, the property laws that they want "IP" to be like ("you don't take my house away after fifty years do you????") say that if you abandon a property then anyone can take it.
Your CYA point is valid: Nobody got fired for choosing IBM. I mean Microsoft.
(Hint: Where's IBM now?)
And most of your analysis is right -- 5% is optimistic. What I think you're missing is the ways in which open source is actually safer.
See, open source is generally known to work -- you can find as many known-good configurations as with Windows. It's possible to pay someone to actually stand behind it -- whereas you admit it's naive to think Microsoft will stand behind their code.
And there's the additional bonus that you always have the source code, which means you're independent of any one vendor, and you have some measure of control over the direction of the project.
In simpler terms: You can always ditch one vendor for another, if something happens to that one vendor. And you can always hire someone to develop a feature for you.
Those are two things you simply cannot get with Microsoft, or with any proprietary software vendor -- if they go away, you're SOL. Take the "Save XP" petition -- this kind of thing completely baffles Linux geeks. If Ubuntu Hardy doesn't work, you can downgrade back to Feisty. Canonical may no longer support it after awhile, but if you really can't afford to upgrade, you can always find your own support.
Or, if it's just a few things wrong with Hardy, you can fix them. No need to beg Microsoft to admit that it's a bug, not a feature.
So there it is, in terms a suit would understand. The only thing dangerous about Linux is the initial switch, and the chance that there's something you need from Windows that just won't run on Linux. So fine, buy a few nice, beefy terminal servers, put some Windows VMs on them, and use those for the 10% of your business which needs them -- and I think I'm being generous there. With the other 90% on Linux, you've got 90% more 'insurance'.
I, too, live in the real world, and I realize this isn't an easy sell. But the reality is, one by one, some of these suits are learning, and bit by bit, Linux is becoming at least competent, if not excellent, for more and more tasks.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Furthermore, it's not as simple as you describe. You can possess property that is "abandoned", but it doesn't become yours for quite some time, and the legal owner can kick you out whenever they want until those many years have passed. True abandonment (unlike the "abandonment" you describe) is rare.
Unsurprisingly, the AC is as wrong as the OP.
There is less support for various commercial apps. Once there is a higher install base of desktop Linux in the enterprise, this will no doubt change. One trend in its favour is the increasing number of business functions that are operated not through a web browser rather than a stand-alone app. CAD or photoshop are not functions that are likely to move that way (though see Adobe's recent online photoshop dabbling), but many business apps will. If the Linux community wants to advance they're going to have to give up on some of their ideals and actually provide what people are looking for, which is a stable operating systems that run applications people actually want to use with a consistent look and feel everywhere. I ran Ubuntu for over a year and reverted to XP because I couldn't deal with the slowdowns for no reason, application crashes, incompatibilities, mystery feature additions and removals based on the whims of the developers (what's pigeon going to include or disable this week!), and decisions that were made purely for philosophical reasons (no mp3 support by default? please.) The issues with support for things like mp3 is not philosophy but patent law. To license patents for mp3 you need to sell each copy which goes against a distro you can download. You can get codec add-ons easily enough, but they're not legal in many jurisdictions so can't be in the base install.
John
Sound in flash still doesn't work correctly out of the box on Ubuntu systems, there's no mp3 support by default, nor does Quicktime really work. There's still not a decent movie player.
:)
In many business situations these might actually be positives
Gimp still isn't a satisfactory replacement for Photoshop. I used Gimp for a lot of website work and it is a perfect replacement, especially for someone who is a student (and cash-crunched). The only thing I was unable to do was to edit text in images that were created in Photoshop.
Sound in flash still doesn't work correctly out of the box on Ubuntu systems, there's no mp3 support by default, nor does Quicktime really work. There's still not a decent movie player.
Never had any of these issues - Flash and VLC media played does all of these just fine
This doesn't even begin to take into account that most businesses I've come across use some kind of custom industry application. CAD applications, specialized accounting applications, lending an loan applications, guess what they're all written for? Windows. Linux still doesn't work for those customers. .
For businesses this is certainly true. But for me atleast wine has ran many applications well enough (Photoshop, Word etc.) If the Linux community wants to advance they're going to have to give up on some of their ideals and actually provide what people are looking for, which is a stable operating systems that run applications people actually want to use with a consistent look and feel everywhere. I ran Ubuntu for over a year and reverted to XP because I couldn't deal with the slowdowns for no reason, application crashes, incompatibilities, mystery feature additions and removals based on the whims of the developers (what's pigeon going to include or disable this week!), and decisions that were made purely for philosophical reasons (no mp3 support by default? please.)
That completely defeats the idea of a community. The community is not there because they hate Windows and want a replacement. The community is there so that they can create something "free" and usable. You can't ask a community of volunteers to give up their ideals - that immediately is the end of the community. Maybe you can try forming another one to make a windows replacement - but that may be better served by businesses like Canonical.
And what version of Ubuntu are you running ? Mysterious slowdown is a rather rare symptom on Linux -- I never faced it on any version I ever used (redhat, Ubuntu) in over 8 years. Application crashes, unfortunately are more common.
Besides, Outlook is still the best email/productivity/calendaring application out there. Nothing I've seen on UNIX even comes close, especially when I need to share data with others. I have to agree with you about Outlook. Google is the only one that comes close.
http://slashdot.org/submission/1062723/Cheap-mobile-data-plan?art_pos=2
As to mp3 IIRC, this is due to licencing/legal issues. I've just played an mp3 file after a newly installed Ubuntu 8.04 and was prompted to download the appropriate codec. This downloaded automatically and was able to play file in about a minute after clicking on it, so there is no issue there. This doesn't even begin to take into account that most businesses I've come across use some kind of custom industry application. CAD applications, specialized accounting applications, lending an loan applications, guess what they're all written for? Windows. Linux still doesn't work for those customers. Use Windows for specialist roles and linux for generic roles like back office/call centre. If the Linux community wants to advance they're going to have to give up on some of their ideals and actually provide what people are looking for, which is a stable operating systems that run applications people actually want to use with a consistent look and feel everywhere. I ran Ubuntu for over a year and reverted to XP because I couldn't deal with the slowdowns for no reason, application crashes, incompatibilities, mystery feature additions and removals based on the whims of the developers (what's pigeon going to include or disable this week!), and decisions that were made purely for philosophical reasons (no mp3 support by default? please.) For some strange reason open source applications like abiword/gimp/firefox work and look a lot better on Windows than on Ubuntu.
If the big companies are serious about getting linux on the desktop then they need to co-operate in building a GUI that is good for business, the Pportland project is a step in the right direction. Whatever the complaints about the bloat in Windows, it is a great productivity tool for business where there are many ways to get things (espeically repetitive tasks) done quickly and if linux wants to get a foothold then they need to emulate this. As for use at home, apart from the wee niggles mentioned, linux has been ready for years.
Unfortunately, they're not offering XP support for the Inspiron 1525 they replaced my display-defective 1505n with. One of the things I liked about the 1505n was that, even though I bought it because it was a factory Ubuntu Linux laptop, there was also full XP driver support. I need to run XP for work-related tasks. Now, I have discovered that the "upgrade" they replaced it with has NO XP drivers available at all - only Vista. Based on spec, I'm gonna try using (most) of the XP driver set from the 1520 model - but this was still a real disappointment.
Just keep in mind that the community has made service packs and shit for Windows 98 and it's all garbage, I tried both the usual sesp21 and the sesp30b and both made my system horribly unreliable.
If you have really reached the point where you are stuck with XP because Vista won't do the job, and you're not currently working on a project to switch your business from Windows to Linux or similar, then you are a sucker. Because Microsoft will just keep fucking you over.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Just to maintain a balance here, Apple uses three different widget sets in OSX 10.4.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
damn i wish I could mod you up.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
IBM is now the world's largest Linux vendor and the world's largest computing services company, and is not going away any time soon. Maybe that was your point?
So there it is, in terms a suit would understand. The only thing dangerous about Linux is the initial switch, and the chance that there's something you need from Windows that just won't run on Linux. So fine, buy a few nice, beefy terminal servers, put some Windows VMs on them, and use those for the 10% of your business which needs them -- and I think I'm being generous there. With the other 90% on Linux, you've got 90% more 'insurance'.Actually, I think that most of the corner cases are better solved with vmware. These days, running two operating systems at once is nothing. I'd just like to see a vmware fusion-like product for Linux.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No consumer demand?
That seems like the most vital reason with a for-profit business (you know, like Red Hat, who gave up on Teh Lunix on Teh Desktop). Also... I don't think consumers are chomping at the bit to get their hands on "Happy Harry Hardon". The way Ubunghole names their products just shows their total contempt for their own product. So what's the next version? Indignant Idiot?
Isn't the OEM responsible for supporting the OS. Moreover, Microsoft is providing updates for another 2 years. This is not a hugh in the near term.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
Now as the IT Officer, I use Gentoo on my computers with PXE-boot capabilities because all of my employees are using smart terminals that boot from the network. The advantage is that should a terminal puke/crash/xplode, then all I need to do is switch out the broken unit and have them up and running within minutes and all of this occurs without data loss since everything is on the server.
As part of my decision, my employees use fluxbox as their WM and it is configured to automatically start the only applications that they use, email for those in that position, Open Office for those who need the office suite and a very restrictive set of apps. Hell I even give em Dillo for html file access as it's good enough for that and as far as my customers are concerned, I don't have any problem with Office file formats because by contract, they have to submit in either RTF or Word 97 format though my new contracts are finally moving to a Combination of ODF and RTF as the failsafe formats.
So from the business standpoint, my employees are using the tools I provide at company expense in the manner I deem appropriate instead of doing what ever in hell they want and because of this everyone actually gets enough done cheaply enough that I can continue to pay them for working. Now I'm not a task master or slave driver as I do give them access to a few extras like Pysol and Minesweeper. They offer enough of a mental break while being easy enough to interupt when things get busy.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
The old VB you refer to (the one which small bits of software used to be written in) had its extended support terminated this April. It's all .NET now, but when Miguel tries to bring another piece of the latest and greatest of that to Linux, all I see is people on ./ complaining about him being an MS shill and all that...
This is not even news... Dell is following Microsoft's mandate for OEM's on this. They are allowed to sell XP until June. After that, until February or so, they will only be allowed to sell Vista licenses, but can downgrade machines to XP at the factory. After that, they can only ship machines from the factory with Vista. However they currently plan to continue to release XP drivers for their enterprise-level hardware for at least 3-4 more years. The same is true for HP etc. This is not some maverick move by Dell, as the post implies. If it was, they would be seriously violating their contract with Microsoft as an OEM.
Yes, i did. Multiple times. We're in the MS Partner Program, and as such get a number of free support calls.
Whenever i called, i was always talking to someone that spoke flawless German (i don't care where the guy is from).
So far, all issues i took to Microsoft (usually advanced problems with Windows Server or Exchange) were resolved fast and with professional people - even though the L3 support i've only spoke english (which for me isn't a problem).
No idea what their end user support is like.
Sure, I'll replace the most important app for 1000 people with " couple of Linux projects which at least claim to support that."
You'll pick up my mortgage and other expenses when I get canned, right? Please be slightly realistic in the Linux fanaticism.
Well, despite it's own special problems, Lotus Notes is available on Linux now, and of course Domino has been available for years. I've been advocating it's use to my company for a while now, since 99% of our users have linux or mac desktops. We all have to have a tertiary system just for windows so we can use outlook because we use exchange.Actually you can get Pro/E for Linux.
And not every company used Solidworks or any of the other software you have mentioned.
The thing is those tools are far more likely to be ported to Linux than say that silly little utility that tacks the use of Scrubs at some Hospital. And they really can not live with out that utility and it isn't worth spending money and time on porting because it works so they keep windows.
The only reason that windows won is that it ran those same stupid little programs written in DOS that everybody used back then.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Is this what you mean when you say "intentional waste"? When you say "rational discussion"? When you say that people who disagree with you "hate" Slashdot?
There is a business aspect to this move. It will both cause people to upgrade to Vista, or purchase extra copies of XP while they are available, instead of waiting to make the purchasing decision when and if they are needed. The time value of money: make them spend their money today when they are not really sure they need something, instead of not spending it tomorrow when they are sure they don't need something. It can only help the bottom line. I don't see people driven to Linux while that's so difficult to use on the desktop (can't even surf the net right, flash 9 available? How about all the sites demanding internet explorer?), or even Apple, while that's so expensive.
It's cheap enough, yes, and there are cases where I see it working. But it should be optional, and I imagine a thin-client solution might be cheaper anyway. How much does it cost for an MS Terminal Server license vs, say, commercial virtualization and a copy of XP on every desktop? And that's assuming you need the real MS terminal server.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I have 2GB of memory and usually have 1.5 GB free. 2GB is standard now.
Firing off 512MB to Windows XP is a triviality. So far everything I need runs in 512MB. My only advice is to have a contiguous hard disk file for XP, it runs like dogshit without it (maybe if you disabled the boot-accelerating defragmenter?) Or, of course, a partition or physical device.
I could dedicate 1 GB to Windows XP and not suffer much, too. Just for the record.
The real issue I think is that in most offices, only one or two people even NEED windows. Everyone else can do everything just fine on just about any solution. They want to cry about how hard it is to learn, but that's just their own obstinacy and mental block, because let's face it, one email program or word processor is much like another. (With the caveat that OO.o's spreadsheet's interface is poop. Excel really does have that part nailed.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Define "free".
I've just booted, and I have almost a gig used. Half of it is cache. I could run XP, but there's no way I'd run it all the time.
So I think you're right -- only a couple of people need Windows, therefore, either let them run it as a primary OS, or leave one Windows server running that they RDP into.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Microsoft Action: Set a date to stop selling a product that is still in (very) high demand, in favor of newer product that is in very much less demand.
World Answer: WTF?
I want XP. I don't want Vista. If Microsoft won't sell XP to me, then they have lost a customer. Simple. I'll use Linux instead, on any future computers I need an OS for. If XP had still been available, I might have considered buying it (and thus sending money to Microsoft). If Vista is the only Microsoft alternative, then Microsoft won't get any of my money.
So, again:
- World: We want XP. Gief!
- MS: No, you can't have it. Buy Vista instead.
- World: WTF?
*World looks around for, and gets, something else.*
(Yes, I'm aware that the "World" above does not make up 100% of all potential Microsoft OS customers. But it makes up enough that Microsoft might want to seriously consider changing the end-of-sale policy and start giving a shit about what its customers actually want, instead of whatever it is they think they're doing at the moment.)
They are the suppliers of your "demand" and they are pretty much saying "no"
Bullshit, they offer downgrade rights to XP with both volume licenses and with OEM copies of vista buisness or ultimate. Those buisnesses who require XP will have no trouble getting it.
The people who are getting screwed are non technical home users. If you make the mistake of buying a machine with a home edition of vista, you want to remain legal (or you don't have the skills to find and install a pirate copy or a techie friend prepared to do it for you) and you don't have access to volume licensing. You are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Retail and retail upgrade copies of windows do not come with downgrade rights!
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Then you have Gat0r30y, an obvious spoof of Gatorboy
Yes. Microsoft is the devil in our eyes, and not without a reason (many in fact :P).
We don't need their security patches.
We already have third partie solves for them.
We aren't technological neophites that are slaved to their advances.
And stop talking for the whole, you are but a part, and that, was my point.
End of Line.
And and even though we've ridd ourselves of NT servers, we still see a few.
Not to mention the hundreds of Windows 2000 PC's / Servers still about...
We're not concerned about them, they will go to 2003 soon enough...
The thing is, you are willingly serfing to M$.
You are probably one of their Vista Trolls....which we will not be rolling out ever.
End of Line.