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One Third of New PCs Downgraded To XP?
CWmike writes "More than one in every three new PCs is downgraded from Windows Vista to Windows XP, either at the factory or by the buyer, said performance and metrics researcher Devil Mountain Software, which operates a community-based testing network. 'The 35% is only an estimate, but it shows a trend within our own user base,' Craig Barth, the company's CTO, said. 'People are taking advantage of Vista's downgrade rights.' Last year, Devil Mountain benchmarked Vista and XP performance using other performance-testing tools and concluded that XP was much faster. Barth said things haven't changed since then. 'Everything I've seen clearly shows me that Vista is an OS that should never have left the barn.'"
Ordinary users expect stuff to work easily. Vista has an awful reputation in this regard, and it chews up more processing power/RAM and is slower than XP.
Every machine I've ordered from CDW has been preloaded with Windows XP, for which I thank them with my continued business. Vista has no place here.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
So... a number that's a guess is the only news-worthy item here? Sweet.
That depends on your opinion/needs.
"Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
Everything I've seen clearly shows me that Vista is an OS that should never have left the barn
Or better yet - BURN THE BARN!
On a serious note, it is sort of sad that Vista has performed so poorly. I mean, I really enjoy Linux, but on my gaming desktop I'd like to have the best OS for the job (with DX10 if it's used). As a gamer, the whole thing put a sour taste in my mouth. I guess I can say I'm happy with Linux, but a bit sad that nothing useful came out of Microsoft's work, except for being able to lord it over them.
90% of users are Joe Sixpacks, and still 35% of them jump through the hurdles to drop Vista. It's hard to imagine what Microsoft would need to do to fare worse than this.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Subject says it all.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
It's an upgrade
and said that its OS is not going out without a fight!
Seriously, some variation of NT 5 is going to live for a long time, ReactOS is proof positive of this.
Crap! I just kissed my karma good-bye.
It boggles the mind why anyone would want a low to mid range laptop to come with Vista preinstalled. And yet that's the only way to get them (reasonably).
And apparently Toshiba's only honouring the warranty now if none of the original bundled software has been removed. So a friend of mine ended up buying a cheap Toshiba, with the understanding that it functionally has no warranty, since he's immediately nuking Vista off of it.
I bought my laptop with the intention of downgrading to Windows XP for increased stability and performance.
I was shocked, on the other hand, to find that there were no Windows XP drivers and that inserting the Windows XP CD and booting from it caused a BSOD before the installing starts. I have an HP Pavilion DV5-1002NR.
Do not purchase this laptop if you want to use Windows XP on it.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
How come no one is talking about the new version of Windows called Mojave? It looks great, and has little utilities called gadgets ... I love Windows Mojave. I give it a "10"!
How is XP a downgrade?
I'm not a Vista hater. I actually like it better - it's UI for explorer (folders) is much better and I like that, unlike XP Home, UAC is in every release of Vista. I think the security is also better but not great yet -- services shouldn't run in administrator level but just be sandboxed to their own account.
But it is dog slow out of the box for many computers with integrated video chipsets (why some manufacturers don't set the Aero level appropriately for their models is beyond me). It takes up too many resources of low-end computers. And Microsoft has gotten way too version happy - 12 versions IIRC (counting 32 and 64 bit seperately). Microsoft is also squeezing wallets for truly inane things - I can't even get 64bit business upgrade easily when I have 32 bit business even though such an upgrade should be minimal costs (somehow my disc doesn't count for alternative media...).
Why is this? I don't know if it's peculiar to Vista, but it really pisses me off when the computer decides that it will restart in T - 10 minutes just for a security upgrade and there is nothing I can do about it -- which pretty much summarizes how Microsoft is treating the customer base in a lot of decisions.
No wonder Macs are starting to get popular on the high end and Linux is starting to get popular on the low end mini notebooks. XP sucks in a lot of regards security-wise, but at least it's small and fast and there were only 2 versions of it for a desktop and all the Apps work on it (Endicia Dazzle still isn't 100% Vista ready...)
Downgrade?
But! But! Microsoft did that thing, and people said Vista is great if we don't tell them it's Vista. Clearly the solution is to rebrand Vista as XP and in two months, like a magician, whip the cloth off and go "Aha! You've been using Vista all along!" There is no way a plan like that could fail!
God, this feels horrible, but I have to defend Microsoft/Windows here a bit
Windows 98 was slower than Windows 95, running on the same hardware
Windows XP was slower than Windows 98, running on the same hardware
Windows Vista is slower than Windows XP, running on the same hardware.
Does anybody see a pattern here? Most people thought XP was rubbish for the first couple of years that it was out for, and now those same people are proclaiming it to be Microsoft's best OS to date.
Vista does a lot of things right, and improves on XP in many, many areas, it's just dogged by this idea that it's crap because you can't run it on your P3-800 and it won't work with your dot-matrix printer from 1977.
Ugh, that felt terrible, I need to go play with Ubuntu for a few hours now....
You know even in spite of all the problems with Linux I think a combination of factors may push it to finally become a mainstream Desktop OS. I'm reluctant to make predictions because people have been saying it'll be the year for desktop linux since I started using Linux a little after 2000.
That said Vista's obviously tanked worse than anyone could've guessed. Even the non-computer savvy are reverting to an OS that Microsoft is no longer developing and is already trying to cut support for entirely.
I know from my friends that's pushed a lot of people towards Mac OS, and it would seem that would be the natural way for things to go and it could be that Macs finally take over as at least an equal share desktop OS, if not become the dominant desktop. But then now Apple's having stock problems and a ton of concerns over Jobs' health and whether or not Apple can continue successfully should Steve Jobs have to retire.
Businesses are going to take the potential for Apple to suddenly go drastically downhill way more seriously than average consumers, which may push businesses toward Linux. Business workstations obviously are a major if not the biggest factor in desktop adoption for an OS.
This is obviously really hypothetical, but it seems like this combination of factors along with the increasing prominence of Linux (especially with the marketing work of Ubuntu/Canonical) are making this a great opening for Linux to move into an area where it has a signficiant enough marketshare that application developers such as Adobe will have to start supporting it as well as they support Windows/Mac. I'm not gonna say it outright because it'll take more than a year I think for this to become fully clear, and it could easily be taken away by Apple if they make the right moves, or if they clear up any uncertainties and concerns businesses might have about their future, but this is the first time Linux has an opening to take a huge chunk of desktop market share because it has non-technical reasons for being a superior alternative.
Somehow I suspect this might not be legal, since the warranty is ostensibly to cover the hardware. Wasn't there a /. article some months back about exactly this kind of issue, and how voiding the warranty on computer hardware for changing the software wasn't legal?
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
I know the article mentions that it's possible to downgrade to XP if the computer is going to be used in a corporate environment, but I was wondering if it would be possible for the average consumer to downgrade?
What does Vista give a business user who will typically want to run XP compatible apps? Not that many people need DirectX 10 support or support for content protected (i.e. DRM'ed) High Definition video at work. File explorer might be better but most users don't spend a lot of time doing anything remotely complicated with files - putting everything in "my Documents" usually works okay.
I'm running Server 2008 64-bit without the Desktop Experience role and 4GB of memory (on a 4ghz overclocked e8500), I might add. Boy I love saying that. I've been hanging out on a lot of OC forums lately.
Anyway, without the DE role, there is no Media Player, no installed WM codecs. I use VLC and Flash. It frickin flies. Beats the crap out of XP, and is way more modern feeling. It's nice. BTW, Windows 7 Server will be pretty much the same as Win2008. All W7 will be is what I have now :-)
Trust me, server 2008 is the way to go.
I'll lay this out for everyone simply and clearly:
Windows XP Service Pack 2 had massive failure rates after its release. This was something which was supposed to be caught during the beta program (silly things like activation being permanently fried and boot bluescreens). There were numerous installation errors which were unrelated to antivirus programs as the team had specified (in fact, a heavy number of these install failures came from machines with no AV or with the AV disabled).
Fast forward to the Vista beta during 2005 and 2006. The same manager (Paul Donnelly. pauldon@microsoft.com) led this beta program through a trip of elitism and hell. Some testers would be massively rewarded for sucking up while others would have nasty bugs closed as being "by design" (including a number of major DWM CPU usage bugs).
The same coordinators managed the same two beta programs, leading to the same results. Paul and his team need to be canned, because they're not doing anything right.
"really pisses me off when the computer decides that it will restart in T - 10 minutes just for a security upgrade and there is nothing I can do about it"
Try shutdown /a (run shutdown /? to see all options available) from command prompt. Not tried on vista, but at least on 2003, that's the command to abort a system shutdown.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
ALL of those oses prior to Vista have brought something to the table that wasnt there before themselves.
vista, brings NOTHING, except drm. therefore people are not tolerating the slowness.
Read radical news here
They put out bloatware and expect that hardware improvements will make it run well.
One big problem: Moore's law has started to run out. CPU speeds have not been increasing like they used to, and Microsoft is not prepared yet to take true advantage of multiple cores. Something's going to have to change inside that company or the Vista debacle is going to keep repeating itself.
No-one will ever need more than 640G.
I hated Vista, but recently downloaded a beta of the new Windows Mojave. It's SO FREAKING GREAT!!! Best OS ever, maybe even!
Anyway, I remember all the idiots whining back in the day about how Windows 2000 was faster than XP. Kind of odd how those exact same idiots are claiming XP is the "really super very bestest OS evar, maybe even!"
But... I ran Vista Ultimate x64 on my HP nc6400, core 2 2.0ghz, 2gb RAM, and the thing ran great. The only reason I got rid of it (was dual-booting) was the heat. My CPU idled at 72c, and with a little work, got close to 80c. If not for that, I'd still be running it.
it worked better with my hardware than OpenSuse 10, Debian 4 (and other distros) too.
I'm really beginning to wonder about these anti-Vista remarks I read all over the place. Seems like band-wagon jumping to me.... Yes, some things with Vista are stupid, and a bit counter-intuitive. But, XP Pro was a horrible OS when it came out, and wasn't fully embraced until SP2. Do people really expect a SP2-quality initial release? Anybody who works in software testing should be able to attest that this is impossible. No matter how thorough you check, test, and attempt to break the product, bugs still make it through. "Features" like UAC still make it through.
That's life, not the worst OS ever....
not only is time travel possible, it's irrelevant.
Linux won't succeed 'because Windows fails', because the simple fact is, Microsoft wont fail.
Vista isn't good, the mob have spoken, but such is Microsoft's lead, they can screw it completely, spend several years making an alternative, and *still* beat Linux on the desktop.
Its all about their installed and entrenched userbase.
All Linux can hope for is to even the home desktop playing field over say, the next 5 to ten years, until Windows is just one of several alternatives.
Microsoft are likely to still dominate, or at least remain extremely strong in the Business desktop and document editing spaces for many years to come.
Of course in internet servers and database clusters, Microsoft have already lost to Linux, so that's something. That was because of the strengths of Linux though, not because Windows was bad.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
One of the departments on-campus where I do IT support just bought a bunch of POS Toshiba tablets for some faculty. They came with Vista. Vista doesn't work with most of our campus systems. I have to figure out how to get the tablets working properly using our campus license of XP Pro. I have three of them sitting in front of me that I am trying three different techniques on...we'll see how this goes. Vista...making IT miserable since November of 2006.
This space for rent...
I work for a smaller OEM that mainly provides computers to school districts around the state. I'd say approximately 80% off all our orders are downgrades. It may be interesting to note though that schools are more like to keep Vista on notebooks than pc.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
The simple, long term test is whether software companies optimise their work for XP or Vista, given the choice. In the absence of a more popular OS the developers will concentrate on the most used variant of any give group. That's the best measure at the end of the day.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
I agree with you in theory... The thing is, have you actually spent a significant chunk of time on Vista? Its dog-slow.
I bought a new computer a few months ago, and decided to put vista on it. On the performance rating vista gave it, it is ranked as off the chart, and described in their performance tool as "faster than the fastest computers at the time of Vista's release".
The problem is, its still SLOW to respond to EVERYTHING i do. Even simple directory browsing is painfully lagged.
I haven't benchmarked specifics, but if feels way slower to respond than XP and Ubuntu on my machine that is 6 years old.
I do a lot of work on that Vista system inside a Virtual Machine with Ubuntu on it, and that VM is WAY faster than the Vista gui (Yes, the virtual machine running inside Vista, is more responsive than Vista...)
"Windows 98 was slower than Windows 95, running on the same hardware
Windows XP was slower than Windows 98, running on the same hardware
Windows Vista is slower than Windows XP, running on the same hardware."
On a 486 with decent memory, it was hard to tell the difference in performance between 95 and 98. There's no mistaking the difference between XP and Vista on the same hardware, though. 1 gig of memory is fast for XP. On the same amount, Vista runs like a dog. Well, actually, Vista runs like a dog with any amount of memory.
As far as 98 to XP, Microsoft has an out there... 98 ran on the old DOS-based core, while XP has the much-more-capable but resource intensive NT core. So you're really comparing apples and oranges there. Vista has an NT based kernel, just like XP, so no excuse there.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
The department name is actually quite insightful, because it brings up the point that numbers like this don't consider the PCs that weren't bought in the first place because of Vista.
Up until this time last year, I was a proud and recalcitrant user of Win98.
I only switched to Win2000 when I started having trouble moving really big files over USB. Then my whole system did that 'releasing the magic smoke' thing and I had to buy a stack of dazzling new gear.
I was happy to discover upon switching to Win2000 that it worked really, really well. With all the service packs in place and all that jazz, I've now got a dream machine.
I waited nearly a whole decade before finally switching over, and that was enough time to see the OS clean itself up. It never crashes and does all I want/need. Cool.
I should add that I did try Ubuntu and a couple of other Linux versions first, but was dismayed to discover that my Wacom tablet wouldn't function properly under them. There are user support forums detailing long sets of baffling instructions on how to get tablets going right, but they didn't work for me and I just ended up frustrated. It reminded me of the days when ripping CD's to MP3 format was a touch & go command line process rather than the plaything of highly automated programs it is today. I'm not a Linux guru and I have no desire to climb the learning curve necessary to become one, so I dropped the whole affair. --Also QuarkExpress isn't supported by Wine. . . Oh well.
Linux is closer, and it looks fantastic and feels great to use, but it doesn't do easily (or possibly at all) what I need. When it finally arrives, I imagine I'll not need to switch to XP in 2017.
-FL
Well I noticed you didn't mention Windows ME...
"Downgraded To XP?" :)
Personally I would say its an upgrade
No no no, my friend: you must get the new 640GT: more aerodynamic.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
The question in the title of this story is: "One Third of New PCs Downgraded To XP?" The answer is: This is a trick question. PCs are not being downgraded to Windows XP; they are being upgraded to Windows XP.
Let me explain. No, that'll take too long. Let me sum up. Windows XP is actually a very decent operating system, if you know how to install it. For that, there is a program called nLite. This is a program that allows you to insert your factory original Windows XP installation disc, choose basically all the various options that you would, on a normal installation, go through all the Control Panel windows, the registry, and maybe even some INI files, and then it makes you a new Windows XP installation disc that installs Windows with all those options set. So you can go ahead and switch all of Microsoft's defaults to their opposite. You tell it to optimize for best performance; get rid of those cartoonish looking blue and red windows in favor of the Windows 95 style; tell it to display extensions and hidden files; tell it to basically do everything backwards from the way Microsoft installs it normally. And once you do all those things, Windows installs in 30 minutes and runs like a meteor through cyberspace. A few additional utilities like CCleaner (set it to run on startup and check all the boxes) and a better editor than notepad (like UltraEdit-32, commercial software you have to pay for and it's worth every penny ten times over) and whatever other utilities you want... like FileZilla client and server for transferring files around your network (Windows SMB networking sucks -- that is unless you do it through Samba, in which case it works great), Wireshark for figuring out why Computer A can't "see" Computer B when you just transferred a file from Computer B to Computer A and that worked like a charm, those sorts of things. If you set it up using nLite to be a more businesslike OS and a less "let's make everything really easy so even the experts won't be able to move a file from one folder to another" then Windows XP is a wonderful operating system.
Windows Vista? I'll use it when it goes Open Source. (Hmmm, maybe I'd better be careful. Sarge was released; Apple did go Intel; and who knows, maybe Duke Nukem Forever will come out one of these days... You never know.)
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
Where I work XP is simply the current standard and even if Vista existed beyond the 2010 release date slated for Vienna we may never consider it. We get in a few hundred PCs annually at my site and it's a small site amongst several and that's not counting our retail outlet stores which number a few thousand.
It's not that we're thumbing our noses at Vista but rather that XP is what works for us and is stable.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Every week or two there is a new post about how Vista is a failure. I run it and it's great. Get over it. Microsoft wins again. Corporations aren't adopting it because the gap between things like Vista or OSX and things like Linux and XP is just too big for most controlled IT organizations to cross at this time. That is why the downgrading is happening. It's not because XP is "better", or even more preferred, than Vista. People need to get off the hater bandwagon and do something useful with their computers!
I downgraded my Vista machine to XP. A critical pice of software I use was dog slow on vista. Dead-dog slow. By accident, i found out how to speed it up considerably - I unplugged the network cable.
No, this was not a network app. It's a CAD program. It does absolutely nothing over the network. Whassup with that? Unfortunately, I need the network, and after much fiddling and tweaking the network settings (I am qualified...) There was no change.
But, every time I disabled the network, my CAD program sped up. Until I wiped out the HD and installed XP. Now it's always fast as ever on my vista-class hardware.
VIsta gave me absolutely no benefit over XP. What's the reason for this OS?
--
http://www.rlt.com/14100 See our newest perpetual motion machine (as designed by Leonardo DaVinci)
"When Joe Sixpack asks his tech friend for advice on purchasing a shiny new laptop, chances are the geek may say something akin to "Avoid Vista like the plague."
How exactly do I avoid it when every laptop in town has it preinstalled?
No sig today...
I've downgraded at least 6 computer in the past 4 months to XP. Media Center edition works great for the average home user, and the Royale Noir theme makes it slick like vista
The performance testing tools was "Office performance benchmarks". So I guess Vista isn't as great as XP for what exactly? TFA mentions nothing about things like Vista's SuperFetch speeding up load times etc, so this "omg vista is slooooow" is highly unscientific if you ask me.
The only reason I know people don't upgrade is for mission critical apps not being ready yet.
Stick a question-mark in front of any text and suddenly you can say anything.
throw new NoSignatureException();
When I have to use Windows, I still use Windows 2000.
How is XP a downgrade?
I heard a salesman at a major electronics store mention "downgrading" a computer from Vista to Linux. That was good for a bitter laugh.
Or get the GTR. The R is for racing, it goes faster.
I find Vista lacking in just too many ways. Until recently, I have never actually used it however. The facts before it is used speak well enough on their own. So throwing out any discussion about the user interface, enhanced effects, backward compatibility, increased stability or anything else that often results in subjective discussion, there still remains the two most important facts about Vista:
1. It requires more memory and processor resources to do the same job that XP does
2. It doesn't do more than XP does
Those are the reasons I have avoided Vista like the plague. Now the fact that in the office, the version of AutoCAD we use is known not to work particularly well with Vista is simply leverage over the fact that I see no business reason to change. Pursuant to my reluctance to change, I bought volume licenses for Vista... so that I maintained my right to downgrade to Windows XP. So now that machines are ONLY shipping with Vista, I am careful to be sure that XP drivers for devices are still available in any hardware selections I make and simply reload machines with XP.
My plan has started to pay off as I needed to buy a Lenovo laptop for one of my users. It came with Vista. I decided to test what should have been a PERFECTLY tweaked and tuned Vista installation. After all, it came with the hardware right? Pre-installed? One would think that it was done right. Perhaps I am over-estimating Lenovo, but I have never had a problem with the stock software load from Lenovo when it is running XP. In fact, those Lenovos [IBM Thinkpads] running XP have lasted years and have never been reloaded and are still running efficiently today. (That's saying a lot considering the typical pattern of "Windows Rot" I'm sure we're all familiar with.) So my expectations of quality and stability are based on my previous experience with Thinkpads and XP.
I powered up the Vista laptop and went about trying things out just in case my own prejudiced had really colored my view too badly. I'm really quick to admit when I'm wrong. That's why I use the name "erroneus" to begin with.
The machine suffered a very bad error that I can only describe. It wasn't a blue screen and it wasn't a lock-up exactly. It was something else... something weird. It was going through some sort of self-configuration stage after I agreed to not hold Lenovo or Microsoft liable for their products. I decided to move one of the Aero styled windows while the circle was circling so that I could entertain myself with the semi-transparent windows. The process was taking an odd amount of time in my opinion. Anyway, the window stopped moving and the circular cursor stopped rotating. The mouse cursor did move away from the window and in a particular rectangular region of the screen, the "busy" circle cursor would resume its rotation but there was no window there. In all other areas of the screen, it was the normal arrow. The hard drive was still chunking away so I let it go thinking it might catch up. It never did even after 45 minutes of doing "something." I tried to three-finger it, but no reaction could be observed. I waited longer... another 20 minutes or so. (I do other things too, so letting things ride for long periods of time is no big deal!) No changes could be observed. I forced the power off and powered back on. It resumed its setup process and continued on as if almost nothing were wrong. (It did acknowledge that something bad must have happened but at least it didn't try to blame me the way Windows9X used to do.)
Things seemed to go better this second go around but the hard drive NEVER stopped chunking and churning. I let it idle for hours and eventually over-night. It did eventually fall asleep only to wake up with a beep and go back to sleep again.
This machine has 1GB of RAM. It *should* be enough for Vista. It's not. And I haven't even loaded a single application on it. It's JUST the OS. What the hell? The damned swap file was growing and growing with no indication that it wo
I bought an system preload with Vista last year since the application we were using was Vista ready so I had to replace it with XP.
You will be surprised how many applications are not Vista ready so that is why IMHO people have to downgrade to XP.
I don't know what is hold up for developing or migrating to Vista but in the old Biblical term:
"...the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak."
Similarly:
"The Vista is willing, but the applications developers are weak."
Seriously.
XP is just 2K with ugly GUI. More bloat.
Well that and little fixes for memory manager which I think also made into some SP for Win2K.
Now if we slap a UI on it and make it asynchronous, we reach the nirvana of GUITAR.
String handling like you've never felt it before!
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3), the update scheduled to be released next year, runs Microsoft Corp.'s Office suite 10% faster than XP SP2, a performance testing software developer reported Friday.
Just wait, it'll be delayed or have additional "security fixes" that slow it down by 11%.
Try shutdown /a (run shutdown /? to see all options available) from command prompt. Not tried on vista, but at least on 2003, that's the command to abort a system shutdown.
On Linux, you need to know advanced terminal commands to do things like force the system to shut down.
On Windows, you need to know advanced terminal commands to stop the system from doing things to you...
Sounds like Linux is finally catching up by having Windows drop down to its level and heading the wrong way past!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Investigating the downgrade options will show you that it's mostly limited to business use (particularly from HP). My store has probably sold hundreds of Vista PC's since it's introduction - and we've only downgraded 2 or 3. IMO the reason for this is that it's more expensive to downgrade (for the average user) than it is to replace the incompatible programs.
We looked at Vista and tried to get it to install on some of our baseline hardware and it didn't run all that fantastically (no surprise) .... but when it refused to run with our version of our Project Management Tool (Prolog) without a massive forklift upgrade, nor would it run with our primary scheduling software (SureTrak) ... It was doomed. At that point, Vista is relagated to a small partition on my dual boot laptop and that's about it.
I'd be very surprised if anyone in Construction IT is using Vista at all.....Anyone in IT in the Construction arena out there? (Sit down Forguer, I already know you aren't :)
High on the list of Microsoft's greatest fears is virtualization.
I'm seeing *lots* of Intel Macs with one of Parallels/VirtualBox/VMWare. More than half, I'd estimate. Almost all with XP.
Virtualization, while it means an upgrade path for Microsoft, also means that people can upgrade to another OS. And, when they specify their next round of software, it's going to be software that runs natively on Mac or Linux.
Also, people are finding hardware without XP drivers (elsewhere in this thread). Virtualization can get around that. If Linux runs on it, xVM will.
Vista is bloated for many reasons, but the fact that its bulk and overhead make it a poor choice for virtual machines is surely considered a real positive around Redmond. That is, if they can make enough software *not* work in XP, people will stay in Windows, rather than Windows becoming a little legacy corner of their screen (Right now, I'm watching Olympic coverage in Silverlight in a corner of my Linux desktop).
I recently assembled a PC using an old Asus P4C800-E Deluxe with a 3.2GHz Prescott, Asus/ATI AH3650 (512MB, DirectX 10.1), 4GB OCZ platinum DDR RAM, and a 1TB Maxtor drive. I admit, this is not a state-of-the-art machine, but the video is excellent, and a 3.2GHz HT P4 with a megabyte of L2 cache is nothing to sneeze at.
Well, after a clean install of Vista with the Asus/ATI video drivers and SP1, the system is so low that I cannot use it. It reminds me of when I loaded W2K on an old Thinkpad with only 96MB of RAM (a real trick with no CD on the 233MHz Pentium X560). In fact, I'd say that the laptop was faster (until you loaded something like MS Word).
BTW, I loaded XP on the Asus first, and there were no delays for anything. Runs every app with no problem. With Vista, however, it is too slow to load an app to test.
You might think that the Vista machine had a virus or some other malware, but I have not yet put it onto a network. So, unless the Microsoft or Asus discs had a bug, then this machine was clean.
I am not disappointed by this, I am amazed. How can Microsoft live with these kind of results?
.
Walmart.com currently stocks 16 Vista laptops with 4 GB RAM. starting at $1000. You can get 64 Bit Vista Premium at this price point.
The 64 bit Vista Premium desktop at Walmart.com with 4 GB RAM also starts at $1000:
Quad Core CPU, 750 GB HDD, NVIDIA 9500 GS Graphics, HDTV Tuner and Combo Blu-Ray Player and DVD Burner.
HP Pavilion s3530f Slimline Desktop
Absolute rock bottom for the MS Vista Basic desktop at Walmart.com is the $329 Compaq Presario SR5505F w/ AMD Athlon X2 4200 Dual-Core Processor
--- and for the laptop the 1 GB Vista Basic Acer 15.4" Aspire 5315-2326 Laptop PC w/ Intel Celeron M Processor at $448.
The dual core laptop with 3 GB RAM starts at $800. Toshiba 15.4" Satellite L305-S5883 Laptop PC
It goes without saying that OEM Linux at Walmart.com doesn't come within ten light years of the specs of the MS Vista system at - any - price point.
then 66% of Vista PCs would be downgraded.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Fuck them.
A once great American company run into the ground by MBAs.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
two thirds of new PCs upgraded to GNU/Linux.
A Vista laptop I've seen boots in 30-50 seconds (it's low spec, Intel Pentium dual core, 1GB RAM, and runs Vista Home Basic). That's respectable (strange fact: Boot times have been 30-60 seconds for a modern workstation any time in the past 20 years, and even OS X doesn't boot in less than that, afaicr).
But when you start to use it you begin to observe things like IE taking more than 20 seconds to start... By comparison, Safari starts in about 3 seconds on my Powerbook G4 (1.7GHz single processor), that's a 2-year old machine running OS X 10.4.
Pretty soon you'll be ready to ditch Windows entirely and join the rest of us in the 21st century :)
(Trolling anonymously as I have modded in this thread :)
Pull the drive, make an image of it, then repeatedly rap it sharply (and flat) on the desk until it makes clicky-crunchy noises and stops working. Around 5000 Gs several times should do the trick.
Then reinstall it in the laptop.
Return laptop for service of failed HDD and other issue.
DOS 3.3 worked well, 4.0/4.01 flopped and 5.0 rocked. Kinda like the difference between 98 and XP with the dud WinME in the middle.
Just like the situation with Vista and XP, people buying new computers that came with 4.0 would ask to have 3.3 installed since it didn't have the data loss problems of 4.0.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Joe Sixpack voluntarily participated in a 'global, community-based effort to gather real-world metrics data from Windows-based systems and to analyze that data in order to extract common threads of knowledge and information'???
This guy's sample sounds a little biased...
The high-output turbos (SPGs) had high-test as the recommended gas, but between the turbo, knock sensor, and timing control they'd run fine on regular gas too. Just not quite as fast.
That's essentially what I yelled down the 'phone in Berlin to Fujitsu-Siemens tech support after a week with a brand new Vista laptop.
I'd bought it in Dublin on sale and had asked the salesman if there would be any problems installing Windows XP for the software I use. He said no and so I left, feeling happy. But not so happy two days later in a Kreuzberg café when I discovered that F-S were not making XP drivers - thanks to Microsoft's licencing. An email from them said something along the lines of XP drivers never being available anymore. So my new laptop had no Wi-fi, sound or proper graphics drivers. Thanks to Microsoft.
I had smartly enough, created a partition to install WinXP on instead of simply formatting and wiping Windows Vista, so I hadn't actually activated Vista and was able to return the laptop to the shop in Dublin a month later. I still had to spend another 150 Euro to get a laptop that had XP in it, though.
And now? I mostly use SUSE Linux.
Um... the whole Mojave thing prove exactly the opposite of what you are saying. Hello!
Mojave clearly shows the extent to which years of MS-hating FUD has spread a huge lie. If Microsoft had put out OSX, the FUD squad would rip it to shreds (especially that disastrous train wreck Leoptard). Likewise, if Apple released Vista, the FUDsters would think it was the greatest thing since individually wrapped slices of cheese.
Reality, honesty, and integrity have very little to do in the world of MS hatred. It's MS hatred at all costs, all the time, nonstop, truth be damned.
he'll shun XP and put something decent on it. I hear Ubuntu is easy to install and great to use.
But seriously, one of the negatives of this Vista failure debacle is that people have come to think of XP as some kind of acceptable excuse for an operating system.
Let's be real: XP is still shit, except in the Microsoft ghetto where expectations are low, low, low and dropping...
(Posted AC because I really don't need the great karma! Thanks to Slashdot's wonderful moderators! <3 <3 )
Say what you want, but as a consultant, I just recently purchased an LG laptop "R 700 model" and I ensured that Windows XP was available for it at the moment of purchase, and LG, to their credit, gave me both a legal license for Vista Business and XP SP2 Pro.
I can't afford to use Vista, most of my clients I deal with require I use VPN access to access their network and they say Vista isn't compatible with their requirements and will simply not cooperate.
Now, truth is, I don't know if it's because they lack the knowledge or Vista is truly not compatible, but the end result is the same. I can't use Vista for business. I'm not surprised that more than 1/3 of PCs/Laptops are downgraded, and the truth is, I would be that number would grow if more people knew they even had the choice at purchase! they would do so in a heartbeat. Vista is a pure hog for resources anyways, a friend of mine bought a sony laptop with Vista and we couldn't get most of his apps running and it was so slow. We ended up having him purchase XP Pro and I downloaded every XP driver from sony for his laptop. And now, he's running it smoothly and fast.
So many stories like this. Vista is just not viable for anyone who has to use their computers for serious requirements. Viva la XP :P
HP DV9500:
.Net platform.
2.4 GHz core 2 duo T7700
4GB Ram
NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GS
Vista Ultimate x64
Paid for by companies that want websites done on the
How else could they sell us 2 different OSes for one machine?
Confucius say "Liking Windows Vista just like masturbation. Nobody admit to it, but eventually everybody do it."
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Just chipping in with what I'm having my company do (I'm the Director of IT). We have no Vista machines on our network, we don't support them at home (even for executives), and we are downgrading all new purchases through Dell to XP Pro. We have evaluated Vista extensively, will not be implementing it at all; instead, we'll continue to downgrade.
We have begun implementing some Macs at the company, including one running VMWare Fusion and a copy of Win XP inside to handle a specific catalog application. While not perfect either, the Macs play nicer than Vista, and running XP in a VM is a real pleasure on a loaded Mac Pro.
Our biggest issues with Vista are the same ones than many people have mentioned over and over in here. Since MS is not even owning up to the problems, we're taking matters in our own hands.
If Windows 7 is little more than a modularized Vista, the only thing that may save it is hardware speed and the ability to carve out the exact "Windows" overhead we need to function.
If
Vista is an OS that should never have left the barn
what do we expect from Windows 7, which is said to be based on Vista?
If it wasn't (based on Vista), we might see a recurrence of the ME-W2K transition, which was seriously okay. But what if ME had been followed by ME-SE (Second Edition, for the youngsters in here)? We'd probably have Linux on the desktops by now.
I wonder what makes Redmond think that a child of a stillborn baby is worth to bet on?
You are incorrect about the 32-bit and 64-bit versions. They are not separate SKUs. There is no such thing as an upgrade from Vista Business 32-bit to Vista Business 64-bit. If you own a license of Vista Business than you can install and use either.
And if you don't like Windows rebooting after automatic updates then change the configuration to never reboot automatically.
Also, there were four editions of XP. Home, Professional, Media Center and Tablet. The various SKUs of Vista are the result of a matrix of the different features.
Unfortunately, Microsoft still has a very strong factor in its favour: momentum. People will just blindly accept what comes on their computer because they don't know about, or don't know enough about, or are scared of, switching.
My wife had been happily using her light-as-a-feather Vaio --the one that's so small that she could stuff it into her purse when she travelled. Unfortunately, her M$ Outlook started to get buggy, with problems like failing to retrieve address book contacts that she knew were present, or being unable to delete email (she had to create a new folder called "Email I want to delete but can't so I guess I'll just stick it in this folder").
Of course, what any of us would have done would be to switch to a different addressbook/email software that does not have vendor lock-in, preferably open source, and go on from there. But what did she do?
Well, she figured that it was a problem with M$ Outlook 2003+1/2, or whatever version she was using. So she went and bought Office 2007. It wasn't even the usual Office 2007 with just Word + Excel + Powerpoint + whatever the database program is called, M$ Excess or Excel something. It was the More Expensive Professional Version that included Outlook 2007, because only Professionals would want to send email or keep track of phone numbers. US$300. But it gets better! Office 2007 only runs on Vista! But her Vaio only ran XP. So she ended up getting a new laptop running Vista. (To be sure, she got a great deal on it.) The laptop is twice the size of the Vaio.
So now she has two computers, one to do some of her stuff, and the other to run Vista (and its pre-installed crapware) so she can actually access her address book and email. She is fed up with the Vista laptop and its UAC's, and how it doesn't have drivers for anything. It can't even connect to the wireless router at home because mine doesn't broadcast the SSID, and apparently if Vista's wireless system doesn't have the SSID handed to it on a silver platter, it will automatically connect to the next Crummy Unsecured Wi-Fi that walks by. So she has to connect to our router through ethernet. Kinda defeats the purpose of having a laptop. When she travels, she has to figure out whether to bring her Vaio or the bigger Vista laptop. Or both. And I've alreadyd told her long ago that I stopped using Windows (at home) in 2004, and am not willing or able to provide tech support for any Microsoft product. Except maybe Win2k, which is the last M$ OS that I used.
So she has any number of reasons not to use M$ Vista. But what does she do? She uses Vista. Because she doesn't want to have to learn a new system all over again.
I dream that, someday, I'll be able to pull out all her contacts and convert it to Kontact format, or Evolution (is that the GNOME equivalent?) --isn't that just the standard VCF format? --and then she can run Joe's Crummy Freeware Addressbook for Windows and free herself from that $300 piece of crap that is M$ Outlook Version For Professionals Who Actually Want To Send EMail. Or maybe Kontact will run on Windows KDE4 and be able to read Outlook files. In the meantime, it's just unnecessary frustration for her, and indirectly for me.
Anyway, back to the topic. Given that Joe Sixpack really doesn't want to spend more than 60 seconds on tinkering with the computer as opposed to just getting things done with the computer, it's telling that 35% of this population at Devil Mountain Software will demand that they've had it with Microsoft's New Revolutionary OS. I used to think that Microsoft held back the computer industry, but now I see that it's actually taking them in reverse. Good job, Microsoft --keep it up any more, and soon we'll be in the days of MS-DOS where nothing is compatible, lay people can't us computers properly, machines run slowly, ... oh, wait ...
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
If it hasn't been said, there are 2 services that I know can slow a computer running Vista, no matter the power of the machine. The indexer is constantly running in the background as well as "Volume Shadow Copy." I only learned about these after researching why my hard drives were constantly active. In my opinion, MS spent too much time re-creating software that used to be provided by third parties (defender, firewall, DVD maker, movie maker...blah de blah) rather than concentrating on their OS.
Doesn't matter if they were right or not. Vista was developed for future hardware. Vista will be just as fast as XP in a couple years then everyone will be using it. Then a new version of windows will come out and we'll all repeat this conversion saying "Vista is so much faster then X wtf were they thinking".
Don't get me wrong I'm not a MS fanboy. I really don't like any version of windows. That's just what they did.
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me". - stolen from Dan C alt.os.linux.slackware
It is the relative levels of useful functionality before and after a change that determines whether that change was actually an upgrade or downgrade. Contrary to Microsoft's devisive mis-usage of the word 'upgrade' the actual classification of whether something is an upgrade or downgrade does not in fact have any dependency on the difference in age of the pre- and post-change environment.
Consequently, as Vista is widely accepted to be functionally more limited and less practical than XP in most areas that matter, (e.g. vista's extra interference in the user's workflow causing a reduction in efficiency, its massive extra usage of more memory and cpu to perform essentially similar role to XP except with less backward software compatability and significantly less ability to play users own media, etc etc ), moving from XP to Vista is clearly both definitavely and technically a downgrade, and so should be referred to as such.
How come is it that I can only order alternative media if it's retail package and not an OEM license then? (I ordered Vista Business though). But OEM licenses for some reason cannot get alternative media...
The worst part of the whole think is that they've actually got a decent OS in there somewhere. I've been running Server 2008 and it's much faster than Vista, even with Aero enabled. Benchmarks right around where XP did, but does much more. They should drop Vista and start pushing Server out.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
Actually, yes I have. I'm not the sort of internet troll that likes to make random off-the-cuff statements about stuff they haven't used.
I use Vista 64bit almost exclusively at home, on an Athlon X2 4800+, 3GB RAM and a 256MB GeForce 7600GS videocard. (all that adds up to a rating of 4.9)
I will admit that it ran like a dog when I only had 1GB on RAM in there, but RAM's cheap these days. Actual potato chips are more expensive than RAM these days. I remember paying $200 for 32MB of EDO RAM back in the day, and now $200 will buy me 256 times that, but I digress... my point is that there's almost no excuse for not upgrading your machine to adequately run the thing.
The old argument of "I shouldn't need to upgrade to run my old programs" doesn't really hold sway - if you just want to run your old programs, why did you get a new computer at all?
In response to the 'slow' criticism, well... I'm just not seeing it, sorry. Sure, it takes a while to start up & shut down, and SP1 took the better part of a lifetime to install, but beyond that, everything is as zippy as I'd expect it to be. I guess I just must have a magic system, huh?
God, this feels horrible, but I have to defend Microsoft/Windows here a bit
Windows 98 was slower than Windows 95, running on the same hardware
Windows XP was slower than Windows 98, running on the same hardware
Windows Vista is slower than Windows XP, running on the same hardware.
What kind of defense is that? Mac OS X gets faster with every release, running on the same hardware.
I do not want a larger OS - I want an OS optimized for gaming.
It seems to me that you are not Microsoft's target audience. What Microsoft wants is for you to get an X-Box and work and play media on your Vista installation
Remember back when Java Swing applications felt slow and un-optimized? That's how the entire .Net written apps feel like for me (are they HTML and Javascript or what?). Take Visual Studio for example. Try running VS 2005 on a machine with 1 core and 1 GB memory, you'll see what I mean. The scrolling menues are lagging back and forth.
I work with SQL2005 for a living and I'm thankful I at least got 2 cores and 3 GB memory (using XP) which allows these applications to run smoothly.
Fight for your digital freedom, join the EFF *now*: http://www.eff.org/support/
And if we slice it up on a sandwich with yogurt and garlic, we've got GUITAR GYRO!!! Yum!!
(ducks out the back exit)
No no no, my friend: you must get the new 640GT: more aerodynamic.
Besides, nobody will ever need more than a 640GT.
In general, it is safe and legal to kill your children. -- POSIX Programmer's Guide
The Sherman Anti-Trust Act says that in the USA, while engaging in interstate commerce, that it is illegal to use a monopoly in one area to force a monopoly in another area.
For example, it is illegal to use a monopoly on rail roads to force a monopoly in oil.
Given that Microsoft has a monopoly in commercial desktop operating systems that can be installed on generic (non-Apple) hardware, what monopoly are they creating by forcing people to move from PX to Vista? Is there utility software that ran on XP that Microsoft includes with Vista? If so, they are in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
Andy
No.
Their products are shit.
The only name I trust today is Asus. Even Antec has fallen into the good but check the model number on Tom's category.
HP's entire business model amounts to selling ink for gold prices and spending the money as well as all they can beg (issue stock) or borrow (issue bonds) buying competitors.
Agilent on the other hand seams to continue making good quality instruments. Wish I could afford a lab full just to play with. (Along with a couple of Haas machines and a mini-gun or two to complete the monster I'm building.)
Agilent is HP as far as I'm concerned.
#define HP Agilent
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I've bought Office 2007 without any clear information how to downgrade to Office 2003; although 3/4th of the people I work with does NOT like the new Office 2007 because:
- Standard Office 2003 plugins (Like the Creative Common & BE-ID signing plugin) do not work in Office 2007 ...
- The menu's are simplified to a system which is a nightmare for people not wanting to click-to-survive
- It crashes multiple times, shortcuts get automagically disabled,
- It seems to be automagically disabling/adding stuff in my Office 97 files without asking for this!
I've got the idea the newest Office had to be out of the door before the final tests were done; but might be wrong about the "quality process" at Microsoft regarding software, usability and security.
I wonder very hard how many people would downgrade from Office 2007 to Office 2003 only already for these few small annoyances.
I wish it was possible with a few mouseclicks away; I'd trade my kingdom for a v2003 license!
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
The one ... one ... advantage Vista Business has over WinXP on a laptop is that offline files finally just work.
For the first time sync'ing with a file server and working offline is no longer a hassle.
Other than that, fuck Vista.
Oh, and Vista Home Prem, with Media Center and the Netflix plugin (vmcNetflix) is pretty good. I say that without cable/sat and living off Netflix & BT. Wish MC would let me use PowerDVD as the DVD player vs Media Player. That is a pain.
The Windows era is over.
Vista is abysmal. It's slow, it's buggy, it's bloated, it's over-priced. It's the worst OS out of Redmond since ME, which I've been trying hard to forget.
Ubuntu is so many light years ahead of Vista, it's hard to fathom.
That being said, for most enterprise uses, XP is still the number one choice:
Clean simple layout, start menu quick launch taskbar systray clock.
NOT BROWN.
Ctrl Alt Del opens task manager.
If Ubuntu solved that and the GIMP and Open Office were just SLIGHTLY better at integrating with the PS and MS Office world, I would not recommend any version of Windows for any user, ever.
If you feel the same, here are the brainstorms about fixing Ubuntu:
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/12326/
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/11784/
(And yes, I'm shamelessly promoting my own ideas, even though they are dupes... :P)
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Not that simple, requires a 27mb download :)
but my european version of tx2510us (tx2590eo) cannot support most of the functions in XP (came pre installed with vista). HP releases drivers and utilities for vista only, with ATIs (amd's?) support for HD 3200 series minimal (or buggy) under XP and linux. tablet pc function is another matter! SO, when the numbers says one third, it could be that in reality, much more wish to migrate but get stuck due to lack of support for their hardware under alternate OSes (XP, Linux, ...). Seems like most OEMs know how to minimise cost, by restricting option and support streams.
People are acting as if Microsoft screwed up by releasing a resource hungry OS. In fact, it was all planned.
It's in Microsoft's interest for their OS's to need a high-powered machine, so that the cost is high, so that the cost of the OS is minor in comparison. I'm not saying the word went out "make this a resource hungry hog", I'm saying that whenever there was a decision to be made and one of the options was resource hungry, people knew that resource use wasn't an issue, so they went for the expensive option.
Could very easily handle 3D. Linux did through very much the same process as games did it.
And you know what? XP had games and 3D apps that used compsiting.
All that Compiz et al did was make a way for the windowing system to call a function "make it wobbly" through the window manager.
The compositing engine was a very small (compared to the rest of the system) part.
Why does this headline have a question mark? Does it have a question mark because it's not actually true? Why do you print such things if they're not true?
I don't know the model but i'm in a band with a guy who has an hp laptop that came pre installed with Vista, let's just say, the chipset does or doesn't have xp driver (i doubt it does) how does one do this, go from Vista back to XP, simply due to the fact that most programs we want to use and the soundcard we have, a nice Tascam card, I just want it to work simply, like me, can anyone provide a useful link to accommodate this request. thanks, Vista, i heard its not in beta yet, actually. 7?
First, the headline:
.01%.
"More than one in every three new PCs is downgraded from Windows Vista to Windows XP
Then the truth:
"The 35% is only an estimate,"
Could we come up with a more meaningless non-statistic? I mean, I get it that there's the perception that Vista is awful and some people prefer XP, but do we really need to make up "statistics" just so we can publish news stories about it? Here's an interesting thought..."nearly two thirds of computer users prefer Vista for their new PCs." Suddenly the story doesn't sound negative at all.
I think that it's also misleading to say that 35% of the PCs are "downgraded" to XP from Vista, which strongly implies that people buy machines with Vista and then install XP on them. The "at the factory" line points out that it's not people downgrading from Vista to XP, it's people choosing to buy PCs with XP pre-installed instead of the same PC with Vista. What I'd really like to know is why they didn't post the number of people who buy PCs with Vista pre-installed and then remove it and replace it with XP after trying Vista. That number is actually less than
BTW, that ".01%" is "only an estimate". See how that works?
Unfortunately i've purchased an ASUS X53Sr. What a mistake! It has no Windowx XP drivers availabe, and you'll be ridiculized when asking ASUS for XP drivers. Moreover it is incompatible with Linux when you upgrade to 4GB ram (shared video memory mess...). I'm Struck with Vista, and I count as one of the 65% "happy" with it. Do not buy Asus X53Sr!!!!
Properly coded games, of course, actually use the system clock to adjust the timing of the main thread and should work on any system.
That's sloppily fixed games.
Properly coded games, actually synchronize to the display refresh rate. Which not only gives a fixed speed, but also give a smooth animation (the 60Hz display refresh has a finer grain than the 18.2Hz system clock, and synching to display avoid tearing and other artefacts).
Also, synchronizing the refresh rate was a requirement for very old hardware to avoid displaying garbage (single channel memory, couldn't be accessed by the DAC and the system at the same time). That's why some archaeologically-old games still run well on more recent PCs.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I'm using an HP Pavilion A6400f with an Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2200 CPU, on-board G31 graphics, 3 GB of RAM and 500 GB Serial ATA-300 hard disk with no speed problems whatsoever under Windows Vista Home Premium edition (SP1).
Methinks the big problems are 1) you really do want a dual-core CPU to make it work and 2) 2 GB should be bare minimum for Windows Vista Home Premium Edition.
So far, Microsoft has the advantage of enough market share that hardware vendors cannot afford to neglect Windows drivers. While Linux support often sucks or does not exist. For Joe Sixpack, that is a problem. But most /. readers should be able to pick their hardware from the well supported subset.
Now if we go into comparisons of OS quality, a "fair" comparison could be based on hardware that has
1) hardware documentation available and
2) has been around for a while so the Open Source developers had time to implement drivers.
For 1), there is now AMD/ATI. 2) is a matter of time. I'm looking forward to Windows vs. Linux Open GL benchmarks once the AMD/ATI drivers are mature :-)
C - the footgun of programming languages
You're aware that Windows can be installed directly on any Intel Macintosh model (since 2006)?
Of course only a lunatic would do that. In any case XP runs nicely inside VirtualBox on OS X, if you must have Windows.
One third may be downgraded to XP from Vista, but the other two thirds are shipped with XP installed.
...so long as you buy the Vista license?
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
I am in the market for a new laptop to replace my aging old Compaq EVO's and one of the criteria will be purchase of XP licenses to use with them. I may consider leaving one of them at Vista just for testing but since I have to purchase 3 laptops, it's likely that all three of them will go XP. I would put Linux on them as dual boot but I am still not happy with the fact that Windows does not play well with the GNU stuff still, and in my multimedia and recording work, there are still latency issues with Linux that are unacceptable.
So; Something in a dual core (No Celerons please!) of at least 1.8ghz but 2ghz preferred. A nice display chipset that won't fail after 90 days (and that manufacturer knows who they are), and around 250gig with a DVD burner and 15" screen should suffice!
Put XP on there, and that thing oughta screem!!
All content in this message is copyright (c) 2008. All rights reserved. RIAA is prohibited here.
While I just purchased a PC from inventory with Vista and downgraded to XP, newer PC's are difficult to do this with.
We have some HP 5750's. They have Vista with XP downgrade rights. But neither HP nor Microsoft are willing to give us the keycode to activate XP. They point the finger at each other.
My Dell guy has told me they have having the same problem with this.
So I guess Microsoft will get those Vista numbers up one way or another.
Office 2007 only runs on Vista!
really? MS says otherwise http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/products/HA101668651033.aspx
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I would guess that MS consider supplying media to be the OEMs job for OEM licenses just like they consider support to be the OEMs job.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Seriously, where do people come up with this crap.
- New OS's always eat up more resources than their predecessors. You want more eye candy? Resources. You want more DirectX stuff? Resources. The list goes on forever.
- Vista is not slower. Please give a single shred of evidence for this. In most areas, it's quite a bit faster. Note that, while it should be obviously, it must be pointed out that you need the hardware to support it.
- Vista is more stable. Again, provide some evidence if you'd like to state otherwise. Evidence != horror stories you've heard down the grape vine.
- The UAC prompts are a pain in the ass, true. Apple has managed to scare the entire market with it. It's approximately 5 clicks away from turning it off, however.
Six months ago I bought a Dell Inspiron 1501 with a dual-core Turion processor and 2GB of RAM. It came preinstalled with Vista Home Ultimate. I've lived with it for six months now. I kept wanting to like it, reminding myself how everybody bitched about XP compared with Win2k -- the "Fisher Price" graphics, the big Start menu that changed all the time, etc. I figured "Hey, Vista will be the same way. It'll take some getting used to, and then I'll be happy with it."
Six months later, I still hate it. I'm much, much more disappointed than I was in my first two weeks. My biggest complaint is performance; Vista is DOG-slow. 2GB of RAM should be plenty for common tasks; it isn't. The lag is just infuriating, and it affects everything I do. The UAC warnings were such an annoyance that I turned them off. The hard drive, on boot and at other seemingly random times, would grind and grind and grind for more than ten minutes, and sometimes more than twenty, absolutely killing performance (trying to launch apps with the laptop in that state was futile) while not accomplishing anything of apparent value for all the grinding. And this was after examining msconfig and the Startup registry entries trying to figure out what in the world was using all those resources.
My second-biggest complaint are the UI changes that hurt, not help productivity. To pick just one trivial and annoying example, in the new Explorer the little triangle things fade out when you're in the right-hand pane. So you can't tell at a glance if the folders have subfolders until you move your mouse closer to them. Why? Like someone above mentioned, I wound up trying -- for the first time in more than fifteen years as a Windows user -- a bunch of different third-party file browsers just to get a consistent experience across my XP and Vista boxes (I settled on FreeCommander).
I finally nuked the entire hard drive and reinstalled XP (I have regular, automated backups so restoring data wasn't an issue). And WOW what a speed increase. This is a great little laptop now, very usable and capable. The lag is gone. As I tried to with Vista, I've kept most installed apps (qttask, jusched, etc.) out of the startup cycle and the boot time is next to nothing.
Vista brought nothing to the table that I cared about, and repeatedly kicked me where it hurts most: performance and productivity. I installed my OEM copy of Vista into a virtual machine so I have it for testing, and I'm never going back unless forced to. I'll almost certainly wait for Windows 7 before trying again.
...when MS's strong-armed OEM licensing tactics made unified broad-based personal computing a reality. They opened up the PC to the tall and wide part of the bell curve - office users who would not visit a site like Slashdot. It was Jobs' vision, but he tried to hold on too hard to the hardware side. As a Windows user, my next machine will be a Mac running OSX, XP, and Fedora with VMware overseeing it all. Many PC users I know are thinking the same thing. Oh how the mighty have fallen.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
All that is needed now is a nice emulator that will allow people to play their video games on linux machines and no one will miss Microsoft operating systems. When their market share goes totally in the toilet maybe they will provide better products.
this news is pure F U D
I have to say that I'm getting so sick of hearing about Vista being bad. Story after story. Post after post. When does it end? You had problems. They were real not perceived. You missed Dragon Con AND a Magik match because of it. You were forced to uninstall Vista and then installed XP or Linux or Leopard or BSD or OS2 or whatever. Then you were happy. Vista sucks. We get it. Now could you please get over it!
That's so not true. I tried Linux a few times on my laptop. Each newer version support less and less of my hardware.
what are you bringing here ? other than a bad mouth and shitty insults ?
before going out to defend any company or being a fanboi of anything, GET DECENT MANNERS FIRST.
Read radical news here
That's so not true. I tried Linux a few times on my laptop. Each newer version support less and less of my hardware.
I call bullshit.
It's not enough to say "I tried Linux". The kernel itself is a big project, and different distros implement it in different ways. Most modern distributions ship kernels built to support pretty nearly all hardware. Though I suppose it is possible that you *could* have a particularly crappy or obscure chipset that is not supported, there is usually a way to make it work.
Yeah, well I'm sure MS also says that you can delete unwanted email in MS Outlook versions older than 2007, but the fact that they say so hasn't helped us much.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
I bought a new HP Media Center PC a month or so ago and swapped out Vista for XP because I need the PC for FPS gaming. Vista just would not work the way I needed it to. I would not consider the swap to be a downgrade, but rather an UPGRADE...