MS Reportedly Adds 6 Months of Vista Downgrade

LiteralKa sends in a poorly sourced Reg story claiming that Microsoft has granted OEMs six more months to sell PCs using Windows Vista with the support to downgrade to Windows XP. OEMs can now offer such arrangements until July 31, 2009 — the previous deadline was January 31, 2009. The article claims as source "a Reg reader" without further details. Neither Microsoft nor any OEM has confirmed the rumor, and only a few scattered bloggers have picked it up.

Comments

Front Page?

[donaggie03]

Why is a poorly sourced, unconfirmed story from the Reg posted on the front page? VERY slow news day?

The Reg

[morgan_greywolf]

I can't decide whether The Reg is The National Enquirer or the Weekly World News of tech news sites on the Web.

Can someone help me with this? ;)

Well well

[Daimanta]

"Neither Microsoft nor any OEM has confirmed the rumor, and only a few scattered bloggers have picked it up."

Including Slashdot.

Thank God

[sdemjanenko]

I still do not see why they are cutting off XP. If their Vista is so good than it would speak for itself and people would switch to it. Perhaps once computers have enough power to waste a few extra cycles on vista's ineffiencies it will catch on. i guess i have a problem with microsoft trying to bully people into using their newest software. If they used that time constructively I am sure they could come up with much improved products.

Re:Thank God

[HBI]

They're cutting off XP because Vista sucks. That is obvious. This is an attempt to force conversions to Vista by putting an air of inevitability on it. However, the truth is that if people don't use Vista, they can't can XP. No company can afford to kill their source of revenue.

If the OEMs can't sell with XP then companies will start pirating it with VLK versions anyway so... I don't see where Microsoft has any leverage here.

Re:Thank God

[RAMMS EIN]

Well, I can only speculate as to what Microsoft's reasons for cutting off XP are, but I would imagine they include a desire to eventually stop supporting it - preferably when not too many people are using it anymore. If they continue to sell XP, XP will supposedly continue to gain new users and keep existing users, which means Microsoft will have to support it longer.

Re:Thank God

[HBI]

Did you ever use it? I ran it for 9 months. Short answer: it's slow. Very slow. Performance is lousy, and if an operating system's performance is that much slower than a previous version, it sucks. I am not concerned about the DRM issues so much, just performance.

There were some good points: graphically it was nice, and I liked some of the UI enhancements, but balancing this out was the incompatibility with some software that I need, such as TFTP servers. Also, certain games (intended for XP, not talking ancient 9x software here) that work on XP will not work on Vista, period.

I reformatted the system as an XP box with the same software and it's a peppy performer now - Core Duo laptop with 2GB RAM, fyi.

It wasn't a driver issue or a crapware issue, pretty much apples to apples.

Re:Thank God

[clang_jangle]

Blame HP, not microsoft.

B.S. If my HP all-in-one runs fine with OS X and Ubuntu, and ran fine with XP but won't work in Vista, it is Microsoft's fault. You have to remember, one of the main reasons Vista even exists is to sell new hardware . It certainly wasn't necessary to replace XP for any other reason, lots of people like XP just fine and it still does pretty much everything consumers expect a modern OS to do. No, Vista was designed to literally require people to have to buy new stuff, as well as to make the **AA's job a bit easier. Either of which is more than ample reason to reject it.

Re:Desktop Operation System Evolution

[miffo.swe]

"why does the evolution of desktop operating systems like Windows go slower now than a decade ago?"

In short, because Microsoft succeeded in killing platform independant applications.

Re:Vista Home

[tha_mink]

I have Vista Home and I like it.

I can do better than that. I pushed out 37 vista business installs about 4 months ago to all of our workstations here, and I've not had a single problem with it. The bees seems to love it and, for me, it's a heck of a lot easier to manage. I watch all this bashing going on and quite frankly, I don't get it. I understand that YMMV, but it seems like Vista is getting hammered but nobody's really tried it. I've heard a lot of "It won't run on my hardware" and "It won't run our winfax95" but c'mon...It's 2008.

You may now commence with the typical bullshit bashing...

Re:Desktop Operation System Evolution

[Vellmont]

why does the evolution of desktop operating systems like Windows go slower now than a decade ago?

I think this is a decent question. You'll note that other OS's actually DO evolve at a decent rate (Linux OSX, etc). So why does Windows such a dog?

The answer, I think is really all the accumulated weight that Windows has to carry. That's not just "code bloat" as some would have you believe, though that's part of it. It's all the OTHER pieces of software that simply HAVE to work on windows for them to continue to exist. Microsoft has resisted pruning much out since the Win32 architecture first came out, for fear of losing market share to the competition. This has been a mistake, and is costing them now.

Downgrade? What?

[JustNiz]

Just because Y is newer than X doesn't mean Y is an upgrade to X.
Whether something is an upgrade or a downgrade depends on the relative functionality, not the time difference.

Installing XP over Vista is definately an upgrade.

http://www.tothepc.com/archives/windows-xp-features-missing-in-vista/

Re:Linux and Mac Evolution

[Espectr0]

looking at the other side of the coin, the reason microsoft has trouble evolving windows, is that the OS is simply mature. linux with X/kde/gnome is developing features that windows has had for ages, and macosx is only about 8 years old.

i actually like xp, it runs most windows software, fast. try running a 7 year old distro and see if it runs today's software.

Re:Vista Home

[Colonel Korn]

I was going to write a well-written retort full of reason and fact, but I decided that it was a waste of time. Instead: *expletive* *expletive* *expletive*.

Moving on.

The people I've heard not complain about Vista use their computers as document editors and web-browsers. However, I have to remind you: my pocket watch can do this, and it costs less than a single install of Vista. To butcher an old phrase: Vista is about as useful as a tit on a bull, and about twice as ugly.

I declare your post to be silly fiction based on a lack of experience. There's nothing I did I XP that doesn't work in Vista. My Vista machine exists primarily because of gaming. My framerates using the same graphical options as in XP are the same as they were in XP, and that's normal and well documented - Vista stopped being slower for gaming long ago, and long before I was willing to install it. It also gives me access to 4 gigs of ram with zero driver problems, unlike XP64, and the general OS responsiveness is improved over XP. It about half a second to load Firefox for the first time after I boot, compared to a few seconds in XP. The same sort of improvement shows up in most apps, though Photoshop only loads at the same speed as it did on XP. Particularly nice is that Vista, while starting out (after a few days of superfetch) faster than XP, continues to extend its lead as time goes on. It seems to be immune from the general slowdown that affects so many XP installs.

Is that you, Mr. Ballmer?

[mangu]

I've heard a lot of "It won't run on my hardware" and "It won't run our winfax95" but c'mon...It's 2008.

Do you think it makes sense to upgrade the hardware without getting any additional functionality?

Just to show a different point of view, I have recently bought a Linux eeePC-900 and am loving it. It has more or less the same capability as a typical notebook of a few years ago: 900 MHz CPU, 20 GB storage, 1 MB RAM, yet it weighs less than one kilogram. That's what I consider TRUE progress. I have the same functionality I had before, but with a big gain in portability.

If you have to upgrade your hardware just to keep the same functionality, without any significant gain, then why do it? Why not keep the same old hardware and software you had before?

Re:Vista Home

[bigstrat2003]

No one with any sense (and who doesn't work for Microsoft) claims Vista is a "must-have" upgrade, though. It's basically a replacement for XP with a few extra bells and whistles... not worth upgrading if you have XP, but if you're building a new machine, there's no reason to avoid it.

The real reason for this...

[pandrijeczko]

...is simply due to the huge tactical error Microsoft has made over Netbooks & low-powered handhelds.

XP can be slimmed down relatively easily to run quite well on these devices but there is no chance with the size of Vista.

I'm sure that there is still a big demand for XP over Vista but I also understand (with my limited reading of MS product bulletins) that Windows 7 is being designed as a scaleable OS, presumably so it can run on these smaller devices. Therefore it makes commercial sense for MS to keep XP alive for their own reasons of getting onto Netbooks until Windows 7 is ready.

So it is not just because there is a continuing demand for XP from new PC buyers.

Re:Linux and Mac Evolution

[maugle]

linux with X/kde/gnome is developing features that windows has had for ages

Wait, didn't we just have a story about Microsoft releasing something to finally give Windows multiple desktops?

...and it apparently doesn't work very well, but that's getting off-topic.

Re:Vista Home

[node 3]

32bit systems don't have enough addressing space for 4GB of RAM, cuz 2^32 - 1 = 4,294,967,295. This space is also shared with other hardware. It's not because Windows is poorly written. Microsoft can't just turn on a magical switch that lets a 32bit OS see all 4GB of RAM.

Yes, they can. The person you were replying to even spelled it out for you.

Three times.

It's called PAE.