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Vista To XP Upgrade Triples In Price, Now $150

ozmanjusri writes "Dell has tripled the charge to upgrade Vista PCs to XP. Under current licensing 'downgrade' agreements, system builders can install XP Pro instead of Vista Business or Vista Ultimate; however, Dell has opted for a surcharge of $150 over the price of Vista for the older but more popular XP Professional operating system. Rob Enderle says the downgrade fees could potentially be disastrous for Microsoft: 'The fix for this should be to focus like lasers on demand generation for Vista but instead Microsoft is focusing aggressively on financial penalties," says Enderle. 'Forcing customers to go someplace they don't want to go by raising prices is a Christmas present for Apple and those that are positioning Linux on the desktop.'"

10 of 907 comments (clear)

  1. Re:But... by Anthony_Cargile · · Score: 0, Troll

    It certainly made more sense than your post above. Silly me for thinking lower UIDs meant more of an understanding!

  2. Re:I don't get it by Anthony_Cargile · · Score: 0, Troll

    Honestly, my biggest problem with Vista is that it appears MS is going to strand us Vista users and come out with Windows 7 next year with no affordable upgrade path.

    This is why the "Mojave" commercials sicken me. Yes, Vista had slightly more criticism than its worth at times, but why is MS upping the marketing on an OS soon to be replaced? "buy that one! buy that one! NO WAIT buy this one now! No - this one!"

    Poor sheeple are going to panic.

  3. Re:I don't get it by jo42 · · Score: 0, Troll

    For the last time, going from Vista to XP is an "Upgrade". "Downgrade" is going from XP to Vista.

    Why anyone would call software that runs slower on existing or older hardware, is compatible with fewer applications and has a clunkier user interface an "upgrade" is beyond me...

  4. Re:Hello... I'm a PC by salimma · · Score: 0, Troll

    With Leopard, that's arguable, at least until 10.5.4. It's the first OS X release that does not provide for a painless upgrade experience; if you try to upgrade from Tiger, you will end up with repeated chkdsk-induced boot failures until you reformat the hard drive clean.

    HFS+ needs to die. Now.

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  5. Re:I believe I've seen this every year since 1994 by David+Gerard · · Score: 0, Troll

    Microtroll, hard working and microshilling for Bill and Steve. You run out of mod points this time around?

    --
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  6. Re:I don't get it by shaitand · · Score: 0, Troll

    No it won't, it will swap. In fact, that one gig isn't even counting the 8gigs of useless swap vista is already using at that point.

  7. Re:I don't get it by Uberbah · · Score: 0, Troll

    Uh, yeah, it is. Period. Vista is a shit sandwich. Deal.

  8. Re:Well. Merry Christmas. by TechForensics · · Score: 0, Troll

    Your sig contains a link which logs out anyone who clicks it. Slashdot will let you be a jackass, but you don't have to oblige, do you?

    Your joke is puerile stuff.

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  9. Re:I don't get it by daver00 · · Score: 0, Troll

    I define that as an obsolete machine. For $800 I can get you a tower with 2 gigs of ram, at least 500 gigs of hard drive, a decent dual core cpu and a moderate video card. Add $200 for a monitor and $100 for peripherals. thats an $1100 machine.

    I call that low end. Seriously guys, you are geeks, get with the friggin program!

  10. Re:It will work... by lamapper · · Score: 0, Troll

    The main thing is that Dell now sell most of their hardware at a spec that will run Vista acceptably, as long as you make sure you spec 1 or 2GB ram, and the memory upgrade is only slightly more than the XP cross-grade.

    And what is acceptable for Vista will be blazingly fast with GNU/Linux...pretty much any distro.

    I have been running Linux with either 256MB or 512MB of RAM without issues. (Purchased an Asus Eee PC in Dec 2007 and it ran fine right out of the box...wait until I replace Xandros with Ubuntu, it will be even better). I also have a Pentium D (64 bit dual processor) with 1 GB of RAM...Linux screams and I love it! Can't wait to get a decent Graphics card installed and run the Beryl Desktop...Vista is not only slow, but just plain boring in comparison.

    Everyone I know that has 2 GB or less of RAM and tries to run Vista, gives up and goes back to XP. I believe most people accept that you need at least 3 GB or 4 GB of RAM for Vista to run well.

    Personally if I put down the money (granted it is cheaper today than in years past) for more memory, I want that memory to be available to my applications, not sucked up by the operating system.

    What I still want it to be able to spec a full Linux desktop with all the hardware supported fully. Why is this still so hard for them when the community has 99% of all the issues sorted already?

    You are not kidding about most of the issues being resolved. And you are CORRECT that many are unaware that past problems have been resolved. Take plug & play, it has only been a few years back when there were still problems with plug and play when using Linux, NOT ANYMORE.

    Try to find an external hard drive in a store that advertises on its box that it is compatible with Linux. I looked last year and did not see one. They all listed Vista and XP, but not Linux and in many cases not MacIntosh either. I knew it would work so I went on and purchased Seagate's Free Agent 500GB USB drive. No problems at all, it plugged and played like a champ. Now you can get 1 TB for what I paid for the 500GB a year ago. WOW! But still no notice of compatibility with Linux.

    While I have heard that Microsoft influences which operating systems many computer resellers installs on their computers, I do not know if they influence other companies like Seagate and Intel, but it would not surprise me.

    When I asked the sales reps at Frys whether or not the USB drive would work with Linux, they did not know. I admit that I paused at first and I have a bit of knowledge. Imagine a complete newbie, makes them think that a Linux OS will not work when it most certainly will.

    Just a week or two ago I read here on ./ how Dell's website offered Linux but that option was definitely NOT as visible as Microsoft Vista or XP. No surprise there either.

    Problem is people just are NOT aware of the facts. For well over a year the main complaints that I use to hear from friend about Linux vs Microsoft have been overcome and resolved. It's just that people are unaware of it. And we are failing them by not advertising it!

    Just look at the Wikipedia, go to any topic that you have good to expert knowledge of and read through the information. See if you see the GNU/Linux solution or if the listing is slanted more towards Microsoft's solutions. Many times I will see paragraphs about various Microsoft solutions and one short sentence about the equivalent (or better) Linux solution.

    Check the links at the bottom of the article, what do you see? Are the equivalent Linux and MacIntosh links there or not? Is the Wiki for your project listed there? How about the home site for the open source project? What about the great tutorial that helped you figure out how to use that feature...is it listed? If not, add them.

    If you are involved in any open source solution please go to the Wikipedia and make sure your solution is equally r

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