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MS To Offer Free Windows 7 Upgrade To Vista Users
crazyeyes writes "With Windows 7 set for release in Dec. 09, Microsoft is getting ready with their free upgrade program, which allows Vista users to switch to Windows 7 when it arrives. The folks at TechARP have consistently scored accurate scoops on Microsoft software releases. They have now revealed Microsoft's upgrade plans, schedules and even screenshots of the upgrade process."
Underling: Sir, here's the latest report on Vista Ultimate sales... it's pretty dismal.
...
Ballmer: Hmmm...I see. Alright, here's the plan: Revise the current Windows 7 Upgrade Program to allow OEMs to upgrade to Windows 7 from Vista Ultimate - for FREE! And leak this to the tech community right away!!
Underling: Uh...sir, pardon me saying so, but won't that appear as an obvious ploy to sell more of our most overrated - and least worthwhile - product?
Ballmer: Yes...you may be right. Those basement dwellers can be pretty sharp...hmmm...I know! Add that free option for Vista Home Premium and Vista Business! We should make up, in additional sales of those, what "loss" we incur with the free upgrades. We should be able to minimize that by frightening the OEMs with scary "Program Compliance" requirements. We can also limit large business deployments by restricting the number of upgrades per mailing address. Finally, send a memo to the developers: Remove all the previously most-desired-by-the-tech-community features planned for Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows 7 Professional, so that these features ONLY exist in Windows 7 Ultimate...
Underling: Right away, sir!
(Ballmer throws a chair at the back of exiting Underling)
Underling: Ou--I mean, thank you, sir! May I have another?
Ballmer: You'll go far here, son...
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
Fool me 12 times, shame on me
Engineering is the art of compromise.
really am attempt to get over the user backlash from vista. i doubt they could have done anything better.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
and when we get frustrated by windows 7 not living up to the hype, will we get free downgrades back to XP?
-I only code in BASIC.-
Aren't service packs always free?
Similar to previous upgrade programs. The goal is minimizing the number of end users who may postpone purchasing a new computer because of the next version of Windows will be released soon.
Buy an eligible new PC with Windows Vista (Home Premium, Business, or Ultimate) and get a free upgrade to Windows 7 when it's released.
No free upgrade to anyone who currently has Vista, and the program doesn't exist yet so no free upgrade if you buy a new PC tomorrow.
No free upgrade for Windows XP...
Absolutely nothing unexpected here.
I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.
* Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic, Windows Vista Starter Edition, and Windows XP (all editions) are not qualifying products under the program.
Right, because that version is being offered in this program. Oh wait, you're a troll.
As that version is not part of this supposed deal, it doesn't affect anything. Troll elsewhere.
If you buy a PC with Vista pre-installed after July 2009, you'll get a free upgrade to 7. Everyone else will still have to buy the upgrade. This is a common practice for software (I think they did the same thing for XP -> Vista); there's really not much to see here.
1. This isn't for arbitrary XP or Vista users; it is (assuming the rumor holds) a program which they will start at some point, so that if you buy a new computer during that time with Vista Home Premium, Business, or Ultimate, you'll get an upgrade to Win 7 when it comes out. This is to reduce the number of people who hold of on buying a new computer until that time.
2. It isn't for XP users at all. There are eleven occurances of "XP" on the linked page, and all but one is in an ad: "* Microsoft Windows Vista® Home Basic, Windows Vista® Starter Edition, and Windows® XP (all editions) are not qualifying products under the program." (emphasis mine).
It's a bit cliche to complain about the editors reading the articles before posting them, but did the poster even read this one?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Why is this getting so much play on /. recently? That's an edition that was available with XP and Vista, and had the exact same restriction. How soon people forget. And if XP and Vista starter editions are any indication, the Win 7 won't even be available outside of basically Asia and Africa.
...please!
You know, if you RTFA, it does state:
...and:
...and:
So let's recap: no free upgrades for XP users, you have to have bought a qualifying Vista-based system within an as-yet undetermined qualifying period, and even then you'll only be able to get a free upgrade from your systems OEM if they choose to participate in the program.
This looks like the standard upgrade protection that Apple typically offers to those who buy a new system just prior to the ship date of their latest and greatest OS. So in essence, there is nothing to be seen here. Please move along people.
Yaz.
What to do when a product has a bad name?
Simply rename it and call it an upgrade, and make the upgrade free for those that bought it recently.
I will wait for the "free upgrade" on the torrents
When I first read this and the comments made about it I was thinking this was MS trying to make an apology for Vista. It looks instead like they are trying to provide assistance to the OEMs that are having an impossible time selling machines curs... er... PREINSTALLED with Vista because users want to wait for Windows 7 to get a new machine. (I don't blame them...)
So once again MS isn't looking out for the good of their customers, for the public, but for their business partners. *sigh* Just once you'd think they would try something that shown them in a positive light to their users?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Since when can you charge for a service pack?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So then why don't they just called it what it is, either a service pack for Vista or actual Vista, as Vista was just a glitchy beta.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Because it seems that Win7 might actually be a decent OS and there has to be something to harp on. What? You expect people to admit that Microsoft is fixing something they screwed up?
11 was a racehorse
12 was 12
1111 Race
12112
will there be a system for custom build system with oem vers of vista?
There is something to see here. There's a catch. Be cautious, Microsoft wants to make money. They probably will force incompatibilities with the old Office which in turn will force you to purchase a new "Office for Windows 7" at a
"through-the-nose" price.
They used this trick in previous versions of Windows to make money. The snowball effect is that you will need to purchase a new set of applications/games for Windows 7.
Same thing happened around the time Vista was coming out. You could buy Vista and get a free upgraded to XP. :D
Ok the opposite happened to. If you bought XP near the time Vista was coming out, you got vouchers etc for free Vista...
This is just business as usual to stop people from holding off on purchases until the new OS arrives.
archeologists opened a petrified copy of windows 7 and found hair from a vista
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
And if XP and Vista starter editions are any indication, the Win 7 won't even be available outside of basically Asia and Africa.
In Windows XP and Windows Vista, "Home Edition" (XP) or "Home Basic" was for cheap boxes in the developed world, and "Starter Edition" (essentially Home Basic with a 3-app limit) was for less-developed countries. Microsoft has reversed the roles of these SKUs in Windows 7: "Starter Edition" is for netbooks and "Home Basic" is exclusively for LDCs. See press release.
And it's nothing special. Running it on a laptop and desktop. It has bugs (reported), but Ubuntu actually feels better imho. So I'm likely to dump it soon, and since WoW runs with Wine, I'm really close to getting rid of all the hassles with MS. I've gotten alot of co-workers to switch, but convincing "great-aunt Sally" types is another thing.
n/t
I'm only missing Windows 1, 2 and me. And, of course, I did not buy Vista. Can't I at least have a free upgrade to Win 7? Please Billy Boy.
Help end the use of Sigs. Tomorrow
to replace the useless laptop that has Visto Home Basic.
Since their offer does not apply to this laptop, (Wrong Vista version and wrong purchase date) I guess that makes it too little, too late.
Is it just me, or does Msoft seems on a path of self distruction by arrogance. This seems strange because after IBM ceeded control of the computer market to them for the same reason, they said that they would be especially careful not to fall into the same trap. Perhaps there is something about a monopoly that makes impossible to learn from other's mistakes. Seems like at the least, the stock owners should be up in arms.
Me too. Oh and I need the Crack too, please.
Help end the use of Sigs. Tomorrow
Whatever it takes! Do what you have to! I don't care if you have to give away the next 3 incarnations of our operating system for free -- WE WILL NOT LET LINUX GET A FOOTHOLD!!!
to ubuntu to all windows users, past, present, and future. Download any time you get fed up with viruses, trojans, malware, spyware, BSODs, etc.
This seems a good way to make people buy computers that otherwise would not be bought.
In the same time, they manage to increase the statistics of windows Vista sells at the end of the year.
back when Windows 3.1 first came out. At the time, the upgrade was called 'Slackware Linux'.
...this is Microsoft's way of telling you that they feel guilty about fooling you into believing that. It's really more of an apology to the people who weren't fooled, but one implies the other.
Since Vista is free anyway, right?
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
free upgrade program, which allows Vista users to switch to Windows 7 when it arrives.
Can't just admit they made a mistake and throw their user base a bone. Why is that so hard? Do the right thing for a change.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
This really should put to rest the idea whether this is a truly a new version of windows of just a version update. I would think of Windows 7 no different than I would see a difference between Ubuntu 8.04 and 8.10, or OSX 10.4 and 10.5. If they really wanted to make people happy they'd give existing XP licenses a free upgrade to win 7.
/. finds they can maintain their daily MS content quota with this 'story'... cha-ching for taco
I have already upgraded to linux for free. No need to wait, no need to feel pressured into buying that upgrade because the version I own is crippled, no problems with inbuilt DRM (see http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html) ...just peace of mind
Since I have a legitimate university copy of XP Pro SP2 which allows for unlimited installs with no activation/validation code (or whatever that thing is, I forget by now) necessary. Could have had an unlimited number of free Windows 7 OS's.
Honestly? Its great. Aside from the obviously unfinished geforce drivers, its faster than XP for me on all my machines. I'll be moving to it (buying the ultimate edition probably) as soon as it comes out.
I avoided Vista as much as I could, except for on my laptop, which I didn't choose, and there it sucks hard. That same laptop running Windows 7 beta is running very nicely indeed.
Mind you, I'm also realising that we who want/need to use the windows platform have no real choice. XP will soon be a decade old, and it won't be long before (outside of large corporations with their slow upgrade cycle and non intensive desktop hardware requirements) only the diehard 'pry XP from my cold dead hands' crowd will still be using it, which means support for new hardware will get dodgy as hell.
Installing it on my current machines is increasingly cumbersome, and I really don't like using such an old version of windows any more.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
When I first skimmed the summary I read it as 'The Folks at TARP' as in the bank bailout package. After actually seeing my mistake I realize both plans are basically the same thing - try to convince suckers to give large corporations more money because honest, the next thing we do won't suck so badly.
Many of us would agree they could do no better. But that is not the same thing as thinking the product doesn't suck.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I thought the idea was to get people TO use Vista...NOT get them off of it??????
...BOHICA.
Have gnu, will travel.
The versions that one can buy in easter Europe now include many useful programs such as WinRar by default.
Do they come with peeps?
How else are they going to get Gartner to report rabid adoption rates? Without these phantom installs and the SA license upgrades and the "pre-downgrade" seat count inflation people might find out what adoption rates really are. That won't do.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
This is not news at all. This is the same thing they did with the Vista launch. This plan was rumored months ago.
During a period before the next OS release anyone who buys a computer with the old OS will be able to upgrade to the new OS for free, via their OEM.
The are NOT giving all the Vista users a free upgrade.
Don't judge me by my spelling
Essentially the best possible case, and the one that seems to be shaping up, is that Windows 7 will be the latter-day equivalent of Windows 2000: on current hardware, fast, stable, functional, and not chock full of garbage.
There is still the multitude of terrible design choices MS made that we can harp on, don't you worry :)
But, see, back then ms didn't have to compete so much with Linux/Open Source. Back then, to them, Linux was a JOKE and Open Source was trashware.
Now, with the economy in a shambles, with what, only some 10% of the recently surveyed 1,000 companies having switched/upgraded to Vista, and with vista costing more than the hardware, and with many netbooks coming out with all number and manner of lightweight Linux distros, the writing was on the wall for ms.
Win 7 is a turnequit, to stem the hemhorraging of blood from being pummeled and bludgeoned in the press. Linux is the bullet or shrapnel that -- in combination with the economy -- is wounding ms badly. Their own arrogance was what got them stepped into the line of fire, like troops being led by hubris rather than field intelligence, straight into the "gunfire and artillery that our best intelligence said was not supposed to be a threat our superior forces..."
Just the other day i (like many i am sure) posited that the ONLY thing ms can do at this point is to offer free upgrades. However, anyone remember back in the early 90's, when you had to give MS your SSN to get money back for a rebate? They supposedly wanted to prevent fraud. I was royally PISSED that they could be allowed to demand AND GET legal backing (or no apparent government/legal authority backlash/smackdown). Imagine hundreds of thousands of SSNs ms must still have, not to mention the access to SSNs they get when doing HR and other consultancy work.
Anyway, with Compiz FusionPlasma turning heads every time a Linux-running laptop is fired up, and people likely being royally incensed that vista home basic TODAY IN ONE to TWO GIGS OF GRAPHICS RAM and 2 GB of SYSTEM RAM cannot even to a *fraction* of what Compiz and Beryl did in 2007 and even improved to current distros can do in under 256 MEGAbytes of... well, again the writing was on the wall for ms. It was nothing short of pure, fucking outrageousness and coy-ass-reach-around job on unsuspecting or disbelieving consumers (but not PROsumers) to get mislabled, or intentionally vista-ready labels on even machines not ratable for "vista ready"...
Well, i'll step down from my soap box... I've got to go into a public place and fire up KDE 4.1 on Mandriva 2009.0 Free (with updates, but STILL haven't received my PowerPack DVD I ordered WEEKS ago...) so people can oooh and ahhh over witnessing the POWER of Open Source and Linux...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Instead of doing an 'upgrade' to Win7, Vista users would be so much better to switch to Ninnle Linux. It offers all the same functionality and more, plus all manner of applications, including the award winning Ninnle Office.
Oh, you mean like Linux.
I was promised a free Vista upgrade when I bought my Windows XP laptop. But I think it was Compaq who promised the Vista upgrade. When I got Vista Home Premium I didn't have drivers for my system and with only 512M of RAM it ran slow, and the graphics card didn't support AERO.
I recall Microsoft was sued over the "Vista Ready" computers that couldn't run Vista. I'll bet the Windows 7.0 ready computers that come with Vista will have the same problems.
Oh ho ho, I always try to stay one Windows version behind now so I don't get burned again. Retrocomputing is great that way! :)
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Given the mess that Vista has been, deserved or not, free upgrades to Windows 7 is a good move and could repair some broken fences. Must say though, I'm surprised to hear this news.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Almost PR-like. A casual reader scanning headlines will think MS is awesome for giving every Vista user a free upgrade to 7. In fact, it's no different than their past releases. Promise a free upgrade so PC sales don't plummet while people wait.
What the hell is wrong with people? Why is there so much hype about Vista+1?
Seems like slashdot can't do a day without at least a half-dozen articles mentioning Windows "7".
Well here in the real world I've been working with Win7. I don't see why everyone is so excited.
Win7 fixes none of the driver "problems" (design flaws) that Vista had. Win7 does nothing to fix the compatibility with XP issues Vista had. Win7 doesn't reduce the piggish requirements Vista had. UAC is still garbage, sliding scale or not. Win7 still has a deliberately broken IPSEC NAT-T implimentation, just like Vista.
In fact, in my testing at work, stuff that worked on Vista (that we had to work hard to MAKE work) has stopped working on Win7. Bra-VO Microsoft. One of our IT guys put McAfee (which works on Vista) on Win7 and caused the first ever Win7 bluescreen of shit.
So riding the wave of undeserved hype, Microsoft is offering a non-upgrade (if you're eligable, and most of us are NOT) to their Vista Service pack (now with ugly panel!) that will fix exactly nothing that was wrong with Vista. Bravo! Good job Slashdot, keep promoting this lemon! Makes my job all the worse...two incompatible Microsoft abortions to support all at the same time. Thank god it's "Genuine Microsoft." Wouldn't want any of that Porkysoft (TM) Windows knock-offs on my machine.
silly kids
people don't run oses they run apps
In the name of Steve Jobs, I command you to buy Apple.
An outfit that can get you to pay for OS updates, pay twice what the same hardware specs are worth on the free market, and get you to accept buying stuff for which the battery cannot be replaced, has got you by the balls (ovaries) like you wouldn't believe. Ouch!!
Of course it will be free, since when did Microsoft start charging for service packs ?!
I originally installed the 6936 x64 beta and was very impressed, however, I then made the mistake of upgrading the beta to 7000. After that everything was sluggish and slow and unbearable (worse than Vista). My own fault, but it didn't really make a great deal of sense. If they don't sort out upgrading by release, they'll have a lot of angry users who tried upgrading from Vista.
Asides from that the main pet peeve I had was sound quality. For some reason sound quality on Windows 7 and Vista is just plain awful, lacking fidelity and bass. It's not a driver issue either as it's the same with 3 different soundcards I've tried on both Vista and XP.
At any rate I'm back on Windows XP now with Windows Fundamentals. Fastest version of XP I've ever used and isn't crippled like the tinyXP homebrew isos. When you use an OS for some time you realise that shinyness doesn't matter, and responsiveness does. Starting your computer, loading programs and switching between tasks needs to go as quickly as possible, otherwise it becomes a frustrating barrier on your creativity.
"Windows 7 Capable"
Most everything in the summary is wrong. :(
The article does not state that Vista users are getting free upgrades to windows 7. It says that people who buy new PC's after the upgrade program takes effect will be eligible for a free upgrade to windows 7 if those new PCs came with Vista installed.
That is the exact same upgrade program they have offered in the months preceding the release of every version of the windows operating in recent memory.
There is no news here.
In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. -T.S. Eliot
OK, I'll byte.
.
Why didn't you include DOS 6, in particular 6.22?
.
- aqk
F U
hopefully by the time windows 7 rolls around i'll upgrade to linux. but for the meantime im sitting comfy on xp :)
Lots of us (me) bash Microsoft all the time. They rarley impress me. I have bought many small potatoes software apps (~$20-$30) via PayPal or whatever that usually give at least one version upgrade for free if not lifetime upgrade. I don't want to pay Microsoft a compliment. But hearing this, all I could think of was... Alright.. That's cool. Please keep it up.
So how does this work exactly if I buy Windows Vista for OEMs off of newegg.com? You know, for myself or someone else, either way. Do I need to wait until the product description mentions this option or is this something everyone with Vista will get?
So, will those eligible for a free copy of W7 by buying craptastic MS Vista count as sales of both?
You know this whole thing would be moot if the OEMs were to become able to ship any distro they want. MS appears to be using much of its staff resources in what now appears to be the end phase of whack-a-mole.
If the OEMs made a coordinated push and all hit the market the same week or even month with linux, bsd or solaris distros pre-loaded, we'd be able to see an and to the racketeering.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
only the small proportion of vista users that buy thier computer late this year will get this. Current vista users will not.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
> Windows 7 free to Vista Users
Well that's no surprise - service packs have always been free.
1. To be entirely fair, there's a reason why MS didn't give XP a new major version number. It was Windows 2000 with some tweaks and needed more memory, and a few new bugs and problems.
Sure, _now_ there are some things why I prefer XP over 2000, say, the no-execute bit, but those didn't exist at launch. It by and large was 2000 with a Fischer-Price theme and it started a bit faster, but used more memory. Otherwise it offered the same functionality and ran the same programs.
Even the GUI tweaks, most people still don't care much for them. I know I disabled them outright when I installed XP. But even if you don't... well, take an XP user and put him/her in front of a Windows 2000 machine, and they'll do just as fine. I haven't seen anyone, even the stereotypical grandma, going, "goddammit, I can't use this because the Start menu isn't bright blue."
So on the whole, would you say that's reason enough to blow a couple hundred dollars on a retail copy of XP? Why?
Memory was also a scarcer resource back then, so getting another 128 MB to get the same space for your programs in XP as in 2000 was genuinely an extra expense. Now I'm not saying you had to mortgage the house for it, but it still was some money spent to get back to square one.
Eventually it became largely a non-factor, but then you're just seeing changing market and hardware conditions, not a change in how people see XP. For Joe Average, they just became equivalent.
2. You're still missing an important distinction:
- XP just wasn't worth upgrading if you already had 2000. But it never was worth buying a copy of 2000 to downgrade from XP either. I haven't even heard of anyone downgrading their XP to 2000.
- A _lot_ of people paid extra money to downgrade their Vista computer to XP.
That should tell you right there and then that the situation isn't exactly equivalent. There's a huge difference between "meh, the new version does the same in more memory, it's not worth the money to upgrade" and "the old version was better enough to be worth paying money to downgrade." That Vista managed to peg itself in the latter category, now that's an achievement.
I can't even think of other MS products which failed that hard, except maybe Bob. There hasn't been a need to downgrade to Windows 3.0 if you had 3.1 or 3.11 for Workgroups, there was no need to downgrade to DOS 5 if you bought DOS 6, and even with ME everyone just gnashd their teeth and toughed it out until the next version was available. I don't remember a major surge of buying 98 SE to downgrade to from ME.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
What surprises me is that Microsoft would even do this. I think that the combination of the PR disaster that Vista has become, the recession and the fact that Microsoft has just seen the first decrease in sales of Windows in its history means that Microsoft is starting to get very worried that the lack of Windows growth might go from a trickle into a landslide over the next few years with businesses too busy fighting for survival to be worried about updating software, and then going for Linux when they do.
Free updates to Windows 7 from OEM Vista boxes means very they lose out on all the computers that are sold from now until Win 7 is released, unless they set a cut-off date.
My guess is that this is either vapourware, i.e. designed by MS to just get some attention and then neutered with many clauses as the Windows 7 release date approaches, or else Microsoft knows something about the true sales of Vista and isn't telling and is worried that Windows 7 will end up being as much of a flop as Vista was, which might very well happen given that Win 7 is very much a service pack release of Vista.
Except that vista basic is not mentioned in the article, only htat the start edition is excluded.
Oems will have the OPTION to give out certificates(/technical equivalence) for a free upgrade. Since it is an option they will have to pay a (relative small) amount for.
So, you buy Vista, and for FREE upgrade to Windows 7, dicover its Windows 7 Standard with a 3 app limit, hence forcing you to fork out $$ for Windows 7 Home?
This could fool lots of people into spending money on upgrades they dont need... Oh - that's how this industry works, i forgot.
You can sell a car for parts, but who'd pay for a bunch of stolen .dll's?
The practical difference is that a stolen car deprives another person of a car that is presumably the owner's rightful property. In the case of an OS, the material cost for the data is essentially zero; the vast majority of the value of the product comes from the R&D that produced it.
If the cost of materials and assembly for cars were not a significant part of the cost, don't you think we'd have mass-produced open-source cars by now? Not to mention car thieves would be virtually irrelevant compared to, say, counterfeit car manufacturers.
With Vista the only difference was that (A) MS tried to cut off their XP pipeline, and when that failed (B) it priced XP higher, so you had to pay extra to get that machine downgraded to XP. But in the end, you could and _still_ can buy a PC or laptop with XP on it. You just have to check some "yes, I want to pay extra for XP" option.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
the thousands of anti-kiddie-porn posters? Or the thousands of anti-torturing murderers posters?
Maybe quite a lot of those hundred thousand anti MS posters are antu MS for a valid reason that an MS sock puppet cannot see because they're the *good* guys!
Star Trek - the new film generation! These are the voyages of a complete reboot, a parallel universe, with the potential to go in a completely different direction, ignoring everything that has gone before!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
You may be an Asimov fan. He was liked for intelligent dialogue-based stories, and disliked by the crowd that wanted action-candy. Patrick Stewart could nail a perfect take on several Asimov roles.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Which version will they allow the upgrade to? 7 Ultimate? Or the crippled Windows 7 starter version, which allows you to run only three applications at a time?
Open Source: Eroding the Digital Divide
Don't care...My Full copy of Vista sits in a frame, with a nasty comment underneath.
They can take my Windows XPSP2 from my dead rotting corpse...
I will not be forced into a lesser product by lies and technical newbs.
This new MS OS scheme has become so politicized that facts are few and far in between.
We want a better, faster, more secure OS's...
What we get is a load of DRM topped with eye candy that requires higher end PC's.
I'm happy I don't work at M$ anymore, but sad that the corporate structure has killed off any innovation and intends to present us with multiple versions of crap.
End of Line.
you can't compare theft of a physical object with a form of intellectual theft.
I say "Hi" and you great me back with "Hi".
And I go, hey you just stole my line, you thief!
Software product costs, but reproduction cost is 0. But please don't use car analogies on slashdot!
outofthefryingpanintothefire
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
the idea is to keep you tied to the OS so that sometime, somewhere along the line you will have to pay them for something.
So the OS came with a "System Restore" safety net for technical problems, that the user was told about and encouraged to use, but when you needed it ... it turned out not to work any more.
There was a certain irony that after all the fuss about the Millennium bug, MS's Millennium OS still managed to have a bad date bug.
If you'd removed SysRest and a bunch of other things, its possible that you fluked on a minimal configuration of ME that was actually okay. But for most people, it was a buggy pile of shit that should never have been released.
One story I've seen (which has a sort of authentic ring to it) is that the last prerelease beta was actually pretty good, but that they then did one last set of optimisations before release, and broke it.
Eric Baird
"With Windows 7 set for release in Dec. 09, Microsoft is getting ready with their free upgrade program, which allows Vista users to switch to Windows 7 when it arrives"
Seems about fair. Microsoft sold Vista Users a product they knew was unfinished. So, it seems only fair they would get a copy of the finished version free of charge.
One of the more serious problems with ME is that some of the bugs corrupted the OS'es own system files when you tried to install updates.
Luckily MS identified the problem and issued updates. Snag was, to solve the problem, you had to install the updates, and if you'd just installed the updates, then the act of installing them had already corrupted your system.
I mean, maybe there was some a new installation service pack that let you install ME from scratch with the fixes already in place, or maybe MS issued a revised install image to OEMs ... but if you bought a retail version ... you were screwed.
I lost count of the number of times I tried reinstalling ME with the upgrades to try to find a sequence that wouldn't pre-f**k the OS. I finally lost patience when I realised that it was showing multiple copies of system dialog boxes that were supposed to be modal.
Basically, the install that people like me saw was broken. The code was all out of sync with itself. Processes that were automated and that were supposed to wait for something to happen before proceeding would just steam ahead. I think this is why the program installation and OS upgrade stuff usually failed ... it'd stack up a queue of tasks that were supposed to be implemented in a strict order, and then the later tasks would start activating before the first tasks were finished. One task would be writing stuff into the registry, and another would barge in and start doing its stuff in the middle.
So the #1 rule on ME was that whenever you saw a dialog that asked you whether you wanted to reboot now and install, you always had to click "later", and then reboot manually, with _never_ more than one program update at a time. Unfortunately, with MS's own OS-update installation stuff, "strictly one update per reboot" wasn't always possible. So while a lot of stuff would install nicely on ME, Microsoft's own stuff often wouldn't. And then you'd be back to a corrupted OS installation again. At this point you'd try to use system restore, and find that system restore had a bug that meant none of your restore points created after a certain date would work. You could download a hotfix that would solve that for future restore points, but that hotfix was one of the ones that corrupted the OS files ...
Ugh. It's all coming back. :( I'd blotted this out of my memory as a traumatic experience. I had multiple machines from different manufacturers with different manufacturers' chipsets ... they all ran 98 and 98SE well, and all of them had the same basic problems with ME.
Most of the problems seemed to come down to the OS being told to carry out a list of tasks in strict sequential order, and not bothering to wait until one item was completed before starting the next. That's why the "Do you want to reboot now to install the software?" option usually failed ... the OS would launch the bit of code that started writing the reboot install files, and then it'd get impatient, and cut the power and reboot before the files had finished been written.
That's what tends to make me tend to believe the story that the problem was due to a last-minute speed-optimisation run before release. It felt like the sort of snafu that would never have survived beta-testing, but might have been introduced at the last moment by someone thinking, "Hey, maybe we can make the boot sequence even faster if we say that the OS doesn't have to wait for one process to finish before it starts the next!", and doing a search-and replace that destroyed ME's ability to lock out one task until another had finished.
The clincher was when I realised that if you had a button that would launch a "system modal" dialog, which was supposed to shut out all other user interaction until that dialog had been dealt with ... if you clicked the button several times, q
Eric Baird
I read "MS To Offer Free Windows 7 Upgrade To Vista"
which made perfect sense to me. Upfgrade Vista to XP, upgrade Windows 7 to Vista, why not ?
Bill Gates bought qdos from the employer of the author who had a contract that said his employer owned everything he produced. qdos was a CP/M knockoff, quick and dirty operating system. Bill Gates removed everything that made it quick, changed some characters (reversed the slashes?) and ran with it.
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
They are going to set up a scheme whereby some participating OEMs may decide to participate and offer free Windows 7 upgrades to some of their Vista customers, who bought systems with the more expensive Vista versions, at the discretion of the OEM.
It'll be up to the OEMs whether they want to participate, and if they do, which customers they want to offer it to, how the scheme will be run, and who'll be told about it.
People who have Vista Home Basic or Vista Starter won't be eligible for an upgrade under the scheme, and neither apparently will people who bought retail copies of Vista. It's just for selected customers of selected OEMs, who bought Home Premium, Business or Ultimate.
MS themselves won't be directly offering customers anything under the scheme.
What it seems to be is a scheme that will give participating OEMs, who have aggrieved customers who bought premium products and got stuck with Vista, and who can't be placated any other way, the option of a freebie win7 upgrade to shut them up.
Eric Baird
Well that's never going to work. In a down economy, nobody's going to buy a new computer on "faith" that the new Windows 7 upgrade will fix it.
Of course, Vista works now on new computers, but that's the problem they have to overcome. Loss of faith in Microsoft. A free upgrade to the next Microsoft OS isn't going to repair that damage. Neither did paying Jerry Seinfeld to "stand around" with Bill Gates.
Promises and image management are no longer going to work here. The PR battle has already been lost. Only a shipping product can begin to repair the damage.
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Toro
The title of this article is misleading.
The offer is only open to people who buy computers with Vista on in the next few months.
What about the rest of us who have already been stuck with the piece of sh1t that is Vista?
Microsoft wants you to steal their software. Download early, download often. Or in other words, stay ignorant, stay dependent, and demand Microsoft products in any environment - like say at work or school - where someone else has to pay for a legal copy.
I call it the "poison candy" marketing method.
Hmm, my low-end core 2 duo and crappy graphics card with 3 GB of varied (running at 667 ops not MHz) DDR 2 boots in a minute or two, and it is not that slow. I've disabled a lot of stuff, and it is (in almost every way) worse than XP, but it's not that slow.
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
(Personal opinion)
Less threads would suck as that would drive up latency.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
DOS1,2,3,5; Windows 2,3; NT, XP, 95, 98, WinCE, Windows Mobile.
I didn't count all the stuff I had not used (Vista, Bob, and various other releases and point release [3.11 vs 3]).
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Stealing a car results in the owner losing his car.
Copying software leaves the original intact.