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Microsoft Says No Profit In Vista-XP Downgrades
CWmike writes "Microsoft has denied that it makes money when users 'downgrade' Windows Vista to XP, as a lawsuit filed last week alleges. The lawsuit, submitted last week, stems from the $59.25 fee that a California woman was charged in mid-2008 when she bought a Lenovo laptop and downgraded from Vista to XP. In fact, it's computer makers, not Microsoft per se, that charge users the additional fees for downgrading a new PC from Vista to XP at the factory. For example, Dell Inc. adds an extra $20 to the price to downgrade a PC. However, Microsoft may profit from the way it structures downgrade rights."
Yes, but Windows use to be Microsoft Turkey that the Gravy just made better.
Back in them olden days of the 1990's People wanted to get the latest and greatest versions of DOS/Windows. Now today people are not jumping threw hoops. I have been at Big companies who require Windows 2000 still.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
That is why if MSFT wants to pull this "no profits" BS then how about giving us choice, huh? Are they afraid of the free market? The market has spoke and they DO NOT want Vista. So instead of creating a situation where consumers are "damned if you do and damned if you don't" put XP back on the shelves. I'm sure most consumers would rather go buy a nice disc from Staples or Best Buy than deal with "downgrade rights" and all that other crap.
But of course we all know it isn't about "rights" or the free market. it is about MSFT force feeding customers a Vista Business license for the "privilege" of getting rid of Vista and going back to a decent OS, which is what XP has been since SP2 and is really nice since SP3. And what about the home users? I just had a home user chunk a copy of Vista Premium in the trash after not being able to get it to work worth a damn with his PC, only to schedule an appointment to hand me $120 for putting XP Home on. Why shouldn't HE have "downgrade rights?" Do they honestly think the home users actually WANT Vista? This whole damned thing since XP sales "ended" has smelled like a "wink wink, nudge nudge" kind of deal, where the OEMs get to push an OS that folks will buy, MSFT gets the extra cash from Vista Business licenses even when all they get is XP, and as usual the consumer gets screwed. The whole thing IMHO stinks.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Why would you use two licenses? You never used Vista, and downgraded to XP. AND - you already paid (through the "Microsoft tax") for the Vista license, which should cost more than an XP license.
It all comes down to what image Dell copies to the hard drive as they build the PC. It should cost no more to write an XP image than to burn a Vista image, and only one license is ever used.
Not 2 licenses... At my company, we build clones for our customer - with Vista, but we downgrade them all to XP. It's just 1 license. According to M$FT, They will not provide you with Media (you need your own XP media) or a license key (you reuse a key you have). When you go to activate, (if you didn't use a non-activation code) you have to explain to the rep that you are using your downgrade rights, and they will provide a new machine code for activation (not a new key). Vista Ultimate and Vista Business can be downgraded to XP in this manner.
The above comments are not guaranteed to make sense to anyone other than the author...
Actually yes, buying Vista does give you a license to XP Pro, or 2000 Professional, or NT4 Workstation.
The problem is that Microsoft doesn't maintain this policy on the home side of the fence. If you buy a business OS you can downgrade all you want which is why my volume license for Windows includes keys for even Windows 2000. NT4 is considered EOL so they don't give you keys for it anymore.
Microsoft just needs to do the same thing on the home side to be consistent. These days companies all over seem to want to make money by nickel and diming customers through licensing. I just got off the phone with VMWare and their licensing model is so screwed up they didn't give me what I ordered despite them producing the quote to begin with based on my specifications. I've had the same thing happen with Oracle, and NetApp. It makes good financial sense from a bean counter perspective but it means that you now have to have dedicated licensing personnel which is annoying to say the least.
Does buying a PS3 give you a free PS2?
Yes?
Only when you purchase the older 60 gig model.
One more time, with feeling!
Microsoft demands that you pay for the upgrade to Windows Vista Business in order to give you "downgrade rights" to install Windows XP
This is why there's a lawsuit
No sig for the moment.
...grade. An XP "downgrade" can only be purchased with a Business or Ultimate version of Vista. So if a customer is looking at a configure-to-order laptop such as with Dell or Lenovo, then in many cases customers have to upgrade their OS from Home Basic or Home Premium in order to get the XP downgrade option.
Is this charging more for XP...in many people's minds, yes. But legally (Full disclosure: IANAL), they are paying for the Vista upgrade, not for the XP downgrade.
You mean "through" hoops? Unless you're an acrobat I doubt you're throwing it and then jumping through it.
My experience with XP Downgrades is with Lenovo, HP, and Dell.
Lenovo and HP gave me XP downgrades for free (I did have to cover the shipping, like $8 or something.) They said there was no cost, because the Vista Business and Ultimate EULA grants me permission to downgrade without buying an XP license.
Then, I tried to downgrade a Dell that my friend owns. It has Vista Home Premium, and Dell said the same thing - if it was Ultimate or Business, it would be free, since it is not, I have to buy and install a retail copy of XP. Apparently, the EULA is different when it comes to XP Downgrade rights. Dell also told me they do not even make any XP based restore images for their Vista Home computers. All of their Vista Home PCs have to use a retail XP disc if you want to downgrade.
The other thing that Dell told me was that they entered into an agreement with MS in which they will not give away or make available XP downgrades to customers who purchased a Vista PC prior to fouth quarter 2008, and IIRC, this was regardless of which version of Vista was preloaded.
The part that really makes me mad, is that when she bought the PC, she bought it from Dell directly, not through a retail channel of any kind. I advised her to stick with XP, and the Dell salesman talked her into buying with Vista, saying that she can always downgrade later if she does not like it.
Since I'm not going to RTFA as I've moved on to Ubuntu, perhaps someone can clarify this for me:
Did I get that right? Shades of Milo Minderbender! Microsoft has developed the digital equivalent of buying eggs in Cairo for 12 cents a dozen and selling them in Rome at 11 cents a dozen at a profit (because they first bought them at 9 cents a dozen in Athens before shipping them to Cairo)...
I am really glad that Ubuntu got good enough to use fast enough that I could walk away from the Microsoft culture before it sank this deep in Catch 22 logical fruit loops.
Really, I don't hear many complaints anymore and I see more and more people with computers with a black task bar and transparant title bars. I assumed that after the service pack it would be allright and that system requirements had reached the required level.
Dennis Onstenk
That is not true.
See the following:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/d/2/3/d23b9533-169d-4996-b198-7b9d3fe15611/downgrade_chart.doc
http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/8/6/2860872a-35dc-4a10-8617-3927aacd189a/downgradeOEMversion-020707.pdf
For OEM and End User licenses, Vista Business and Ultimate alone have downgrade rights, and the list of what they may be downgraded to is short.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.