Slashdot Mirror
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."
Maybe their whole production process is customized with a Vista image. Imagine that you now have an employee that needs to yank out the vista hard drive, throw in an xp hard drive, and then have another employee make sure that it is an XP system before it ships out. Not to mention the cost of changing the OS sticker on the laptop...
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.
Even if Microsoft was making money off a so-called downgrade, why is that grounds for a lawsuit? Are companies only allowed to profit from certain product lines now?
something that to many people and organizations is still considered a valued piece of software.
There's the problem. People consider XP more valuable than Vista and are willing to pay extra for it, so they charge extra.
Proud member of the Ferengi Socialist Party.
they've got that Office gravy coming in
Mmmm....office gravy....
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Does buying a PS3 give you a free PS2?
Yes?
Do you have to buy a PS3 to get a PS2?
Do you have to buy Terminator 2 to get Terminator 1?
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
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 $120 for putting XP Home on. Why shouldn't HE have "downgrade rights?" Do they honestly think the home users actually WANT Vista? This whole damned thing since XP sales "ended" has smelled like a "wink wink, nudge nudge" kind of deal, where the OEMs get to push an OS that folks will buy, MSFT gets the extra cash from Vista Business licenses even when all they get is XP, and as usual the consumer gets screwed. The whole thing IMHO stinks.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The vendors purchase licenses for a specific number of computers. If the vendor uses two licenses for the same machine (Vista & downgrade to XP), I don't see the vendor profiting in any way. What you did was purchase 2 licenses, and the profits are shared by your vendor as well as M$. Its hard to tell how they share those profits.
That, or I have no clue what I'm talking about.
Face your daemons!
No, and you don't need to buy Vista to get XP.
Choose a vendor that still sells XP.
Buy XP separately.
Use your old XP license on your new computer.
XP Home is $90.
Vista Home Basic is $90.
If a vendor has entered into an agreement with MS that states that all PCs must ship with Vista, then that was their fault. If they want to offer XP, for free or for an additional fee, that is their choice.
There is no rock or hard place.
If you're not happy with Vista (and I can certainly understand that) and you feel you're being winked-and-nudged by the hoops you have to jump through to get XP, maybe you shouldn't still be giving MS the cash.
What if everyone that wanted XP didn't buy Vista to downgrade and instead wrote to MS that they wanted XP without hoops?
Sure, the first few hundred will be laughed at by customer support. The next thousand maybe not so much. And after a hunderd thousand customers called (and sales not made) you can bet XP is all over the shelves again.
Sometimes life can be so easy, but we choose to make it difficult.
Not quite correct. FTA:"...when Dell was accused of gouging customers by charging $150 to downgrade a new computer to XP. Dell countered that although it did charge $20 to install XP on the machine, as well as to cover the cost of the additional media, the bulk -- $120 of the $150 -- was the price of upgrading the PC from the standard Home Premium to the more expensive Business edition.
Microsoft does not offer downgrade rights with its Vista Home Premium, the most popular of Vista's editions."
Your Dell config came with Vista Home Premium? Well, if you want XP you're SOL, that'll be $120 to 'upgrade' the Vista you want to 'downgrade'.
Not 2 licenses... At my company, we build clones for our customer - with Vista, but we downgrade them all to XP. It's just 1 license. According to M$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...
...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.
For every user that buys a Vista license and then downgrades, MS gets to claim that as a Vista sale. The higher sales numbers serve as marketing copy. It's artificially inflating their sales.
Right, so I won't
Yes
No, I won't pay a cent for something I don't plan to use. I very specifically don't want to reward in the slightest or appear in the usage statistics of something I don't want to touch with a 10 foot pole.
Neither. It doesn't make sense that I have to pay extra for the ability of using something older, which by all logic should be cheaper.
I wasn't given enough choice, and yes, I will bitch about it until satisfied, because that's the only way things get done these days. See the recent Facebook TOS change. Have enough people complain about it loudly enough, and things do get done.
The manufacturers aren't doing me a favour by allowing me to buy their products. I'm doing them a favour by choosing their product and paying a price, and no, I'm not going to comply with arbitrary demands and act as if their offerings were gifts from heaven.
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.
So, to paraphrase: ...a license key (you reuse a key you have).
1. They will not provide you with Media (you need your own XP media)
2. They will not provide you with
3. Some complex bullshit is required to activate.
Sounds just like downloading a Torrent, only more expensive...
That's exactly the issue (as I understand it); you must pay more money to upgrade to Vista Ultimate or Vista Business so that you can then downgrade to XP Professional. With Dell, this upgrade is an extra $99 (unless you happen to catch them doing a free XP downgrade promo).
Isn't an up-sell on editions a profit generator for Microsoft in addition to Dell? Doesn't that mean both companies are making MORE money by requiring this?
The cons of course is that I'm comparing a $99 upgrade from Vista Home Basic to Vista Business Bonus (which has a license transferable to XP Professional), which is comparable to the $99 upgrade from XP Home to XP Pro back before Vista came out, so it's really the same thing, but I don't see how Microsoft can claim they're not profiting off of this. On top of this, nobody running Windows XP independent of an Active Directory server would care about getting Professional instead of Home ... it's just that Dell (et al) aren't offering Windows XP Home downgrades, since there would be no profit. Hmm...
Microsoft can claim they're not making money on XP, but they can't claim that people downgrading to XP doesn't make more money through upgrading Vista for the transferable license.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
And with Office 2007 the user interface went completely bonkers.
Maybe they wanted it easier - but I can't call it better. I'm still getting dandruff from it.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
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.
So as I said, I don't. XP is what I want, but I refuse to get it by getting Vista first. The only option I will go with is "XP, at a normal price"
That one is easy, there's demand, there's little supply, and you can't make an original Model M without restarting whatever factory made them, which may have already been demolished.
Software is much different. Pressing an XP CD and pressing a Vista CD has the same cost, measured in cents. Preloading XP is unlikely to be more expensive than preloading Vista, especially since it's something that's been done for many years, and every manufacturer by now will have the process fully set up and debugged.
By all logic, XP should be cheaper.
The only reason it isn't is because Microsoft wants to sell people Vista, regardless of what they want. But that has nothing to do with the economics of CD pressing and distribution.
That's how it used to work. Things aren't like this anymore.
These days, the customers aren't independent anonymous people who show up at a shop and make an independent choice about which flavor of jam to buy. These days they go on forums, communicate and organize, and when they figure out that they can pressure a manufacturer to get what they want, they go and do that, because in large enough numbers it works.
You seem to fail to realize that what you say enables this. I can say "I won't buy Vista, and won't buy XP at an extra price". For me individually this means that if MS doesn't offer the option I want, then yes, I go and use something else instead. But when it turns out that it's not just me, and there are millions of people who want the same, suddenly they become strong enough to force MS bend to their demand, because when there are that many people who want something, some of them turn out to be in control of important contracts, some willing enough to start a lawsuit, some to make their opinions widely heard, and so on. And collectively, all that, might well cost more than giving people what they want.
Manufacturers are in the business to respond whims shared by millions of whining potential customers, because not doing that endangers their ability to make a profit.
Hmmm, let me think. My name is Microsoft, and I just sold another copy of Windows XP to a new customer. Did I make a profit?
No, no. Absolutely not! Mmmm-mmmm. No sir, no way, no how. No profit. Nyet, nada, nichts.
(Oh and thanks for the hundred dollars.)
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall