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Windows 7 Licensing a "Disaster" For XP Shops
snydeq writes "Enterprise licensing for Windows 7 could cause major headaches and add more cost to the Windows 7 migration effort, InfoWorld reports. Under the proposed license, businesses that purchase PCs with Windows 7 pre-installed within six months of the Oct. 23 launch date will be able to downgrade those systems to XP, and later upgrade back to Windows 7 when ready to migrate users. PCs bought after April 22, 2010, however, can only be downgraded to Vista — no help for XP-based organizations, which would be wise to wait 12 to 18 months before adopting Windows 7, so that they can test hardware and software compatibility and ensure their vendors' Windows 7 support meets their needs. XP shops that chose not to install Vista will have to either rush their migration process or spend extra to enroll in Microsoft's Software Assurance program, which allows them to install any OS version — for about $90 per year per PC."
No, for $90/PC/year, plus the cost of the open license of Windows, you can run any Microsoft OS you want, technically all the way down to MS-DOS & Windows 3.0.
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Exactly. Consumers need to understand what this licensing means and why Linux, OS X, and older versions of Windows (2000-XP) are a better investment than Vista/Windows 7 licensing.
I still use W2K at home. XP is literally a patch-work and I am tired of the reboots, so I have mostly abandoned it. Vista is slow, lacks drivers, and drops support for hardware that is perfectly good in W2K-XP. Windows 7 is an improvement -- although Windows Explorer in RC1 is annoyingly slow and reason enough for me to abandon Windows 7.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Did you actually read what's written...MSDN is for testing and dev only. hence the: "Software testers or IT professionals who need to set up test labs with Microsoft operating systems, but do not need additional products. Example: Test or IT staff at a video card manufacturer needs to set up a lab for testing drivers on multiple versions of Windows." If you install MSDN OS in your shop in production and MS knocks on your door...you'll find yourself in court in a snap of a finger. ...it happened to us last year
The problem is that his only alternative is to install an old version of XP and wait an eternity while it updates, then spend an age hunting around for all the drivers and then spend lots more time installing those. Imagine the pain of having to reinstall XP from an original pre-SP1 copy.
Do you have mod points right now?
If so, before actually changing any of the drop down mod boxes under the comments, go to the bottom of the page and click the "Moderate" button.
I don't know why it works, but it does.
I'm unitron (5733). Had to log out to make this comment without undoing some mods I made.
On the other hand, if you don't have mod points, go up to the top of the comments where there are three drop down menu boxes for threshold and 2 other things and two buttons--reply and change--and without changing anything, click the change button.
Don't know why that works , either, but it seems to.
Thanks for forcing me to find a fix for something that's been driving me nuts for a couple of weeks now.
I'm still unitron (5733), still avoiding undoing mods.