The Government rates food establishments, if you live in LA county walk into any resturaunt and tell me that you don't feel better when you see an A on the wall. And I see the arguement.... well if you eat bad food you can get sick. Well if you watch sick crap online you can get sick too. They aren't freaking forcing anyone to to subscribe to a G rated ISP they are just rating them (I know some of my favorite places to eat don't have an A on the wall, and I might pay for it someday, but at least I'm informed), I don't see anyone complaining about rating systems on movies...
I work at a small oem/var and through the authorized Microsoft distributors Windows XP is still Available and will be for a while still However the price is virtually identical to the vista versions. XP Home = Vista Home Basic... XP MCE = Vista Home Premium & XP PRO = Vista Business. However that is for the OEM versions which dell and the rest of the big pc builders don't use anymore. They use something known as a Royalty Disc. Which is why they can Preactivate, and Why they actually charged for the XP CD when you bought a computer. So I'm not sure if Microsoft stopped the royalty version like the retail version or if it was the pc builders who made the decision. All I know is that I like it since my company handles mostly corporate clients and not home users most of the PC's that we send out have XP loaded on them.
A service that we offer that you will never hear about from Dell is the Vista Downgrade rights... meaning you can buy a license for Vista Business or Vista Ultimate and Downgrade it to XP Pro. They will never give you a product key for it, but you just take an XP Pro disc that you, your neighbor or your best friend's dog has at this point and install XP using a key from another computer that won't activate and when you have to call MS all you do is tell them that you are using Vista Downgrade Rights and they will give you the activation code. It takes about 10 more minutes of installation but if its worth it, almost like buying software assurance for XP, because you have XP for stability, and then when its time to move up to Vista you have a legal Vista license.
But with the prices that MS sells its OS's if you can wrap your brain around Linux there is no question as to which is cheaper.... And in most cases better.
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The Government rates food establishments, if you live in LA county walk into any resturaunt and tell me that you don't feel better when you see an A on the wall. And I see the arguement.... well if you eat bad food you can get sick. Well if you watch sick crap online you can get sick too. They aren't freaking forcing anyone to to subscribe to a G rated ISP they are just rating them (I know some of my favorite places to eat don't have an A on the wall, and I might pay for it someday, but at least I'm informed), I don't see anyone complaining about rating systems on movies...
I work at a small oem/var and through the authorized Microsoft distributors Windows XP is still Available and will be for a while still However the price is virtually identical to the vista versions. XP Home = Vista Home Basic... XP MCE = Vista Home Premium & XP PRO = Vista Business. However that is for the OEM versions which dell and the rest of the big pc builders don't use anymore. They use something known as a Royalty Disc. Which is why they can Preactivate, and Why they actually charged for the XP CD when you bought a computer. So I'm not sure if Microsoft stopped the royalty version like the retail version or if it was the pc builders who made the decision. All I know is that I like it since my company handles mostly corporate clients and not home users most of the PC's that we send out have XP loaded on them. A service that we offer that you will never hear about from Dell is the Vista Downgrade rights... meaning you can buy a license for Vista Business or Vista Ultimate and Downgrade it to XP Pro. They will never give you a product key for it, but you just take an XP Pro disc that you, your neighbor or your best friend's dog has at this point and install XP using a key from another computer that won't activate and when you have to call MS all you do is tell them that you are using Vista Downgrade Rights and they will give you the activation code. It takes about 10 more minutes of installation but if its worth it, almost like buying software assurance for XP, because you have XP for stability, and then when its time to move up to Vista you have a legal Vista license. But with the prices that MS sells its OS's if you can wrap your brain around Linux there is no question as to which is cheaper.... And in most cases better.