Microsoft may be preparing to discontinue sales of Windows XP, but some OEMs have found a way to circumvent the software giant's June 30 deadline.
In yet another sign of the market's resistance to Windows Vista, Dell Computer, Hewlett Packard (NYSE:HPQ), and Sony on Wednesday all confirmed plans to exercise the downgrade rights Microsoft offers with OEM versions of Windows Vista Business and Vista Ultimate in order to continue offering XP-equipped PCs to their customers.
Downgrade rights, which Microsoft also offers to volume licensing customers, give users the ability to roll back to the previous version of the product they're using. Downgrade rights have existed since 2001 for Windows, but many Microsoft partners say they've been seeing a recent uptick in the number of customers exercising downgrade rights to roll Vista back to XP Professional.
View: The Full Article @ CRN
In yet another sign of the market's resistance to Windows Vista, Dell Computer, Hewlett Packard (NYSE:HPQ), and Sony on Wednesday all confirmed plans to exercise the downgrade rights Microsoft offers with OEM versions of Windows Vista Business and Vista Ultimate in order to continue offering XP-equipped PCs to their customers.
Downgrade rights, which Microsoft also offers to volume licensing customers, give users the ability to roll back to the previous version of the product they're using. Downgrade rights have existed since 2001 for Windows, but many Microsoft partners say they've been seeing a recent uptick in the number of customers exercising downgrade rights to roll Vista back to XP Professional.
View: The Full Article @ CRN
I almost want Vista to be THAT BAD just so this make sense.
I almost want Vista to be THAT BAD just so this make sense.
Best Quote of the year
Another one in the free choice colums.
Although it's only a money thing with any other comapny doing this, as XP is still selling.
- no longer in general use; fallen into disuse. example: an obsolete expression.
There are a lot more XP out there right now than Vista.
On top of that with SP3 coming out, XP will be just like a brand new OS.
Obsolete ? I don't think so.
Why people hates the new and shiny OS? Because it's like MacOSX or a nix distro with CompizFusion, but over 10 times the memory/cpu/gpu cost? Why don't you just buy a new computer, you poor people!
Or the great protection system that comes shipped with it! The complete black screen / insert password is there just for your safety, you stupid! What if it doesn't remembers you did the same action 5 seconds ago... No matter how annoying or concurrent it is, it's for your SAFETY! Exception rules? Are you crazy? Disabling it? You shouldn't be allowed to post in the Internets!
Explorer pane that doesn't hide the "default" locations? Why would you hide them? Un-resizable menus? You should be ashamed! You're not adapting to the new breed of technological advance that is Vista.
Why people hates the new and shiny OS? Because it's like MacOSX or a nix distro with CompizFusion, but over 10 times the memory/cpu/gpu cost? Why don't you just buy a new computer, you poor people!
Or the great protection system that comes shipped with it! The complete black screen / insert password is there just for your safety, you stupid! What if it doesn't remembers you did the same action 5 seconds ago... No matter how annoying or concurrent it is, it's for your SAFETY! Exception rules? Are you crazy? Disabling it? You shouldn't be allowed to post in the Internets!
Explorer pane that doesn't hide the "default" locations? Why would you hide them? Un-resizable menus? You should be ashamed! You're not adapting to the new breed of technological advance that is Vista.
New doesn't always mean better which is the case in point with Vista. Its an inferior product. Let's hope that Microsoft learns its lesson with Windows 7.
Why people hates the new and shiny OS? Because it's like MacOSX or a nix distro with CompizFusion, but over 10 times the memory/cpu/gpu cost? Why don't you just buy a new computer, you poor people!
Or the great protection system that comes shipped with it! The complete black screen / insert password is there just for your safety, you stupid! What if it doesn't remembers you did the same action 5 seconds ago... No matter how annoying or concurrent it is, it's for your SAFETY! Exception rules? Are you crazy? Disabling it? You shouldn't be allowed to post in the Internets!
Explorer pane that doesn't hide the "default" locations? Why would you hide them? Un-resizable menus? You should be ashamed! You're not adapting to the new breed of technological advance that is Vista.
New doesn't always mean better which is the case in point with Vista. Its an inferior product. Let's hope that Microsoft learns its lesson with Windows 7.
You don't use Vista, do you?
Once no more security updates get released for XP then it will be obsolete
again, I am not taking about those who own older hardware. those should run XP fine.
Come on, it's NEOwin, what do you expect?
Did you knew that I actually have a penguin in my fridge? And I wear my communist GPL hat all days? We've got a geek gathering at the Party's convention!
Come on, it's NEOwin, what do you expect?
Did you knew that I actually have a penguin in my fridge? And I wear my communist GPL hat all days? We've got a geek gathering at the Party's convention!
r u high or something? yeah nothing beats an actual user experience.
again, older hardware should stick to XP, but for newer systems, its a waste.
and regarding that penguin and communist hat, good for ya buddy. whatever makes u sleep the night.
check your motherboard and your graphics card, since you thought you needed to update your drivers so often. a bad video card (blown capacitors) was responsible for my cronic BSOD on Vista 32.
People who prefer XP should have the choice.
Come on, it's NEOwin, what do you expect?
Did you knew that I actually have a penguin in my fridge? And I wear my communist GPL hat all days? We've got a geek gathering at the Party's convention!
r u high or something? yeah nothing beats an actual user experience.
again, older hardware should stick to XP, but for newer systems, its a waste.
and regarding that penguin and communist hat, good for ya buddy. whatever makes u sleep the night.
Not only that but sometimes you can't even find the drivers for the hardware so you can use it in XP. Dell is providing seperate configurators for XP and Vista on their website because of this. Some hardware that you can use in Vista is not available in the XP configurators.
People who prefer XP should have the choice.
dude, I am a Mac user (thank god). my positive experience with Vista vs. XP comes from the family PC.
between Vista and XP, I would take Vista anytime, but I don't really care if MS would shutdown today b4 tomorrow. Its yr PC and its yr time spent on it; u have the right to choose the best combo that works for u.
Last edited by abulfares on 25 Apr 2008 - 17:04
Yeah, just like the comparison between Vista and WinMe.
Come on, it's NEOwin, what do you expect?
Did you knew that I actually have a penguin in my fridge? And I wear my communist GPL hat all days? We've got a geek gathering at the Party's convention!
Come again?
Yeah, just like the comparison between Vista and WinMe.
SNAP!
Yeah, just like the comparison between Vista and WinMe.
Mods delete this post please.
People who prefer XP should have the choice.
THANK YOU! The people want it, then microsoft should sell it. Simple. It doesn't matter if vista is better or not. If they want the "inferior" Windows, Microsoft will still make money. Why do they care?
check your motherboard and your graphics card, since you thought you needed to update your drivers so often. a bad video card (blown capacitors) was responsible for my cronic BSOD on Vista 32.
Ya, I've seen alot of video cards do that.
Last edited by Apple-a-Day on 25 Apr 2008 - 15:53
No, they don't. Anything less than millions of people complaining and they're not going to care, nor should they. Why cater to the minority when the majority are happy?
http://vista.blorge.com/2008/02/25/how-to-...tures-of-vista/
Me I'm going for the brand new release: Windows XP SP3.
Windows® XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) includes all previously released updates for the operating system. This update also includes a small number of new functionalities, which do not significantly change customers’ experience with the operating system
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...;displaylang=en
Thank god !
give it time, let vista mature like XP did. sure have performance, compatibility and reliability issues but they will get fixed eventually. Its not that vista its totally a mess, have its opcion improvements that carry over previous windows version
It's been well over a year and a service pack later, how much more time does vi$ta need? will we all be grey and bald before we see vi$ta turn into something worth using?
There is no mistake. It'd be impossible to release a relevant bug-free OS that supports all the hardware Windows has to support from day one. Sure you could take 2 more years of internal bug squashing but then all the tech in the OS is 2 years older (hence my point about being relevant), and you still have the issue where some companies won't work on drivers until AFTER an OS releases and there's a user base to make it 'worth it' (see: Creative)
It's been well over a year and a service pack later, how much more time does vi$ta need? will we all be grey and bald before we see vi$ta turn into something worth using?
It is something worth using. I remember pre-SP1 XP, Vista pre-SP1 is a hell of a lot better than that was (and I upgraded from a crashy ME install so don't tell me my XP wasn't already a step up, but I certainly had problems). For me it feels like the two SP1s are on-par, they fixed many of my nags in both cases.
Last edited by Danrarbc on 26 Apr 2008 - 05:38
Last edited by TRC on 25 Apr 2008 - 17:40
This steaming pile of a comment has made me speechless.
This steaming pile of a comment has made me speechless.
Good, we don't need anymore comments from the peanut gallery.
This is it, right there, in a nutshell. It's what people feel comfortable with. And in the business world, that makes all the difference. End-users haven't got the time or the inclination to learn how to do things differently. Remember, a lot of these users have only ever used XP, and the very idea of change for... what reason exactly? Because it's new? It simply doesn't out-weigh the comfort factor.
XP is just windows 2k with a enhanced multimedia (and gaming) experience (xp w, vista instead is a eyecandy and burdensome xp version.
Also XP in fact is MORE compatible that windows 2k with legacy software (dos and windows9
No, not necessarily. In my experience, the majority of end-users in todays modern businesses have only ever used XP, and work procedures and practices are based around that OS and whatever apps they use on it. Their argument is "it works for me, so why should I change?" So far there hasn't been a compelling enough reason to do so.
2000 to XP wasn't really such a quantum leap, and users could easily adjust, and in fact welcome the extra functionality XP brought. But that was 7 or 8 years ago. Since then users have gotten used to XP. You could argue that they are "stuck in their ways". I wouldn't disagree. Unfortunately, this very fact makes switching to Vista unwelcome.
Which is 99.99% of the (windows) digital world.
I also run MacOS X Leopard on my machine and guess what, it runs just as well as Vista. Vista boots and shuts down faster but overall the user experience is great on both operating systems. Neither is without faults and both have some things that are better than the other.
People won't stop buying computers if they're not given the choice to XP. People need to be forced into it in order to realize that IT'S AN EXCELLENT PIECE OF SOFTWARE. The reason most people want XP on a new computer is that they hear a bunch of BS about Vista from somebody they know who read that BS on the internet from some idiot blogger who thinks he knows everything about computers. It's getting ridiculous.
"Vista is not that bad. I don't understand why people blow it up..."
"It works flawlessly even though I have heard bad things about windows vista, it gives me no problems."
"Vista is much more user-friendly than everyone had told me."
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,140583-p...ds/article.html
You're choosing to believe what you want to believe.
If you're willing to do the exercise, go look at some of the forum on the PC builder's website. For example, HP. You will find post after post of people looking for drivers to reinstall XP on their Vista-pre-installed PCs and Notebooks. That's "real world".
That could equally apply to you as well.
Even more "real world" is when I get customers in at Circuit City who spew ridiculousness about Vista and how it's somehow bad, but they have no idea why. And then when I explain to them the differences and the reasons for any potential problems, they're much more comfortable with a Vista machine than they were before.
All this "fear" of Vista is simply from hearsay. Uninformed users are telling other uninformed users and so on that Vista is bad, and by the time it gets to customers going on a quest to find a machine that still has XP, that customer has no idea why they shouldn't go with Vista but just that it's "bad." Nobody's giving Vista a chance and seeing that it is indeed an excellent operating system but that it just takes some getting used to.
To +gigapixels: Oh, so you're the one.
I agree with you about your customers at Circuit City. But then you don't get to see them in 2 or 3 months. I do. They might not have known why Vista was "bad", but when I see them, they do.
Most of them are ready to pay for an XP license and pay for my time to reinstall it for them. I've been doing at least a dozen a month since Vista came out. And I'm in small town.
Personally I love Vista. I make money as the alternative to your big store by selling XP installed computers or I make money when you sell them a Vista computers. It's a win-win for me.
I agree with you about your customers at Circuit City. But then you don't get to see them in 2 or 3 months. I do. They might not have known why Vista was "bad", but when I see them, they do.
Most of them are ready to pay for an XP license and pay for my time to reinstall it for them. I've been doing at least a dozen a month since Vista came out. And I'm in small town.
Personally I love Vista. I make money as the alternative to your big store by selling XP installed computers or I make money when you sell them a Vista computers. It's a win-win for me.
Don't make assumptions, thanks. I'm not a computer salesman, I'm a firedog technician, and I couldn't care less whether a customer buys a computer at my store or orders one online from Dell or HP so that they can still get XP installed. What I do care about, however, is when customers are afraid to buy Vista because they're completely uninformed of the real issues they might face. I do get some customers back with some minor issues, but it's very infrequent. Most of my work is done removing viruses and spyware on XP machines.
I won't. If I took all the words that were said about Vista in the beginning, I probably wouldn't have upgraded. But I saw past the FUD that was being spread around about it--such as stories of how Vista would either delete all of your non-DRM media or report you to the RIAA to Vista having a backdoor to the FBI. This reminds me of a paper I wrote in college about the launch of Sputnik and it's impact on America at the time. I saw a headline in a newspaper from back then stating "REDS BOMB THE MOON!" (FUD is exactly not a new thing, lol).
When you have this much disinformation going around of course people will be leery of it when they buy a new computer. And because of it's differences (which are definitely for the better) they will not spend much time on it before giving up after already having all these preconceived notions about it. But as I illustrated above, at least some people have a mind of their own and saw past the paradigm. I'm for one am not a technological Luddite.
Last edited by midway40 on 26 Apr 2008 - 18:58
Why did I move to Vista? I got another gig of RAM, a new GPU, a c2d, blah blah. Okay so the point is, the transition from 2000 to XP, did not demand such a huge upgrade in hardware as the transition from XP to Vista demands. Thats where Vista falls back in the line. People don't realize not everyone can afford new hardware or not everybody is in the favor or spending money just so they can have a new OS. My friends are still working on XP, all of them. Their hardware can't support vista and they don't see any point in upgrading, since XP is doing everything Vista can, only faster.
Not to lie, I am also considering downgrading to XP, but not cause im a Vista hater (which I have been in the past), but cause my computer sometimes crashes, which is something I can't live with. Despite doing countless tests, no solution in sight, while XP works flawlessly. Everyone will agree, Microsoft is trying to shove Vista down the consumer's throat, whether they want it or not. It is in the best interest of Microsoft to extend the life-cycle of XP by another one or two years until Windows 7 is in sight and majority of consumers have upgraded their computer. The day hardware and softwares start to roll out exclusively for Windows Vista, that will be the day when people will consider to upgrade. But which company wants to lose out on their profits? So they cater to all OSs, atleast of Microsoft, cause thats where their majority user base exists.
Microsoft boasts about selling maximum liscences of Vista than anyother OS of it, what i see is, they have practically shoved/forced or guided the blind consumer to buy what they want them to. Vista is great and so is XP. A world exists where both can live together.
The problem with that logic is the time frame. There was only about a year in between 2000 and XP releases so there wasn't that much hardware advances during that time. The difference between XP and Vista is of course 6 years and there has been a lot of advancements during that period. So why not make an OS to take advantage of today's technology instead of 2001?
Your logic fails in more ways than one.
Or sometimes, like in the case of a motherboard with an Nvidia chipset, you'll get the right drivers from the Nvidia website.
Acer are actually the easiest one to upgrade, and their people are very helpful with that. For Notebooks I sell, I was able to order reinstallation disk for XP from Acer. All the Vista Business one come with the XP disk by default.
oh Microsoft just give what customer wants fcking choices.
And I guess you really don't remember the days of 98/2000 -> XP, as I certainly do remember looking at the XP system requirements and thinking "OH MY GOD!" XP had quite a good amount of difference, though it doesn't seem as drastic as Vista since the hardware itself hadn't changed as much between 98/2000 and XP as it did between XP and Vista, but relatively it was pretty similar. People could still install XP on a regular machine they had, but performance was frankly pretty bad if you didn't meet the minimum system requirements.
I don't think people should be forced to use Vista, but I think that keeping XP available any longer is ridiculous, as many of the initial Vista issues have been ironed out. As long as customers are informed that perhaps something like their old Canon printer might not work with Vista (which I blame wholly on Canon and their shoddy driver support), then they should have few, if any, problems switching over. The biggest hump is getting used to the way things work differently, and as long as you have an open mind about that, you should have a very smooth transition.
Vista vista vista
Linux linux linux
XP xp xp
Mac mac mac
Shut up, don't care. =)
It's not Microsoft's fault that you're using outdated software and encountering problems on a brand new operating system. You can either update everything or stick with your older software on an older operating system, but you certainly have no room to complain that Vista isn't running software that hasn't been updated or patched in years.
It's not Microsoft's fault that you're using outdated software and encountering problems on a brand new operating system. You can either update everything or stick with your older software on an older operating system, but you certainly have no room to complain that Vista isn't running software that hasn't been updated or patched in years.
It makes it easier to read.
Just remember that XP was delayed many times. When it came out, most drivers and software vendors already had, or were about to, patch software and updated drivers. So, the transition of people from Win98, Win98 SE to XP went better than XP to Vista.
But i remember that almost every piece of software and drivers weren't compatible with XP with it came out. Before XP SP2, XP was really "average" and had a ton of issues.
I'm not selling Vista to anyone, so i will keep to myself any comments. I prefer it over XP in a number of ways though.
For a company, supporting a very old OS is really not a business because no matter the number of copies sold, the support for it cost more than the already deployed vista. So, i agree with MS in this one.
That OEM's are using this downgrade rights is just because many of the equipment they sell are not 100% vista ready. May it be hardware, drivers, own applications, etc.
Meanwhile, stick to the OS of your choice. Everyone has something to like/hate.
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