Microsoft has said it would offer free technical support to small businesses that buy new PCs with Windows Vista in the next three months, its latest attempt to convince users that moving to Vista is a good idea. And if those efforts are for naught, Microsoft will help those users downgrade from Vista to Windows XP, the same maneuver several large computer makers, including Dell and Hewlett-Packard, have used in recent months to continue offering the older operating system to buyers.The offer, dubbed Windows Vista Small Business Assurance, is available to businesses with fewer than 50 employees or 25 PCs, and it provides free telephone support through the end of October to companies that buy new PCs with Vista Business or Vista Ultimate between now and Sept. 30, according to details posted on the Microsoft Web site. Only businesses buying new hardware can take advantage of the free support; companies upgrading existing computers from, say, Windows XP, don't qualify.
View: The full story @ InfoWorld
They should've been sued for releasing this thing when they did, like they did, and without better 3rd party driver support before they did!!
Not very hard at all to downgrade though. Already have done it at least a 100 times on other peoples computers!
Good luck getting a jury to agree with you...I surly would not. As we all remember Vista's release was one of the slowest ever. There were beta versions available to developers over a year before its general release. If other companies couldn’t bother to take the time to update their driver's to support Vista what would you expect Microsoft to do? Cripple Vista by holding it back to the XP driver level or delay Vista by another few years while MS wrote their own drivers for 3rd party devices? Microsoft’s job is to make Vista as good of an OS as they can, not bend over backwards making someone else’s device work.
I have been running Vista sense RC1 and the ONLY problem I have seen has been 3rd party devices support. Even that is not near as bad as everyone makes it out to be—no worse than when Windows 2000 was band new (remember that XP used the same driver model as 2000 so it had almost 2 year experience before it was released). Within a few months of its general release in early 2007 I had every device I owned working properly on Vista with the only exception being an old iRiver MP3 player. Everyone else I know running Vista has a similar experience.
You're forgetting that Microsoft changed the standards a few times during that time and it was expensive for the other companies to try and keep up. Its seems that every time Microsoft paves the road we have to buy a new car....
Plus, it wasn't just drivers that were the problem with Vista. It has many, many, many other real problems, for the majority of its users and only a very small minority has had little to no problems with it, that it really shouldn't have at this stage in the company's existence.
I would never say Microsoft is perfect, there are a number of little things in Vista that really bug me, but when it comes to Vista I have three opinions. They are opinions so if you disagree that is fine.
1 All things said Vista (imperfect as it may be) is a better OS for most users than XP.
2 Microsoft should not be blamed because Company X has not made its products Vista compatible in a timely manner (I think XP's long run has made them lazy when it comes to support and updates).
3 Bashing Vista is popular now and just about every tech writer out there wants to jump on the bandwagon.
Plus, it wasn't just drivers that were the problem with Vista. It has many, many, many other real problems, for the majority of its users and only a very small minority has had little to no problems with it, that it really shouldn't have at this stage in the company's existence.
I am sorry but I can't believe you on either account. The Vista driver model was set almost two years before its general release and during that time saw only a few extremely small changes which would not constitute a company having to start over on development—even if there was radical changes up until its release candidate stage, that was over two years ago…come on! As for your other point, yes I am sure many people have had other problems. Many people have had problems with every OS ever made. Other than UAC (which can be very easily turned off) there just are not any other big design flaws with Vista which would prevent someone from using it or running almost any software app which worked on XP.
I have spent a lot of time on support forum’s answering people’s questions about Vista and Windows in general. I hear everything from “I can’t believe MS released Vista without the file sharing feature working,” “Vista is crap, it keeps rebooting for no reason,” “Why can’t Vista connect to wireless networks,” to “This is crap! MS released Vista with nothing but system beep sounds!” It goes on and on, but the point is that most of those issues are the same issues people had with Windows XP, but with XP they were most likely to admit it was a problem with their setup as opposed to blaming the OS.
I am in the industry and no matter what anyone says you cannot convince me that everyone I have talked to is of the elite few who are able to use Vista and it is everyone else that sees the real problems.
Because of the many changes many of the compabies had adopted a wait and see attidude because they no longer trusted Microsoft. I've used Linux and I have also used XP and neither of them were anywhere near as bad as Vista is. XP WAS a major change in architecture over 9.x. Vista, on the other hand, is really not that big of a change to warrent such problems.
I am in the industry and no matter what anyone says you cannot convince me that everyone I have talked to is of the elite few who are able to use Vista and it is everyone else that sees the real problems.
It still reminds no matter what you choose to believe that Vista IS a piece of crap. I have around 25 years experience using computers and I used Vista for 6 months before I dumpted the POS.
The common reaction is that Microsoft is totally without blame in this.
No, it isn't. All of the evidence says that you're wrong.
They lost trust in Microsoft because it kept changing the standards.
I really had wanted to like Vista. I even bought it the day after it officially came out and I did give it a chance for 6 months. Its the only version of Windows that had driven me to another OS.
True from one point of view but not really true. XP was a VERY minor upgrade from Windows 2000 at the time it was released (a number of free upgrades and service packs have slowly changed this over time)--the kernels where virtually identical. The 9x platform was retired and XP because the new OS for home users, but it really wasn�t new because Windows 2000 forged the way and already had good driver support. This was not the case for Windows 2000. Windows 2000 had a LOT of driver problems in the beginning. I used both Windows 2000 and Vista heavily in their beta and early release states and I would say that hands down Vista was an easier transition. They originally planned to make a Home edition of Windows 2000 but felt like there wasn't enough support for home users and released a half-assed WinME based on the 9x code instead. Vista had no Windows 2000 to forge its way.
At the end of the day talk is nothing but words. What matters are actions. I use Vista without issue and prefer it over XP. Millions of other users also use Vista, about the same number as used XP when it was 18 months old.
Last edited by sphbecker on 10 Jul 2008 - 17:20
agree
Commenting has either been disabled on this article or you are not logged in. Click here to login or register, its free!
Note: Anonymous commenting is disabled in order to keep the quality of responses to a high standard.