Dell charges extra $50 for XP

The reason for the $50 isn't to downgrade it! Its because you are going up to Windows Vista Business and it has downgrade rights to XP PRO. Just the same as Microsoft has had downgrade rights on XP pro to Windows 2000! Check you fact before you jump on DELL.

The relevant statement is, "Whatever the market will bare." As long as hapless computer buyers continue to buy the product, the corporations will continue to abuse them. 

Some of the very best computer systems are built locally by independent shops using the vary latest and best components. The size of Dell, HP, Gateway or whoever is irrelevant; their products and service are no better than the local guy. In fact, they're usually far worse.

Can't think of a better way to enrage smart users than to charge them for the use of a superior OS to Vista. Users will also become enraged at MS, as well as Dell, for killing XP and replacing it with a sequined log, which will have them calling for Linux, which Dell will happily sell them on its systems, and without the Windows license fee, Dell will have fatter profit margins.

...still come with a "licence" you can either accept or refuse on first boot ?

I'm curious how hard it is to get a refund for an unwanted M$ OS out of Dell these days - and even more to the point, what refund they'd have to give you as a result.

My mind wanders to the recent french court case where, IIRC, one OEM was trying to charge as much to "process" the refund as they'd have to refund - I think the court found in that case the OEM was being completely unreasonable and ordered a full retail value refund of the unwanted software...

good year, enough rain - cost more ;-)

Recently bought a dell for £390 inc 19" widescreen, intel dual core, 2GB, 3 year warrenty.

I didn't mind paying out for the £50 downgrade because Vista is a total pig to work with and uncompatible with a main piece of business software.

Windows Explorer in Vista - why can't you see the address bar and be able to copy and paste it any more? Each / is broken into stupid function boxes so you can't copy and paste the whole string.

Vista Backup - you can't select folders and files, you can only tick "pictures", "music", "movies", "tv shows" and a few other crap choices. Vista Backup is brutally useless. You have no control.

And if you try to show users how to use it you will just lose time that they should be spending doing work.

Vista is pretty but hard to use intuitively. And it's dumbed stuff down so it's less usable.

The network diagram looks nice, but network file sharing in Vista is a pain. And they should have made it easy to secure shares, like on an apache website, but they've made it either where you can't share, or you share it wide open.

When you first use Vista pc's with XP, the XP pc's can't see Vista pc's, and Vista pc's can't see XP. Solution - download a patch and install it on every single XP pc.

No wonder small businesses won't touch it. It costs you money in time, support and your workers saying "help" or "I can't install our main program because the network version isn't vista compatible" etc.

We need a slimmed down version of XP with some new USEFUL features.

And why does every program I install always insist on running at startup even though I may only use it 1 or 2 times a year? HP photo crap with a new office printer, Yahoo/Google toolbars with adobe reader, etc.

And why do AntiVirus programs try to default run the AV and scan the whole system on a daily basis at 8am, 9am or midday? Just when you want you workers to be active, their pc grinds to a halt for several hours and they scratch their heads wondering why, and start talking instead of working!

;-)

HP have been doing it with some of their laptops in the UK too. £790 for the laptop with Vista Buisness preloaded, £830 for exactly the same laptop with XPPro pre-loaded. Leaving us to buy the £790 version and use our MVL downgrade rights to install our own XP image.

Crazy

Here in the UK, Just send back the copy of your licence and say you dont agree with the terms of the licence and ask for your money back. So far this works here in the UK.

Acer, now refuses to do anything with Win XP, 
i recently got an Aspire 7720Z laptop with Vista home on it. After about 2 month when it finally crashed beyond the point of no return. I said to myself that it is time for something that works. However, Acer has taken down all the drivers off their websites for windows XP, and when i called tech support, the already non-too-friendly tech, wanted to get rid of me, the second he heard i'm downgrading to xp. "Sorry sir, we don't support Windows XP anymore. If you machine originally shipped with windows vista, then we can only offer support for windows Vista". so now i'm stuck with either installing something that will fail in 2 months tops and slow me down, or trying to find drivers that are no longer on the net. 

it could be worse with dell, at least they still acknowledge that windows XP exists.

You seem to indicate there's no problem sending back the licence for a refund - i'd love to know how, when the licence is normally now only in electronic format when you boot the machine, and not in any tangible "asset" that you can put in an envelope.

You have no real way of proving you have rejected the "licence" other than by setting it up in the shop.

Another scenario springs to mind, and i'm not sure how this would pan out - if you bought it on credit, the credit issuer is jointly liable with the vendor under Sec. 75 of the Consumer Credit Act - so if the vendor refuses a refund, you should be able to pursue the credit issuer for same.

@Nikita:

Thanks for the important lesson. I will never buy a new computer until I find and download all the XP drivers first.

I will never permit Vista to reside on any of my system. Ugghh!


In its effort to cram Vista down PC users' throats? That last comment about Acer's policy suggests maybe so.

If Vista wins, then DRM makes a great leaped forward, as stuffed as Vista is with DRM junk.

A Concerned Mac User

Why shouldnt XP be more expensive than vista? Isnt it way better? -:)

Who says Acer have dropped XP support? I checked 10 minutes ago on the Europe support site and all the XP drivers are still available.

I think part of the reason for the increase in price is that they are now selling more computers with vista that they no longer can receive as drastic a license discount that they can with vista, and therefore have to raise the price for it. 
Also, if it were cheaper, they would still be selling a lot of XP boxes, because there's a lot of people out there who would like to conserve as much as possible. This could screw up the sale of vista and the discounts they receive on its licenses. Most people who prefer XP already have a copy anyway. Just remember to only install it on 1 computer, though...