Never believe in mirrors or newspapers - Tom Stoppard
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Ancient XP gets yet another stay of execution
MICROSOFT HAS GRANTED HEWLETT PACKARD yet another extension on its long-in-the-tooth licence to supply new computers with the ability to 'downgrade' to Windows XP Pro, according to an Apple Insider report.
And Microsoft is continuing to clock up sales on the much-maligned Vista operating system, despite the fact that the first thing some users do is to replace it. This is because most new boxes come with Vista pre-installed on Microsoft's insistence, and XP is only offered as restore media.
But the most startling thing about the extension – news of which was apparently leaked by an HP insider – is that it will probably overlap with the release of Windows 7, which is wideley expected to reach release candidate status within months.
An internal document from HP, which was acquired by Apple Insider, reportedly says, "Microsoft will allow PC OEMs to structure similar downgrade OS SKUs for Win 7 Professional once available. No formal announcement has been made on the General Availability date for Win 7. However, you can anticipate that business desktops, notebooks and workstations will take advantage of this with the release of Win 7 in the October timeframe to allow our customers maximum headroom as they transition away from XP Pro OS. The Win 7 Professional to XP Pro downgrade OS will also discontinue on April 30th 2010." µ
L'Inq
Apple Insider
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Something that MS have struggled to learn and which Apple latched onto ages ago... MOST PEOPLE ARE TOO STUPID TO MANAGE A COMPUTER.
Ask people to learn a new concept or change the way they've been used to doing something, and most are totally fucked... they'll fight and argue that new is bad, even if it's not.
You gotta do it for them, using pictures, and make it "just work" first time out of the box.
The thing about XP is that Microsoft can at any time decide to stop supporting activation on that product (thereby effectively forcing an upgrade the next time something trips the activation routine).
The same can not be said of Windows 2000, which users can use for as long as they like without interference from Microsoft.
It's not quite a kill switch in XP, but it's no doubt what Microsoft are working towards.
there will always be people who will argue about anything just for the sake of argument and there are always people who will try to write off their incompetency as system fault.
brain-rot, first of all my condolences on your brain condition. but to the topic - had it ever crossed your mind that the problems you experienced were a user error? something that you forgot/misconfigured. now that couldn't have possibly happened, couldn't it?
as a man made product software and specifically software of windows-any complexity will always have its rough spots. it is up to you as a professional to find a workaround and avoid a rough spots to preform your task.
but i guess bashing is much funner.
Having used Vista now for 2 years (to get DX10) I can say that if you have a good setup, it works near flawlessly.
I think everyone forgets what XP was like when it was SP0 running on PIII's. I remember consumers harping about how slow it was, how much stuff didn't work with it. I remember legions saying they were NEVER going to use XP because it SUCKED.
Here we are years later, and everyone's clinging to it like a baby at their mother's bosom.
The ONLY reason Windows 7 (aka Vista II) will get favorable reviews is because the hardware has caught up and the new driver model is in full force.
Comical, but that's the way it is...
ooh, i hope you are using fully paid up versions of vista on all your computers Mr Anon!
If not, you may fall out of love with it when a full audit trail of your activities is collated and processed on behalf of the Vole! see link:
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Forget-about-the-WGA-20-Windows-Vista-Features-and-Services-Harvest-User-Data-for-Microsoft-58752.shtml
vista users are not free men - they are just a number
Vista is far better than XP. XP is one of the worst OSs I have ever come across. 2000 was far better.
I was really worried about Vista at first due to a lot of negative press, but it was all unfounded.
Currently I am running Vista on all my PCs at home. One of them only has 1GB RAM and I'm running Vista Ultimate 64bit with Aero. The main place manufacturers come short is from slow HDD speed, not RAM.
You need 1GB of RAM, but not more than that. CPU is also not so important. Just make sure you have decent HDD speed.
Acer and the likes often ship Vista compatible laptops with 4000RPM HDDs. These are a joke and really let Vista down. If your HDD is too slow, it doesn't matter how much RAM you throw in, you'll never get the performance you desire.
Think about it, XP installed is < 600MB, Vista is around 10GB. That's a lot more data it has to go through on load. You need IO speed.
vista is good if you have less than 1% computer literacy.
it is the opposite if you have 2 or more %
microsoft should make 2 tiers of o/s so they dont insult the intelligence of the latter group.
this is the same fatal mistake they have made every time since win3.11.
some pc users are not thick and they dont need or want an o/s that controls everything at the expense of performance and privacy.
but the ever belligerent microsoft will continue to make their product accessible by the maximum number of consumers.
so from that i gather that microsoft believes that thick people part with cash easier and in greater amounts.
a fool and their money.... etc etc
Why is the transition from Visa - XP PRO considered a 'Downgrade'?
How dare you insult my intelligence!!!
When you move from something as obese as Vista,which only works on it's own terms - XP Pro,which does work,even if some noobs manage to screw it up, I consider that move to be an 'UPGRADE'.
Where's your sub-calibre Charlie?
always get a kick out of how much people want to complain but then again there will always be people who cant handle change and cant even imagine change at the expense of security. pfft
Looks to me like Microsoft is admitting what everyone else knows already, that Vista is not cutting it in the business arena, despite their best efforts, and that ...
Ya know, WTF cares about Microsoft and Vista and even Windoze 7?
To hell with 'em all. The only reason I use XP Pro at work is because of the specialized applications that only run on Windoze. If I had the time, I'd work on getting them to run under Ubuntu, but there are only so many hours in a year....
It isn't that Hp wants Xp, its that Warehouse is full of Non NT6 equipment it needs to unload upon public. Only FOOL Buy Xp these days, if Hardware is of newest design, yet big names use very cheap mainboards & cheap mainboards just arn't ready for extreme data flow & string length of Vista Ultimate. Even 7 massive 16 gb of HDD Space is Nut Cruncher for cheapos, Big Box Names are Cheap KnockOff of Personal Computer built of best hardware available today. ST drashek
Vista is more concerned with calling home to microsoft through the TASK SCHEDULER than letting my programs work without crashing to desktop. Try and disable that task scheduler and see that you are not allowed to.I need NO scheduled tasks on my machine period. But microsoft call home spyware needs its so it's forced upon you. I hate vista and win7 will be more of the same cr@p. See here http://news.softpedia.com/news/Forget-about-the-WGA-20-Windows-Vista-Features-and-Services-Harvest-User-Data-for-Microsoft-58752.shtml
If you're worried about the speed of your RAM you've bought into fanboyism and the manufacturer's excuses to get you to upgrade. Unless you're doing intensive video transcoding you won't notice any difference, and even then the difference is quite small.
When I moved from 4GB DDR2-667 ECC to 8GB I looked at 667 vs 800 and it really isn't worth it.
I agree though that Vista is fine : stick on SP1, 2GB for 32bit, 4GB for 64 bit. Accept that the default user account isn't *quite* an administrator (it should have even less privilege, to be honest) and badger application developers to write their programs correctly, rather than dumping shit in the install directory and insisting on admin privilege.
Businesses (especially mission critical ones) have, for better or worse, avoided Vista, and will not be able to certify Windows 7 for many months after release. Many wait until at least SP1 of a new Windows version before even thinking about it. If Microsoft want to continue selling anything into those businesses over the next couple of years, they have no choice but to allow this flexibility.
vista isnt that bad?!?
how about: "you cannot delete your own files because you dont have the proper authority"
dont have the authority? i own the thing! i put the files on there! i control the power that goes into the damn thing!
the pc will do as i say not as i do. it is a tool. it has no brain.
it will not tell me what i can and cannot delete.
vista lasted about 2 days with me - during that time i was conceding comrpomises and delays in order to give it a fair chance.
i should have just formatted it as soon as i got the thing.
...and microsoft are happy to blatantly lie about its acute failure.
you can shove vista. its concept is based on pure vomit.
Vista isn't all that bad when you've got a decent set-up I aint talking high end I'm saying the likes of 2GB RAM Dual Core even slight low end and a decent lower end G.Card 8400GS or 3840.
Problem lies in the manufactures like HP, Compaq, Acer etc in PC worst they look good on paper. For example quite a few machines are INTEL C2D yet you can bet say a E4500 inside with 2GB DDR2 runs perfect togther. Problem is the motherboards they use the memory isn't PC6400 most of the time it's PC5300 and the m-boards max FSB is 533mhz.
I suppose 800FSB wouldn't make a difference but if you where buying a PC at £400-500 you'd want it to be using it's max potential.
As for this topic Microsoft will continie to extend the license to XP because there's still a demand for it. Vista is just XP with more eye candy and a better system for loading stuff into memory on a decent machine but XP machines should be on sale would save the annoying downgrade scheme.
This isn't anything particularly shocking - Microsoft hasn't announced an end date for when users must downgrade by. As far as I'm aware, they will continue to offer support for XP through 2014 and downgrade rights from Vista to XP will continue until then. This isn't anything unique to HP either - any machine with Vista Ultimate or Business has downgrade rights to XP Pro. Although if people think they'll be able to downgrade from Win7 to XP, they're sorely mistaken.