Re: Microsoft making vendors remove drivers

On Fri, 20 Jun 2008 02:57:53 +0000, Guy Macon
<http://www.guymacon.com/> wrote:

I had the same experience recently with a laptop. Microsoft made
the manufacturer delete all XP drivers so as to force people to
buy Vista. A web search turned up dozens znd dozens of sites that
had linked to the manufacturer's website instead of serving up
local copies. I finally found the XP drivers on the vendor's
European website.

Any particular laptop vendor and model?

It's kinda old news with HP and Compaq for Win95/98/ME:
<http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/genericDocument?lc=en&cc=us&lang=en&docname=c01080344>
I haven't seen any XP drivers intentionally pulled from the major PC
vendor sites. I so some repair work and am constantly downloading
drivers for older hardware. What I have seen are web site
reorganizations, that break links to such things as driver downloads.

Hardware vendors would be nuts to comply with such a request. Many of
them developed those drivers without MS certification or help. They're
not owned by MS. In addition, having the drivers on their web site
results in a huge reduction in support calls, where customers don't
have to bug support asking "where's the driver"?

Other than a few unfounded accusations, Google search didn't find any
evidence of MS "forcing" vendors to remove XP drivers. Got anything
better?

Incidentally, MS is still back pedalling on killing off Vista. Dell
no longer offers only XP on their products. However, they offer
something called "transition", where XP is pre-installed, but a Vista
SP1 license and CD is included for eventual "upgrade".
<http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/sitelets/solutions/software/business/xp_smb?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd>
I haven't checked if the price was jacked up to include both licenses.


--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@xxxxxxxxxx
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Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
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