Re: Microsoft making vendors remove drivers

On Thu, 19 Jun 2008 23:22:00 -0700 (PDT), JeffM <jeffm_@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Jeff Liebermann wrote:
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.

You're over 24 hours behind Slashdot.
"$50 to Get XP On a New Dell"
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/18/1441230&threshold=5&mode=nested

There are a few inviolate rules in the universe. Gravity attracts,
radioactive elements decay, politicians raise taxes, and Microsoft
never really gives anything away for free. Thanks for the
verification.
<http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9099178>

I'm also wondering if Dell timed the demise of XP to coincide with the
night of the full moon is coincidental or satirical.

Once upon a time, I was involved with SCO and the transition from
Xenix to ODT (Open Desktop 3.2 Unix). That was about 1989. It was
very difficult to get people to switch from a known stable product, to
a more capable, but far more complex product. Numerous attempts to
kill of Xenix failed usually as a result of dealer revolts. History
repeated itself again with the ODT to OSR5 transition (about 1995) and
again with the OSR5 to UW7 transition. Basically, customers and
dealers are not thrilled with new and improved, if it costs them time,
money, diskspace, rewriting drivers, and recoding apps.

One would think that Microsoft would have learned from the Windoze 3.1
to Windoze 95 transition. However, that wasn't much of a lesson.
Windoze 3.1 was an unstable piece of crap, and the initial release of
Windoze 95 wasn't much better. Going from one disaster to another was
fairly easy. Going from Windoze 98 to Windoze 2000 was a shocker, but
MS had the interim version of NT3.5 and NT4 to get the users
accustomed to how it worked. NT was so much better than 95, that it
went amazingly smoothly (but slowly). It was functional because MS
didn't kill off Windoze 98 during the transition. They even released
an update in the form of Windoze ME *after* W2K to placate the
Neanderthals while they got W2K running.

Alas, that's not the way Vista was released. No more maintaining the
old operating system while the new one gets up to speed. This was
going to be a dump everything you own, throw out all your old
"incompatible" hardware, and migrate to the next big thing. I'm sure
some brilliant marketing type is now collecting his bonuses based on
the wonderful way Vista has been received by the GUM (great unwashed
masses). I'm not sure what MS was thinking, but a fast look at their
own history, and those of other operating system transitions should
have given them the clue that this was not going to be very smooth.

I just got a call from a customer wanting to buy a new Dell laptop. I
have him the $50 transition option. His answer was "$50 for a
parachute is cheap. Buy XP". I think that sums it up. He has a
variety of legacy insurance rating applications that are known to blow
up running on Vista. He needs XP. I was planning on doing a dual
boot, but my experience with multiple OS's and non-geek customers has
not been gratifying. Incidentally, I've now done 9ea Vista to XP
downgrades. All were because Vista would not run legacy applications,
and the vendors were not interested in patching old apps to run on new
iron.

I'm still waiting for evidence that MS is "forcing" vendors to remove
XP drivers from their web sites. I can't find anything with Google or
on Slashdot.

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@xxxxxxxxxx
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Microsoft making vendors remove drivers
    ... Dell no longer offers only XP on their products. ... I was involved with SCO and the transition from ... One would think that Microsoft would have learned from the Windoze 3.1 ... that's not the way Vista was released. ...
    (sci.electronics.design)
  • Re: A week with Vista as the primary OS
    ... Vista SP1 laptop from the Dell running XP. ... All of the software from the Dell is up and running. ... My Windows 3.1 language cross reference program even works flawlessly. ... report how successful his transition was from a point upgrade of his ...
    (comp.sys.mac.advocacy)
  • Re: A week with Vista as the primary OS
    ... Vista SP1 laptop from the Dell running XP. ... All of the software from the Dell is up and running. ... report how successful his transition was from a point upgrade of his ...
    (comp.sys.mac.advocacy)
  • Re: A week with Vista as the primary OS
    ... Vista SP1 laptop from the Dell running XP. ... All of the software from the Dell is up and running. ... report how successful his transition was from a point upgrade of his ...
    (comp.sys.mac.advocacy)
  • Re: Multiple Transitions
    ... DV-AVI source files captured by Vista differently than those captured by XP. ... 25 of them on the timeline, added a different transition between each pair ... is a Vista Home Basic one on a new $399 Toshiba Satellite laptop. ... A capture with Vista may have ...
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