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OEMs now have the option to provide XP downgrade to Vista Business, Vista Ultimate customers

Windows Vista is Microsoft's current flagship operating system for consumers. The operating system launched in late November for OEMs and was released to consumers on January 30.

Microsoft has long-touted the operating system as a revolutionary product for desktops and notebooks -- a product that would leave no consumers longing for the 5-year-old Windows XP operating system.

"Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 will transform the way people work and play," said Microsoft chairman Bill Gates on January 30. "Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 squarely address the needs and aspirations of people around the globe."

"The visual effects are spectacular; the navigation is streamlined and intuitive," added Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. "They make it much easier to protect your PC, yourself and your children online. And they work together to help you accomplish more throughout the day."

In the months following the consumer launch of Windows Vista, Microsoft played the numbers game with sales figures. The company announced in late March that it sold 20 million licenses of Vista within two months compared to just 17 million for Windows XP. The number crept up to 40 million by mid-May and by late July; Microsoft reported that 60 million copies of Windows Vista had been shipped around the world.

Microsoft expects to have shipped one billion copies of Windows by the end of 2008.

Despite the many successes that Microsoft has touted with its operating system, some consumers just aren't impressed. Some have derided Windows Vista as being a bloat-fest with a prettier GUI and slower performance than its well-seasoned Windows XP predecessor -- ironically, both of those "flaws" were leveled against Windows XP in comparison to Windows 2000 after its launch in late 2001.

Other features that have irritated a number of consumers include the intrusive User Access Control (which can be turned off), application and driver incompatibilities, beefed up anti-piracy/activation scheme and Explorer's inability to remember View Settings among countless others -- feel free to add your own in the comments section.

The numerous issues many customers have with Windows Vista are compounded by the fact that many feel that Microsoft's pricing for the operating system doesn't quite mesh with the perceived value offered over Windows XP. Windows Vista is priced at $199/$99.95 for Vista Home Basic, $239/$159 for Vista Home Premium, $299/$199 for Vista Business and $399/$259 for Vista Ultimate (full/upgrade).

As a result of the complaints from customers and businesses regarding Vista, Microsoft recently began offering an "XP downgrade" option for OEMs. The decision to downgrade a Vista installation is fully supported by Microsoft, but it’s up to each individual OEM to provide the option to its customers. Unfortunately, the option only exists for Vista Business and Vista Ultimate installations – Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premium users are out of luck.

Fujitsu, which took matters into its own hands by offering copies of Windows XP with its Vista notebooks and Tablet PCs, fully embraces Microsoft's decision.

"That's going to help out small- and medium-size businesses," said Fujitsu's Brandon Farris to CNET News.

Other PC retailers such as Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Lenovo also provide their customers with Windows XP if they so choose.

"For business desktops, workstations and select business notebooks and tablet PCs, customers can configure their systems to include the XP Pro restore disc for little or no charge," said HP spokeswoman Tiffany Smith.

"We've been offering it and we're still offering it," added Dell's Anne Camden.

While Vista Business and Vista Ultimate users have always had the right to downgrade to Windows XP per the licensing agreement, the actual implementation of the program has been lacking. The process by which to get XP media for new systems with Vista Business or Vista Ultimate pre-installed was often complicated and troublesome, but changes made over the past few months have made it considerably easier for customers.

Some companies, such as Dell, have even gone so far to allow consumers to purchase new PCs with Windows XP pre-installed; thus leaving Vista completely out of the equation.

With that said, the window of opportunity to acquire Windows XP is slowly closing. Direct OEM and retail license availability of Windows XP will cease on January 31, 2008.

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Well
By KeithTalent on 9/24/2007 11:33:09 AM , Rating: 4
While I do not doubt the validity of some of the complaints, I think there are many people that have no clue what they are talking about.

I have been running Vista for several months now and have had next to no problems. UAC is barely intrusive if you set things up correctly (it's actually a great security feature) and overall the OS runs smoother and faster than XP ever did for me.

I think a lot of the time, these 'issues' that people are having would not exist if they just did a little reading, particularly those people who say it is a huge memory hog.

Just my $0.02.

KT




RE: Well
By TomZ on 9/24/07, Rating: 0
RE: Well
By othercents on 9/24/2007 1:48:39 PM , Rating: 2
When you add all the "features" into Vista and compare it to XP, some people think Vista is slower. The menu takes longer to come up because instead of instantly being there is slowly shows itself to be cool. Someone told me today that the game Hearts runs slower and my only response is thats the way it was created. It looks better and is more animated, so it seams to run slower.

Most people want their computer operating system to take a background role instead of this foreground role that MS things it should have. Let me use my apps and let them perform well. Beyond that everything else usually just causes the computer to run slower.

Other


RE: Well
By Samus on 9/25/2007 2:49:13 AM , Rating: 4
Vista with 2GB RAM performs much like XP with 1GB of RAM.

XP with 512MB RAM performs much like Windows 2000 with 256MB RAM.

Windows 2000 with 128MB RAM performs like Windows NT with 64MB RAM.

Gee, go figure. Newer operating systems with new features and new security need more RAM. I would have never thought that computers would need more memory in the future!? /sarcasm


RE: Well
By leexgx on 9/25/2007 7:10:50 AM , Rating: 1
both of those "flaws" were leveled against Windows XP in comparison to Windows 2000 after its launch in late 2001

i agree and with your comment as well (i been useing XP when it came out and has been rock sold for my use)

but vista should of been an step forward all thay realy done is added DX 10 and Aero and UAC yes there other inprovements but you need an PC thats 20% faster then the Same spec pc to run vista as to XP

Xp and windows 2000 can run on the same hardware Vista cant
your OS should Not be Boltware and thats what vista is XP needs 64mb or so more ram than windows 2000 so 512mb is recommended but id recommed 512mb for windows 2000 any way

vista is an resource hog and you not got an fast pc to hide that it shows

i got VIsta and XP dual booting and vista is far slower even with the 4gb of ram

gameing on vista requres 3gb if useing high settings or game may stutter alot on high Q settings


RE: Well
By colonelclaw on 9/25/2007 11:49:34 AM , Rating: 2
can someone explain something to me, preferably someone who uses vista day to day?
i use my computer for work, i am a 3d artist, and i spend most of my day in either 3dsmax or photoshop. now when im working i want every last drop of cpu power and available memory working for me and my programs. all i want from my operating system is for it to sit in the background, let me work without interruptions, and never crash. so why does vista have sky-high requirements? why does it appear to want a quarter of all my memory (i have 4gb) to run and generally do it's thing? for me it doesn't seem to make any sense. also i rely on the power of my quadro gfx card to enable be to work fast. as far as i have read, vista will also be using my gfx card to do some of it's stuff - again, why? i need the gfx for my modelling.

i don't mean to bash vista unnessecarily, but it doesn't seem to offer me anything whatsoever, and even looks like it would slow me down. maybe you could confirm or deny this?


RE: Well
By elgoliath on 9/25/2007 3:49:54 PM , Rating: 2
What you are probably referring to is the fact that Vista doesn't typically let RAM go unused. It prefetches app's that you use a lot and preloads them into RAM so that they load faster. I haven't seen any more processor cycles going to Vista than went to XP (not that there aren't, just that I don't notice any difference and I dual boot with XP). My recommendation to you would be to just try it. We can go back and forth with this, but it all depends on your setup which we don't know.


RE: Well
By mindless1 on 9/25/2007 4:10:36 PM , Rating: 3
Why are you encouraging someone to try something when they have not expressed any need for it, quite the opposite colonelclaw has clearly expressed a scenario which XP comes closer to meeting.


RE: Well
By elgoliath on 9/25/2007 6:26:34 PM , Rating: 2
Perhaps you should re-read my post. I am not encouraging anyone to do anything. He asked some rather broad questions to which I gave a possible answer. I do believe I told him that without knowing his current spec's and more of what he is trying to do, his best bet is to just try it.

But if you want to really get down to it, more than likely 2000 will work even better unless something he needs is not supported.

Regardless, I don't think he gave enough info to decide which OS is better for him, but continue the FUD by all means.


RE: Well
By mindless1 on 9/26/2007 12:57:16 AM , Rating: 1
Actually, throwing around the word FUD causes you lose of credibility.


RE: Well
By elgoliath on 9/26/2007 12:18:59 PM , Rating: 2
lol- ok, I guess I have no credibility cause I said FUD. Do you even read what others or yourself write?


RE: Well
By mindless1 on 9/28/2007 2:47:07 AM , Rating: 2
Get over yourself, what you might have (or might not have) meant is not what I replied to, rather what was written.


RE: Well
By InsaneScientist on 9/25/2007 9:15:09 PM , Rating: 3
I can't claim to be a 3D artist, and I'm sure I don't need quite as much out of my computer as you do, but I do play high end games a lot, and, more importantly, I do quite a bit of video conversion (into H.264) on my computer.

I was actually quite worried about that initially, too, but I got to play for Vista for a while before release as a Microsoft beta tester, so I knew what I was getting into (I was really scared initially... you should see some of the memory requirements for the beta builds... >_< They finally got that sorted just a few builds before the final.).

I have, on several occasions, noticed that Vista starts unloading (a lot of) things from the physical memory (RAM) when you're doing something that demands a lot of RAM. Sometimes I'll exit from a game, and it'll be under 300, as opposed to the 700-900 that it normally sits at.
Since Vista tries to learn what you do, and loads those applications before you actually run them, it seems like the OS itself has a much larger memory footprint than it actually does. If those programs aren't running, though, which presumably they wouldn't be while you're trying to render something, then it's trivial for Vista to reallocate that memory space to what you're working on, since that memory wasn't really being used for anything more than an educated guess. And if you were running the program... well, it'd have to page it to the HDD if the program is idle, but XP has to do that too....

Personally, in what I do, going to Vista had a sideways effect on performance... it didn't go up at all, but it didn't go down any either (as far as processing tasks are concerned. Overall responsiveness feels much better than XP when using anything over 1GB of RAM... probably because of SuperFetch, the very thing that makes Vista look like a memory hog)

Like I said, though, I'm not a 3D artist (though I do use Photoshop a lot... I think I forgot to mention that), so the way it affected me may not be representative of how it'll work for you. Hopefully I've at least given you some food for thought, though. :)


RE: Well
By Nekrik on 9/26/2007 1:46:53 AM , Rating: 2
As far as Vista goes I don't see why you would need to be running any one of the heavier Vista versions. Ultimate requires the most resources, go figure, it has a ton of services. If you just want a workstation for a dedicated task you might try something lighter like Vista Business, it is much lighter than Ultimate, Premium, or Enterprise.


RE: Well
By colonelclaw on 9/26/2007 8:24:04 AM , Rating: 2
thanks for all the answers guys :)

btw the pc i use is a bog standard workstation - the newish 3ghz xeon dual core, 4gb ram, quadro 3500, fast hard drives etc

i think i'll just stick with xp64 for the time being until im actually forced into going to vista for some reason


RE: Well
By elgoliath on 9/25/2007 3:44:17 PM , Rating: 1
Vista should have been more of a step forward? How big of a step were any of these transitions:
3.x to 95? Big
95 to 98? average
98 to 98 se? small
anything to ME? downgrade
98 to 2000? average
2000 to XP? average
XP to VIsta? Average

The difference between Vista specs and XP specs is about relatively the same as the difference between 2000 and XP.

2000 can run on hardware XP can't. Go figure. Not really an argument against Vista unless you for some reason think the hardware industry is stagnant?

XP was slow on the first system I put it on.

It sounds to me like you have something else wrong with your system that you need to check out before you blame the OS. I've seen games run fine on Vista Ult with 1GB Ram and with 4 GB RAM. If your's is slow with 4 GB, as I said, there is something else going on.


RE: Well