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Microsoft to require all Windows preloads to be Vista only in 2008

If you're not a fan of Microsoft's latest operating system, Windows Vista, you've no doubt already noticed the near-total absence of systems that are still offered with Windows XP. While change is a natural part of the computing industry, so is resistance to the unknown. However, as the saying goes, "Resistance is futile."

Microsoft will soon prohibit OEM manufacturers from selling Windows machines carrying anything other than Vista preloaded. "The OEM version of XP Professional goes next January," said Frank Luburic, senior ThinkPad product manager for Lenovo. "At that point, they'll have no choice."

Despite the promotions and hype surrounding Vista, many consumers are still looking for ways to get new systems loaded with the more familiar XP operating system. Some are turning to the "Small Business" sections of their favourite retailer, but even those will not be a safe haven in 2008. Dell has already reaffirmed to business users that it plans to "continue offering Windows XP on select Dimension and Inspiron systems until later this summer."

However, home users are still being left out in the cold. Users wanting to stick with XP for comfort or compatibility reasons will need to pay the extra money for a retail (or third-party OEM) copy of Windows XP, and those will surely get harder to find as the year continues.

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so what?
By Murst on 4/12/2007 12:30:56 PM , Rating: 4
Why does this even matter?

95% (actually, probably higher, like 99) of people who buy systems from Dell and the like want vista, not XP. There's a ton of people complaining (or was, not sure if it still is the case) that the XPS systems were not shipped with Vista but XP.

By 2008, vista will have SP1. The OS will have had over a year to mature, and I'd be extremely surprised if anyone but an extremely small minority would prefer XP. And if they do, they'll probably have several retail versions of XP on discs anyways. The exact same thing happened with Win98 when XP came out.

Some people will continue to complain that vista uses too many resources, etc, but the same was the case with XP. However, 2GB ram chips and dx10 cards should be very common and cheap by next year, and that's really the only problem that I can see right now with a new system (price-wise).

Anyways, the sooner the spam bots become extict, the better. Sure, Vista won't solve it completely, but at least it should help.




RE: so what?
By qrhetoric on 4/12/2007 1:12:09 PM , Rating: 2
If it was ok to ignore 5% of the market than nvidia and ati/amd would be coming out with insane cards all the time.


RE: so what?
By PrezWeezy on 4/12/2007 1:30:10 PM , Rating: 2
My company does computer support for a financial (very large) company. There home office will not allow any of them to use Vista, and most likely wont for the next several years. They have lots of proprietary software that doesn't work on Vista. And this isn't a little company, but they don't have the resources to deal with it all at once. This could present a problem for us in trying to get XP systems for these people and they are going to have to buy the more expensive retail versions. I would guess there are other businesses like them that will have a problem when XP is taken off the shelves.


RE: so what?
By Homerboy on 4/12/2007 1:42:26 PM , Rating: 2
count my company in on that too... we got issues if we can't get a PC with XP on it in 2008


RE: so what?
By JCheng on 4/12/2007 1:42:50 PM , Rating: 3
The company probably has its own volume license for XP.


RE: so what?
By Hoser McMoose on 4/12/2007 4:15:32 PM , Rating: 2
Exactly. And Microsoft's policies allow for a downgrade to any previous version of Windows that is still in any stage of it's support Life Cycle.

The volume license will allow companies to continue using WinXP on their PCs until 2014.


RE: so what?
By PrezWeezy on 4/12/2007 7:53:39 PM , Rating: 2
Actually...they don't. Because of the way this company runs, all of the people who are buying the PC's have to purchase their own PC's and their own software. It's a dumb system but that's the way they have chosen to set it up.


RE: so what?
By Xenoterranos on 4/12/2007 3:08:41 PM , Rating: 2
My company can't even use IE7 yet! We just upgraded to XP last year

ugh. At least we have Office 2003.


RE: so what?
By ATC on 4/12/2007 3:23:02 PM , Rating: 2
We're in the same boat only our mission critical systems have only just been upgraded to 2000. Only the administrative computers have XP, and that wasn't rolled out till last year.

But I think, as the poster above said, that companies like ours won't be affected much by this, if at all, since we use VL for XP and 2000.

The only thing is it would add an additional cost in work load to our IT department when we replace hardware that comes pre-loaded with Vista, it would then need to be wiped clean and either XP or 2000 put on before coming online.


RE: so what?
By hubajube on 4/12/2007 3:37:11 PM , Rating: 3
quote:
The only thing is it would add an additional cost in work load to our IT department when we replace hardware that comes pre-loaded with Vista, it would then need to be wiped clean and either XP or 2000 put on before coming online.
Good luck to them. Hope that Dell doesn't ship some hardware with Vista only drivers.


RE: so what?
By BMFPitt on 4/12/2007 3:37:38 PM , Rating: 2
If you're a big company that doesn't have volume licensing, and doesn't put a clean install/image on your systems when you buy them anyway, you have other problems to concern yourself with besides what Microsoft does in 2008.

Downgrade rights FTW!


RE: so what?
By cubby1223 on 4/12/2007 4:10:03 PM , Rating: 2
Ditto here too.

I've built an extensive web application for one company that demands the use of certain css tags relating to page setup and printing, which IE6 is compatible with, but the tags were dropped in IE7, and never in Mozilla/FireFox or Opera. Move to Vista, forced to IE7, web application no longer works properly, with no alternative.


RE: so what?
By GlassHouse69 on 4/13/07, Rating: -1
RE: so what?
By BladeVenom on 4/12/2007 3:40:12 PM , Rating: 2
Dell's top end game systems still ship with XP.


RE: so what?
By exanimas on 4/12/2007 7:22:02 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
By 2008, vista will have SP1. The OS will have had over a year to mature, and I'd be extremely surprised if anyone but an extremely small minority would prefer XP. And if they do, they'll probably have several retail versions of XP on discs anyways. The exact same thing happened with Win98 when XP came out.


I read something saying Vista will have no major service packs, but instead Microsoft will try and keep up to date by incremental patches. I don't have the article, but it may have actually been on DailyTech. And I agree, when I heard about Vista I figured I'd wait for a service pack or at least for them to work out a good majority of the "off-the-bat" bugs. Until then, my XP Pro runs just quickly and stably.

You're also very correct about the hardware. People complained XP took too much resources when it came out, as time goes on 2GB of RAM will become standard and no one will be complaining anymore.


RE: so what?
By Samus on 4/14/2007 5:37:28 AM , Rating: 2
they are forcing this slow CRAP down our throats? WRONG WRONG WRONG.


No more OEM software in 2008?
By ThisSpaceForRent on 4/12/2007 11:49:51 AM , Rating: 1
Does this mean pirated copies are back in? Maybe this is nothing, but if a company refuses to sell their software, but still supports it, are you really stealing it anymore?




RE: No more OEM software in 2008?
By Chillin1248 (blog) on 4/12/2007 11:58:16 AM , Rating: 2
No, you are still stealing.

Just because Toyota supports but does not sell their 2005 Camry anymore in favor of their 2007, does not mean you can go and steal all 2005 Camry's in storage.

-------
Chillin


RE: No more OEM software in 2008?
By tehgrump on 4/12/2007 1:29:54 PM , Rating: 4
hmmm... no.

What if the guy in charge of storing the 2005 camry could clone it at zero cost. Cars and software are not the same.


RE: No more OEM software in 2008?
By oTAL (blog) on 4/12/2007 1:36:02 PM , Rating: 3
Once again one has to add the fact that, unlike your example, it is not REALLY stealing as you are not depriving anyone of their property.
Nonetheless it is copyright violation, it is wrong and illegal and people should be aware of that. As a Software Engineer I would resent lost revenue resulting from piracy (although I still prefer a pirate to use my software rather than the competition... but that's another story).


RE: No more OEM software in 2008?
By Christopher1 on 4/12/2007 4:41:45 PM , Rating: 3
Lost revenue? Frankly, once a OS is no longer sold, in my opinion it should fall into the public domain and ANYONE can copy, give out, or do anything with it short of SELLING it.

That way, no lost revenue and people like me (who is going to make a dual boot with my Vista notebook for Vista AND XP) can still use XP for the VERY few things we need it for.


RE: No more OEM software in 2008?
By Zirconium on 4/12/2007 8:27:54 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Frankly, once a OS is no longer sold, in my opinion it should fall into the public domain and ANYONE can copy, give out, or do anything with it short of SELLING it.
Maybe when you develop an OS, you can follow that policy, but Microsoft has invested to heavily to simply allow its software to fall into the public domain. Secondly, by giving out XP, Microsoft will be cutting into people who would otherwise buy Vista, and that represents lost revenue.

I realize that software piracy is not the same as stealing a tangible object, but it does appear as though people miss the forest for the trees when dealing with this issue. They focus too much on the fact that pirating a $200 piece of software isn't quite the same as stealing a $200 object, while missing the fact that it is still wrong. I've pirated lots of software in my day (when I had no money), but I never tried to convince myself that what I was doing wasn't immoral, which is the impression I get from many of these posts.