Posted on 04/12/2007 8:20:09 AM PDT by ShadowAce
Computer makers have been told they'll no longer be able to get Windows XP OEM by the end of this year, despite consumer resistance to Vista and its compatibility problems.
By early 2008, Microsoft's contracts with computer makers will require companies to only sell Vista-loaded machines. "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 Microsoft's relentless promotion of Vista, manufacturers are still seeing plenty of demand from customers for systems preloaded with XP, especially in the finicky SOHO market.
In a recent post on its Direct2Dell blog, Dell reaffirmed to concerned customers that it wasn't about to force small business users -- who typically purchase PCs piecemeal, rather than in large enterprise-style orders -- to shift to Vista, which has experienced a less-than-stellar reaction from many buyers because of driver issues and moderately beefy hardware requirements.
"Dell recognizes the needs of small business customers and understands that more time is needed to transition to a new operating system," the post read in part. "The plan is to continue offering Windows XP on select Dimension and Inspiron systems until later this [northern] summer."
"From a local perspective, the post was a reminder more than an announcement," Dell ANZ corporate communications manager Paul McKeon told APC.
"This was something we'd always planned during the transition phase since businesses will have different time frames to adopt the new OS. If you're a consumer, you're unlikely to be managing more than say 2.4 OS images at home, so it's less of an issue"
There's general agreement amongst PC resellers that Vista has provided a minor boost to PC sales, but hasn't produced blockbuster numbers. A similar story applies in the retail space. Figures from marketing consultancy GfK suggest that after an initial sales surge, around 1500 copies of Vista are now being sold through Australian retailers each week, according to a recent report in the AFR.
While Dell's post suggested it wouldn't be promoting Vista systems to the home market, manufacturers still have the option of selling XP-based systems for consumers this year.
He was referring to businesses, which you can find easily by going to dell.com, choosing small business then selecting XP on the left menu. Try telling them you want it for your business, but I’d recommend going ahead with Vista if you’re buying something new, would save you the cost and pain of upgrading later.
I've personally cost MS at least three Vista sales in recent months.
#1 - ATI 64 onboard 64 shared (of 512)
#2 - Intel 32 onboard 256 shared (of 2048)
Not nearly as kookie as those saying “switch over to this foreign crap ubunty instead”! XP is still out there if that’s what you’d prefer, I saw several boxed copies of it at Walmart just a couple days ago.
So your fine for video memory on both, but you are running under the minimum for #1. I still can't see how you get equivalent performance from the two. You must be swapping all the time on that slow laptop hard drive.
“that was the only way could find a laptop with XP on it”
Thinkpad....just bought one with xp
Linux has its place. Solaris has its. OSX has its. As yet Vista does not. HPUX and SysV no longer have a place.
Windows 2000 remains the best OS MS ever shipped.
I've been out of using desktop Linux for a while. Really, I just don't need it for desktops, and the last time I tried was just too much hassle. But with all this talk of Ubuntu, including from you, I may just have to download an ISO and try it out. I'll give you a report on how it runs on an fairly old, slow system that's currently running XP.
Warning though, last time I popped in a Knoppix CD to run some utilities on it the system seemed to run faster except for the app load times (it's a live CD, what can I expect?).
Actually it’s not swapping hardly at all, the only thing I would say is noticably slower is the boot up time, which does take about twice as long. The only app that’s horribly slow is VMware, but that is expected since it borrows enough RAM to run another complete O/S, so it’s really not an option on this system.
I’ll put a video up on youtube when I get the chance, showing the RAM and even 3D flipping through multiple desktops.
So download it.
What's the big deal? You have to download all kinds of stuff to get Windows in a usable state. Just different stuff.
There's no easy way to get around the codec issue on Linux, because of licensing and patent hassles.
And why the heck are you trying to play DVDs anyhow? Isn't it easier to watch those on a DVD player with a TV?
LOL
Seeing Vista in action sealed the deal for me. I will be opting for an Apple product for my next computing purchase.
Great post, you’re one in a million around here. That is impressive for free software, to provide support for 4 years. But Microsoft will have supported XP for over 12 by 2014. Free software is usually trying to catch up too much to ever sit on a single version for that long.
If you want to have a secure, relatively virus-immune system, you can't go wrong with Linux and one of the popular distros. I've used Red Hat Fedora Core series, Suse, Knoppix, and Mepis. If you're looking for:
email - Thunderbird (included in most distros)
web browsing - Firefox (also included)
word processing, spreadsheet, the occasional presentation - OpenOffice (also included)
work with digital pictures - GIMP (also included)
play digital music - Amarok (may have to find/install)
calendar/to-do list - Kontact (also included with KDE)
Who needs MS and all their expense, bug fixes, viruses, exploits, etc.??? All, ALL of the above can be had for free (well, time downloading and a CDR or seven) and perfectly legal. Updates are more timely and focused than MS.
Instead of Vista being a "no-brainer" upgrade, the real question is rapidly becoming "why MS at all?" Anyone who has ever played with the beryl 3D interface on top of Linux will never go back. ;-)
I like that! Couldn't agree more... Linux runs just fine on several systems I have that couldn't hope to boot Vista, and would struggle with XP...
Both offer "live" CD options. You can download the ISO image, burn a single CD, and (if your BIOS is set up to boot from CD) boot the CD(s) without committing to Linux. It'll give you a chance to poke around a little.
If you have 2GB of memory and a dual core, Linux will sing. Note, running from just the live CDs will be a little slower because you're pulling everything off a relatively slow CDROM drive, and it is compressed to boot.
Other good distros are Suse and Red Hat. Although the Linux community is somewhat ah "cheesed off" at Novel/Suse for making a deal with the devil (MS)...
There is really no need to be scared of the Mac OS. You’ll figure out the idiosyncrasies straight away. What you WILL be scratching your head about is what all these Mac drones are shouting from the rooftops about. We recently added on a client that has a fair amount of OS X workstations for graphics design, so myself and one of the other partners got drawn to be the Mac guys. I bought a MacBook Pro, and bought a used iMac off of eBay to start familiarizing myself with it. Three months into it now, and I’m begging someone to tell me what the big deal is. I don’t get it.
I do. I use Norton Ghost with good results. I recently lost a HD so I decided to try SCSI. Ghost won't go from IDE to SCSI. The truth is, I use my machine for many, many, many tasks, and I try allot of software and then delete it if I don't like it. I start to get conflicts and have to reinstall other programs over again. Sooner or later the registry is full of crap and it just runs better to spend a weekend reinstalling the 30 or so programs I NEED to run. I keep the images to get me back up when it's an emergency and I can't afford the time. I use 2 of the machines to trade stocks for my living, and one more for fun and throwing fits,( and trying Linux distro's).
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