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.
I will wait for Vista until I get a new computer and/or somebody hacks the DRM out of it.
False. Way false.
If you leave themes turned on with XP, you can just use the Silver color scheme and it looks much better than the XP Cartoon Plus one.
I have to disagree a bit. XP did bring a lot that 2000 didn't have, even if you turn off the Crayola user interface. There were a lot of kernel changes, including being able to deal with larger files, much better memory handling, better locking, hyperthreading support, better multiprocessing support, and in general a lot of important kernel updates. Hibernation and suspend were reworked to be a LOT better. And wireless (with SP2) works great. They also split out the core services for stability and security. Let's see, they rewrote Defrag, actually much of NTFS is a lot better.
On the server end, there's just no comparison especially if you're running IIS, where the security and stability are far beyond what was in 2000.
I'll never from XP or 2003 back to 2000, at least not willingly.
EVE online is an awesome game. Don’t know what you’d have to have for a laptop to run it tho. You might check out their forums at www.eve-online.com if you haven’t yet. Folks there are pretty helpful.
Is anybody else getting these curious system messages (on XP) that say, “Your operating system MAY be fraudulent, click on the message box to resolve this”
It appears to be a buy Vista now campaign as the link takes you directly to MS website. I’ve tried to right click and delete but it never goes away, I get about 5 messages everyday.
I think MS if flirting with Anti-trust stuff here or at least fraudulent advertising.
I eventually discovered that, but by then I liked my skins. It is much better than the Crayola look.
Too late. Dell lost what otherwise would have been a guaranteed purchase when I was shopping for a laptop a few weeks ago. All Vistas, no XP = no sale.
I suppose it hasn't occurred to you that this is a virus, probably because you clicked on something while visiting a website.
I bundled all that up under "incremental improvement". 2000 was such a quantum leap above 95/98/Me and NT 4 that all the improvements since have been relatively small by comparison. IMO, of course.
“I suppose it hasn’t occurred to you that this is a virus, probably because you clicked on something while visiting a website.”
I’ve run comprehensive anti virus stuff on it...it is not a virus. Why would a virus take me to a MS website to buy Vista?
Have you heard of FlightGear? Maybe not as polished as MS FlightSim - yet - it is coming along at a nice pace. They are actively working on getting it certified as an FAA PC Aviation Training Device. It's free, open source, extensible (if you want to try your hand at Flight Dynamics Models) and it runs on Windows (2K/XP), MAC OSX, UNIX, and Linux.
FYI
Just for the record, it's true. MS is clamping down on hardware independence, with Vista. The current trend is amazing: MS is turning into the old Apple and Apple is turning into the old MS.
One of the systems we had (in addition to DEC, Netware, PC, MAC) at my last job was a 3B/4000, SRV 4.2.
I don't know, and I'm unaware of anyone else having your problem.
When I have weird problems I search google for the message, to see if anyone else is having the same problem. If I had a valid MS copy of Windows and got messages saying it is invalid, I would go to my computer seller and ask why.
One small thing. I know for a fact that many Dell computers have Windows installed with a different licence number that what is displayed on the case sticker. There's a program called Keyfinder that will tell you what the real number is. There's a possibility that someone with a pirated copy has used your installation key.
In any case, after a day or so, I would consult google, the PC vendor and Microsoft, in that order.
and to taxed2death - redhat and SUSE. albeit not recently.
I run SuSE 10.2 at home on all my systems, even my T30 ThinkPad with WPC54G wireless card. Works like a champ. And my 80 year old dad uses it too. It wasn't that difficult to show him around the basics of the system, and how to launch Firefox, E-Mail and Solitaire.
If you haven't checked out SuSE or Redhat recently, you might want to give them another look.
I get zero hits in google for your message. If MS were doing this, the net would be littered with complaints. Either you are misreporting the text of the message, or you have some new and unidentified virus.
Are you seeing these messages while web browing?
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