Posted on 12/15/2007 4:33:44 PM PST by antiRepublicrat
Go to the Dell web site, and using the codes from a similar machine that has XP from the factory, search for the disks. (or go to driverguide)
Unless your time is worth nothing, just get a new hard disk.
By now everyone is aware of their strategy. Its twofold:
1. make money on upgrades.
2. Help the rest of the industry to make more money by selling the extra hardware to run their lead sled OS.
If you still want XP the best thing is to just run it in a virtual machine from within Vista, which you can pretty easily do and not have to throw your existing Vista install out the window. That also gives you additional backup options, and the ability to browse more securely inckuding discarding any changes since your last boot.
That's what happens when it's the default at the OEMs. The real question is how many people consciously chose Vista over XP. We see a lot of people choosing XP over Vista, especially given that the OEMs caved to consumer pressure and kept XP as an option.
All that’ll do is give you XP that is as slow and clumsey as Vista.
Mine runs great, but I do have good hardware, life’s too short to waste playing around with junk.
If you have some instructions or links to them for running virtual XP, please let me know. Did you have any problems with drivers? I need to run an HP Laserjet Pro printer and I do enjoy YouTube and Google Vids as well as other internet videos. I think Adobe Flash Player is needed for those.
Thanks.
Bah! You'll stop defending Vista as soon as MicroSoft drops it.
My whole shop is Windows. Vista bites dirt. It's awful. Backwards compatibility with proprietary, in-house software is the only reason that Windows was *ever* a success (and don't give me that "marketing" nonsense...no one can even name a MicroSoft commercial)...and Vista is blowing even that backwards compatibility advantage for MS.
Try this link:
www.alltheweb.com/search?cat=web&cs=utf8&q=running+xp+virtual+machine&rys=0&itag=crv&_sb_lang=pref
I’m not the only one defending Vista, look at this thread. Many people are quite happy with it, what is your evidence Microsoft will “drop” it? Sounds very far fetched to me, the only OS they’ve ever dropped was ME but it was lacking any significant new features and was released at a time there were many other new choices from MS.
You also keep going back to backwards compatibility, when Vista is just as backwardly compatible as any other new MS release, and much more backward compatible than other options like Mac or Unix would be. I’m not saying Vista is a perfect easy upgrade for everyone, no OS upgrade ever is, but it’s definitely not the disaster you keep making it out to be. It’s already running on about as many computers as these alternatives combined, even though return policies on $500-2,000 products are excellent. I know I wouldn’t have kept it if I didn’t like it, and being an IT pro making a change to something else would be a piece of cake, I run several different alternatives already.
Vista and Windows ME share the same embedded MS-DOS 8, by the way.
...And MicroSoft dropped DOS 4, too.
So when are you predicting it will be dropped? I assume you mean completely removed from the market, and extended support pulled?
I couldn't have mocked my own experience with Vista any better.
Not a chance on either. MS has too much invested in Vista. They'll keep relying on patches, OEM sales and the market momentum to keep it going until they can push out something (hopefully) better. The key is convincing the OEMs to drop XP, which they've been resisting. After that, Vista will be the default and Windows users will start getting used to it as the norm.
Vista introduced as a new OS would have failed miserably, no doubt. It's a testament to Microsoft's might and market momentum that it will succeed.
A not-so-nice way of saying that is Microsoft will ram Vista down the public's throat until they like it.
But who knows. As of SP2 in a year or so Vista might actually be pretty decent. But by then Apple will have released their next OS version, further leaving Microsoft in the dust, and Linux will be truly mature as a desktop system (it's just about there now).
No, not support pulled. By "dropped" I mean that MicroSoft will be asking PC vendors to default to a non-Vista 1.0 OS for new machine sales.
I'd guess by January of 2009 Vista as we are discussing today will be ridiculed if remembered at all. The Vista codebase as we are bashing today won't be MS's flagship OS by then, in my opinion.
...and quite frankly, Vista never should have been MS's flagship. It should have been a visual and aural/audio specialty release while Windows XPress was streamlined for even more speed.
That's a better marketing plan, certainly. Offer the "speciality" OS and if it takes off, then you switch it over to your flagship OS with its next patch/update. In the meantime, you dance with the one that brung ya with XP and variations on it.
So you think in just 13 months Vista will no longer be the default install on most PC systems shipped with Microsoft OS’s? Seriously? Based on what, other than your own personal dislike of it, and a few other random articles that don’t exceed typical complaints of new Microsoft operating systems? Have you forgotten how long it took Microsoft to build, beta test, and deliver Vista? Do you realize they are seeing record profits following their current plan? They’ve already equaled the installed base of the competitors in just one year, my prediction is 13 months from now they will have nearly doubled it. And why not, despite the doomsayers they are currently right on that track.
MicroSoft can use its current market position to ram quite a few sales through, but Vista’s lack of backwards compatibility, slow speed, and bugginess limit its overall potential and make it a bad candidate for MicroSoft to force onto businesses and consumers.
Frankly, the key complaints today being aired are from retail consumers...but the core Vista problems will run into an eventual corporate brickwall.
For one thing, Vista is too bulky for pocket devices. For another thing, corporations have a Trillion Dollars invested in legacy software that simply won’t run on Vista.
Throw in Vista’s bugginess and slower speed (e.g. Vista blew multi-tasking) and you’ve got yourself an inevitable market crash of that OS.
Right now, today, IBM can buy licensed copies of Windows XP, for instance, each with its own processor, and make XP available for sharing online (rent an OS or have full IBM compatibility available for anyone with xyz’s OS).
Now, IBM isn’t so mercenary as to shop that outside of their firm in such a way as to make a competing OS like Linux or Mac more IBM-compatible than Vista...but someone out there *could* and most likely *will* if MicroSoft pushes Vista for too long.
MicroSoft could be beaten by their own OS. Because XP offers superior functionality, a competitor could make XP available to users of an entirely different OS...and said competitor would comply with more of MicroSoft’s own design rules than would Vista...and would be faster...and would have fewer bugs...and would run the Trillion Dollars of legacy corporate proprietary, in-house software that makes businesses tick.
Just sayin’...
So is XP.
For another thing, corporations have a Trillion Dollars invested in legacy software that simply won’t run on Vista.
But they won't run on anything else, either. They should stick with 98, until they re-write it for something more modern, like they had to do when 2000/XP first came out.
Throw in Vista’s bugginess and slower speed (e.g. Vista blew multi-tasking) and you’ve got yourself an inevitable market crash of that OS.
Microsoft has announced it as the fastest selling OS of all time. And their record numbers from last quarter blew estimates out of the water. Need a link? How about a lot of them.
IBM can buy licensed copies of Windows XP, for instance, each with its own processor, and make XP available for sharing online.
IBM is out of the consumer business, sold it to the Chicomm government. Sure they'd like to sell cloud resources and support services to big business and government, but no one really wants a dumb terminal on their desk again. Some get stuck with one but no one really wants it, which is why it never penetrates beyond the lowest level.
a competitor could make XP available to users of an entirely different OS...and said competitor would comply with more of MicroSoft’s own design rules than would Vista...and would be faster...and would have fewer bugs...
Sure, several have been trying for some time to duplicate the MS API and provide Windows app compatibility on alternative OS's, but can't seem to even work the bugs out of their own code yet. Apple seems to have the best shot, yet look at their latest release. Tom's Hardware: Leopard Problems Plague Apple
Just sayin’...
And your posts are usually very excellent. But saying Vista is doomed and that MS is going to dump it completely just 1 year from now simply isn't supported by the facts.
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