Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 5th Feb 2008 22:39 UTC
The Japanese computer supplier NEC has officially launched a product to let network administrators downgrade machines running Windows Vista to XP. The OEM first made the product, NEC FlexLoad, available to customers on 25 January. However, the product was officially launched on Tuesday. Customers with a Vista licence can purchase the two-DVD pack for GBP 7, according to David Newbould, NEC UK's product marketing manager. The first DVD sets up a partition on the hard drive and installs core XP files and drivers, while the second DVD installs the remaining XP files in the partition, said Newbould. NEC recommends that customers burn a Vista recovery CD before installing the XP partition.
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Member since:2005-12-15
Member since:2007-02-17
No
Actually, yes. If you read what I posted, I was talking about what would be of immense benefit to NEC's customers. Not NEC's suppliers.
After all, it is NEC's customers to whom this offer is being made, and NEC themselves say they cannot continue the offer past June.
NEC could easily support their customers past June by offering them an upgrade to Ubuntu instead.
NEC's competitior mentioned in the article, Dell, seems to have a far better understanding than NEC does.
Edited 2008-02-06 01:11 UTC
Member since:2006-01-06
Member since:2007-02-17
"Wouldn't it be inifinitely better for NEC's customers if NEC offered them an upgrade to Ubuntu?
Read for comprehension: They're running Windows. Ubuntu doesn't help them. " Read for comprehension yourself. The customers in question are buying new machines (they are not running anything on them yet, as they are new machines). They don't want Vista (customers that do want Vista are already catered for, and are not therefore the subject of this discussion). NEC's only offer to them is a downgrade to XP, and only then up until June. If a customer wants to roll out a whole series of new machines phased in batches over the whole year, then NEC's offering is not viable.
If instead they can get an upgrade from Vista to Ubuntu/Fedora/SuSe from Dell or from HP, then NEC's offer is very poor in comparison.
This is especially the case when you consider that anything legacy and Windows-only that a customer company must still support could be run either on Windows machine via remote desktop, or on a virtual machine under Linux.
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS9105885588.html
Edited 2008-02-06 02:12 UTC
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Member since:
2007-02-17
Wouldn't it be inifinitely better for NEC's customers if NEC offered them an upgrade to Ubuntu?
NEC could even do that for no charge.