Microsoft Australia will try to prod businesses into upgrading to its planned Windows Vista and Office 2007 products with a set of sweetheart loan deals. The loans will come from the Microsoft Financing operation, which kicked off in Australia in March and offers credit for technology upgrades that include services, hardware and Microsoft software. The aim of the loan products would be to make it easier to tempt businesses into buying the new operating system and Office upgrade along with the hardware necessary to run it.
If upgrading to Vista will make a better business case than staying with XP (or even windows 2000!), businesses will. The sad truth is that XP is more than good enough for most users and businesses. Microsoft uses their overall lockin strategy to force users to upgrade. A good example would be making the new version of Halo, one of their best games, only run in Vista.
This is similar to Windows OneCare, “Pay us, and you won’t get viruses or spyware. Don’t pay us, and you will.” Some of Microsoft’s business practices aren’t just unethical, they are deceptive and even borderline criminal. What will they think of next?
Except that you can use any other virus app in existance.
Also, the spyware stuff comes with Vista for free.
Microsoft is making the next Halo Vista only? Hadn’t heard that before.
Anyway, so they are making it for DirectX 10, which is Vista only (and would really be hard to backport as the graphics system in Vista is COMPLETELY different).
Once upon a time people were saying that 2000 is good enough and who needs XP. Now it’s XP is good enough, who needs Vista? If 2000 was good enough why move off of it and go to XP? 2000 is still supported.
Enough is enough. Stop bashing for the sake of bashing and bring up a real argument.
I don’t think it’s bashing.
The only things of value to me in XP are the cleartype (unavailible in Windows 2000) and the Wireless applet that got updated in XPSP2. Other than those two things everything else is more or less the same OS as far as I and many others are concerned. I can get nearly all of the GUI ‘improvements’ bundled as a part of XP in my Windows 2000 box with the side benefit being I can turn them ALL on or off at my discretion.
Really, what major leap seperates Windows XP from Windows 2000? It was a point release, NT5.0 ==>NT5.1 nothing more nothing less. Meanwhile looking at what Apple delivers in their ‘point releases’ makes me wonder just what Microsoft has been doing for the last few years…
–bornagainpenguin (not an Apple fanboi but face it they’ve been delivering while Microsoft waffles..)
I like the xp start menu!
I always have like 10 apps opened so its a lot easier to got start menu to get to My Computer or My Documents then it is to minimize everything to get to the desktop. I also like the commonly used apps list… has all my regular stuff in it.
I’ve grown to like the XP start menu myself, despite hating it in the beginning. That said I always remove a few items here and there to streamline it. The point is I can get the XP startmenu on Windows 2000 (or 98SE should I be running that OS) if I want it bad enough, by running Stardock’s ObjectBar. It isn’t exclusive to Windows XP like cleartype or the redesigned wireless applet I mentioned.
That said I’d like to add the login screen to the list of XP only features I like. I am a fan of the Welcome screen in XP and wsh someone wee abe to port its Neptune beta attempts back to Winows 2000. But my point is looking at Windows Vista doesn’t inspire me to run out and purchase it. There isn’t really anything that Vista has I can’t get in Windows XP at the moment. The folder thumbnails are nice but then again those are evolutionary, not revolutionary and as such I see no reason to run out and upgrae right away.
Security and built in theming was the reason ran out to grab my copy of Windows XP on that Sunday morning when was first released. Then I found out I had to either hack the theming support to allow me to use it or pay a third party for the ability to use what was already there. Security? ROTFLMAO… They’ve hyped security for the last four releases and haven’t delivered; why should I expect Vista to be any different? And I’m mostly a home user these days, I imagine the business suit types are even less impressed with the trend…
–bornagainpenguin
Microsoft is making Alan Wake Vista only, well, Vista and Xbox 360 (“Exclusive for Windows Vista and Xbox360” on http://www.alanwake.com). It’s published by Microsoft Game Studios. I was personally looking forward to this game.. it’s been in the works already for a while and it gets my attention because it’s from the people who made Max Payne and Max Payne 2 (I loved those games). They’ve released a trailer a long while ago and it looked promising.
I think this is really the sad thing about Microsoft also being a game publisher. This allows Microsoft to limit good games to their own platforms so as to push their own platforms… this includes using it to push people into upgrading Windows.
For example, Age of Empires III, also from Microsoft Game Studios, works only on Windows XP. You can’t use the DirectX argument for that one. All other recent games (not from MS) I know of, run on both Windows 2000 and Windows XP. I doubt it’s that much work to keep compatibility with 2000 if they wanted to. Btw, I still believe Windows 2000 is good enough (and btw, seriously, I think Windows 2000 is a reasonable, decent OS). But I have to admit I only use Windows rarely.
Hmm.. just found this link which says that the choice to limit AoE 3 to Windows XP was not based on technical reasons (second last paragraph):
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060209-6148.html
About the Alan Wake game… it’s already in development for a while, so it must have been running on DirectX 9 (in any case, I assume they weren’t giving a demo of their engine on Windows Vista with DirectX 10 during E3 2005). The question is whether it would have been a lot of work to maintain a DirectX 9 version, or to let their game fall back on DirectX 9 if DirectX 10 is not available. (I do not know the exact differences between DirectX 9 and DirectX 10) In any case, the game as initially anounced by Remedy Entertainment, and presented on E3 2005 was going to be available on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. After Microsoft Game Studios became their publisher, they made it exclusive for Vista and Xbox 360, Microsoft’s new gaming platforms.
I think it’s rather naive to think that Microsoft won’t use its position as game publisher to push their own platforms. Thinking as a business, it makes sense to do that. Making new games only available on the latest Windows release helps pushing the new Windows release, and also helps getting rid of older Windows releases they do not longer wish to support.
Whether that’s ‘unethical, deceptive and borderline criminal’… I’ll leave it to others to judge… but what the grandparent said, was not “bashing for the sake of bashing”.
2000 is as good as XP – it’s binary compatibly. And yes microsoft have pulled dirty tricks like this before. Age of empires 3 would only work with XP and not 2000. It worked perfectly though if you tricked the installer into not checking which version of windows you were running.
Edit
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Should have read the post above this post was a bit repetitious
Edited 2006-06-27 19:21
If you want a real arguement for bashing Microsoft here you go:
http://www.vanwensveen.nl/rants/microsoft/IhateMS.html
This is a stupid ploy if you ask me. The only reason that businesses would even need new computers is for the graphical effects, which are an unjustified business expense as they really don’t offer a significant enough improvement of usability to be practical. Else, it is just a normal upgrade, which businesses are known to be slow on anyway, so I can’t imagine that many takers.
Give out “loans” of Linux install CDs. Use existing hardware.
Do your upgrade and make zero loan repayments.
Sweet!
Quick, somebody ring Con Zymaris.
This article has already been trolled twice. Might as well mark it as dead.
Well, it just struck me as crazy to take out a loan in order to punish your business with Vista and additional hardware.
yecch.
Who in their right mind would go for this?
Vista and Office 12 don’t support standards anyway, such as ISO/IEC 26300, which is likely to be required by at least some institutions here in Australia:
http://opendocumentfellowship.org/Fellowship/AboutUs
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php?id=954149621&eid=-6787
http://www.govtech.net/news/news.php?id=96774
http://olpsc.org/main/?q=node/166
http://www.cebit.com.au/main/media/CeBITwire.asp?id=2
Anyway, any money we spend on Microsoft cruft just floats off overseas. We are far better off supporting open source in our IT infrastructure.
It would also save the BSA a great deal of trouble as well.
A win/win for all Australian companies!
No problems insofar as the Free Trade Agreement goes also, as we won’t be all snagged up with DRM and WGA stupidities. You can take your mandated DMCA-like bs laws and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine.
Edited 2006-06-27 14:51
Anyway, any money we spend on Microsoft cruft just floats off overseas. We are far better off supporting open source in our IT infrastructure.
It would also save the BSA a great deal of trouble as well.
A win/win for all Australian companies!
No problems insofar as the Free Trade Agreement goes also, as we won’t be all snagged up with DRM and WGA stupidities. You can take your mandated DMCA-like bs laws and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine.
Somebody give that man a New!!!
It is true, our spineless government will just bend over for the DCMA like laws. Is it really worth paying interest to upgrade to Vista?
As someone who works in IT in Education, we won’t be interested in Vista, and a lot of schools, in Australia at least, are still using Windows 2000.
There’s only been a few times now that we have upgraded to XP ourselves, and after that, will probably shift back down to Windows 2000.
Why? Because it was their most stable OS without all the pretty features.
A lot of companies, government, Healthcare environments are still using Windows NT4, Windows 2000, and they don’t have the funds to upgrade every machine to Windows Vista, and they probably wont want to.
Despite the reluctance in those areas, Vista will no doubt be a hit because vendors will push it out on new PC’s. And gamers will be forced to buy it because of DirectX10 which they most likely won’t backport to XP.
Honestly, Windows is fine when the right user is controlling it.
Do I think there are better alternatives? Definitely, but people will always stick to what they are used to, not what may be better.
Edited 2006-06-27 22:30
Telstra’s still rolling out XP as well. The rest are on NT4, there’d only be a few 2000 boxes left. Some 50, 000 boxes all up.
There was a Debian Linux project, but it got canned after the Vista deal was signed.
we have got vendor lockin and financial lock in… cool now where do I sign… na f–k that