Submitted by “Two days before the start of Professional Developers Conference 2005, I’ve received exclusive insider information about the product editions which Microsoft intends to create for Windows Vista.” Secondly, Microsoft has made available for download a preliminary vesion of the Vista User Experience Guidelines. Lastly, Brian Proffitt thinks Vista will be free. As in beer, that is.
“Starter Edition will allow only three applications (and/or three windows) to run simultaneously, …”
Is it just me or is this an example of extreme madness and stupidity? I’m just… confused. Maybe it will be free of cost, like a windows vista-shareware-edition but I seriously doubt it.
It’s almost the same as XP Starter Edition selled today for real small price… It’s aimed to attract new users, specially in 3rd world country.
I’ll also be selled as OEM by many in these countries…
It sounds like the starter edition is meant for the third world. But still, I don’t see why they would pay for Windows if that is they type of product they are sold. Linux and many of the BSD varients are free after all. While you will lose a bit of functionality due to the inability to run Windows applications well, it will likely be less significant than the Microsoft imposed limitations which they are paying for.
Of course I suspect piracy is the reason why Linux doesn’t have a chance here: vendors are probably under pressure to ship the starter edition, because shipping bare machines (or machines with pirated copies) does not serve Microsoft’s interests. I would also suspect that most of these machines get a pirated full edition of Windows once they reach their destination.
Does the “UX Guidelines” document contain any interesting screenshots?
Is there a link for the direct download of the paper by us Macintosh/Linux users?
On Microsoft’s Channel they have posted this link: http://www.w3bdevil.com/misc/VistaUI.zip for Macintosh users.
The author might well turn out to be right about free Vista, but he too easily dismisses the income stream that is the Microsoft Tax: 30 dollars (or whatever) off almost every one of nearly 200 million PCs sold per year add up to a very significant amount even by Microsoft’s standards.
Brian Proffitt is a fool. If he seriously thinks that Microsoft ‘selling’ Vista for free will cause Apple to stop making OS’s, then he definitely is so.
I pray for his sake, that this article is his attempt to get as many hits on his articles as possible.
I think it goes beyond being a fool, I don’t think he’s really too in touch with that reality thing.
I love this part the most!
“Users, when faced with that reality, will soon come to the conclusion “hey, I didn’t pay anything for this new Windows, but I am still having problems. Then there’s this Linux over here, and it’s stable and safe and just as free. Hmmm…”” LOL!!!
ummm… Sure they will! And pigs will be flying on that day too eh?
People aren’t going to switch from Windows if M$ makes it free. In fact, it being free will make them more likely to stay with it even if there are “issues”
Heck, I can’t even get people to switch from IE!!! I even know people that are well aware of the risks of using IE, yet they continue using it because that’s what they’re used to. Normal people just don’t up and switch, especially not for some crack induced reason like that! lol
I have no idea what he’s been smokin’! I also think it’ll be a cold day in hell before M$ gives away Windows for free. It goes against everything they stand for. Heck, they won’t even give away DOS! And hasn’t DOS been “dead” for 10 years now?
And there is also the “preinstalled OS” issue. Only a small fraction of people ever deviate from the OS the find preinstalled with their new computer. Regardless of the price and of anything else.
Yeah I agree with you about Brian Proffitt– he seems to be quite out-of-touch with reality. However, I had to link to his article because the submitter of that article is pissed off because I very often dismiss his items (can you bame me if they are like this).
Of course Vista won’t be free– MS generates a lot fo cash from Windows, and making it free will stop all that revenue. Yeah, a lot of people ight pirate Windows– companies sure don’t. If they can get Vista for free, then MS will lose all the revenue gained from selling Windows to corporations and smaller companies. That would be stupid.
You really shouldn’t just give in to the submitter, especially if all the articles that are submitted are of this quality. That’s what an editor is for. To edit stuff 🙂
No I can’t say that I blame you. The Linux Today piece is divorced from reality. Microsoft has invested a huge amount of money and time developing Vista. Windows is anything but a financial sink hole for Microsoft, and it’s not going to start making it one. Where in this entire piece does Brian Proffitt outline an actual advantage for this? What does Microsoft need good will for? It dominates the desktop market, and most people don’t care even the slightest bit about Microsoft; not everyone thinks about Microsoft on a daily basis despite using their products extensively. IE was dumped in order to dominate the web client market to protect its desktop monopoly (remember Wired et al predicting the demise of Windows to Netscape?). What’s there to be gained by doing that in a market you already own? I don’t know, and he doesn’t tell me.
And honestly I couldn’t be bothered to read more than two-thirds of the turgid document to ascertain if he’d ever tell me, because it was just not worth the time.
So please let me commend you for any and all previous acts of filtering out this sort of thing. In some alternate universe where Microsoft doesn’t make money from both Windows and Office, there’s an article written by an alternate Brian Proffitt leaving its audience equally confused.
One point from the article (I could have interpreted it wrong, the guy does seem to be a little out there) is that Windows could release a free consumer version of Windows while still requiring corporate users to pay for a license. There are certainly a lot of companies that have taken this route by adding certain terms to the EULA. Also, the free version is usually less capable compared to the non-free version or it simply doesn’t offer any support (various Linux distros are offered this way even if they don’t limit corporate users from installing the free version by way of a corporate restrictive EULA). Since Microsoft offered a less capable version of it’s software starting with the “home” and “professional” versions of Windows XP, it doesn’t seem impossible for them to continue. In fact, they seem to be streamlining their efforts to castrate their products (starter edition).
I really don’t think that Microsoft will be offering a free version of Windows either. The “genuine advantage” program seems to indicate that they care more about controlling Windows piracy through product updates rahter than wanting to eliminate the possibility of piracy due to a free version. But, then again, maybe they are just testing a method for differentiating between multiple product SKUs to deliver different tiers of service.
I can see the basis for a conspiracy theory, but I really think that Microsoft is too greedy to offer Windows for free unless they see some kind of competitive advantage first.
Is very interesting. I am looking forward to Vista.
I hope MS will put uPnP to more use in it’s apps and os.
Microsoft cannot give away Vista for free because if it has to recoup the development and other costs, it would have to sell its user apps at a higher price, which would attract clones and alternatives from other makers. For example, an OpenOffice.org version for Vista. MS may make Vista cheap, but the the alternative apps will still be there, and theres the hefty hardware requirements and the resentment over all that DRM stuff.
And why is it that everybody thinks Linux is under threat from Microsoft? People who bother with the whole Linux thing are not going to give up the stability, security, functionality and savings and go back to Windows, no matter how cheap it is ever going to be.
Microsoft cannot give away Vista for free because if it has to recoup the development and other costs, it would have to sell its user apps at a higher price, which would attract clones and alternatives from other makers. For example, an OpenOffice.org version for Vista. MS may make Vista cheap, but the the alternative apps will still be there, and theres the hefty hardware requirements and the resentment over all that DRM stuff.
And why is it that everybody thinks Linux is under threat from Microsoft? People who bother with the whole Linux thing are not going to give up the stability, security, functionality and savings and go back to Windows, no matter how cheap it is ever going to be.
I agree. Just like Windows users don’t normally switch to Linux because it is available, legally, for free, the same won’t happen with Linux users switching to Windows. Most Linux users have a copy of Windows but still use Linux, for one reason or another. So them giving Vista away for free would be pointless IMHO.
Unless they give Starter Edition away for free, I could see that happening.
I doubt many people would use the starter edition whether it was free or not, the exception might be people who don’t know much about computers are are contented just running an e-mail client, web browser, and word processor.
I could see older folks using the free starter edition, I could even see cheap schools using it too, but I’m quite sure almost everyone else will be either buying it or pirating it.
The only advantage I could see to a free starter edition is for people to test drive Vista before buying it, and with it crippled like it is that isn’t going to give people very good impressions.
>Brian Proffitt is a fool. If he seriously thinks that Microsoft ‘selling’ Vista for free will cause Apple to stop making OS’s, then he definitely is so.
To some extent I agree with the author. A free Vista will definately change the scene for Apple when it comes to attracting new customers. The Apple product suite is, after all, fucking expensive. While the Apple Desktop may appeal to some, their customers are assumed to be willing to buy expensive hardware and spare $200 a year or so for OS and i-whatever suite updates. While they might have a core of loyal customers, I think it will be very hard to compete with *free* to attract new ones.
On the other hand, I live in Sweden and do not know how general this is, I but hardly know anyone who has actually gone to a store and bought Windows XP. Some got it with their DELLs or HPs, the others are perfectly happy with pirate copies. This is one of the reasons I find it hard to make people try Linux over the uber-commercial, stripped and expensive Windows OS – they already have a (pirate) copy and run free applications such as AVG and Firefox, or pirated third-party copies of ZoneAlarm or whatever. They don’t really care much, as they already have theis “free” computers. So a free Vista may not really change much after all. I dunno.
To some extent I agree with the author. A free Vista will definately change the scene for Apple when it comes to attracting new customers. The Apple product suite is, after all, fucking expensive. While the Apple Desktop may appeal to some, their customers are assumed to be willing to buy expensive hardware and spare $200 a year or so for OS and i-whatever suite updates. While they might have a core of loyal customers, I think it will be very hard to compete with *free* to attract new ones.
How exactly will this change the scene for Apple? They are already charging for their OS, which runs on proprietary hardware hence if you even wanted to run OS X you’ll have to literally buy everything. Apple’s target market is different from that of MS or even Linux. Many assume that OS X will run without a hitch on typical x86 hardware, but that has not been confirmed by Apple. There is nothing stopping them from implementing some sort of DRM on the final version of OS x86.
Just because Vista is free, doesn’t mean that OS X will have to be free, or that Apple will get out of the OS business. Completely different markets there.
Whatever the author is smoking, I want some!
Too many versions. Seriously, IMO evry market they want to cover could be covered with the vanilla “Home” and “Professional” versions that they have now… well, had before they introduced “Media Center” and “Tablet PC” editions.
I think that Apple got it right; “client” and “server,” each with some definate overlap with the other…
Brian seems to be relying on one fundamental flaw.
Windows OS is a loss leading product for MS.
Uhhh, no it’s not. They charge 200 dollars retail for the home version and 300 retail for the professional version. I’ll have to dig up the link, but microsoft makes mad profits on every version of windows sold. The OEM versions maybe not so much, because of corporate deals via hp, dell, etc.
And Office is definately their cash cow though. It’s an interesting theory, but I don’t see them giving up the revenue stream from windows as it’s inevitable that office obtain OASIS-read/write capability.
That, and he underestimates Linux. I for one haven’t forgotten that Linux took the #2 OS spot from Apple, making MacOS #3.
Ahhh, here it is.(Google is a beautiful thing)
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-966219.html
Windows brings in as high as 86% margin. They won’t give that up.
86% margin is ***NOT*** a loss leading product.
It is other things which are loss leaders. MSN, the CE group, it’s home/entertainment group, and so on.
If it gave up the revenue stream it would have to give up some of these ventures, and they don’t want to do that yet.
Send this link to Brian.
My suspicion is that Vista will cost significantly more than XP Pro today. Ultimate edition is several spots above Vista’s XP pro replacement. If we take that Vista Pro will cost as much as Xp Pro how much will users have to shell out for enterprise or Ultimate edition?
The bottom line is that there are way too many editions, they are way too similar and they don’t seem to add much to what XP provides today.
Now the biggest issue will certainly reflect itself in the pricing. If memory serves me well, everytime you bump up from one edition to the next that will be an extra $50-100 minimum, so start adding.
According to what this fellow presented in the article, which BTW I’m glad to have read it, even though I certainly differ on his views, most of the editions don’t seem to provide a lot of value and that’s why M$ is adding all these subcription services to them. And my experience with M$ subscription services is that they totally suck.
Just as an example, the company I used to work for used differnt M$ services for I don’t know what reason. One in particular that really didn’t work as advertised is their famous Microsoft SharePoint Services. We used it for about a couple of months in this huge project, and people started to realize that data was getting lost, and there were major problems with connectivity. All in all, we had to stop using the service and implement a different solution.
Heck, this might only be one single case, and everyone else might be more than happy with their experiences using M$ online services. To that, I can only say good luck. I’m not planning upgrading XP for a while now. If at least Vista provided a jornaling file system, for example, or something else that for sure will make things better. Instead, it will certainly provide new basic capabilities that have been available to Linux and OS X for a while now. Microsoft will put their PR mega millions and machinery at full throttle, and people will flock to pay for the new version, regardless if it is only to run their same old applications. History will repeat itself once again…
…If at least Vista provided a jornaling file system, for example, or something else that for sure will make things better. Instead…
NTFS is a journaling file system
No, it’s not. It’s kind of a quasi-journaling FS, but not really one. Standard Microsoft SOP, kind of, but not completely. Among other things, that’s one of the many things the next FS was/is suppose to cover…
This article makes no sense. This article makes it sound like Microsoft only wants Windows around so that people will run Office. Why not make Office for other operating systems. Office for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Is Microsoft so pathetic that they just want Windows on people’s computers so that they can see their name everywhere. I doubt it. Microsoft definitely makes money off of Windows, otherwise it would scrap it. Too much work and money is spent building Windows when it could just make its Office suite available on other operating systems and make the same (more?) amount of money. I don’t think so.
“This article makes no sense. This article makes it sound like Microsoft only wants Windows around so that people will run Office. Why not make Office for other operating systems. Office for Windows, Mac, and Linux.”
Hidden API’s and borked standards are easier to pull off with an OS you control.
The day Windows is free, is the day that the “War on Terror” ends.
In other words…Never.
Actually…… the war on terror is winnable.
It’s the war on poverty which will never end. Look at the past 50 years of Louisiana/New Orleans.
The past 30 of africa.
The war on poverty has made these worse, not better.
Even the war on poverty is winnable
But it takes much more will to beat extreme poverty than to win against terrorrist. And in the case of America Nixon changed the war on poverty for the war of drugs.
As for the article…
Makes no sense to me
no
the war on terror can never be won
how can any army change a mindset ?
basically it is like this,
you cannot kill a belief
same way windows/macos/beos etc cannot kill linux
linux is not a “THING”
terrorism is not a “THING”
they are “concepts” and they cannot be destroyed
do not believe BUSH/FOX when they say they are winning the war on terror, it will only ever get worse
Actually linux is indeed a “THING” it’s a kernel
You might want to change linux to Open Source, Free Software, or whatever…those are beliefs. Linux is a thing and it can be killed. Release something better with the same freedom and linux will disappear…
Actually linux is indeed a “THING” it’s a kernel
You might want to change linux to Open Source, Free Software, or whatever…those are beliefs. Linux is a thing and it can be killed. Release something better with the same freedom and linux will disappear…
No, while Linux is indeed just the kernel, it still cannot be killed.
You can release other versions of kernels which are compatible or not, you can release a system to try and destroy linux,
but linux is just too big
the only people who seriously think linux can be killed, are people who have no concept of what linux actually is.
linux <> redhat
linux <> suse
linux <> mandrake/mandriva
linux <> 100 other various distros
linux <> a single target !
Now you release a new kernel, now lets say you call it HURD, it is free to use/modify/distribute and it does everything my linux kernel does….
why should I switch?
why should everyone else switch?
you cant kill linux
bsd kernels have almost the same freedoms, they existed before the linux kernel
did linux kill off bsd ? no
did linux kill off plan 9 ? nah
did linux kill off windows ? not yet
did linux kill off athena ? nope
you have not got a clue fella
Actually I didn’t say linux killed anything off. But Linux is a hype and hypes can be killed off when no one uses it.
How, lemme explain: Open Source software is only as useful as it’s developers make it. If a developer loses interest, he stops working on it. Some other developer chooses to pick it up, and continues. Great! The non technical users can continue using it, bugs get ironed out, features added…
But if no one else picks it up, the users lose out. The non developers realize that there are better solutions, they choose those.
How does this apply? Something better, more interesting comes along, developers take notice and move to that project…as do the users. Novell, RedHat, etc start losing customers and abandon their projects, close their doors, etc. Joe user has no commercial support anymore, doesn’t know any geeks and gives up…
You can kill linux…just create something better….
and with linux, that’s not difficult, it’s a mess. There are better kernels out there.
You have no clue, fella!
I agree. The “War On Terror” helps politicians like Bush solidify their power. The “War On Terror” has been great for politicians and they are going to milk it for as long as they can.
This has been mentioned earlier, BUT 7 VERSIONS?
Make it easier for the customer?
MY GOD! The average user already had enough confusion over Home and Pro. I don’t know how many people over the years that I have built a PC for asked what the main differences between Home and Pro, looked at me when I told them say, “That seems retarded to pay so much more for so little differece.” A difference that they themselves would never notice.
But now, users can look forward to choosing between 7 different versions of Windows. That definitely makes it easier. Someone said that they think Apple has versioning down right, well, I do too. One version for all your desktop needs. One version for server uses.
As for free Windows, NEVER GONNA HAPPEN.
the whole point of having 7 editions of vista is to capture inefficiencies in the market. since microsoft has an almost complete monopoly on the operating system market, the laws of supply and demand alone do not determine the price of the windows operating system.
this creates inefficiencies (take an introductory economics class to see why). in order to compensate (partly), microsoft creates 7 editions of vista, ranging from starter edition (for people who aren’t willing to shell out much cash) to the ultimate edition (for people who have cash to spare and want lots of features). this allows microsoft to collect profits from a larger range of people (wider range of incomes), but also allows them to collect the maximum amount people are willing to spend on an OS upgrade.
from microsoft’s point of view, once the software is written, it costs no more to distribute the started edition than the ultimate edition (except perhaps a negligable amount for additional cd’s or dvd’s).
my point is that the fact that microsoft is coming out with 7 vista editions is entirely contrary to the notion that vista will be offered as a free upgrade. if vista were free, why not simply give everyone the ultimate edition?
I had a call from a Microsoft rep the other day. They told me they would give me free copies of any product they offer as long as I used it to migrate from Novell, UNIX, or Linux. They are offering this through their partners to any customer looking to migrate from cemptetive products.
Yeah its free for you now just like a drug dealer giving you free crack to get you hooked.
But once hooked, the price you will have to pay will be extremely high and thanks to vendor lock-in you will have no easy escape.
I don’t like how they offer free stuff to people who could afford to buy their products in order to solidify dependence on MS office, but they don’t offer it for free to people who need it thanks to the dependence MS created. As a student I take it personally when they offer the department of education discounts or free copies of MS office, but don’t offer the same deal to the student which they know will need to buy it at full price in order to do their homework.
Personally I think the schools would probably use OpenOffice.org if MS didn’t wasn’t cutting them special deals, and then students could do their homework without having to buy an expensive office suite. As it is I can’t use OpenOffice.org even if it is reasonable compatible with MS office because the school only shows you how to do graphs and special spreadsheets with MS Office, and the two aren’t perfectly compatible nor do they have the same features.
If MS wants to do something nice, why don’t they give me a call and offer me a free copy of MS Office so I don’t have to shell out $200 CAD before I can actually do my homework at home, at the very least they could offer schools 50% off MS Office cupons for the students. The school library does have computer, but they are pretty bad and usually aren’t available because of the number of students who need to use them.
“offer me a free copy of MS Office so I don’t have to shell out $200 CAD before I can actually do my homework at home”
Use OpenOffice.org version 2.0 (even if it is still in beta).
Effectively a free copy of MS Office, insofar as being able to do your homework goes – unless you have to encode VB macros for Access databases or somesuch.
For more normal things – such as essays, documents, spreadsheets or presentations – you should be perfectly fine using OpenOffice.org.
You also get a vector graphics drawing program. All for free.
If you want a decent bitmap graphics editing program – use GIMP for Windows (they have improved the UI so now it is not quite as bad as it once was).
I truly believe that Microsoft has never made pirating their products difficult (until recently) because they’d rather have people using illegal copies than not using their products at all. Some companies have made hardware validation (CAD, etc.) a requirement since the 70’s with hardware dongles, etc. Why has Microsoft never done this, when they can obvioulsy afford to or use politcal pressure to force the hardware manufacturers to implement such a feature? They’ve got Intel implementing hardware validation now with Palladium, but it could’ve been done much earlier. I think it’s the old drug dealer tactic: I’ll give you the first taste free, to get you addicted, but then you’re going to pay.
When he says that Windows product doesn’t bring much revenues to Microsoft he simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about. There’s no need to discuss about this article, actually, since the basis is just plain wrong.
That doesn’t mean that MS couldn’t think about offering free versions. However, history proves that (like someone else said) MS can drive spreading of its product by piracy instead of offering free versions. At that’s why MS products are so easy to pirate.
Totally useless game of mind, IMO.
Here’s my two cents…
First cent:
If Vista was free MS would lose their OEM pressure.
Second cent:
If vista hardware requirements are too high,
Linux will whip it’s ass in every benchmark on
the same machine.
(think databases, servers, rendering, video editing)
A year ago, “exclusive insider information” was doing the rounds claiming that WinXP was to get a serious refresh in 2005 under the moniker “XP Reloaded”. We never heard another word about it after that. My guess is that the same will turn out to be true about seven different versions of Vista. In a word, it’s baloney. There might well be three or even four versions, but they will be very clearly differentiated, possibly geographically (i.e. an el cheapo version for the Far East or wherever).
Unless MS wants to infuriate everybody, especially corporate America, by trying to enforce a new system by abandoning WinXP as soon as possible in 2007. They’re greed enough perhaps, but dumb enough?
just quit worrying about “Vista” (which is only going to slow your computer down anyway… ) and go help develop a free version of windows.
Wouldn’t that rock? A free version of windows?
http://www.reactos.com/
I could care less when M$:V1ST4 comes out.. just give me duke nukem forever god damnit!
Take from:
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=161845&cid=13531005
Starter Edition, Sloth
Home Basic Edition, Anger
Home Premium Edition, – Pride
Professional Edition, – Lust
Small Business Edition, – Envy
Enterprise Edition, and Greed
Ultimate Edition.- Gluttony
I think these are better names for the editions.
I’ll take a Windows Vista Gluttony Edition, thanks!
Right, Microsoft is going to make Vista “free”. Need I remind you that these are the same people that have become so fanatic about pirated versions of Windows that they pioneered product activation and their “Genuine Advantage” program? Don’t kid yourself, you’ll pay a hefty price to upgrade, and proabably more than any prior release of Windows.
ah well whatever, with the up and coming xbox360 being $400 with a hard-drive and backwards compatability, they’ll make money somehow either way off all these i-pod clutching couch-potatos
Six dumbest ideas in computer security.
I don’t know why this suddenly leapt out at me.
Let’s see, Microsoft release their Starter Edition as basically as an “out” for the people in Third World countries who they’d otherwise waste time and money and reputation on taking to the cleaners for “piracy“. Since they’ve got the verifiablely legitimate MS Vista, Microsoft doesn’t need to look too closely. A “do as I say, not as I do” coupled with “ignorance is bliss“.
Of course Microsoft isn’t going to give MS WinVista away for free. But on the other hand, allowing “piracy” under the guise of the Starter Edition, primes the market, and keeps their MS WinAPI/MPC/dotNET engine running.
Anything to stop the erosion of their market share following Brazil and China’s decisions to choose to base their software futures on Free/Open Source Software with a Linux base.
They’re quite content to follow where Wang boldly led …
Anything to stop the erosion of their market share following Brazil and China’s decisions to choose to base their software futures on Free/Open Source Software with a Linux base.
I hardly believe this decision has anything to do with prices. It was a political decision to stop a US company (which has a proved backtrack for creating backdoors for NSA to exploit, like many other US companies) from providing an OS to become the foundation of computer systems for those countries.
The Shared Source Initiative MS launched was aimed to provide other countries a way to look into MS code and be assured that no more backdoors exist.
Yes, prices matter but in a different way. When Brazil had to launch its campaign to provide their citizens about 1million computers, they evaluated prices as well. When China stopped any public administration to build their systems around Windows, that was not because of prices but because a matter of national security.
“It was a political decision to stop a US company (which has a proved backtrack for creating backdoors for NSA to exploit, like many other US companies) ”
You do realize you ruin your credability tossing stuff like this out here. There’s plenty of things to hang around Microsofts neck without throwing rumours at them as well.
<>You do realize you ruin your credability tossing stuff like this out here. There’s plenty of things to hang around Microsofts neck without throwing rumours at them as well.[/i]
Yeah I do realize that, Mr. 4.x.x.x 😉 Just do some googling like :
http://www.google.com/search?q=windows+nt+nsa+key
Though I’m a Windows guy (as people reading this forums know) that doesn’t mean that I have to lie.
And please, don’t think Microsoft is the one to blame as usual. For example, ask IBM if they know anything about backdoors in Notes 😉
Gosh, I ruined my credability forever… 😉
HAhahaha. Try actually reading the articles. It’s a fucking joke. There was no backdoor.
HAhahaha. Try actually reading the articles. It’s a fucking joke. There was no backdoor.
Yes, sure… a joke…
On the other hand, I live in Sweden and do not know how general this is, I but hardly know anyone who has actually gone to a store and bought Windows XP. Some got it with their DELLs or HPs, the others are perfectly happy with pirate copies.
The situation isn’t different in The Netherlands.Maybe they will not give away Vista for free right now but in the long term itś a very dirty weapon towards Linux and OSX.
Many here seam to forget that Buiseness and consumer markets are totally different breeds.The companies don’t buy products but services and support software is just a smaller facet of the who deal.Furthernore their deal becomes less expensive too thatś true but wouldn’t the marketshare increase too?
Maybe there will be eventually a prize war.And during war time allmost anything goes.
Like the plummer,the material costs don’t outweight the service costs (hour pay,knowledge,garantee,after service etc)
Wonderful. As if some people weren’t confused enough with XP Home and XP Professional. Now they have to choose between Windows Vista Starter Edition, Home Basic Edition, Home Premium Edition, Professional Edition, Small Business Edition, Small Business Enterprise Edition and Ultimate Edition. That’s great marketing strategy, Microsoft. Now, no one will know what to buy.
Hell if they would just sell Vista at a resonable price say $100 they would make a killing. I cringe thinking about spending $299 for full version Microsoft OS(I refuse to buy upgrades).