Dell, Inc announced on Friday that it will offer Windows XP operating system to their personal computer customers after the June deadline. Microsoft has scheduled to pull the Windows XP operating system from store shelves on June 30 in an effort to upgrade customers to Windows Vista.
i thought microsoft gives and validates those registration keys ..how can other people continue to sell windows xp without getting new keys? ..if microsoft stops giving out new keys, wouldnt this behavior stop? does dell just continue to use keys already sold to them?
Simple, they simply use any of the available keygen’s on the internet! 😉
PS:
I don’t condone piracy… I’m a Linux guy and a big supporter of open-source software.
Ahem. That’s like providing instructions on how to hack your neighbor’s WiFi and then adding “for educational purposes only” in the fine print.
Back on topic, Dell is able to do this because of a deal it has with Microsoft. Dell’s customers want XP and if other OEM’s stood up to Microsoft, they’d be able to continue offering XP too. I’m so sick and tired of reading PC ads and seeing the prominent “<vender> recommends Vista…” OEM’s have to place that statement prominently in their ads to placate a Microsoft requirement. And they say Microsoft doesn’t have a monopoly? Why can’t OEM’s say they recommend XP or even Linux if that’s what their customers clamor for.
Edited 2008-09-01 01:08 UTC
Dell installs the OEM version of Windows XP without providing you with a valid XP product key. The OEM version doesn’t require you to activate, so as long as you don’t have to reinstall you’re golden, you still get updates and stuff.
BUT try to reinstall XP and you’re screwed. The little Windows license key label stuck to the top of your system has a VISTA product key, not an XP key. The provided Vista key cannot be used for reinstalling XP.
“Dell installs the OEM version of Windows XP without providing you with a valid XP product key. The OEM version doesn’t require you to activate, so as long as you don’t have to reinstall you’re golden, you still get updates and stuff.”
Actually you can reinstall XP all you want to, as the Dell version does not require a key to be upon install, nor does it require activation. If you reinstall you will still get updates as long as Microsoft publishes them.
I’ve bought quite a few PCs from Dell since the deadline, and have requested Vista to be downgraded(?) to Windows XP using downgrade rights, granted by the Windows Vista license.
Dell pre-install XP for you, but only supply Vista media. So a simple reinstall from Dell media isn’t an option (unless you have a copy of Dell’s OEM Win XP Pro CD from a previous purchase).
Dell don’t have a Deal with Microsoft to allow them to do this, any OEM could supply a system with Windows XP, infact you could do it yourself as long as you have a copy of Vista (to downgrade from), and a copy of the XP Pro Retail Media (you don’t have to own the license either).
To exercise downgrade rights your self, perform the XP Pro install using the CD Key supplied with your retail copy of XP Pro, but when you need to activate the product, don’t do it over the internet, instead opt to do it by telephone. When you ring the telephone number (provided by the activation wizard), don’t press any numbers, just ignore the menu system and just wait for your call to be diverted to a human (after two cycles of the menu options). At this point explain to the person on the phone that you want to exercise downgrade rights. The person on the phone will ask for the installation number, and should give you a new product key that you can enter. You can’t use your Vista license and use XP at the same time (e.g. on another computer, or dual boot), but you can upgrade(?) back to Vista at any time by simply reinstalling from the Vista media.
Edit: You can only downgrade from Vista to XP if you have Vista Business or Ultimate. The home versions don’t cut it.
Edited 2008-09-01 09:19 UTC
“Dell pre-install XP for you, but only supply Vista media. So a simple reinstall from Dell media isn’t an option (unless you have a copy of Dell’s OEM Win XP Pro CD from a previous purchase).”
Dell sends you XP and Vista media with these systems. If you do not get them, then your Dell rep has messed up. I have ordered at least 30 systems this way, and with each one receive XP Pro Media, Vista Business Media, XP Drivers Media, and Vista Drivers Media. Everything I need to install either XP or Vista on these systems.
You do realise that these computers come with a Windows XP restoration DVD/CD that does not require the end user to input a key at installation time – do you? or is this yet another example of an individual allowing hate to get in the way of a rational discussion?
Dell announced this back in April!
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/145194/dell_to_instal…
I see GAMES that run better in WINE than with Vista SP1. Vista SP1 broke so many applications for me I was forced back to XP SP3. I can only hope for SP4, long live XP, the final working version of Windows.
I thought the last working version was win2k?
XP drove me to Linux
XP isn’t too bad, I still have one machine in my network with that OS. Although I am 99% running Ubuntu.
Edited 2008-08-31 05:23 UTC
I use Linux for my day-to-day work and at home. I’m a software developer by trade, so I have to test my apps under Windows as well (unfortunately). I fully agree with you, Windows 2000 is for me the best Windows version by far!!
I’d be more apt to blame the developers then Vista for your broken apps. They only had 2 years to update them, and couldn’t get it done. I don’t see blaming Vista as a rational response. Application compatibility was actually pretty good at release, and has only gotten better in the interim.
Most problems I had with Vista was with hardware support, and that has almost completely gone away. It’s been a whole year and a half. Driver compatibility was mostly the fault of crappy or missing drivers, The hardware companies also wasted that 2 years. Microsoft released the first developer preview for Vista in 2005! Come on, it shouldn’t take that long to get fast stable drivers out the door. Thankfully, the driver situation has also gotten much better.
I’d rather move forward and gain more capabilities, even if the road is a little bumpy, then to stay rooted firmly in 2002.
Edited 2008-08-31 01:11 UTC
So basicly, every time ms decide to break compatibilty, developers should jump up and change every single piece of software they ever made?
Or else they get the blame for what ms decided to change.
They didn’t change anything for 6 years! other OS’s break compatibility much more often, Apple breaks things whenever they want, with little or no warning (64 bit carbon, anyone?)
Linux has no binary compatibility guarantees whatsoever, that’s why everytime you update your kernel, even a minor version change, you need all new kernel modules.
One of the major goals for every Windows release is compatibility, and they are mostly successful, more than any other OS developer. In fact, app compatibility is one of the main reasons for all the cruft that has accumulated in Windows.
People have just been spoiled by the long release cycle for Vista. You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.
I couldn’t agree more. Oh and that is why all other OS’s have much better (solid, stable and cleaner) code. They would rather rip out some bad code or design and rewrite it to fix it correctly. Microsoft just places a band-aid over it and hopes nobody notices – does that answer the other question of why there are so many security issues in Windows?
Vista is more like a rotten egg! 😉
I could be wrong, but IIRC Microsoft made changes to the driver model several times, and one very close to the release Vista release date. I believe this was due to loopholes around DRM that required re-jigging the driver model to change them. Again, I could be wrong, but this is murmurs that seemed to be coming from hardware developers regarding Vista. If this is true, who’s fault would it be then?
The last major change to the driver model I believe was the developers preview in 2005, so two years is about right.
If MS didn’t include DRM, then you couldn’t play Blueray disks. So, it was an easy choice, offer users functionality they want, at the price of DRM. What else could MS have done?
As someone who writes drivers regularly, any change, no matter how seemingly minor, is enough to set you back a fair chunk of time. Linux also sucks in this regards, trying to maintain your own out-of-tree drivers is a real pain.
My point is, the reason why drivers weren’t ready isn’t because the driver writers were slack, as you insinuated in your original post. Any change made by Microsoft, even if you as a user consider it relatively minor, is a lot of work for driver writers.
2 years is a long time, more than enough time. I just don’t see how the driver situation can be blamed on MS. Other problems with Vista, like the changes to the UI layout, are directly attributable to MS, but not drivers, they had enough time, and they wasted it.
In case you missed it the first time I said it, changes were made much closer to Vista release than two years. Maybe not a complete overhaul, but changes nonetheless – this is what slowed driver developers down.
It was not in the financial interest of driver writers to have poor drivers on Vista release – just imagine if it had been a roaring success (which I thought it might be) instead of the customer debacle it has become. The driver writers had no gain in stuffing it up, yet they did, and it was more than a few. It was Microsoft’s error in changing things too late and too frequently.
Shall I repeat myself a third time or have you put away the “2 year” mantra nonsense?
What have you been smoking – they had a vested interest in ensuring that Windows Vista turned into a massive win fall – “oh, sorry, we’ve stopped supporting that piece of hardware, but we have a brand new version of this hardware that does support Windows Vista!”.
“driver writers had no gain in stuffing it up” my ass, they had every bit of vested interest in turning it into a reason to force their existing customer base to upgrade their hardware and then turn around and use the oldest red herring in the book – blame the operating system vendor.
I disagree that changes were made after the 2005 developers conference, not where drivers and application compatibility were concerned. Pony up some proof, I’m not going to take your word for it.
Is the New York Times a credible enough news source for you?
http://www.nytimes.com/idg/IDG_002570DE00740E18002573FE006B7266.htm…
Cross-check with (which mentions Nvidia’s woes, the same Dell documents mentioned in NYT, and Microsoft’s internal messages)
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/28/0326209&from=rss
Still think that Vista was truly frozen from a driver-writer’s point of view (not just the driver model)?
That just proves that the driver manufacturers couldn’t get their act together in 2 years. I only see Dell making excuses, not MS introducing changes to the driver model.
This first paragraph from the article I mentioned states:
You replied with:
Yes, some driver manufacturers were slow in getting going (as mentioned in the article). However, even if they has started early they still would have been subject to “Last-minute changes to Windows Vista broke drivers, forcing key hardware vendors to “limp out with issues” when the OS launched last year …”. The article doesn’t go into specifics, but that’s what the 158 pages of supplementary material is for. Note also that it was not only Dell with these problems (although that was not referenced in this article, other manufacturers mentioned problems).
So, I have a referenced article (from 2008) stating that last-minute changes to Windows Vista broke drivers (a report from 2007). You continue to have blind faith in what someone told you in Tech-Ed in 2005, but no reference to refute the New York Times? What justification do you have for refusing to acknowledge the New York Times’ word? Is it all a big conspiracy by hardware manufacturers to make Microsoft look bad?
Well, there is nothing that can be done or said to correct such unreasonable, stubborn, flying-in-the-face-of-facts fanboyism. I will say, at least I’m experienced and mature enough to either shut up or acknowledge I was incorrect when someone corrects me with better proof than I have. Sheesh!
I want to see where MS changed the code, not where Dell claims they changed the code. Dell saying that is no different than MS saying that Linux infringes on MS IP. Show me where MS states the code was changed, and I’ll change my tune, otherwise, it’s just Dell making excuses.
So you’re saying New York Times, Dell and the other vendors are lying? I understand why you could think this, but please try to have some semblance of an open mind.
Not so. MS did this deliberately to cripple Linux adoption in the enterprise. Dell was attempting to explain why things didn’t work so well on Vista, they were not trying to prevent enterprise adoption of Microsoft. If you think through it they don’t have the same purpose.
Easy. Get the Vista DDK from your 2005 TechEd, get the DDK from Vista release and do a diff. I’m not gonna do this for you. Exactly the same? I’ve trawled the Windows WDK site (which would have indicated if I’m wrong) but it is such a hideous mess they don’t exactly have a handy changelog do they? Not very handy for developers to see what has changed in the WDK
Edited 2008-09-02 21:31 UTC
The New York Times can’t publish Tech News, they can’t write about it, and they don’t understand it. I would never quote them as a source ever. Have you ever read their tech news? It’s ridiculous
If Microsoft said no to DRM, you could still play Blueray disks, just not DRM ones. The disks would still legally be protected by copyright and the copyright holder can enforce their rights normally. DRM is an industry attempt to reduce the rights of consumers to less than those granted by existing copyright law.
MS needs to decide whether they get more money from customers or studios. If they get more money from customers they simply say they can’t play DRM media and it will die. Just as DRM audio CDs have. They will get fantastic PR as the champion of users. Microsoft would also be showing the studios who is boss (consumers, and their software representative, Microsoft).
At the moment Microsoft’s willingness to foist any-and-all DRM scheme into Windows draws the ire of any remotely-savvy user, even if they don’t pirate copyright material. It is users that generate far more money for Microsoft than any money obtained from studios (if any), so they ought to be careful.
For example: At the start of the DVD era the companies that sold expensive regionalised players were completely upstaged by those who broke the regionalisation. Guess who sold more units? Why, because consumers aren’t always stupid and any company forgets that will sooner or later get their comeuppance. Microsoft is not the only O/S in town so they shouldn’t pi$$ users off by putting user interests last.
“If Microsoft said no to DRM, you could still play Blueray disks, just not DRM ones.”
Yeah, tell that to the guy with the 60 inch plasma and the brand new media center pc, see how happy he would be about it.
You are right, but this is an edge case. Since we are attempting to examine things financially this is not the bulk of the market. Furthermore, someone owning a 60″ plasma is probably not going to use a bulky and loud PC to control it (in general – I’m sure there are a few exceptions out there).
Why must all copies of Vista be infected with DRM? Why isn’t there a “Media centre PC” version of Windows that has Blueray DRM capability, and other “desktop/student/business” versions of Vista that have no capability to play DRM-protected Blueray disks but are blessedly unencumbered with DRM?
Your argument about the guy with the 60 inch plasma just doesn’t fly with respect to the majority usage of Windows in the marketplace … most Windows PCs simply don’t have 60 inch plasmas attached.
Edited 2008-09-01 23:19 UTC
Microsoft released a Windows Vista Drive SDK that was stable around 2 yaers ago. The problem is that driver vendors, as said in a previous post, want to do the least amount of investment. Get the hardware out the door and let some other bugger sort out the driver and software issues.
To me, the responsibility for hardware and software compatibility fall on the lap of the vendors themselves, not Microsoft. We the customers pay *THEM* money to maintain compatibility with the underlying operating system as well as providing updates for bugs in their software.
Windows Vista just goes to prove just how lazy third party vendors are and how willing they are to milk customers then turn around blaming Microsoft for their laziness. As the previous poster said, they had over 2 years – there were no sizable changes. They could have developed and continued adjusting their driver if any changes/fixes were done during that process. It is about tracking changes as development moves along – it is stupid to think that some how a product can stay in freeze and vendors to suddenly start writing the drivers.
The drivers should be written as the operating system develops – that is the whole point of beta releases being sent to developers.
Edited 2008-09-01 21:04 UTC
You have not used “Great Plains” (a Microsoft product) on Vista. (Edit boot.ini to disable DEP then reboot to install service packs.) Microsoft’s own service packs for Great Plains will not install with DEP running and Mico$oft had more time to prepare than anyone else.
As to hardware: I have not had as many problems with the hardware itself as I have with Microsoft’s “Vista compatible” scheme.
When you see “Vista Capable” on the box it does not mean compatible with all flavors of Vista, rather it means compatible with at least a few – mostly 32bit, but sometimes (according to one company I have spoken with) Business Pro may not qualify either.
I have Ultimate 64. I bought “Vista Capable” hardware that I am either stuck with or have returned, depending on the circumstances of the purchase.
Confusing the consumer with misleading marketing is not going to foster a favorable view of Vista. So shame on Microsoft for not coming up with “Vista 32,” “Vista 64,” and “VISTA (meaning ALL flavors) Compatible.”
Instead, Mico$oft’s solution, as described by someone from one of the companies I have dealt with:
“As for the Vista compatibility logo, this is actually a Microsoft standard/requirement that is being used by companies in general for products that carry the Vista Compatible sticker. As Microsoft explains it:
“”Vista Capable” sticker has a reasonable
expectation of getting “the core experience that
Microsoft has spent quite a lot of money
advertising as the Vista experience.”
Unfortunately this does not guarantee it will run on Vista 64 bit, and for many products they do not. The Microsoft standard/requirement that does guarantee working with both 32 and 64 bit Vista is the “Certified for Windows Vistaâ€Â
(“..Ensures compatibility with 32-bit and 64-bit
editions of Windows Vista.“
I know it seems a bit nit-picky and can be confusing to users, but this is the mechanism that Microsoft has created for placing the various stickers on vendors products.”
I agree with “nit-picky” and “confusing” for users. I think it is reasonable to expect a product which is described as “Vista Capable”, without qualifications, to work with Vista without qualifications.
Think about, “this does not guarantee it will run on Vista 64 bit, and for many products they do not.”
They didn’t say “Vista Capable” excludes Vista 64 all the time, just some of the time, with no definition as to when and why.
I, as a consumer, would rather concise definitions regarding compatibility, in clear language, as opposed to what we have with Vista right now.
“Microsoft has scheduled to pull the Windows XP operating system from store shelves on June 30 in an effort to upgrade customers to Windows Vista.”
I would rephrase that into something like:
Microsoft has scheduled to pull the Windows XP operating system from store shelves on June 30 in an effort to force customers to Windows Vista.
Note that you have to pay for Vista AND XP Pro to get XP Pro installed. They’re just making some extra money, Dell and MS…
Offering XP on a new machine is a fraudolent activity because XP is just obsolete!
Edited 2008-08-31 12:55 UTC
How is offering customers what they want, fraudulent? As long as the customer knows what he/she is getting, you’re offering a valued service.
You might want to learn what a word means before using it in a sentence on the internet.
“Q. Who can install the downgrade software
or reinstall the original software?
A. An OEM (when authorized by end user), or the
end user.”
[1] http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/f/4/5f4c83d3-833e-4f11-8cb…