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Microsoft to Simplify Downgrades From Vista to XP
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Jun 29, 2007 03:30 PM
from the where-do-you-want-to-go-today-besides-down dept.
from the where-do-you-want-to-go-today-besides-down dept.
castrox writes "Microsoft has noted that many corporate users want to run XP instead of Vista. They are now simplifying the downgrade process for top OEMs. Currently, all OEMs must call Microsoft whenever a downgrade is done. After the new procedure is put into place, OEMs may submit batches of keys to Microsoft online. According to the Microsoft blog on ZDNet, the 'downgrade software' will still need to be supplied by the end user. The deal is rather perplexing — it does not seem like you can convert the license since the only eligible versions for downgrading is Ultimate and Business. The company has more details available in a pdf document online."
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Technology: PC Makers Offering a Bridge Back To XP 523 comments
The Telegraph is reporting on efforts by PC manufacturers to give customers buying systems pre-installed with Windows Vista a much-sought way to downgrade to Windows XP. ( A few months back we discussed Microsoft's similar concession for corporate customers.) "It took took five years and $6 billion to develop, but Microsoft's Vista operating system, which was launched early this year, has been shunned by consumers — with computer manufacturers taking the bizarre step of offering downgrades to the old XP version of Windows."
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The downgrade installation manager... (Score:5, Funny)
Turbo Debuggerer
Solomon
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Turbo Debuggerer
Re:The downgrade installation manager... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems like an up-grade or at least a non-grade to me.
Parent
Not that this matters... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not that this matters... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Perplexing? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
What price do you pay for XP this way? (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, the joys of working with Microsoft software.
Home users get to buy XP again. (Score:5, Informative)
My friends tell me that what the summary reports is accurate:
This is true for home users. Your Vista license can not be used for XP, even if you simply upgraded. When you transfer your XP license to Vista, M$ won't give it back to you with their "Please let me use my OS" validation page. So, if you make the mistake of "upgrading" XP to Vista, you will have to buy XP again if you don't like Vista. Let's just say that people have not been happy with that and hope that M$ fixes it real soon.
Business users, I'm sure, get the usual double M$ tax. They pay the M$ tax when they buy the computer and they pay it again when they buy the OS and actual software, assurance plans and other nonsense.
Parent
Re:No Choice Purchase. (Score:5, Interesting)
First of all, corporate customers on the volume license agreement pay per full time equivilent employee, not per machine, for their licenses. This license allows them to install any office or windows pro products on all systems the company owns, provided they originally came with any version of windows from the OEM.
The license does NOT cover, however, the installation of windows XP pro, or vista business, on a computer that originally came wihth Linux (Dell's Ubuntu laptops), freeDOS, or MacOS (all apple computers). The corporate license of the OS is for the UPGRADE only to the professional version of the latest or previous release. In this case, XP or Vista.
The problems for businesses are many:
- businesses or government institutions who are on the license and don't re-image all their systems end up licensing XP pro/vista business TWICE for each employee.
- In order to not double pay, you must buy the system with a home version of windows, then image it using the corporate license to XP Pro or Vista Business. In this way, you pay minimally for the home version, then upgrade the system to pro using the corporate license.
- Many places do a hybrid method, and only double pay in some instances: they deploy large quantities of desktops or laptops at a time and order with home edition, then since they are managing them all with altiris they just stick the corporate image on them when they arrive. But they also some employees to choose which system they want to order for example, customize one specifically for them from dell.com. Then, those people always end up ordering xp pro because they don't want to have to re-load the system when they receive it from the factory. Since these people are ordering one at a time, its difficult to manage them with an automated deployment system like altiras because of increased down time and technician time.
So, its not a clear cut argument. It is definately a problem, and this complexity is 100% due to microsoft's stubbornness on the "upgrade" license (fact: you cannot purchase a MS OS volume license that is not upgrade only). MS should be more kind to their large customers and allow them to install on ALL systems, not just all MS systems. But they specifically do it on purpose as the loophole way around the DOJ lawsuit which prohibited microsoft from banning OEM's from selling non-microsoft computers. So this way, they get to have their cake, and still follow the letter of the judgement.
Parent
Re:What price do you pay for XP this way? (Score:5, Funny)
I'll do whatever it takes to make my business people-ready.
Parent
Baby steps. (Score:4, Insightful)
-jcr
Leave it to Microsoft... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do the companies have to tell Microsoft everytime they "downgrade" a PC from Vista to XP? Does the company receive some sort of credit for being forced to buy an OS they don't want/need?
Why can't they just buy the PCs with XP already on them without having to uninstall Vista, then re-install XP, then beg for Microsoft's forgiveness, THEN apply all the hundreds of patches - each of which also requires a reboot, and then...
Re:Leave it to Microsoft... (Score:5, Insightful)
Companies don't do it this way, they use Windows Deployment Services (formerly RIS), and install fully patched and ready to go OS and Applications using PXE boot off the network. Total Tech time (not process time) for a complete (re)install, about 5 minutes (or less). Anyone with more than a handful of machines would benefit from WDS(RIS) setup.
Right now, when someone complains about "slow computer" or other mysterious problem, I WDS the machine and a few minutes (30-60 mins) later, a fully functioning workstation, with all the standard applications required, and none of the cruftware/crapware.
It is the only way to go, if Windows is involved.
Parent
Corporate licensing... (Score:5, Interesting)
However, having to set up an activation server, have users log back in every 180 days... is just idiotic.
If we get audited, we get screwed anyway. So why make it so difficult?
Re:Corporate licensing... (Score:5, Insightful)
You also don't pay hackers to patch your ACCOUNTING SYSTEM!
I work for a software development firm. We build our own servers. We set up our own DNS, Firewalls, Phone System. Mail servers, and database servers all running Linux. We paid a company to set up the accounting system and it runs on a Windows box. Why?
Because we couldn't find a Linux accounting system that our accountant liked and none of us want to get blamed if it fails. Accounting is just too important to risk messing up. There are some new FOSS accounting stuff out that looks good but we have already bought and paid for what we have and frankly moving accounting systems is painful.
As I said IT ISN"T THAT EASY TO JUST MOVE TO LINUX. Even for a software development firm like the one I work for. Even then a good 50% of the people here are none technical and probably 90% have no Linux experience yet.
Parent
Re:Corporate licensing... (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course the other problem is frankly and I know people will hate me for saying it... Some of Microsoft's products really are very good solutions. I don't think that Outlook+Exchange+Blackberry has any FOSS equivalent for the enterprise.
OO.org is very new compared to Office.
Parent
Environmental reasons (Score:5, Funny)
Nice for businesses (Score:3, Insightful)
So if MS is letting businesses do this, can the average consumer call up and say "hey I'll mail you the original CD + key, send me back an XP disc + key"
University (Score:5, Informative)
When I build the image, any new models we receive have their drivers added to the image with this [vernalex.com] as part of our sysprep. We use Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 2.x (we use the DOS based DeployCenter to actually drop the image from our central imaging server to the workstations). I also have to modify the DeployCenter boot floppy (stored as an
I kinda went off topic there, however, the point is we have a MS Campus agreement for ~2000 seats (we are somewhere around 1600 to 1800, actually) for XP/Office2003/Vista/Office2007, so no matter what the computers we order come with, it's wiped and replaced with our own image (without even allowing the OEM drive to do its first boot).
The only people I see this affecting are businesses that use the machines as they come in, loading software on a one-by-one basis. It won't affect LARGE businesses (or those in the same situation as the university).
Home Premium seems to permit this too (Score:4, Interesting)
I was bored and actually READ the licensing information (well, most of it) when I first booted my new Toshiba laptop that came with Vista Home Premium.
A section in that document specifically stated that THIS license may also be used to run a previous version of Windows, and I think it specifically stated Windows XP and Windows 2000.
I remember thinking "Well, that's nice to know," but so far have not run into any major Vista problems to worry about.
Farce! (Score:5, Informative)
What the current process is - and I have a "manager's manager" (a guy somewhere in North America) on tape with this - is that you install using any legit media and a legit xp cd key.
Then, when the PC fails activation (which it will, if you've used the same key a few times), you call in, do the song and dance with the crap voice recognition system, talk to an Indian and hopefully* get an activation key.
This method will no doubt cause us problems in the future with genuine advantage, etc, but there isn't a damn thing we can do about that.
*I say hopefully because Microsoft reps don't know what the hell they are talking about and different call centers will get you different answers / route you to the wrong people. We've had a call where 2 managers were yelling at each other in Indian in a very heated argument while we sat wondering "wtf". Getting a key normally takes about 2 hours although we've got them in as little as 5 minutes after we've passed through the pointless activation voice system. The process is generally quicker now, although we dread calling. Oh... and we've gotten completely conflicting information - although MS is not supposed to generate xp keys, I've had several keys generated for me (if you bully the female Filipino csrs, they generally do stuff they apparently shouldn't)
Of course, for customer satisfaction, we've written most of this off - it totals in the thousands of dollars at this point. We've been pleading with Microsoft (we have system builder status, but we usually act as resellers) to get us a better process, because this is a waste of our time, but nothing has happened. False promises, missed deadlines, et al. OEMs were supposed to have a policy in place months ago, but as far as I know, not a single large company (from Seanix to HP to Dell and Lenovo) has the capability for their phone technicians to generate an XP cd key to solve this problem.
We're especially hit hard because we mainly deal with small businesses - usually under 75 people (we're in a fairly small town, so those businesses have slowly grown to get that "big"). If our customers were bigger, they'd use volume license agreements. As it is, they don't and we can't exactly say "fuck it" and install a corp edition w/ a wga crack which is what I've heard some of the smaller companies around here are doing.
Furthermore, I worked for Vista support for a few weeks during the rollout (if anyone wants a shitty, low paying job, head up to Sutherland in Vernon, BC) nobody knew what they were doing and we got conflicting information during training. When we were sitting on the line during the downgrade process, none of the indian csrs knew what was going on.
From what I understand from my contacts there, nothing has changed.
I'm assuming that Microsoft can reach all their outsourced call centers and provide them with the correct information (they have a centralized call logging application).
The fact is that that they have had several months and they haven't. CSRs are still giving out bad info and managers still have no idea what the hell the process is.
I don't want to say that Microsoft is intentionally making the process difficult, but I can't see any other explanation except for mass incompetence.
I know for sure that we haven't heard the good news or the new process yet... Maybe people in Canuckistan have to wait a bit for the news to filter down...
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If I read TFA correctly, the deal here is that you are buying Vista, but you get to run XP until you are ready to move the machine to Vista. If you just bought XP you'd have to buy a Vista upgrade later.
Re:Downgrade? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, they're missing an opportunity here - if they admitted it was an upgrade, they could charge for it.
Parent
Re:Upgrade to Ubuntu (Score:4, Funny)
Free Software means never having to tell anyone what you want to run on your computers...
As you have showcased, free software means telling everyone what you run on your computers!
Parent