Microsoft quietly offering Vista to XP downgrades

[richcz3]

Seeing Vista in action it's more a visual upgrade than anything else. It's features aren't essential updates/upgrades. From a business perspective, XP has has more than enough life in it yet. I have two upgrade copies of Vista and I don't intend to install either until SP1 or SP2 is released.

[Spin99]

Hey I think getting a PC with Vista if it comes with free XP can only be a really good deal?
Is this confirmed? I wonder if the OEM version allows you to get the XP CD as well.

Ideal would be buying Vista Ultimate 32 and downloading both 64 and XP.
Can you really do it free of charge? I'd run all 3, probably mostly XP for now..
Total bargain if you ask me.

[Boone]

Well, I'm getting a notepad computer soon and shall opt for XP even though I could go with Vista for no extra cost. Perhaps maybe when it gets a "service pack #2" I might consider it, but for now I'm holding a wait'n'see stance.

[attanze]

I have some friends who are bought laptops with Vista and I hear from they ONLY complains. Firstly the apreciated the new interface, but after a while they begined to complain about the compatibility and usability of this os. They want to change the Vista with XP but unfortunately, in one case (An Asus laptop) the manufacturer dont provide any drivers for XP. And Vista sucks badly.

[Saurus]

I have some friends who are bought laptops with Vista and I hear from they ONLY complains. Firstly the apreciated the new interface, but after a while they begined to complain about the compatibility and usability of this os. They want to change the Vista with XP but unfortunately, in one case (An Asus laptop) the manufacturer dont provide any drivers for XP. And Vista sucks badly.

Most people who bought laptops with vista and had problem didn't bother to get latest updates. I have two Vista machine, a 3 year old tablet PC and a new Asus laptop and both run solid. A friend who also had a laptop with Vista complained of stability, until he updated and now it runs very solid. I'm not saying updates will fix your friends problem, but it seems a lot of people jump to conclusion without determining if there is a simple solution. I'm looking for a CHEAP Vista desktop license, so if any of you guys who's not satisfied with Vista and already bought an XP...I'll buy.

[ThirdEye]

Vista looked decent until i decided to plug my mp3 pendrive in it. Lots of problems there.

[switchblade327]

Well, I'm getting a notepad computer soon and shall opt for XP even though I could go with Vista for no extra cost. Perhaps maybe when it gets a "service pack #2" I might consider it, but for now I'm holding a wait'n'see stance.

If you mean tablet PCs, I hear vista is actually better for these since it uses a much better handwriting detection... thing.

I personally won't upgrade until there is a better reason then "Microsoft wants more of my money." XP has what I need in an OS (hell, Linux has what I need besides compatibility) but make sure you read up on the pros and cons of Vista if you're going to use it with relatively new tech like a tablet PC. Remember, those weren't common when XP came out.

[Szos]

I recently bought a new PC and i didn't have an option, so i am running Vista now (or else i would still be running XP for at least another year).

Vista isn't horrible - and I say that because most of my hardware on that machine is brand new - but then again there are some hugely annoying things about it... some of then because of MS, but also some others are because all the other software companies are still transitioning either software from XP to Vista.

Until all your software is totally up to date there are definitely going to be issues (and that could easily take years)... of course that kind of 'forces' you to upgrade software that you might have no interest in upgrading.

I think MS deciding on offering XP as an option is not a smart thing... yes, some people will complain during this transitionary period, but offering up XP as a viable OS just prolongs the transitionary period... not a good thing in my opinion. Sometimes its just easiler to make these large changes in one quick move, rather than having a mix of OS'es for a long time.

[Tlock]

The XP > Vista transition issues are mostly hardware manufactors not being on the ball regarding drivers. I have been using Vista for almost a year now and on new laptops it works great! Considering they have had more than a year and half to do this, it is really sad and the reason some of them are getting sued such as nVidia.

The PPC > Intel on the Mac side was almostly completely seamless in comparison, aside for some performance issues on old apps everything else works perfectly. I think MS has to tie the .NET to the OS like Mac has done with their frameworks. Rather than going from 1.0 > 1.1 > 2.0 > 2.5 > 3.0 and now 3.1 between XP to Vista. This is not progress this is just a recipe for issues, which is why i also don't touch .NET. But the best part is VB6 works under Vista but VS2002 and VS2003 don't and VS2005 has quite a few issues.

[Spin99]

Heh thing is you need to face it, it's Vista time.
If you like to build monster machines for gaming as well, you'll have to run Vista
sooner or later. Vista will have to get there, as long as it may take..

Switching to Mac won't do it, even if you can play PC games online I doubt you'll be
that competitive or able to upgrade parts over time? You can't overclock a Mac.
You wouldn't want to do that?

So if there's a chance to get a Vista AND XP double deal it's a no brainer imho

[Szos]

...able to upgrade parts over time? You can't overclock a Mac.
You wouldn't want to do that?
:curious:
\What the heck are you talking about?


I believe the point that TLOCK was trying to make by mentioning the Mac is that they have changed both their OS and hardware dramatically over the last few years (both going onto PPC hardware, then moving to Intel hardware), and yet it was probably a smoother transition than the relatively simple move of going from XP to Vista. One of the reasons was that it wasn't a 'gradual' change really...Basically Apple 'decreed' that the OS/hardware was changing and they changed it. Period... it might have caused some individuals some problems, but as a whole it was a smooth transition.
MS's current move to allow XP to continue to be sold is just going to muddy the waters.

[Wonderer]

This post by pluMmet may contain offensive material. Click here to view it. </a>

Offensive for who? didnt understand that.

[DoubleSupercool]

I had Vista on my new 'puter (2months old, top of the line everything) for a week before I took it off and re-installed XP pro. I really didn't see *any* benefits to me whatsoever in terms of running apps but my printer wouldn't work and all my games, including new releases I had just bought, ran at about 50-70% of my old P4 with less memory and a much slower video card . . . hardly inspirational stuff.

I kept the copy of Vista as it might be worth it in a year or two with some service packs, but I don't see any point in the forseeable future.

[Tlock]

Szos, you nailed it right on the head. I wasn't implying ppl buy a Mac, but rather making a comparison of the 2 transitions. Like Szos said the XP > Vista is a very small transition in comparison to what Apple has done in the last 2 years.

IMHO, i think if MS tied changes to DirectX and .NET as part of the OS (not including bug fixes and minor updates). I think transitions would be much better. Also maybe then MS would actually use .NET in the OS rather than just push it on MS developers (less than 4% of Vista code is .NET). This way hardware manufactors and software developers can better plan their transitions to work with the MS upgrade roadmap. The Universal Binaries Apple developed are brilliant cause code can be developed for both the PPC and Intel systems. Also the fact that OS X can be installed on old (as old as 5 years) and new systems AND work well is also very impressive try that with Vista on a 1 year old system, heck try it on a brand new system it still slow.

This is not to knock Vista cause i do like it much better than XP, not cause it is better but cause i see a much better future for it over XP once these major issues are resolved. I am actually knocking the way they went about introducing Vista and the planning of it's role out.

[aaraaf]

Transition is just a pain.

There are a lot of Intel Mac guys out there who can't run software that they ran before, and a lot of people on Vista who can't run some stuff that was fine on XP. You guys nailed it when you said it was the software manufacturers.

Microsoft sent out info on what they were going to require a looooong time ago. Max changed its install directory and a handful of hardware people I know were working on changes to their devices. Apple didn't change their strange iTunes install, though, and there were a toooon of problems initially. (not that they are required to... and not arguing pc/apple... just one of the more obvious software companies not following protocol.)

The only really big problems with Adobe software that I've encountered are from their software that they bought and basically relabeled. Some of the menus in Audition and Encore don't show up. The font color is white on a white backdrop in the few that are strange.

The biggest problem and craziest transition that is causing issues is the porting over to 64bit. It's happening, but with companies like Adobe creating strange workarounds to use more memory under 32bit and not completely supporting 64bit, it's going to be a much tougher go.

As for Tablet PC... I switched my Tablet XP install over to XP Pro to get rid of the tabletPC functionality (handwriting recognition and so forth). Tablet XP really slowed down the drawing, which is all that I wanted it for (and not what it is exactly designed for). Vista lets you switch all of the tablet functionality off and on, and you can change it on the fly if you need to. A definite step up.

In 2 years when many people are running 8 gigs or more as a standard for memory, and our apps are doing some of the stuff ZBrush and Max only do on 64bit, it'll all seem worth it! :)

[Szos]

^^ Good point on bringing up 64-bits.,, because that throws a whole other ball of wax into the mix. We got XP, Xp-64, Vista & Vista-64.
My opinion is that Vista should never even offered a 32-bit version. Basically if ya don't have a PC new enough to be 64-bit, then chances are you don't have a PC fast enough to run Vista. Offering up a 32 bit version of Vista just makes this OS upgrade even more confusing.

[pluMmet]

This post by pluMmet may contain offensive material. Click here to view it.

Offensive for who? didnt understand that.

I'm very pleased with this action. I really don't want to offend but also want to be able to extend my opinions. :)

Thank you moderators :)

[scorpion007]

I just wish vista had the option to use less memory. 512 MB is a pretty big 'minimum' requirement, and 'apparently'* it runs pretty slow on that.

* Based on various online benchmarks I don't remember the URLs to.

[bluemagicuk]

Vista is not better than xp at anything

waste of money for the next year or 2 at least imho

[ThirdRail]

</a>

Offensive for who? didnt understand that.

I find that he has an 8800 Ultra, and I don't, very offensive.

[Szos]

I just wish vista had the option to use less memory. 512 MB is a pretty big 'minimum' requirement, and 'apparently'* it runs pretty slow on that.

* Based on various online benchmarks I don't remember the URLs to.
I would say that the "comfortable" minimum of RAM for VISTA is 2GBs... but honestly, I would consider that the minium for XP too for any kind of 'serious' work.

It is weird in a way though, cuz as I am working, I see that VISTA is eating more RAM, but I can load just as many applications at once on my Vista machine versus work's XP machine and yet it doesn't slow-down or hickup when you have a ton of stuff open. You would think that because it uses more RAM, that it wouldn't let you open up quite as many things, but I honestly haven't seen that to be the case. Of course it's only been about a month since I got Vista.

[pluMmet]

I find that he has an 8800 Ultra, and I don't, very offensive.

Yes...with billions of dollars at stake the ATI corporate trolls have insured that thru complaints they can control this forum and the minds of those that read it:D

[scorpion007]

I would say that the "comfortable" minimum of RAM for VISTA is 2GBs... but honestly, I would consider that the minium for XP too for any kind of 'serious' work.

It is weird in a way though, cuz as I am working, I see that VISTA is eating more RAM, but I can load just as many applications at once on my Vista machine versus work's XP machine and yet it doesn't slow-down or hickup when you have a ton of stuff open. You would think that because it uses more RAM, that it wouldn't let you open up quite as many things, but I honestly haven't seen that to be the case. Of course it's only been about a month since I got Vista.

Yeah, that's what I've heard (re: the 2GB comfortable amount). I've only got 512MB on this system, and my XP runs pretty damn fast if you ask me. Sure, 2GB would be great for some heavy rendering but the OS itself shouldn't need that much to run comfortably. (Right now I do mainly development work on it and some 3ds max).

The thing is (I haven't used Vista yet), if I install it on my current machine which runs XP really well/fast, and suddenly it becomes dog slow just from the upgrade, it doesn't sound too appealing to me. Sure I'll get around to upgrading my system at some stage, probably by then MS will release SP1 or maybe 2 and I'll have another look at Vista.

[bsm3d]

Interresting to know about this downgrade offer.

So 2GB is minimum for Serious work with XP (3D is the main one) If Vista need 2 GB to run smoothly...2Gb is a bit less for serious work with.

Why actually sell PC laptop/notebook with ONLY 2 GB and VISTA ? again in 32 bits...Today PC are ALL 64 bit technology...

Best is to sell PC laptop with 4GB and Vista64 directly...maybe to fill the "market" that's not the best for gaming and familly affair...

my 2 cents.

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