HP offers free upgrades to Vista
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(InfoWorld) - North American customers who purchase certain Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) PCs can begin signing up Wednesday for free upgrades to Windows Vista once it is available on Jan. 30. HP also is offering customers support to help them with the Vista installation process if they qualify for a free upgrade, the company said. Customers can register for upgrades at this Web site. Customers eligible for free upgrades beginning Wednesday are those who have purchased or will purchase a new HP Pavilion, Compaq Presario or HP Digital Entertainment Center PC with the âMicrosoft Windows Vista Capableâ designation between Oct. 26, 2006, and March 15, 2007. Purchases must have been made direct from HP or from select retailers and customers can only upgrade to the version of Windows Vista that is equivalent to the PC's existing version of Windows XP, HP said. Microsoft announced in March that it is working with hardware vendors to make sure customers would know which PCs were capable or running or optimized for Windows Vista. Microsoft had planned to have Vista available on PCs in time for the busy holiday shopping season, which is currently in progress, but delays set the OS release back to January. In October, Microsoft and its hardware partners announced they would offer coupons for discounted or free upgrades to Vista for customers who had already purchased Vista-ready PCs when after months of early press reports about the plan. Analysis of the plan at the time showed there were hidden costs associated with the upgrades, costs that varied from PC vendor to vendor. HP's upgrade plan appears to be free to customers as long as they purchase eligible PCs and have access to HP technical support if they need it for the installation process. According to the vendor, customers who sign up for the free Vista upgrade will receive a kit with the OS upgrade DVD once it is available, along with an additional DVD from HP with drivers they will need to complete the installation process. On the DVD is a guide for following the correct upgrade procedure, HP said. The company also will make available the necessary Vista drivers on its HP Support Web site so customers can download them if needed. HP will upgrade that Web page as necessary so customers will always have the most current versions of drivers for the OS. HP also offers customer support for Vista as part of HP Total Care, its service and support program that offers a variety of plans for its consumer products, the company said. In addition to the usual technical support, HP is offering free online classes to help people install and use Vista, and also offers one-on-one classes with technical support agents. For more information on HP Total Care, customers can visit this Web site.
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(InfoWorld) - Notebook PC users who upgrade to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Vista may have to disable some of the new operating system's flashy graphics features to avoid seeing a decrease in battery life compared to Windows XP. The drop will come from the extra power needed to run the high-end processors, graphics cards and memory capacity required to support Vista. Microsoft has designed the new OS to deliver novel visual effects such as translucent "Aero" windows on the desktop interface and improved performance as a digital media hub. The business version of the OS was released last month with the consumer version due out next month. PC and hardware vendors see Vista as a windfall because it requires faster, more powerful computers. But just as sport utility vehicles burn more gasoline than sedans, the extra power comes at a price. "Vista demands more compute resources for a given application than XP does. So you need a heavier battery or you will have shorter battery life because of the greater demand for watts," said Phil Hester, chief technology officer of Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), in remarks made at the company's annual analyst day in New York on Thursday. Dell Inc. also said that Vista's appetite for computing resources will increase its draw on battery power. "If Vista is run in full Aero mode, with none of the Vista-provided power management settings turned on, it is likely to demand more power, and have an impact on battery life," said Dell spokesman Ira Williams, in an e-mail interview. "That said, if you run Vista in battery-optimized mode (using non-3D interface), we would not expect the battery life to be significantly different from XP in that scenario." A Microsoft spokeswoman confirmed that Vista will allow users to disable or tune down graphics as part of a power management package meant to keep Vista battery life on par with Windows XP. But she said the graphics have a smaller effect on battery life than other hardware in the PC. "Although it is true that the Windows Vista Aero theme and components can use more resources than previous versions of Windows, the relative impact to battery life is minimal," said Microsoft spokeswoman Kristin Farmer. "Microsoft is working with device manufacturers to ensure their device drivers are optimally tuned for performance and power savings. We recognize that battery life isnât just a Microsoft issue and involves our partnerâs decisions as well." Microsoft has designed Vista to allow notebook PC users to save battery power by turning down the screen brightness, volume, wireless networking and other attributes, according to the company's Web site. Vista also has a power-conservation mode called sleep, similar to the "standby" and "hibernate" modes in previous versions of Windows. A spokesman for Gateway Inc. agreed that Microsoft's power conservation steps can make a difference in compensating for the extra hardware. "We've done extensive testing and we haven't seen [shortened battery life]," said Gateway spokeswoman Kelly Odle. "While it is true that Vista has higher system requirements than XP, it also has more sophisticated mechanisms to allow for power savings." Still, users who need to preserve battery life will face a tradeoff in giving up some of the most impressive new features, said Richard Shim, an analyst with IDC. "It's a common criticism that any new Windows OS will have a toll on battery life," Shim said. "If you look back at XP and Windows 98, it took a while for folks to learn how to optimize the hardware. And as the PC market continues to rely on notebooks to drive shipment growth, this will be a big thing." Notebook PC users can manage power by choosing to reduce the time it takes their processors and hard drives to switch into hibernation mode, turn off their sound and Wi-Fi, avoid running 10 applications at once, and turn down the brightness of their screens -- the one component that consumes more battery power than any other computer part, Shim said. Some hardware makers are also helping out, as they are striving to squeeze an extra 2 percent to 5 percent efficiency out of the chipset, graphics component and BIOS, Shim said. However, they face a limited power budget, since battery technology has not improved significantly in recent years, and PC vendors are unlikely to specify a larger cell, since that would add to the PC's size, weight and cost. "That can add up to savings, but it's not enough to overcome the fact that Vista is not battery-friendly," Shim said. Â
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Microsoft's operating system from 1.0 to Vista.
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Microsoft says update improves setup and overall usability. HP had said it was waiting for the update before it released its first product using the software.
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Configuring a PC around the minimum hardware requirements of an application or operating system may not be the best idea for users who hope to get the most out of Windows Vista.
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TechWeb - If sluggish performance and numerous bugs in your shiny new PC running Windows Vista have got you down, you can downgrade -- at no additional cost -- to Windows XP. It's not hard. Here's how.
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Many computer users prefer to install their operating system "clean" by simply using their old Windows disc to verify they own a copy of the software. However, that appears to no longer be possible using an Upgrade version of Windows Vista.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-PackardÂ is introducing a long-awaited upgrade to its Unix operating systemÂ and launching new, affordable Integrity servers in a direct challenge to rival products from IBM and Sun Microsystems. HP Thursday is introducing an Integrity rack server with a starting price below $5,000 and an Integrity blade server below $4,000. Integrity servers, powered by Intel's Itanium processors, have been traditionally sold as high-end products used for mission-critical business applications. By offering Integrity servers at these prices, HP is aiming at entry-level servers from Sun, HP executives said. "We believe, with our entry class servers, it's very much targeted at taking that away," said Nick van der Zweep, director of Business Critical Systems at HP. "We think Sun's in a vulnerable position in the entry class right now." The new HP-UX 11i v3 features enhanced virtualization management capabilities, which should give it an advantage over IBM, said van der Zweep. IBM often touts its legacy in virtualization dating back to its mainframe computers, but van der Zweep said HP has been more adept at bringing virtualization to the server platform. The Unix operating system is a standards-based OS, but IBM, HP and Sun each add unique features to differentiate their products. HP has encountered delays in the development of HP-UX v3, which was originally scheduled for release as far back as late 2004. But HP, instead, focused on adding new features as they became available to HP-UX 11i v2 rather than hold them for version 3. "HP has deliberately not made this a 'must upgrade to today' release," said Gordon Haff, senior analyst at the research firm Illuminata. "The case here is that upgrade when you're ready." HP-UX 11i v3, shipping now at a list price of $150 per core, does have enhanced features over v2, such as running software applications 20 percent to as 30 percent faster than on version 2, HP claims. Notably, it runs Java applications faster, another dig at Sun, which developed the Java programming language. "It's not really clear what's new here," said Tom Goguen, vice president of Sun's Unix operating system, Solaris. Solaris 10 is a free download that can run on 735 different brands of servers, including HP, while HP-UX only runs on HP servers, Goguen said. Solaris 10 already includes a virtualization manager called Containers, and has security features he considers "second to none." HP, IBM, and Sun are close competitors in the $17 billion Unix server market and, combined, control about 80 percent of it, said Jean Bozman, an analyst at IDC Research. "Every time there is a major Unix bid out there from the government or some big business, all three of them are in there pitching their products and it gets very intense at times," said Bozman. However, what makes HP's latest Unix release significant is that HP actually went into the operating system kernel and made changes that are part of the reason they achieved an increase in application performance, she said. The introduction of the new $4,931 rx2660 rack server, shipping now, and the $3,827 BL860c blade server, shipping in March, should also put to rest questions about the viability of the Itanium processor platform, said Markus Berber, HP's Integrity Blades Strategist. Itanium has been slow to catch on in the market because relatively few software products were certified to run on it. Today, 10,500 applications can run on Itanium, more than double the amount of just a year ago, said Berber. "It is self evident that there are many OEMs who are voting with their dollars or yen or Deutsche marks or French francs in support of [Itanium]," he said.
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Velocity Micro is first system builder to offer Vista SP1
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Microsoft Corp. is considering discounts or other promotions during the holidays to entice consumers to upgrade their PCs with Windows Vista, even though the new operating system isn't due to hit store shelves until January at the earliest.
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Aperture 1.5, available for free upgrades this week, adds some consumer-level features.
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Microsoft said the free upgrade will allow unlimited virtual instances of the SQL Server SP2 database to run on servers that are fully licensed for SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition.
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Microsoft Corp. has released the second beta of a new server aimed at giving users a way to connect and manage Windows Vista PCs, devices and printers in their homes.
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Upgrading your Windows Vista operating system to the Vista Service Pack 1 Release Candidate Refresh is complex and not necessarily for all Vista users, not yet. Take an in-depth excursion into the world of Vista upgrades.
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Dell, HP, and others launch souped-up PCs to support Windows Vista.
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The un-PC dream lives HP has delivered a much needed refresh to its blade PC product line, upgrading the hardware and graphics performance of the systems.â¦
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Microsoft wants to make it easy for users to upgrade among editions of the next Windows.