Vista OEM 'Express' upgrades stuck at the gate
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People actually redeeming vouchers Europeans who bought a new PC in time for Christmas and were persuaded that they would get a Vista upgrade soon after the rollout by redeeming a voucher, are learning that demand for the upgrades far outstrips "supply".â¦
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Microsoft is set to offer either free or discounted Vista upgrades to those who purchase new computers during the holiday season, press reports indicate. To qualify for the coupons, a PC would need to be purchased after October 28 of this year.
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Windows Vista is causing problems for those trying to hook up a PC to a broadband net connection.
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(InfoWorld) - In an effort to simplify the distribution of Windows Vista and make it easier for customers to upgrade, Microsoft Corp. will include the various retail versions of the OS on one DVD instead of having separate DVDs for each Vista edition. In the past, Microsoft distributed each version of the Windows client OS on its own disk. However, in a move it is calling "Windows Anytime Upgrade" -- which cuts costs for Microsoft as well as making it easier for customers to upgrade -- the version of Windows Vista that a customer buys will be activated by his or her product key and will be on a disk with the other editions of the OS. For example, if a customer buys Windows Vista Home Premium from a retail store, he or she will get a DVD that also includes Windows Vista Ultimate, but the product key for the purchase will only activate Home Premium and its features and functionality, said Mike Burk, a Microsoft spokesman. "With Windows Anytime Upgrade, the idea is to provide customers with the most convenient user experience possible by enabling them to more easily and directly upgrade to a higher edition of Windows Vista from within their current edition," he said. Consumers will have their choice of several versions of Windows Vista when it becomes available, which is scheduled for January 2007: Windows Vista Ultimate, which will cost US$399; Windows Vista Business, which will cost $299; Windows Vista Home Premium, which will cost $239; and Windows Vista Home Basic, which will cost $199. Microsoft has said it plans to urge customers to purchase premium versions of Vista in favor of Windows Vista Home Basic, the entry-level version for U.S. consumers.
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U.S. government office not yet upgrading to Windows Vista, Office 2007, or IE 7.
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Two weeks ago, InfoWorld launched a petition campaign to save Windows XP. So far we?ve gotten more than 70,000 signatures, thanks to a passionate response from a wide range of XP users. We hope we can persuade Microsoft to keep selling XP licenses indefinitely, past the June 30 deadline, after which Microsoft has said no more shrink-wrapped or OEM licenses will be available for retailers, computer makers, and others to order. (Vendors can continue to sell by June 30 any XP licenses they ordered from Microsoft, but when they run out of those, they can't get more to sell.)We fully acknowledge that, even if we get a million signatures, Microsoft may stick with its original plan. If new Windows XP licenses come to a screeching halt after June 30 as currently planned, what can IT do to get more XP seats? The answer depends on your licensing arrangement with Microsoft. The short answer for most users, though, is that Microsoft will let people with Vista Business or Ultimate "downgrade" to Windows XP Pro under specific circumstances.Here, based on Microsoft's published documentation and on the company?s responses to our questions, is InfoWorld's guide to how you can get new XP licenses after Microsoft officially pulls the plug. Note that some of Microsoft's answers to us differ with what has been published on its Web site. Microsoft had changed some of its "downgrade" policies in summer 2007 and appears to have missed updating some of its documents.Retail licenses If you?re Joe XP user and you want additional upgrade or full-install packages, your only option is to stock up before the deadline. Only until July 1 can retailers order shrink-wrapped boxes of new XP licenses and upgrade licenses -- what Microsoft calls FPP (Full Package Product) licenses -- to sell to customers like you. Chances are these last licenses will sell out quickly after the June 30 order cutoff.Also until July 1, individuals can buy XP licenses online from Microsoft (such as when you have an installation CD and need an extra license for it, or when you need to load the software on a second computer). But not after that date.OEM licenses PC makers largely stopped selling XP preinstalled on new consumer-oriented desktops and laptops in spring 2007, although they remain available to business customers who order online or have a business account with OEMs such as Dell Computer or Hewlett-Packard. (Microsoft calls preinstalled copies of Windows "Direct OEM" licenses.) So larger businesses have by and large kept ordering XP-equipped PCs, although many individuals and small businesses bought Vista instead because they didn't know they had a choice.Today, people who have already bought Vista systems have two choices to get XP instead. One is to buy an FPP XP license before June 30 and install it over Vista.The other is to "downgrade" to XP Professional, using an XP Pro install disc you already have or a "downgrade" XP Pro install disc supplied by the PC maker. Essentially, Microsoft lets you use your new Vista license for an XP Pro install. You have such "downgrade rights", however, only if you bought Vista Business or Vista Ultimate.Note that you can't run both Vista and XP using the same license (so you can't, for example, install Vista on a virtual machine if you're also using the XP "downgrade" install as your boot OS). You get only one license and have to choose one OS or the other. And OEMs don't have to make the "downgrade" discs available to you.Also note that any version of Windows preinstalled on a PC is licensed only for that computer and cannot be transferred to a different machine, so you cannot use such "old" licenses on new PCs, even if you no longer use the old hardware. But you can use your old XP discs under the "downgrade rights" conditions above.After June 30, OEMs can no longer order new licenses of Windows XP. (The deadline is January 31, 2009 for white-box PC makers, who have what Microsoft calls a System Builder license. Other than the date, the limitations and options for installing XP are the same as for Direct OEM licenses.) So how do you get XP on PCs you buy after these cutoff dates?After the cutoff, OEMs may still install Windows XP Pro (not Home) on users' systems, but only for orders of 25 or more PCs. In this case, the systems must come with a Vista Business or Ultimate license, which is then transferred to the XP Pro install. Essentially, you're buying a Vista PC that the OEM can then put XP Pro on instead, using the Vista license to activate XP Pro. (Again, the OEMs don't have to provide this option.)If you buy fewer than 25 PCs in an order, the OEM can install only Vista. You can still get XP Pro on those PCs, though, if they came with Vista Business or Ultimate. Those two Vista versions include the "downgrade rights" that let you apply the Vista license to your XP Pro installation. You can use your existing XP Pro install discs or get an XP "downgrade" disc from the PC maker (if it wants to supply it). Remember that "downgrade rights" are not available in OEM licenses for other versions of Vista, and they do not let you install XP Home.Enterprise licenses Businesses that have volume Windows licenses can also install XP Pro after the order cutoff deadlines. If you have a volume license for any version of Vista (not just Business and Ultimate), you may install XP Pro on your Vista PCs using the "downgrade rights" granted in the volume license.To downgrade, you can use your existing copy of the XP Pro installation images. Microsoft will also supply an XP Pro "downgrade" installation disc or disk image after the cutoff dates. As noted earlier, OEMs can also do the "downgrade" for you in some cases."Most small businesses, enterprises, government agencies and educational institutions purchase their software through volume license agreements. As part of those volume license agreements, they get downgrade rights as part of the license," noted a Microsoft spokesperson. Volume licenses are available for as few as five seats."Subscription" licenses Some businesses don't directly license Windows, but instead "rent" it from IT support companies such as CenterBeam that provision Windows, Office, and other software on a per-user, per-month basis under Microsoft's Service Provider License Agreement. The service provider actually owns the license. If your business gets its Windows OSes this way, any XP licenses acquired through the provider will stay active, said Karen Hayward, executive vice president at CenterBeam. For new users after June 30, however, it's not clear if CenterBeam can offer XP, she noted. The service provider license does not forbid provisioning of XP after that date, but neither does it specifically allow it. CenterBeam hopes to have a clarification from Microsoft in February.The Microsoft spokesperson said that such providers' license agreements with Microsoft would specify how long each provider could offer XP, but that the June 30 and January 31 cutoff dates should have no effect on them.What happens to existing licenses Organizations can continue to use any Windows XP licenses they have indefinitely, even after the OS is no longer available for new licenses.For technical support and updates, Microsoft will end mainstream support for XP on April 14, 2009, for most editions, and it will end extended support on April 8, 2014 for most editions. (Extended support is not available for consumer licenses.) Both support mechanisms include free security updates. Hot fixes for other issues are free only during the mainstream support period; non-consumer users wanting hot fixes must buy a hot-fix update plan from Microsoft before July 14, 2009.
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Way back in June I suggested you hold off on buying a new PC until systems with PCI Express shipped. The new technology has the potential to dramatically improve performance because it replaces the pokey old
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Software giant battles activation of unauthorized copies of its new Vista OS.
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Install, spin three times, buy a monkey and wait Microsoft is now letting the common rabble get its mitts on the latest beta build of Windows Vista Service Pack 1.â¦
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Microsoft denied Wednesday that its software had arbitrarily changed Windows Vista's update settings, saying that users were responsible for the modifications that generated claims of unauthorized patch installs.Reacting to reports that first surfaced last Friday, a program manager for Windows Update said today that an investigation had turned up no evidence the Oct. 9 security fixes had switched settings in Vista's AU (Automatic Updates)."From the customer logs that we received, we found that none of the updates released as part of the October security release have made any changes to users' AU settings," said Nate Clinton in a post to a company blog. "In fact, in the logs we reviewed, AU in all cases was set to 'install updates automatically' prior to the October security release."Vista allows users to turn off AU entirely, tell the operating system to check for but neither download or install any fixes, instruct the mechanism to download files but not install them; or accept all patches without any additional approval.The claims that AU settings had mysteriously reverted to the "install automatically" setting began to trickle into a message forum on the AeroXperience Web site soon after the release last Tuesday of six security updates. Several users said that AU downloaded and installed patches even though they had specifically instructed Vista not to do so.But unlike last month, when a Windows newsletter revealed that Microsoft had updated users' PCs contrary to their instructions, the newest charges were limited to AeroXperience members. No similar reports, for example, were posted to the Windows Update support newsgroup hosted by Microsoft. During September's brouhaha, that newsgroup was thick with messages about the stealth updating.Certain that AU had not run amok and changed its own settings, Clinton fingered users for the altered state of AU. "I want to stress that the Windows Update client does not change AU settings without users' consent. However, AU settings can be set or changed in the following scenarios," he said, and then listed five; all require the user to take action or accept one option from several offered."During the installation of Windows Vista, the user chooses one of the first two recommended options in the 'Out of Box Experience' and elects to get updates automatically from Windows," Clinton said was one possibility. Another: "The user chooses to opt in to Microsoft Update during the installation or the first run experience of another Microsoft application such as Office 2007."Earlier, a Microsoft spokeswoman had been more blunt. "It may be more a case of someone clicking to change their AU settings but not realizing /remembering doing so," she said Tuesday.Users on AeroXperience writing to the forum after Microsoft wrapped up its investigation accepted Clinton's explanation. "The disparity between the Windows Update control panel applet and the OOBE (Out of Box Experience) update settings page (when first running Windows Vista) seems to be what's causing the confusion," said a member identified as Bryant.Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate
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Microsoft revise a program that allows Windows Vista customers to upgrade from a basic version of its OS to one of the premium editions.
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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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But warns it's a dummy installer with no update code
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Trust us Microsoft has offered little satisfaction to Windows Vista Ultimate users frustrated by the dearth of goodies used to justify the operating system's premium price.â¦
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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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update In order to get the next update of its Windows operating system out the door, Microsoft will delay some of the key improvements that had been planned.
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InfoWorld?s petition asking Microsoft not to discontinue Windows XP after June 30 has garnered more than 65,000 signatures since Jan. 14. And with those signatures have come thousands of reader comments that reveal why many IT organizations are up in arms about the June 30 deadline to retire XP.                                                    Three reasons dominate the resistance to Vista: performance, compatibility, and cost. All of them can be overcome with investments in hardware, software, training, and support. The question is whether the upgrade will help businesses increase sales, perform better, or serve customers more effectively -- especially when other IT initiatives with more ROI potential, from greening the datacenter to more effective partner integration, may fall back in the queue as a result. A recent Gartner study confirms that such direct business benefit is now driving IT budgets, not new technology for its own sake.[ SignInfoWorld?s Save XP petition to ask Microsoft to keep XP available after June 30. ]Lots of pain, little gainJohn Alber, CTO at Bryan Cave, a large, tech-savvy law firm in Los Angeles, was willing to go on the record when he expressed misgivings about moving to Vista over the same trio of issues. Many other IT professionals were not, due to fears about damaging their company?s relationship with Microsoft. Off the record, one technology vendor told InfoWorld that it has indefinitely postponed its conversion to Windows Vista after several months of testing because the demonstrable benefit was elusive. Similarly, the IT staff at a large California school district has no plans to convert to Vista; its technology director said that Vista takes twice the hardware resources.In some cases, the changes that Vista brings reduce productivity or increase costs just to maintain existing capabilities. That?s why John Hawkins, CEO of Adviser Media, ended up removing Vista from a new laptop and then from his company, which maintains several how-to sites aimed at baby boomers. ?Whatever I tried to do, the new computer fought me -- and usually, it won. By ?do,? I mean basic stuff: save a file, connect to my office network and the Internet, turn on, turn off, copy some files. It's my computer -- shouldn't I be allowed to do these things? Nope, not without lots of effort, wasted time, and sometimes, complete failure,? he wrote in his blog.Basic incompatibilities also drive him to go back to XP, Hawkins told InfoWorld: ?My ?favorite? is that Vista doesn't work with many Wi-Fi access points (the main reason our users demanded a return to XP) -- and Microsoft's fix is to tell users to replace them!? Scott Pam shared this frustration: ?There are lots of incompatibilities on drivers,? noted the independent IT consultant in Palm Desert, Calif.Even some of those who like Vista on their home computers have been unable to use it for work. ?I love Vista on my home machine. But it would be completely impossible to use at work. I still need to support applications running on Pocket PC 2002 and Windows CE 4.2 platforms, and for that I need the development environment I wrote them with -- Microsoft eMbedded Visual C++. This is not supported, and doesn't work, on Windows Vista. Even where the customer has upgraded some devices, a move to Visual Studio 2005 native device development entails a change of libraries, which can have complicated breaking changes. Oh, and they broke serial ActiveSync as well,? noted a U.K. developer who declined to be identified.And of course, those much-publicized performance issues loom large. ?It uses mega hard disk space and has a lot more running programs in the background than XP,? noted a support technician at a broadband provider, who asked for anonymity.User frustration equals IT frustration Support staff and IT consultants also feel the pain, mainly from the confusion that Microsoft?s new UI and security controls cause their users.IT consultant Scott Pam is frustrated with the burden that Vista has placed on him. ?Customers are panicking,? he says, since they can?t find their data or common controls in the new UI and assume the data has been lost or their Vista PC is broken. ?So I go back for free [to explain how to use Vista], costing hundreds of dollars of my time.? He asks why Microsoft could not have offered its new security approach and other features without breaking the familiar Windows XP UI. ?Apple added new capabilities in all the versions since Mac OS X 10.2 but kept the interface, drivers, and applications mostly compatible. Microsoft changed everything.?The broadband company?s support technician faces the same user frustration. ?A lot of us cringe when we get a call regarding Vista. It is hard to understand, hard to find what we need, and hard to explain it to customers,? she said.The new UAC (user access control) security approach bedevils both IT consultant Pam and his clients. Not only do users not know how to respond to endless ?are you sure? messages about possible security threats, Vista?s lockdown of users? own files areas keeps clients from being able to work. He cites a user who dutifully copied all his data to a USB drive before converting to Vista, only to discover that Vista would not let him copy the data back because the USB drive wasn?t accessed through administrator privileges. ?That?s ridiculous -- it?s his drive,? Pam said. The idea of having to log in as an administrator just doesn?t occur to users, he noted.Jason Sage, a developer and software engineer who didn?t want his company named, is also frustrated by overzealous security in Vista, which he believes works against the standard set by Microsoft .Net and Visual Studio. True, in Vista, Microsoft has documented what developers need to do to give applications permission to access their own configuration files. But Sage thinks the basic approach is wrong. ?What we have now is applications running as the user. This is too much responsibility for many users who have no idea what all the software on their machine is doing while running as them.?Other developers are frustrated by the change in security and other core OS services. Noted one developer working at a small company: ?My company has had several developers forced to use Vista while servicing our clients. The result has been an absolute nightmare. Applications don't work, drivers collide, the screen loses integrity at random times, we encounter file data loss or corruption, our network-based automated backups don't work, etc.?Roadblocks on rollback to XP  Given the many frustrations he?s encountered, Pam advises his clients not to install Vista or to replace Vista with XP on new computers. And he seethes that he?ll have to get each of the five different Vista versions, and either five PCs to run them on or a Mac or Unix box with enough virtual machine capability to run them all, just so he can duplicate customers? environments.?Several of my customers have gone back to the store where they purchased their new computer and have asked that they replace Vista with XP,? he says.But users may not always have that choice, several InfoWorld readers noted. ?There are not always XP drivers available for a clean install of XP,? commented one reader, whose newer Toshiba?s NVidia video card had only Vista drivers. Another reader had a similar issue with a new Acer laptop: ?The hardware and firmware in my laptop's chipsets simply do not support XP.?Agents of change Not everyone is holding back on the shift to Vista, of course. Several InfoWorld readers expressed satisfaction. For example, an independent developer in the U.K., who did not want to be seen as a ?fan boy? and thus declined to be identified, told InfoWorld he prefers Vista to XP and views the UI changes and incompatibilities as minor issues. ?Vista is what Microsoft wanted XP to look like; when they couldn?t achieve Vista?s look they settled for the horrible design it has. Yes, Vista uses more resources than XP, but it runs absolutely everything 20 percent faster for me than XP ever did. Yes, drivers are a problem at the moment for older hardware that is capable of running Vista, but then the same was true for XP,? he said. ?Program compatibility has caused one or two problems recently, but nowhere near as many with XP when I first got it.?Other readers suggested that those who wanted to stick with XP were doing so because they simply didn?t want to invest in new hardware. All OS conversions cost time and money and change is just part of the technology landscape.For IT, the cost of such change -- directly and indirectly -- is the key issue in deciding when, or even if, to shift from XP. Microsoft has told the Wall Street Journal that resistance to adoption is ?business as usual? in a new OS?s first year, but eventually there?ll be no need for a petition effort like InfoWorld?s to keep an older OS available.The question is what ?eventually? means and what Windows 7, now rumored to be arriving next year, may offer instead. Meanwhile, if massive response from InfoWorld readers is any indication, few businesses are putting an upgrade from XP to Vista at the top of their to-do lists.