Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, responding to a question about the support for XP off the shelf, said that customers can buy Vista, then downgrade to XP for free. “I don’t know how you can do better than getting both,” Mr. Ballmer said Tuesday in Washington D.C.
According to InformationWeek on Wednesday, Mr. Ballmer’s comments suggest that Microsoft doesn’t see the license provision as a loophole to be exploited by disgruntled customers but, in fact, is endorsing a program to spur sales of Vista.
Despite Microsoft’s claim that 140 million copies of Vista have been sold, enterprise customers have had problems with Vista’s onerous hardware requirements, incompatibilities with older applications and driver issues.
According to Paul McDougall with IW, this raises the question of how many copies of Vista are actually in service because of the special licensing provision. Some PC makers, including Dell, have “pre-downgraded” the PC from Vista to XP before delivering the PC to the end user. Read the full story on InformationWeek.Com Found via TheMacObserver.Com
Windows Vista Refunds!
Yeah, I have often wondered how many of those 140 million Vista licenses are actually in use. It is clear many businesses upon purchasing new computers with Vista will remove Vista from the computers and reinstall XP on them (via volume licensing agreements). So the actual number of Vista licenses in use may be only a small proportion of the number sold.
Personally I will never pay for or use Vista even if Microsoft gives me free copies. I still use Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 on my PC and these will probably be the last Windows I use.
Microsoft turns XP into vista through set up, and they have total control of the computer, and don’t allow programs on, which they can’t have control over.
they have messed up my computer and hacking it.
…still love that Apple ad with the Vista PR lady. By downgrading, he means users are upgrading to a more familiar product…
pathetic to make a full blog of hating something, i don’t like vista either but this is lame.
“Buy Vista, then downgrade to XP.”
So, what is really being said here is paying $399. for Vista Ultimate Full version(in early 07) will garner me a license for XP home full version ($129. last I checked).
Hey Bill and Steve…I usually get a kiss before I get screwed.
Suggestion: Stay off the crack and meth, and leave the business of writing programs to the professionals.
Nem
If you nbuy a product and it is junk you normally get a refund. These ass%$#s have us over a barrel and know it. They should be ashamed of themselves and should be charged with fraud. Promised but no delivery. I hope you choke on your squillions Gates.
Am I missing something. You buy a laptop with Vista and have the benefit of downgrading. BUT, to downgrade unless somehow the laptop make offers you an freebie XP OS, you have to pay for the XP and then have the downgrade option. Where is this diffeent from simply being told if you do not like it go to Tigerdirect and buy our older software and install it. The when you want you can reinstall Vista at some later date. To me a downgrade option is MS sending a copy of XP at no charge posibly coded to the machine and original owner so it can not be used on another or transferred/sold.
Am I dense or is this a con job?
Anyway for me, I’ve found 2000 Professional to be robust and reliable as well as easy to set up and use plus will run on 256meg and loads ontl as little a couple of gigs of HD space. Limitations only are that it limits Windows Media Player to 9 and hence can not load a PPC with music or video. Also, will not load IE7 and 6 now is crashing on some sites but Opera runs fine on 2000 Pro and I suspect FF and Sea Monkey should also. Also, not limitation as to loading and to date still supported by MS. Just load and update to SP4.
In march of this year I bought a Hewlett-Packard desktop machine bosting an AMD quad core processor 7 Gigabites of RAM And A powerful Invidia graphics processor. and preloaded with vista. It worked as a clock before the operating system crashed beyond repair. Now after sending hp several F… ..U’s A am the proud owner of a 1200 dolar black box sitting in the corner of my room collecting dust. Maybe Someone should pass some of the afore mentioned to hp in hopes that I may get some kind of operating system for the piece of HP S…! I think 64 bit xp might run well on it but I cant find it anywhere. And for a laugh hp making the pc personal again…yea gutted for parts and thrown out in the yard for the next bond fire!
to whom it may concern windows vista sucks,and someone should recall it and give people the option to switch to xp, free of charge,your faithful customer!