@s017jrs:
The industry I'm in relies heavily on mainframes and green screens. It's not that we are out of date or out of touch, mainframes are the best way to do what we do, and native green screen access is by far the most efficient and fastest way to access that data.

A lot of larger retailers have ancient *nix boxes or even an LPAR for managing inventory and sales. The cost of upgrading the entire environment can be prohibitive.

s017jrs

@iAirmanshirk: Yeah definitly hilarious. I think Windows 7 will be a good answer to Vista, but Microsoft seems to have done some pretty serious and possibly irreparable damage to their reputation by releasing Vista.

Vroomtrap

They're probably Republicans! HA HA HA!!! Bush! Wait...what site am I on?

solartaco

@Monty: *Some* computers are sold with OEM licenses of the OS. Transferring the license to another PC (technically motherboard according to MS and their interpretation of the EULA) or selling it is prohibited. However, selling the computer that contains the OS to somebody else is not against the EULA.

Also, none of this could ever be illegal...at worst it could be a violation of the EULA. They could revoke your Windows license or try to claim damages (good luck with that), but they can't arrest you for violating an EULA.

geowrian

@Kaiser-Machead's LEGO Delorean:

survey saysss, #3! (:

iAirmanshirk

@Shodan:

Yet just accepting Vista is a fate worse than death...

Shodan

@Vroomtrap:

funny as well :)

iAirmanshirk

@obeisance: Kudos for the Kentucky Fried reference.

BIG JIM SLADE!

spaceman37

@vgart:

Vista. blah. lol

iAirmanshirk

@Epoch: Hmmm I remember when I intern'd at my highschool "tech" department... pretty much my whole job was to drill holes thru old hard dives. (which don't get me wrong it was pretty much a blast - and I had a wicked collection of original pentium processors)

Here's hoping there's nothing important to the school on those HDDs.

squish123

@vgart: how so?

lazerpenguin

@Shodan: Piracy is also difficult for some people. Cracking call-homeware for a lot of folks is not consistent and comes with its own share of problems.

Kaiser-Machead's LEGO Delorean

@Monty: Well it may be true that PCs are sold with OEM copies of software but if you find an old XP machine with a license key on the side you can pop it into a new install and call up microsoft's activation robot and he will hook you right up. If it were something to worry about microsoft would find a way to fix it.

squish123

Looks like my copy of Windows 98 is going to be worth a pretty penny very soon!

GiltProto

@thedarkhorse:
Futureshop still uses mainframe green screens when connecting to their ccard processor. Going straight to the old mainframe app just makes sense for the way they're set up.

s017jrs

@Monty: against the eula != illegal.

lostarchitect

Vista:\ˈvis-tə\noun 1. a distant view through or along an avenue or opening 2. an extensive mental view (as over a stretch of time or a series of events) 3. LOL

Kaiser-Machead's LEGO Delorean

@Monty:
I sell software for a living & Monty is right.
OEM licenses live & die w/ the computer that they were sold with.
If you need XP - purchase a "business class" machine from HP, Sony, Lenovo, or any other top tier manufacturer. The "business class" machines are still shipping w/ XP. You won't find any business class machines at Best Buy & I'm not going to use this post to advertise my company, so put that hammer away, please.

rexplex

@pettiblay:
i thought that vista would let you legally install it on up to 4 computers?

Framewerk

@rcast1986: Explain how XP is inferior to Vista. Show your work. And don't forget to sign your paper in the top right corner. Blue or black ink is acceptable, and spelling, grammar, and neatness all count.

DeusExMach

@Git Em SteveDave loves this guy->★: so does the .reg that makes any copy valid...

Epoch

@pettiblay: Spend some time looking around at how to turn off some of vista's more annoying parts and it's better then xp. Especially if you are planning on using a 64bit OS.

Spoony

@rcast1986: yuh-huh.

DeusExMach

When the high school across the street from me was tossing desktops, I grabbed a bunch of HD's with XP on them. They come in very handy.

Git Em SteveDave loves this guy->★

The real issue is that stupid people buy into the 'Get A Mac' ad scare tactics, and instead of even buying a Mac they just go out and get a copy of an inferior OS for their machines. Who does this benefit??

rcast1986

MS should just swallow their stupid (and costly) pride and realize that Vista is perceived as BAD and therefore no one wants it and that perception is not going to change. Re-offer legit XP, make money, do a better job on Windows 7 and revaluate your stock.

Curves

@pettiblay: Uhhhh...no it's not.

rcast1986

Hell, the license keys are on the side of every Dell. Just going to school library/computer lab is a heaven of keys for the taking.

Mr_LaZy

LOL... Wow that is pretty embarrassing.

Vroomtrap

haha so sad microsoft

iAirmanshirk

Computers are sold with OEM copies of software, and transferring that license to another computer is prohibited. It sounds like a great idea but, technically, it is just as illegal as pirating.

Sorry to deliver the bad news.

Monty

WOW, this is the True Disaster for Microsoft.

vgart

Is it really surprising that businesses do this?
I mean I see a lot of companies around that still use monochrome green monitor systems for sales/inventory.
I think futureshop where I live just upgraded from those last year to windows machines.

thedarkhorse

@Shodan: The thing with piracy is it's not really leal!??! And I know of a lot of people that take that stuff to heart and would never ever go out of line, even if it costs them 300$ for a new OS

pettiblay

Well, if the Simpsons are going to get pissed off at (m)Apple, then Nelson Muntz should mock Microsoft.

Haw Haw

OMG! Ponies!

@smcallah: If you have another computer, you buy one for yourself, give Vista to the wife who had XP or something in that line of thought..

pettiblay

Has piracy really gotten that hard? Some people are just sad...

Next they will be buying netbooks for the XP copies...

Shodan

People are stupid. Film at 11:00.

obeisance

This reminds me of the stupid special that Best Buy has in their Sunday ad this week.

You can get a copy of Vista Ultimate Upgrade for $99 instead of $189, but only when you buy a new PC...

So, that begs the questions, do they sell any PC's with Windows XP installed? Or do that many people really want to pay $99 to immediately upgrade from Vista Home to Vista Ultimate before they've even used the computer?

smcallah

Never thought about that... If you wanna go 100% legit it is actually cheaper to buy a crappy used computer with XP for 50-100$ instead of paying the what... 300$??!? for XP. And XP >>> Vista

pettiblay

@solartaco: Jesus.com

MeoX9X

@squish123: Not much that I have found. These were stacked on pallets and left out in the elements for weeks. After the 2nd thunderstorm, I declared "salvage rights" and went to town. As for security, there were passwords, which were easily reset using UltimateBootCD. I'm guessing(hoping) that all the vital info was kept in offsite servers. These seemed to be mostly classroom PC's, so except for the occasional class sched, they were "clean" of private data. The best was the laptop I found in a dumpster covered in coffee grounds. It had the login and password printed on a label on the keyboard bezel. The only HD's that gave me problems were ones marked "bad" or "dead", that I later found out were locked with a firmware password, which required a total sector by sector wipe and then re-format. Worth the 8 hours wait for the CD to do it's bizness.

Git Em SteveDave loves this guy->★

@pettiblay: Sorry...wrong. (Unless you're using a PC from 5 years ago, then you better stick with XP)

Darkest Daze

I just picked up two HP dx2400's with factory installed "XP Downgrade" from NewEgg for $309 each. (One for the wife, one for my father.)

Throw in $20 worth of memory for each and you've got a machine that will last for years doing any task but hardcore gaming.

comedian

@Vroomtrap: how so?

lazerpenguin

hrm I dont think that this is "embarrassing" to MS. It sucks that people are still sheep thinking that xp is better than Vista, but it shows that people love one of their products so very much that they are willing to got to very odd measures to use it.

Also the article isn't say "gabillions of people are buy old pcs cause vista is teh suk" it simple says some businesses are buying older pcs due to their system software is older and runs off of xp. it also goes on to say

"The other main reason we see people staying with XP is for standardization. Having five PCs that are Vista and five XP can create training issues and compatibility issues,"

so chillax peeps. its really simple it is. it goes like this:
XP was great, vista is better, but people fear it due to a bad launch

lazerpenguin

lol.

That is all

NeoXY

@solartaco:

mCcain is funnier to make fun of ;]

iAirmanshirk

@Vroomtrap:

windows 7 looks nice, but i dont think it will be my primary OS, never again for me. im switching to mac. but ill def duel boot if its not complete crap (:

iAirmanshirk

@DownfieldComa: And another thing; there are so many apps that run on XP that people aren't sure that will run on Vista. So why upgrade or buy units that they will have to spend hundreds of thousands to get new software, or worse yet, have software written for them!

Training is a big issue as well, I own three PC's at the house, all use Vista (one (macbook pro) dual boots OSX and Vista Ultimate, one (homebuild) is Home Premium, and the last (homebuild) is dual booting XP and Vista Home Premium, and still was forced by my company to go through a weeks worth of training so they wouldn't lose productivity (Oxymoron, right?)

So there are many reasons why they could be doing this, but I honestly suspect that the shitty economy could be one reason, and not this evil plot to not use Vista.

DownfieldComa

@DeusExMach: Environment Monitor has stopped working. Bonjour has stopped working. Windows Media Player has stopped working. Internet explorer has stopped working. Shall i go on?

dillinger23

meanwhile, xp is used on 70% of computers in the marketplace, vista on 16% and osx on (lets round this figure up some) 8%

despite all the poor publicity vista gets, it has double the users that osx has? seems silly to poke fun when the catastrophy that is vista puts one to shame so easily.

im_a_pc

How much of this is just pure conjecture? I'd say more than a fair amount. And these analysts they could be doing nothing more than looking at companies trying to make it in an economy that frankly is frightening/killing large companies, let alone smaller ones that would have to resort to buying older PC's.

DownfieldComa

XP4Life

chopstickhero

@Framewerk: Ummmm no.

EndlessMike

Vista is about as much fail as apple's miniDisplay port debacle.

Stuttering sound, slower framerates, driver fail.

Vista and miniDisplay port can shove it.

ltethe

@Vroomtrap: They survived Windows ME, and Vista is way better than that.

CSX321

I bought a brand new hardware and tried to install vista on it, well needless to say it didnt go right. Vista told me it cant install because there is no driver found for DVD drive it actually already booted from. Plain retarded.

Beigl

Microsoft says (I pretty sure on this) they will only support the two most recent versions at any given time. So when Windows 7 comes out XP will no longer be supported by MS in any way. It seems to me that like they should no longer be checking if your copy of XP you are installing is legit since they are the ones saying that, that product is not longer useful. They are going to leave servers running to police it, but according to them that product is too old to be worth their time???

fragglepac

Why buy a used crap computer that you have to toss or recycle when you can buy OEM Home XP Service Pack 3 for less than $100?

ionerox

@lazerpenguin: Google the words 'Vista', 'memory', and 'management', and you may find why people with brains not sheep hate Vista.

Good news is Microsoft will finally be cleaning the back-end with Windows 7.

darthuv

I thought it was locked to the computer hardware

TBM-Fan

@dillinger23: I had Vista hang on my 12 times in 2 days. Working, working, working, hang... beeep, mouse stops moving. That is between 2 machines, 1 brand new, one 8 months old. Different applications.

What's your point? That Vista is somehow magically more stable?

Vista doesn't really supply ANY additional functionality that a business needs. It seems to require more hardware to run, is slower, and generally this tends to reduce overall productivity. Microsoft basically created an OS that the base install of would take up 1/4 of the average business PC that still contains a 40 gig hard drive.

There is basically absolutely no reason to spend the resources, man hours, and infrastructure upgrades necessary to deploy an OS that provides no ROI. NONE.

Lite

@TBM-Fan: All you have to do is tell the Indian guy when activate that you upgraded the system (you don't have to mention it was the whole box you upgraded), and he will okay the activation.

darthuv

@ionerox: That's what I was thinking, but they might be leasing the equipment and getting some sort of maintenance agreement with the vendor. At least that is what we are doing at our company; we've got software that we invested $250,000 into but we aren't positive it works smashingly with Vista yet so we are on XP for the time being.

I fixed up an old beater of a PC with an OEM copy of Windows for less than $100, too, with great results.

tmlfan81

As far as companies go I am not surprised at all by them wanting XP that bad. Do you honestly think that the average office drone in their mid to late 40s is going to be able to navagate it with out hurting themselves? It becomes a nightmare of a training issue for the companies that want to use Vista. It would be like trying to teach quantum physics to a room full of Simple Jacks. They know that you never go full retard, or in this case you never go Vista.

Mr.SithNinja

@lazerpenguin: Vista provides no ROI to businesses to convert. It merely slows the machine down, which reduces productivity. That's it. For home users Vista is fine, but for an existing business environment there is no reason to upgrade.

Especially if you're a large business. 6,000 machines to upgrade, 1 hour install/conversion (off standardized image), join machine to domain... If you outsource it for dirt cheap $20 per hour (if you're lucky)... That's... Uhm, $120,000 for the upgrade. This doesn't include time for creating standardized images for all machine variants across the board, or any necessary memory/system upgrades/replacements. Or the necessary training for people who are computer illiterate and need to know where things are now stored/accessed from. Or the increased strain on tech support. Or the lost productivity time for each of the machines being upgraded.

This assumes an inability to mass-image machines, which for many companies isn't viable without restructing your existing storage/account techniques, scheduled downtime, etc.

That $120,000 doesn't include the licensing for Vista btw.

Now, if it came down to "keep 3-4 people employed, or move people to vista..." and it was your job on the line, which would you chose?

In a business environment, what does Vista provide that XP doesn't already do for you?

Lite

Uh... there's a lot easier to get keys.
[magicaljellybean.com]
:P

monkey314159

@lazerpenguin: How will Windows 7 be a good answer to Vista? or How did M$ cause irreparable damage to their reputation? or both :)?

@CSX321: When ME came out, there weren't any real other alternatives. Linux and OS X were still barbaric.

Vroomtrap

@solartaco:

LOL!!!!!!!!!

vgart

My computer is old, slow and sucks. When I upgrade, can I just buy a new PC, take out the hard drive it came with and put in my old one? And use the new one as a slaved back up? I guess the drivers for stuff would be missing. Does anyone want to give me some info if or how I can do this. Thanks

OdeliaTermite

@lazerpenguin:

Ahhh you really funny, are you just writing something to make your name seen. READ THE ARTICLE!!!

vgart

@iAirmanshirk:

CONGRATS!

vgart

@lazerpenguin:
What are you blind. Read the article again, don't be retarded or make a point.

vgart

@pettiblay:
That is utter BS.
Why would anyone pay $300 for XP with no support?
You can get a legit OEM version (no support either) for next to nothing.

I even bought Vista Ultimate OEM for under $216 at Egghead.com back in January 2007.

Vista has been flawless to me for 2 years. I run it in 7 years old hardware just fine.

aec007

@OMG! Ponies!: Ok, this is a little embarrassing, especially since I've been coming to this site for quite a while... But what does that little star next to his name mean?

soccer1105

Have you heard OEM License? Most OEM machines have OEM XP License.

They are NOT TRANSFERABLE . They only valid on the hardware they are sold on.

That's why MS sells XP for 20$ to Dell and 100$ over the counter.

Emre Aydinceren

@soccer1105: He turned in his homework on time.

FredicvsMaximvs

@Mr.SithNinja:

Very true. This was a big reason for us not upgrading to Office 2007, not to mention Vista. Some offices adapt to change quicker than others. I work in a law firm with mostly older people and learning new technology isn't real high on their wish list. If it works as it is, then that is usually good enough!

cronked

@OdeliaTermite: As long as you are running XP on your "old" hard drive then you shouldn't have a lot of driver issues. If there is a conflict somewhere you can always get the current driver from the manufacturer. If I were you, I would "clone" (use Achronis) the old drive to the new one and use the old one for storage. The new hard drive will most likely be faster and larger.

Mr.SithNinja

@soccer1105: Oh, and also this.

FredicvsMaximvs

Too funny - people are dumpster diving for XP! LMMacAO!!

MINI Driver

@geowrian: We might be getting into more of a symbolic argument here, but there is no question that Microsoft puts a EULA on their software and in order for you to run it you have to agree to it. If you agree to it, you also agree to the terms bound by it, and Microsoft can send Guido the Software Pimp after you to extract some very nasty penalties.

There is no question that the chances of this happening to a home user are nil, and I will not argue that point. However, claiming that this is no big deal because it is just a EULA is not an argument. If we want to discuss whether EULA's should be allowed, I am on your side of that argument. But, to use software today you have to agree to it, and it is a violation if you do this.

As for the argument that only some computers are sold with OEM licenses, you would be hard pressed to find a major manufacturer selling anything but an OEM copy of Windows with their systems. It is a safe bet that 95%+ of all systems being purchased for this purpose are OEM.

I believe the original point was businesses doing this. Personally, I would never put my place of employment in jeopardy to save a few bucks since a software audit by Microsoft at a business is not an unlikely scenario.

Monty

I'm just trying to sell off my old Alienware PC without it's hard drive/Windows. Still a powerful machine, but it seems next to impossible.

Madge Gristle

@ionerox:

Yep, walked into Fry's paid $99 for OEM XP Home SP3 and Bootcamp'ed it onto my Mac. Did it a week ago Saturday. Made sense to me, no big thing.

Kingteddybear

Haven't people been doing this for years? You can pull legit XP licenses from trashed computers for free, although people give me so many old/broken computers that I end up collecting keys.

If an OEM license doesn't work for an install, just call the activation line and tell them you're replacing the motherboard on a computer and they'll provide you with a new working retail XP SP2 key in exchange.

ReekRend

@aec007: Talk is cheap. Lay down the specs.

kazemizuhi

@dillinger23: Why do you even have Bonjour? I suppose this is because you use slow and cumbersome, non configurable, resource hog iTunes (or some other proprietary Apply app)? You know virtually zero-footprint foobar2000 can take over the role of iTunes (among others) with a simple plugin, right?

Why do you use Windows Media Player? You do know Media Player Classic has a much smaller footprint and with the right codecs can play virtually anything (.mov .qt .rm .rmvb etc.), which WMP can not. You do know there are better applications for managing music, do you not?

Why do you use Internet Explorer? You do know Firefox, Opera and Safari are much better browsers, right? I shall point you to the Mozilla Firefox Add-ons page, where you can find a plethora of excellent extensions to improve your browsing experience:

[addons.mozilla.org]

kazemizuhi

I have to say that late last year, I tried Vista and it was absolute crap. (Vista Ultimate, came with my Dell XPS laptop)

Few weeks ago, my laptop failed on me once again (the Nvidia overheating problem). But this time the HDD also went to the crapper.

Which forced me to get back to the Vista HDD (I preserved the original stuff and bought other HDD to install XP).

And the truth is: After installing Vista Service Pack and updating everything... Vista is now working better than XP.

Tons of problems were solved. For instance, I no longer have random crashes, Task Manager sucessfully closes stuff that's not working, no bsods, and even some games that were running like shit back then are working faster than they did in XP.

But XP was also great, and I can't say Vista is such a huge improvement too.

Still, I know there are lots of people having shitty, and having great Vista experiences.
I won't tell other people that Vista is better than XP because it still depends a lot on several things... like the setup, the software you use, etc.

But there are too many people saying Vista is crap that never used it, or only tried it in early stages when it really was very bad.

Fanboys will always be fanboys, but those who are not, I recommend to try using it for a while to check for yourself.

Provided you do have to make some tweaks and fine tunning to remove annoying messages.

Bokusatsu_Tenshi

@kazemizuhi:
P4 2.2Ghz / 1 GB PC800 RAMBUS /Gigabyte GA-8ITXE Mobo / 5 HD ATA133+ATA100+ATA33's (About 750 GB total) / 1 CDRW + 1 DVD, Xfi, ATI Radeon HD 4600 Pro (replaced a Matrox G4Ti4800 that died 3 month ago)

Win Vista Ultimate running since Jan. 2007

Windows Experience index of 3.0
(by lowest score of the Proc. - mem is 4.8, HD's are 5.2)

There you have it...7 years old.
Yes, it runs Vista just fine.

In 2009 it'll be my Win-Home server once I clean it up... for a good 2nd life.

aec007

I have like 15 XP Pro license stickers that i salvaged from pcs being scrapped. Dunno what i'm gonna do with them...

elislider

@aec007: Okay. Fair enough... You win this round.

kazemizuhi

@aec007: Agreed, Vista runs on old hardware just fine for me. I run it as a Media Center with an Athlon 64 3200+ @ 2.2GHz, 1GB DDR 400, and an Radeon HD2600PRO (AGP).

I also have a copy on my Dad's old laptop, a Pentium M @ 1.5Ghz with 768MB RAM, and an Intel GMA900 (no Aero :( ) Thing runs like buttah.

KStrike155

Hey, I've done it. Bought a couple old crap PCs off Craig's List for less than $50. Just make sure the COA sticker is on it.

TimeTourist

@obeisance: Followed by, "Microsoft is even more stupid."

avconsumer2

@Monty: Thanks for the reasonable response...I can't stand the childish stuff that we see far too often in blogs.

With regards to sending the software pimp after you, or to perform an audit, Microsoft needs proof that the EULA is being violated before they can even attempt to take action and have any legal bite behind it. They can't just force an audit on a business.

Secondly, most OEM computers are sold with OEM versions of Windows. No denying that. However, if you look exclusively at businesses, I don't think it's near 95% because any larger type of business uses site licenses and corporate VLKs, not OEM licenses and keys. At my business alone, we have over 400 computers and only a handful of them have OEM licenses.

I wouldn't trust my business with used computers in general. That said, for very small businesses (a few employees), it does seem like a cost effective way to work with XP without violating the EULA.

geowrian

@Shodan: This article deals with companies and corporations. It's really not in a corporation's best interest to be pirating software.

excaza

@elislider:

Legally.. there's nothing you can do with them. OEM means that license expired with the hardware to which it used to be attached. You might get by with it, and you might not. Keep in mind also that most of the time OEM manufacturers use a bulk key to do their installs and make their restore CDs so the key on the sticker is useless, it's simply a license and won't actually work for an install unless you use an OEM package from that manufacturer.

Spliner

Okay, people are taking this Vista hate thing way too far. If you've got half decent hardware, it has a significantly nicer UI than XP, and chances are relatively slim that you're still relying on hardware that doesn't have Vista-compatible drivers.

Those John Hodgman Apple commercials have sold more copies of XP than OSX. They've brainwashed people into thinking that XP is not only better than Vista, but so much better that it's worth jumping through hoops to get it. Have any of these people even used Vista before? It's perfectly fine!

chefgon

@geowrian: Even if you look at the business market, nearly all legitimate Windows licenses are OEM licenses. This is because Microsoft volume licensing programs NEVER include full-version licenses for client OS's - only upgrades. The only way to license Windows to a new PC is with an OEM or full packaged product (retail) license. See the last two questions at [www.microsoft.com] for an official source.

Many people are confused by this because they use volume license media to install a clean version of Windows on multiple business PC's. Microsoft allows this as a convenience to the customer, but for the license to be valid, an underlying OEM or FPP license must still be acquired for that PC.

In addition to the points already made about OEM licenses not being transferrable from the original computer, volume licenses are also not transferrable from the original organization (even if the underlying computer hardware is sold). A volume license transfer can only be accomplished by notifying Microsoft and with their approval.

baliktad

@soccer1105: Don't ask... It's embarrassing.

DustyButt

@soccer1105: You don't wanna know... It's embarrassing.

DustyButt

@dillinger23: right, that's what happens to me in Vista... so how is XP inferior?

DeusExMach

I bought my new HP PC late last year with the obligatory Vista installed. I have since built another PC and have purchased three OEM versions of XP - two of them XP Pro. All is fine with keys etc. (all bought on ebay) I am very happy about this. Vista stank although I accept it did look nice.

VAR1016