Wednesday, April 30, 2008

XP is Vista light

Thanks to DF for the heads up on this wonderful bit of Redmond doublethink:
Dell will take advantage of a licensing option in Vista Business and Vista Ultimate that lets PC makers provide XP under the Vista license, which Microsoft calls a "downgrade" license. (Enterprises with site licenses have these same rights with any version of Vista.) In essence, the user is buying a Vista license that it can apply to XP, and Microsoft can still claim a Vista sale.
In other news, war is peace, and we have always been at war with Eurasia.

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3 comments:

troutmask said...

Actually good news! having recently helped someone set up a new computer complete with "Vista" I was forced to do a complete instillation with a cracked copy of XP replacing the legit Vista supplied with the machine. It would have been nice to have actually installed a genuine licensed copy of XP as I don't think I have ever seen one!

troutmask said...

Just to add, I did actually have a legit XP pre installed on my Laptop...unfortunately Microsoft kept telling me it wasn't genuine and popping up stupid reminders,it was also missing several dll files and Microsoft failed completely to respond to my e mails about it, so I was forced to stick a cracked copy on and no more problems.
It has always interested me that genuine Microsoft stuff is harder to live with than cracks.....way to win customers.

Robert Sharl said...

There seems to be plenty of examples like this, and I suspect a lot of companies are running 'illegal' copies or cracks of Windows due to the heavy-handed approach to Windows licensing. By contrast, the approach on OS X is a light touch and an assumption of honesty. There's even a five-license 'family edition' which is identical to the regular one, except with added good karma. Of course this is only possible because it only runs (officially) on Apple hardware. The licensing on OS X Server is similarly sensible. What's clear is this isn't simply an argument between 'free' and 'commercial', but between 'trust' and 'suspicion'.