Posted on 02/29/2008 6:33:47 AM PST by raybbr
Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) will cut the price of some versions of Windows Vista, the software maker said late Thursday.
The move came a day after court filings revealed internal dissent over which Windows XP computers would be considered capable of running the new operating system - and a feeling on at least one executive's part that the company had "botched" the marketing of computers as "Vista Capable."
Only copies of the year-old operating system that are sold in boxes directly to consumers are affected by the price cuts - not the versions pre-loaded on personal computers. The cuts will range from 20 percent to 48 percent.
The reductions are to coincide with the late March release of Vista Service Pack 1, a collection of security fixes and other improvements.
Microsoft said the new prices will apply to the Home Premium and Ultimate versions of Vista, in both their full editions and the editions that upgrade an older or more basic operating system.
Both versions serve the tiny percentage of users who install an operating system on their own; most people get the latest version of Windows only when they buy a new PC.
Windows Vista's January 2007 launch was plagued by delays. To keep consumers buying PCs in the holiday season of 2006, Microsoft and PC makers promised free Vista upgrades later to shoppers who bought Windows XP computers.
At the launch, Microsoft was widely criticized for offering too many versions of the operating system - including Home Basic, which didn't have the snazzy new signature look called "Aero" - and for setting the price too high for the high-end versions.
Brad Brooks, a corporate vice president for Windows marketing at Microsoft, said in an interview that the company has since tested lower prices and found "product was moving much, much faster."
Brooks said he expects so many customers to buy Vista at the new prices that the price cuts will increase Microsoft's revenue, not subtract from it.
A federal judge recently said consumers could pursue a class action suit against Microsoft for labeling PCs as "Vista Capable," even though many were not powerful enough to run all of Vista's features, including the Aero interface.
Company e-mails produced in court chronicle Microsoft settling on a plan to market a wide range of XP-based PCs as "Vista Capable" after company officials realized in early 2006 that 30 percent or fewer of computers on the market could run the full-fledged version of Vista with Aero.
That realization apparently caused computer makers like Dell Inc. (DELL) to worry that people would stop buying PCs for almost a year - until Vista launched.
The e-mails also showed Microsoft lowering the bar for "Vista Capable" to protect Intel Corp. (INTC)'s sales of some widely used chips that weren't powerful enough for the full Vista experience.
Microsoft employee Anantha Kancherla was particularly blunt in his March 2006 response to a question about whether a certain PC configuration would be considered "Vista Capable."
"Based on objective criteria that exist today for "capable," even a piece of junk will qualify," he wrote. "For the sake of Vista customers, it will be a complete tragedy if we allowed it."
According to the e-mails, Jim Allchin, the executive in charge of Windows at the time, wasn't involved in the decision to brand a wide swath of XP computers as "Vista Capable."
Upon learning the details, Allchin wrote, "We really botched this."
What’s a CD?
Agreed!
There are people who buy a car because they like to drive, they lean towards Mac.
There are people who buy a car to tinker under the hood, they favor Windows...
No, it is Vista's internal wireless utility.
Run your set up program that came with the router, and make sure you have entered or clicked the required buttons for auto setup of the routers address. If I recall, it is the very first option, and you click Auto DCH or something with a "D" as the option.
I manually set the router up by accessing it's http server via it's IP address. I can assure you that DHCP is running perfectly, SSID is being transmitted, and I have eliminated it as an issue by setting the Vista box up temporarily with a fixed IP, with no change in the problem's occurrence. I am quite competent regarding most router setups, and particularly linksys, as it is my house brand.
I had this happen once on a laptop and it turned out to be a bad antennae. I had to purchase a new wireless card for the external slot.
My other two laptops are XP and use the router via air with no troubles. It is definitely the Vista box. I had returned my original Vista (Acer) laptop over this issue, but the new one does the same thing. I also have the same problem in the field with other networks and other Vista based laptops. It is something in the OS.
It is a irritation, resetting the router all the time, but is not an ordeal. It happens intermittently across a day or two. I will figure it out. I just have to take the time to de-DMZ my nix server and sniff the local side of the network with that to see what the Vista box is doing in order to prove it.
There are people who buy a car to tinker under the hood, they favor Windows...
LOL!! Well, I suppose if I had learned to do all my computer-related stuff on a Mac to begin with, I'd have that preference. And I let someone else do my tinkering. ;-)
I do have a friend who has a Mac, so I've tried to negotiate my way around that system. I guess once you learn what all the pretty little desktop graphics represent, then you're good to go. ;-)
Absolutely, but then again, all Judges are lawyers, so that would be redundant, wouldn't it?
Another problem I've seen in the aviation world is the juries. When someone in an aviation related field (or medical or whatever) are brought to trial they are rarely tried by a "jury of their peers". If you are a pilot and are being tried for general liability because of an accident, your jury should be made up of pilots, not housewives. If you're a doctor on trial, your jury should be made up of doctors, etc.
My experience with jury duty, after having been called up several times in the past 15 years, has been that every time I've been called I was dismissed because I hold two advanced degrees in engineering. As soon as that fact became known, usually to the defense side, I was dismissed. Folks with GED's and high school diplomas were the ones that were kept. IOW, trial lawyers don't want educated juries.....
I have a ACER 5610z...............
Then again, I haven't booted into W2K for over two years now. Happily FReeping and doing lots of other stuff on SuSE 10.3, which has UI eye candy as good as Aero.
Yeah, that's about the time it takes for the router default timer to time out.
My ACER came with a suite of programs called Empowering technology. One of those progs is a utility to organize and maintain connections of all kinds. It works well and gives you a lot of easy control.
If you don't have it, it is on the ACER driver site, and you might try itif they have it for your particular model and sn.. I have no other ideas at this time, and really am stumped as to why it will not maintain.
I have a XP machine that did something very similar, and I tried everything to get it to work. I never found it, and one day I simply deleted the linksys apps and the connection and started over. This time I went from the standard 16bit security to the 26 digit 128 bit WEP and the problem miraculously went away. I know I had tried this before, but I never went to the 128 bit. We have a dozen or so networks in range, and I suspected that there was some sort of interference. This computer is at the other end of my house and seems to recieve more signals from other sources. But I am not sure.
I don't know what you are currently using,but I thought this might be pertinent to the problem.
If that's the case, then there does seem to be grounds to include Microsoft in a lawsuit, if there were were grounds for a lawsuit.
However, unless those computers aren't capable of running Vista Home Basic, then there isn't grounds for a lawsuit.
Low end systems usually run software more slowly than high end systems, and can't do everything that a high end system can.
Microsoft's advertising has said right from the beginning that not all systems would be able to run Aero.
Did Microsoft force vendors not to tell customers which systems might not provide good performance with some features of Vista? Did they tell vendors they had to sell customers low end systems on which they likely make less money instead of selling customers high end systems?
Or did the customers buy a low end system to save money, and then when it didn't perform to their expectations sue instead of returning it and buying a more expensive, faster system?
Vista is the Hillary Clinton of the OS world. No way, no how will I ever buy into “more of the same”.
If one defrags when it is not needed, one only wastes one's time. WRT your statement using defrag as a first attempt to fix a problem, I agree, but only WRT Hard drive or format related failures, but defrag generally will not continue if it finds a dirty drive.
I defrag Vista exactly like I have always defragged any NT box- about once per month- and I have always noticed a significant improvement after completion, even though it is still set to defrag on the fly. MS has always claimed that defrag is not necessary on NT, but I have always claimed that they are wrong. It is not as necessary as often as with their DOS based OS's, but still a standard necessary maintenance point.
As a point of order, This Vista box is still set up stock so that I can continue to learn it's vagaries... I would normally have auto defrag disabled anyway. As a recovery specialist, I can tell you that the auto-defrag options are bad news if one should ever need to recover files. All automated routines relating to the hdd should be shut off if possible, running the maintenance utilities by hand.
Another thing, is the registry. I have never needed to get into it, because the OS maintains it. XP does not do that very well [...]
Vista is not a whole lot better at it either...
It has a 1.6 ghz dual core and it by far, outperforms my fast 3.4 Ghz desktop.
Mine is about the same, and is no where near as fast as my bigger XP based desktops, or at least not as fast as AMD 2600+ and up... It may be comparable to 2300 or so. No getting around it, Vista is a fat pig, and if I had my druthers, this thing would be running XP right now. But then I would never learn Vista...
I don't get all this constant whining. I really don't.
If you will recall, I was not particularly unhappy, just not very excited about Vista. It is certainly over-sized, slow, and isn't more functional than XP. It works, as I said, and I have not seen the overwhelming problems as related by some. I give it an ~eh~.
So the window on your Zune software isn't a ridiculously stylized thing that servers no useful purpose? The mouse doesn't behave erratically and leave images of the pointer all over the screen; almost as if it is trying to somehow override the mouse driver itself? You are easily to pick and choose which columns are displayed with a simple right click? There are dozens of attibutes you can display in columns, and one of those columns is "date added"? You are able to select multiple songs for property editing( so you can rename a whole album at once)? It doesn't take a long time to load and use a ridiculous amount of memory? It doesn't have a scroll bar that is about a millimeter wide, and difficult to grip? When you do scroll, your hard drive doesn't grind and your screen doesn't flicker? It has standard Windows features like file and edit menus, just like microsoft tells us all good Windows applications should? It is able to take an unknown song, or even a song recorded from vinyl, go to the Internet and accurately identify that song within seconds, just like itunes can?
It isn't essentially unusable and inferior to itunes in every way imaginable? We must somehow have gotten different software. Is the version 2.3.1338 I have actually some sort of inter-company joke that somehow slipped out on the internet?
Something else I am using now for the first time in Vista is the audio interface. I have it set up to use verbal commands while I am some distance away. This all comes with vista premium home, and it very much improved over earlier versions. As you may know, they are putting the base program in cars by Ford now.
I have Skype so I am experimenting with all sorts of neat things that never really interested me before as far as hands free calling, and basic instructions for the OS. It's quite exciting to think about the possibilities of third party apps and I have so much more stuff to try. Just wish I had the time.
I think there is more to vista then just replacement OS that is bulky or fat. As to speed, other than initial boot-up, it is very fast. Assuming you have few choke points like lack of RAM or slow drives..
If I wanted to do the same old things I did before, I would have stayed with 98 second ed. It was perfect.
But vista opens up a different option set of possibilities, and yes it is a resource hog, but those services are there to do more than what XP is capable of. It will get even better in time as these ideas make their way into apps. Apps that Mac will never do unless it runs Vista. Slow booting is not a problem on a computer designed to run 24/7. It's what it is capable of doing that is interesting and that is not being explored by many users.
Just my thoughts. I think Microsoft has more imagination and future capabilities built into this OS for a reason, and that reason is being ignored, much as the first desktops were labeled as toys.
That being said, XP is pretty darn good. Not quite as easy as OSX, but certainly good enough.
Except a system with an Intel 915 chipset.
So why are consumers suing Microsoft rather than the computer vendors? The bought the "Vista Compatible" computers from those vendors, not from Microsoft.
Because Microsoft Certification Laboratories certified them as Vista Compatible even though they knew they weren't. That's why.
"Microsoft executive John Kalkman wrote: In the end, we lowered the requirement to help Intel make their quarterly earnings so they could continue to sell motherboards with the 915 graphics embedded. ...."
According to HP’s Web site they have been promising a driver for it since last August and continue to promise it.
Vista Home Basic does run on the Intel 915 chipset.
Intel decided not to bother producing a WDDM video driver for the chipset, probably because they felt it wouldn't perform well enough to be worth the effort.
Therefore the Aero interface doesn't work.
Windows Vista Home Basic doesn't even include Aero.
This is one an 8 port wired router. It refuses to even see the network. I haven’t found a way to even get to the network setup to add a static IP. I tired running the software that ca,e with the router, and the same thing. it absolutely refuses to find the router.
Mine has a off switch run by a third party app. I have to turn it on. It is a safety disconnect so you don't have to right click and look for the screen. (or yank the wire) When or if you see a upload you don't like. Not much good on a local home network however....:-)
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