Vista Sales

I know this happens where I work but apparently it happens at a lot of places:

InfoWorld has done a study that suggests that

35 percent of mainly enterprise-class users “downgrade” their Vista systems to XP

See Bursting the Vista sales bubble

Yeah and even though they downgrade to XP the sale still goes towards vista.

It would seem M$ is padding the sales figures of vista.:stuck_out_tongue:

On 08/19/2008 Doog wrote:
> It would seem M$ is padding the sales figures of vista.:stuck_out_tongue:

Which vendor doesn’t? Such statistics are a marketing instrument. Blame the customers: As long as “One billion people use that software, it must be good” is a reason to buy something, they deserve fake statistics.

Uwe

>> It would seem M$ is padding the sales figures of vista.:stuck_out_tongue:
>
> Which vendor doesn’t? Such statistics are a marketing instrument. Blame
> the customers:

Makes sense to me…bind XP to your previous machines hardware, sell you new
hardware with a new OS that you don’t want and sell you another XP license
for your new hardware. Awesome! This is solely the reason I hate Windows.
If you could take your XP license from your old machine to the new one then
I’d have really no issue with Windows, bsods and the plethora of other
nuisances pale in comparison to their license problems.

Isn’t this sort of binding only for OEM licenses? I don’t recall reading such restrictions in my full version XP Home EULA. I did read such language in the OEM pre-install Vista 64 bit on my new laptop though.

> Isn’t this sort of binding only for OEM licenses? I don’t recall
> reading such restrictions in my full version XP Home EULA. I did read
> such language in the OEM pre-install Vista 64 bit on my new laptop
> though.

It’s the reason why there is a sticky on your machine with the key. It is
a non-transferable license. It’s also why ‘activation’ exists so they can
see where the key pops up. If MS sees the key repeatedly popping up, they
can/may come looking for you.

Well, they are definitely making money selling something a lot of people aren’t using. Here’s the scoop on downgrading according to Microsoft:

Can I downgrade my OEM version of Windows Vista Business to Windows XP Professional?
Yes. OEM downgrade rights for desktop PC operating systems apply to Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Ultimate as stated in the License Terms. Please note, OEM downgrade versions of Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Ultimate are limited to Windows XP Professional (including Windows XP Tablet PC Edition and Windows XP x64 Edition). End users can use the following media for their downgrade: Volume Licensing media (provided the end user has a Volume Licensing agreement), retail (FPP), or system builder hologram CD (provided the software is acquired in accordance with the Microsoft OEM System Builder License). Use of the downgraded operating system is governed by the Windows Vista Business License Terms, and the end user cannot use both the downgrade operating system and Windows Vista Business. There are no downgrade rights granted for Windows Vista Home Basic or Windows Vista Home Premium.

I think a lot of the enterprise customers who are downgrading are using a XP Professional volume license.

I agree that the whole Microsoft licensing thing is a huge annoyance. Not only do you have a zillion different versions (home, home premium, business, etc.) but also OEM and retail versions, and then full versus upgrades. And if you are dealing with servers, you have client access licenses. Good grief! Forget whether it works well or not, this is reason enough for open source.

On 08/19/2008 GofBorg wrote:
> If you could take your XP license from your old machine to the new
> one then I’d have really no issue with Windows

In Germany you can.

Uwe

The last 30 computers that my company ordered came with the COA label for Vista on them but they were installed with running XP SP2. We aren’t upgrading to Vista anytime soon I’m soon. I got the upgrade/downgrade CD’s for Vista with each computer.

Vista is a failure. So bad that OEM’s have/had to offer a downgrade to a seven year old OS (XP).