Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
> ____/ [H]omer on Tuesday 28 August 2007 17:22 : \____
>
>> Verily I say unto thee, that Linonut spake thusly:
>>
>>> A friend at work, who likes Windows and knows how to use it well, got
>>> Vista on a new computer. He found he didn't like it at all.
>>>
>>> So he's back on XP.
>>>
>>> But guess what?
>>>
>>> Windows XP drivers for a couple of key components (wireless and
>>> sound) don't work on his new (desktop) machine.
>>>
>>> Incredible.
>>
>> It's been noted before - he's not unique.
>>
>> Amazing, isn't it?
>>
>> New machines come with Vista by default, has drivers, but Vista sucks.
>> Try moving back to XP, but there's no drivers. End up replacing the
>> machine with something older, just to get things to actually work.
>> Conversely, those who already have older hardware, and try to "upgrade"
>> to Vista, can't get drivers or software to work either.
>>
>> What a mess.
>>
>> Roy's posted a tonne of reports in the last year, about both individuals
>> /and/ companies migrating en mass away from Vista on new machines, for
>> exactly those reasons. In fact IIRC Microsoft actually ended up
>> capitulating by making emergency changes to their policy WRT provisions
>> for such people, by issuing a whole new series of XP license numbers
>> (apparently they ran out of numbers!), and with a programme intended to
>> assist such people to "downgrade". Of course MS (and partners like Dell)
>> could hardly ignore the screams of pain coming from their customers, on
>> places like IdeaStorm, and elsewhere.
>
> Remember what Acer said last month 'on behalf' on the "entire industry" (which
> is "disappointed" with Vista).
>
> Acer has just devoured Gateways and since around May it has been introducing
> PCs with Linux preinstalled. It appears to have started in India, but it's
> expanding everywhere (also to different models). It's called "escape route".
>
This is the first time that there has been no easy "downgrade" route for
Microsoft users. In the case of WinME, pretty much every peripheral
going also had drivers for Win98, so a downgrade was reasonably
practical. In the case of Vista, the differences are apparently so huge
that many manufacturers, on the back of Microsofts no-doubt massively
inflated sales claims, elected to only provide Vista drivers - this also
suits Microsoft as it begins the binary lock-in process, by using
binary-only kernel drivers, into a new hardware stack (a process many
people here seem to deny can happen when Linux is the OS, but seem to
accept it does happen when the OS is Microsoft).
This time around, there is a gaping hole in performance and capability,
with a choice of a very modern Linux distro, and highly disfunctional
Vista, or an ancient version of Windows, which was less secure and
reliable than its predecessor.
Linux vendors have never had it better!
--
| Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
| Cola faq: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/linux/advocacy/faq-and-primer/ |
| Cola trolls: http://colatrolls.blogspot.com/ |
| My (new) blog: http://www.thereisnomagic.org |
|
|
