vista is just like windows 98-95

mukki

well not really but was I shocked by it today....

I fixing up an old pc, i plugged in a 30gig hard drive, and wanted to install an os, switched it on to make sure it was all working

and ....

the pc booted up too desktop, on a drive that had vista RTM installed on by a totally different pc

install on pc
intel x6800 core 2 duo
asus-p5b


this booted first time on..
amd 1.2 ghz athlon
iwill kk266plus board

8T8

Yes the HAL has changed in Vista so you can swap motherboards at will without having to mess with the drivers like in XP.

zilog_jones

Handy.

Capt'n Midnight

8T8 wrote:

Yes the HAL has changed in Vista so you can swap motherboards at will without having to mess with the drivers like in XP.

But the OEM license doesn't allow you to do that :rolleyes:

As long as they only allow it in Retail
And possibly in Upgrade - but since 90% of the copies of windows are OEM, chances are the upgrade is OEM'd , so I'd be curious to see how they enforce the restrictions of the license.

8T8

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

But the OEM license doesn't allow you to do that :rolleyes:

As long as they only allow it in Retail
And possibly in Upgrade - but since 90% of the copies of windows are OEM, chances are the upgrade is OEM'd , so I'd be curious to see how they enforce the restrictions of the license.

From a strictly legal point of view that is what's outlined in the EULA for the OEM versions (same as XP OEM).

However in actual practice Microsoft they are not stopping Vista OEM versions being reactivated (same as XP OEM).

So you can still swap motherboard & platform AMD,Intel even on the OEM versions and of course the retail versions.

Saruman

Im probably wrong, but i think microsoft makes more money off its other products than it does off an OS. So Microsoft wants everyone on their new OS's to make a little money but mainly so that they will see it as time to upgrade everything else.. such as office 2007 etc and thats before even getting into their Business software like Navision etc.

Capt'n Midnight

http://archives.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/02/23/microsoft.china.idg/

"Although about three million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software," Gates reportedly said. "Someday they will, though. And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."

Pirate copies of Vista are going for about $2.50 in China , the retail version is several months pay for the average Chinese worker.

8T8

http://archives.cnn.com/2000/TECH/co...oft.china.idg/
Quote:
"Although about three million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software," Gates reportedly said. "Someday they will, though. And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."
Pirate copies of Vista are going for about $2.50 in China , the retail version is several months pay for the average Chinese worker.

Not sure exactly what that has to do with the topic at hand but that comment was over 6 years ago. That's exactly the same path which let Microsoft dominate in the west & it will as he points out probably work again if China's economy continues to grow and the standard of living and pay rises in the very long term.

Im probably wrong, but i think microsoft makes more money off its other products than it does off an OS. So Microsoft wants everyone on their new OS's to make a little money but mainly so that they will see it as time to upgrade everything else.. such as office 2007 etc and thats before even getting into their Business software like Navision etc.

That's partially true Microsoft makes most of their money on Office, Windows & Windows Server the high profile Xbox department continues to actually make a loss but Microsoft makes the bulk of it's Windows revenue from it being pre-installed on PC's not at retail.

Why Microsoft priced retail Vista so high is beyond me you'd think they would want to stimulate growth & sales (plus PR) by pricing it cheap

At the moment we are getting shafted on price :mad:, in the USA Vista Home Premium retail edition costs about €180 euro which is a reasonable price but here it costs €300 so you can see why a lot of people are drawn to the OEM versions but comes with less desirable licensing terms.

Capt'n Midnight

Microsoft also make a lot of money on CAL's - and this is almost pure profit since they don't have to produce more or hardly any more support.

The blast from the past was in relation to my perception that microsoft don't actively enforce their licensing terms which IMHO is akin to entrapment. Not so much of a "try before you buy", but more of drug dealers free samples, you can use it now, but when you are hooked well come looking for our money. Corporate software has very little control over it being installed on many machines, in many cases XP users already have admin rights to get some old apps running and the software has to be shared on the network for when it goes looking for files when a new user runs office etc. for the first time. Tracking microsoft licenses is a real pain and microsoft compared to other software vendors do little to help customers in that regard. (I will gladly take that back if someone shows me where in AD on a 2003 server you can see what is installed on each client on the domain )

With XP activation and Vista's initial pre launch "One-time" transfer license I had thought microsoft would finally make the software such that it would be a little harder for you to break the terms.

/RANT

zilog_jones

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

I will gladly take that back if someone shows me where in AD on a 2003 server you can see what is installed on each client on the domain

Yeah it's a complete pain in the hole trying to find out what you have license-wise. I was working in a company with about 100 PCs (one was still running Windows 95C ) and about 6 or 7 servers, and at the time they were planning on getting open licenses - but we needed to find out what licenses we had already. After using about 3 different programs to scan the network for installed programs, counting all the OEM and retail CDs we had, there was still a lot of guesswork involved as some PCs just wouldn't respond to any of the software we tried, and we weren't sure exactly where some of the laptops were.

MS Office 4 was great - putting in the CD key was optional

Peteee

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

But the OEM license doesn't allow you to do that :rolleyes:

As long as they only allow it in Retail
And possibly in Upgrade - but since 90% of the copies of windows are OEM, chances are the upgrade is OEM'd , so I'd be curious to see how they enforce the restrictions of the license.

Why should the OEM license allow you to do that? Its sold with the hardware, everyone knows this anyway, and shouldn't complain about it.

Not that it matters a tap, all you do is ring up microsoft and say your motherboard blew up, and they'll activate you again. What difference does it make to them, you've already paid for it.