xp registration vs. windows update

MadMax · Post by **MadMax** » Sun Aug 01, 2004 10:57 pm

M$ is so big now, I mean they claim Windows is the OS for 96% of desktops (or some similar incredible figure).

With figures like that, there isn't much chance they will be able to increase their sales figures. PC's also seem to have been stuck in the 3Ghz barrier for some time, and they probably won't go much further before the next great computer shift to the 64bit world.

The majority of M$ OS sales are captive, you buy a PC and Windows whatever is already installed, users after that might upgrade their OS, but rarely by buying an OS (if not you wouldn't see those same old copies of win98 sitting around software sellers) In principle this shouldn't realy worry M$, as long as lots of PC's are sold each year, and to make sure people upgrade you just write bloated software that will only run on next years PC's.

Evidently the theoretical limit for computers progression hasn't been reached, except that some are beginning to wonder if the do need such fast beasts, just to type letters, use a spredsheet and other typical uses of a PC in a bussines. Why have to change perfectly good hardware and pay a whole lot of new licences (corporations unlike home users DO have to pay everytime they upgrade)? The idea is catching on, and will snowball.

M$ knows this perfectly well, and they are rightly worried. Not only they have more trouble growing like before (difficult once you own more than 90% of the market) They are actualy in danger of loosing there share of the big/medium bussines market, and this could very easily lead to loosing the small bussines market. It is true that the big/medium bussineses were mostly UNIX but UNIX was too expensive for small bussines, now with Linux this whole thing could rapidly change.

Of course a company that grows slowly or not fast enough will have trouble getting money from shareholders, and right now M$ needs lots of money, they are having trouble it seems with their next OS. WinXP is nothing but a big headache full of security issues and on top of all they seem to be loosing the 64bit migration battle.

Now, are the people at the top of M$ aware of this? Yes of course it's easy to see by their coments and reactions that they are well aware of this. Are they using the right strategy? Well in my opinion they aren't, they are trying to win it all, instead of adapting and concentrating on the areas they could easily win. Not strange, big dinosaurs have trouble adapting to changes. Of course meanwhile they are pissing of many of their faithfull customers and more and more users are unhappy with M$ products.

What will happen? Only the future can tell.

blueznl · Post by **blueznl** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 9:46 pm

one of the things that tick me off is the 'oem license' concept, it's like selling a car and you're only allowed to use it on specific roads, ie. you buy xp and you're only allowed to use it on one specific machine

(the !#$%^&*()! jerk that wrote hmonitor (great program, not a very nice person) does the same thing, ties the program to your hardware... got new hardware? buy new software)

tying a license to specific hardware is a concept that i think should be outlawed, unless it's part of the copy protection (which in this case it is, but it isn't... i got no problems with a dongle or something similar)

so, i bought a regular xp pro, way back, for quite a few bucks, but if i buy a mouse these days, i get xp thrown in... but, the m$ license and website states that these oems are only allowed to be run on one specific machine... ok, change the mainboard, then the power supply, then the memory, then the vid, then the case... at what moment is it a different machine? when more than n% of the parts are replaced?

the whole 'activation' thing just stinks, i'm not happy calling m$ every time i upgrade (which i do more than i care to admit

) but i can even live with that... but 'sneaking in' additional copy protection mechanisms under the misnomer of 'improved functionality' goes one step too far, especially when screwing up by releasing a wrong version first (which they did, grrr)

get rid of m$? there is a way, but it takes one thing: a version of linus that does the following:

1. install out of the box, no fuzz, auto everything (autodetect, ask for what it missed)

2. good support of all sorts of hardware (so it needs a standard for drivers, that everyone supports, find new hardware, insert driver disk, relax, driver installed, etc.)

3. no NO NO NO NO fancy command line whatevers to install anything... recomplile? brrrrr.... just a setup.exe, click on it and go, not ten different versions for all flavours of linux...

4. good GOOD support for direct X... or whatever else, so windows games can be easily ported over (hey, opengl will do if 1 to 3 are met)

5. cheap cheap cheap, how about 25$? I'd buy one for every machine at home right now, no discussion)

i don't care much anymore about windows compatibility, with an os that's cheap enough and compatible enough drivers will show up, as well as applications, but please keep it more or less free from 'hacked up' hobbyist approaches... patch this tweak that etc.... those are fine, and i use 'm myself, but if they are necessary a new os will not find foothold

seriously? price, security and stability are key points, linux is (still) somewhat too geeky (from my point of view, but i admit it's changing)... perhaps someone should have another look at beos, nextstep, os2 (comstation), intuition (amigaos) or ...?

Doobrey · Post by **Doobrey** » Tue Aug 03, 2004 12:25 am

Well, today I toddled off to WindowsUpdate to see what goodies MS had to offer (can`t be arsed to do automatic..I`m on a slow dialup

)

Anyway, the page loads up and all the b##### buttons are ghosted out on the menu. Then I noticed something, I have Internet Exploder set to prompt me on any ActiveX crap..
Three 'Yes`s' later, and it`s still the same, but with a nice warning message in the middle.. <see screengrab here >

Only Microsoft could do something this stupid.. The only way to get the IE fixes is to run my PC with it`s security settings turned down for the couple of hours it takes do download the crap..

And they want us to believe their security is getting better???

Post by **Dare2** » Tue Aug 03, 2004 12:49 am

Devil's

Advocate.

Doobrey wrote:And they want us to believe their security is getting better???

Isn't it? Didn't your IE security just deal with things at a level you selected?

PS - bet you hate macromedia flash sites.

I wish macromedia had never gone activeX for their windows doofie.

Codemonger · Post by **Codemonger** » Tue Aug 03, 2004 12:50 am

I think windows sucks. But the alternatives are pretty crappy too ... Anyone know of any good OS's that are not windows/linux but are backward compatible with windows (and not an emulator) ?

@blueznl I couldn't agree more. If MS would focus more on the end customer rather than software protection, it would be a step in the right direction. Their copy-protection is an absolute pain in the A$$ for end-users.

Post by **Dare2** » Tue Aug 03, 2004 1:00 am

Codemonger wrote:Anyone know of any good OS's that are not windows/linux but are backward compatible with windows (and not an emulator) ?

Not yet (that I know of) but reactos is trying to be that, at least for NT.

Derlidio · Post by **Derlidio** » Tue Aug 03, 2004 1:27 am

Windows...
Can't live with it, can't kill it.
We're all in catch 22.

The only way I see to get rid of MS is switching platform, but that is not easy. I would like if Apple has enough power to make it happen, but I'm not sure I can convince a customer to choose for a US$1300 iMac instead of an US$500 PC that'll do the spreadsheet & text editor job pretty well.

Amiga is not a choice where I live. We haven't a single Amiga distributer around here either.

From my part, I'm giving Linux a try...

Codemonger · Post by **Codemonger** » Tue Aug 03, 2004 1:40 am

Dare2 wrote:
Codemonger wrote:Anyone know of any good OS's that are not windows/linux but are backward compatible with windows (and not an emulator) ?

Not yet (that I know of) but reactos is trying to be that, at least for NT.

That looks interesting, too bad they didn't have a GUI like:

http://www.skyos.org/screenshots.php

Post by **Dare2** » Tue Aug 03, 2004 2:06 am

Pretty nifty.

Doobrey · Post by **Doobrey** » Tue Aug 03, 2004 2:32 am

Dare2 wrote:Devil's Advocate.
Isn't it? Didn't your IE security just deal with things at a level you selected?

And wasn`t it MS that told us all to up the security settings because of that worm last month ?

What gets me, is all the lovely ActiveX components that do sweet FA on that page load fine, all certified safe..
The one major part that needs to run to update security holes is marked as unsafe... :roll:

PS - bet you hate macromedia flash sites.

Yet another example of MS not actually thinking things through...
Cos I`m on an piddly dialup, I often have a couple of pages loading in the background while I read email, or read a loaded page..
Then it`s "Attack of the Killer Prompts"..
Never mind the fact the page that just loaded is minimised, and I`m doing something else..
PING... would you like to run this ActiveX ? No bugger off I wouldn`t...
get back to reading again..
PING...Hello, I`m the same annoying page just wondered if you`d like to run this macromedia advert. ? GRRRRRR...
How long would it have taken them to put in an option to stop these prompts if the screen was minimised?
And yes, I do have Mozilla/Firefox or whatever they`re calling it this week, just wish it didn`t take a month to startup.

Post by **Dare2** » Tue Aug 03, 2004 3:47 am

@Doobrey

lol, not a happy chappy!

I agree though, tiresome with the extra clicking that needs getting done and the refocussing of the windows as activeX pops and etc try their stuff.

So here is a gift: A *grrrrrrr* for you, from me, to use the next time it happens (probably next site you go to).

PS: Ever tried to beat the popup launcher? You go to a site and the taskbar shows two instances of IE. One is about to spew out popups. You mouseover, rightclick and click X Close.

Tah-dah! Beat it to the punch!

... Or ...

It comes up "This program is not responding" and when you click "Exit Now" ALL your browser windows close.