Free upgrade to Windows Vista AARGGHH!!!

Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2007 4:46 pm

Here's the deal:

Windows Vista is delayed in the European countries because the European Court has decided that M$ must rip out a bunch of crap to keep the market open for small companies that release incredible software which might not work due to vista's security crap.

Due to that M$ offers a deal for all people that currently buy a PC for a free upgrade to Vista.

Nice deal but will those PC's be compatible? It seems not, because some pc's have a sticker with the deal and others don't.

So this smarthead went to some shops with the question:

Quote:

I want a PC without Microsoft Windows because i want Linux.

The answer was the same all over the place:

Quote:

Sir, you must buy Windows XP and get a free upgrade of us to Vista. That's around $500 discount!

I responded

Quote:

Nice, but can you guarantee that all non-certified hardware in this machine is compatible with Vista's hardware certification system?
And tell me that i don't need atleast 2gigs of RAM to play games?
And tell me that the Operating System doesn't need 2 dvd's to install 15gigs crap?
And tell me that the videocard can handle vista's theme without overheating?

It went very quiet......, and after a minute or so he asked his collegue if he is allowed to sell the PC without windows and give me a price for the PC. But the collegue (probably his supervisor) said: no

So my next prepared question was attended to his supervisor:

Quote:

Ok i will buy the PC but will give you a big herassment right after because i will demand a refund due to the fact that i will open the box in the store and place the windows cd on the counter with the exclamation that i don't agree with Microsoft's EULA and that the agreement does say i'm allowed to bring back the CD and get a full refund.

The guy said

Quote:

How do you know M$ EULA without opening the cd box?

Answer:

Quote:

Simple, i've read it since Windows 95 and now i'm done with blue screens and reboots.

Final response:

Quote:

Then i ask you to leave the store because i don't sell you a PC

So the answers were very clear each time:
- None could proof their computers work properly with Vista
- None wanted to sell me a PC without Windows

I just hate it, all those freaking assholes trying to buy crap and get loads money. Afterall, when you buy a PC and get the Vista upgrade, they sell new hardware with it or else it crashes.
Where does it go with the world while i spend my money for poor Africans and fight for freedom in Dafur.

It almosts sounds like Enron.

Sells PC To Pay For Divorce Joined: Posts: 5661

huh?...
whats this?
A frustrated djmaze?
Thats new.... killing me

I dont know much about linux....
but i heard some well educated people say that linux will never beat m$ in any way....it never realy came of the ground....., they mean linux.

But i have no idea why everybody is yelling at m$.

my history with computers is very simple....

first time i worked with a computer is 7 years ago or so...playing with win 98.

but when i gave it some heavy jobs it started to crash...
i think i realy installed win 98 like 30 times.

then win xp came on my path...
installed it twice by now and it runs smoothly with a lot of heavy programs i have.

when im realy busy.....
i can run photoshop , winamp (listening) , ftp , and sometimes pinacle tv...
all at the same time...with no problems...

so my computer can handle a lot and therefor i dont se any reason yet why i should go for vista...
but some want vista....

its still soooooo new...
bugs are waiting....

Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2007 6:57 pm

Just buy the components and build it yourself. I did it myself two years ago and I'm no hardware junkie. It went so well that I ordered a bunch of components for my 14 year old nephew, who is no computer expert by any means, and by the time I went over to his house he had the thing running. You can get the case, motherboard, memory, hard drive, video card and the rest that you want and there's plenty of websites, like Anandtech, to help you with making informed choices.

I hate all that preinstalled stuff you get from most vendors. Even if you wanted to do Windows you'd be much better off getting a blank hard drive to start with.

registered · Site Admin Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 6437

Yeah, it's really easy to build it yourself. I found an article on how to build a PC with 1 TB of disk for under US$500. I thought, that sounds interesting, so I forked over the $500 and did it. I've loaded 4 different flavors of Linux on it, but had problems getting it to work with VMware. I haven't had time to work on it, but it's waiting and will surely beat the crappy XP systems I have...

registered · Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2007 10:37 pm

This post should be attached to a SlashDot article. Rolling Eyes

Build your own. Period.

Posted: Thu Jan 25, 2007 2:02 am

Don't understand me wrong, i use Windows since 3.11, and i also build my own custom pc's.
I just needed a computer with some years of guarantee for my mom to use Internet the safe way and Windows isn't suitable and a custom PC has no guarantee.
At the end i bought a MacBook for her.

Posted: Thu Jan 25, 2007 3:27 am

I don't know what other countries are like, but in the UK I know of a number of companies that will sell you the PC without an operating system.

Fot instance: http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/

If you go to the likes of PC World, that's another matter! Mad

Posted: Thu Jan 25, 2007 7:14 am

Yeah, I went through the same problem with my father-in-law. He knows basic Windows but that's it. I wasn't about to spend hours and hours up there teaching him Linux, and I just don't like MACs.

I just ended up building him a Windows XP SP2 machine, installed a good software firewall, anti-virus program, Windows Defender, and made sure that everything would update automatically for him. I then turned off scripting for all sites in IE, only allowing scripting on a few sites that I know he will go to and that I trust. I have a custom Whitelist here that I keep updating for him depending on his needs.

On top of all that, I stuck him behind a $50.00 NAT Router that will give him a pretty good hardware firewall as well. So, aside from user error (opening attachments, removeable media, etc.), and I did sit with him and school him on that stuff as well, he's pretty rock solid. Being new to computers and almost 2 years of browsing now, not one piece of malware ever hit his machine.

Worker Joined: Dec 23, 2005 Posts: 226 Location: UK

I'm still not sure why M$ have renamed osx to vista ROTFL

registered · Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2007 10:09 am

Having been able to use Vista since the first alpha release, all I can say is, I don't get the reasons to upgrade. It has a few nice features, but only one or two things that are really WOW! Even then those things don't say to me, spend $xxx dollars to upgrade. I really fail to see any reason to upgrade. Its not like 3.11 to 95 or 95/98 to XP.

To me it feels like XP with a face lift.

I don't honestly know what they were doing the past 5 years, but it wasn't making a better OS in my opinion.

Worker Joined: Dec 05, 2006 Posts: 180

eh its just pretty and a pretty big hog.

build your own computer, us vmware like kguske said. Put a free distro of linux and play around on it. I have beta vista and have not installed it yet.

Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2007 11:48 am

After looking briefly at Vista based laptops yesterday I mail ordered more memory for my XP laptop. When I asked if the laptop with Vista comes with the CD for Vista, I got an "uhh, no it comes preinstalled". Which of course begs the question. But no, you don't get a real "copy" of Vista and if your laptop ever goes south well ... you can get a restore disk from them for only $29.99 but that's essentially a disk image from what I make out. So it will restore your pc back to day 1, meaning you lose all your programs and data, everything you've put on the PC. Of course you can chunk over $250 or whatever and BUY a copy of Vista but it would have to be a full copy and not an upgrade . Kind of strange considering you're buying a laptop with Vista on it.

This verges on false and misleading advertising if you ask me, but of course no one does. Smile

Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2007 12:59 pm

I'm sure M$ know what their doing, remember those oh so helpful updates to win98 that made you buy XP just to keep your sanity.

registered · Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2007 4:42 pm

The only reason people will have to use Vista is DirectX 10. There aren't any games that require DX10, nor are DX10 video cards mainstream yet. So until then, I am waiting and sticking with XP

Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2007 6:48 pm

I was reading on a C++ gaming site that MS is already thinking about bending to DX10 complaints and has plans to back port many of the functions into a DX9.x version or maybe even all of DX10.

Posted: Wed Jan 31, 2007 7:04 pm

The more I play with Vista, the more I like it and appreciate it. There's a lot of new backend security stuff that most people don't even know about yet. The thing I didn't trust at first was the fact that they re-wrote the whole networking stack from scratch. And as we all know, security is not claimed...it's proven over time. But....the other features more than make up for it in my mind. Microsoft could very well have built their most secure operating system to date.

Involved Joined: Jul 15, 2004 Posts: 252 Location: OKC, OK

manunkind wrote:

Microsoft could very well have built their most secure operating system to date.

That's like saying the new line of Ford trucks are the closest thing to running on nuclear fusion yet.

Till Service Pack two, their not through.

Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 5:18 pm

Funny, how can it be rewritten from scratch and more secure when it has the same security bugs that XP has?

Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 7:49 pm

Tao_Man wrote:

That's like saying the new line of Ford trucks are the closest thing to running on nuclear fusion yet.

Till Service Pack two, their not through.

All things being equal. XP was a total mess when it was first introduced. Vista will be more secure right out of the gate.

Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 8:00 pm

djmaze wrote:

Funny, how can it be rewritten from scratch and more secure when it has the same security bugs that XP has?

Like what? It's very possible. Re-writing of layers 2 or 3 may not have any affect on layer 5 to 7 vulnerabilities. What exact "security bugs" are you referring to?

Posted: Thu Feb 01, 2007 10:43 pm

There already reporting a minor issue with the speech recognition in Vista. Nothing that can be exploited directly, but you have to download an audio file and have it play with the speech recognition on. Essentially it would allow speech commands that could possible do things with whatever user access you have