Comp USA and MSFT Sell Vista/Office Nov. 30 On

[Chad Harris]

Apparently MSFT is offering volume license sales now from this site:
http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusin...tage/security-microsoft-software-upgrade.mspx

https://microsoft.order-5.com/upgradedesktop/addrform.asp?skipto=4


Microsoft Teams Up With CompUSA to Deliver Windows Vista Business and
Microsoft Office Small Business 2007 Early to Small Businesses Purchasing
Five or More Licenses
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/nov06/11-13CompUSAVLPR.mspx

"Customers will initially receive a Microsoft Small Business Value Program
Kit and a proof of purchase. A CompUSA sales associate will then work with
the customer to explain how the software can be downloaded with activation
of the license."


This is how they say it is setup until they get the regular complement of
actual packages in the store which will probably be around January 30, 2007.

Right now what you walk out of the store with is a registration number for a
license which you then take to a MSFT web site to download the appropriate
iso that allows you to exercise what you have purchased in that license, and
receive the benefits of some training and the Software Assurance guarantees.

"Part of the Small Business Value Program, Open Business and Open Value are
simple and flexible software license offerings designed to save money for
small businesses that can be easily managed online and require as few as
five licenses. Open Value, the most comprehensive, cost-effective way for
small businesses to purchase Microsoft software by spreading payments
annually, comes with the added benefits of Microsoft Software Assurance,
which includes technical and end-user training along with new version
upgrades. Open Business licensing enables small organizations to gain
significant savings from the estimated retail prices of full packaged
Microsoft products, with the option of adding Software Assurance."


Offer for tech assessment and information kit which includes:

A free tech assessment and opportunity to purchase Windows Vista and
Microsoft Office Small Business 2007 from a Microsoft small business
specialist partner
A free business kit which includes demos, tips & tricks, and other useful
information on Windows Vista and Microsoft Office Small Business 2007



These will help you see the Vista Editions and the Office Editions:

Vista Editions
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/editions/default.mspx

Office Editions:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/suites/default.aspx

*VISTA*

All Vista licenses are upgrade licenses and they are for Vista Business.
Vista Business does not have the MCE interface and functionality. It does
not have Bit Locker Encryption.


All of these licenses are sold via two plans and you can mix editions and
pay accordingly in the five licenses requirement of the plans.

I Open Business License Plan requires a purchase of a minimum of five
licenses and you pay up front. You can mix any of the Vista or Office
licenses with at least five or more to make up the five.

II Open Value License Plan allows you to pay over time after registering
with MSFT. You pay Comp USA either plastic or cash and can make 3 annual
payments. If the payments failed, the software would be killed, including
any attempts to use an image made or to activate one.

I'm not clear on MSFT's plans to make people activate Office or Vista every
so often, and if anyone knows firmly how this is planned, I'd be interested.

They said there would be X64 availalbilty based on what CPU the person had
with no cost difference. I would refer to the ability to upgrade as to X64
as Colin recently posted in this thread, and of course Colin's caveats would
apply. My understanding from them though was that if you had the
appropriate hardware i.e. CPU and software that 64 bit upgrade would be
accomodated with these licenses.

*OFFICE*

Office Editions Available via Comp USA License Plans.

There are seven Office editions. Four of them may be purchased now via Comp
USA licenses. Basic is available only through OEMs according to the MSFT
Office site.

Office 2007 Overview:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/suites/HA101757031033.aspx

Office 2007 How to Buy
http://office.microsoft.com/search/...id=CL101732621033&CTT=3&Origin=HA101757031033

Pricing is as follows:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/suites/FX101754511033.aspx

Office Suites Comparison Table is here:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/suites/FX101635841033.aspx

Paul Thurott's Office 2007 FAQ
http://www.winsupersite.com/faq/office2007.asp

Microsoft's Office 2007 FAQ
http://office.microsoft.com/search/...id=CL101732621033&CTT=3&Origin=HA101757031033

They said that these Office editions are available as upgrade editions,
although there will of course be full and upgrade editions per the Office
site.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/suites/FX101754511033.aspx

Office Standard
Office Small Business
Office Pro
Office Enterprise
_______________


Sheet 1
A B C D E F G H I J
1 New Agreement Sheet
2 SAP Description 26 Character JDA Description Language Sell
3 Office 2007
4 MS Part# IMS Sku Description Description Language Sell
5 021-07856 343639 Open Business Office 2007 Eng OLP Office 2007 OLP OB
2Y 2007 $369.00
6 76J-00323 343644 Open Business Office Enterprise 2007 Eng OLP Office
Ent 2007 OLP OB 2Y 2007 $584.00
7 W87-01806 343646 Open Business Office Small Business 2007 English OLP
NL Office SBE 2007 OLP OB 2Y 2007 $410.00
8 79P-00123 343634 Open Business Office Professional Plus 2007 English
OLP NL Office Pro+ 2007 OLP OB 2Y 2007 $478.00
9
10 Vista
11 MS Part# IMS Sku Description Description Language Sell
12 66J-00724 343638 Open Business Windows Vista Business English UPG OLP
NL Vista Bus UPG OLP OB 2Y Non-specific $187.00
13 66J-01215 343632 Open Business Windows Vista Business English Upg/SA
Pack OLP NL w/VisEnterprise Vista Bus Upg/SA OLP OB 2Y Non-specific
$296.00
14
15
16 Open Value 3yr Full Pay
17 Office 2007
18 MS Part# IMS Sku Description Description Language Sell
19 021-07261 343633 Office English Lic/SA Pack OLV NL 3YR Acq Y1 Addtl
Prod Office 2007 OLV 3Y FP 3 Yr English $691.00
20 76J-00210 343640 Office Enterprise English Lic/SA Pack OLV NL 3YR Acq
Y1 Addtl Prod Office Ent 2007 OLV 3Y FP 3 Yr English $1,095.00
21 269-09050 343650 Office Professional Plus English Lic/SA Pack OLV NL
3YR Acq Y1 Addtl Prod Office Pro+ 2007 OLV 3Y FP 3 Yr English $897.00
22 W87-00360 343643 Office SB Ed English Lic/SA Pack OLV NL 3YR Acq Y1
Addtl Prod Office SBE 2007 OLV 3Y FP 3 Yr English $769.00
23
24 Vista
25 MS Part# IMS Sku Description Description Language Sell
26 66J-01442 343642 Windows Vista Business English Upg/SA Pack OLV NL
3YR Acq Y1 Addtl Prod w/VisEnt Vista Bus Upg/SA OLV 3Y FP 3 Yr English
$352.00
27
28 Small Business Advantage
29 MS Part# IMS Sku Description Description Language Sell
30 B6K-00050 343651 Desktop Small Business Listed Lic/SA Pack OLV NL 3YR
Acq Y1 Ent Small Bus Dsktp OLV 3Y FP 3 Yr Listed Languages $923.00
31
32
33 Open Value 1YR Annuity (3 Payments)
34 Office 2007
35 MS Part# IMS Sku Description Description Language Sell
36 021-07257 343637 Office English Lic/SA Pack OLV NL 1YR Acq Y1 Addtl
Prod Office 2007 OLV 3Paymt 1 Yr English $231.00
37 76J-00206 343645 Office Enterprise English Lic/SA Pack OLV NL 1YR Acq
Y1 Addtl Prod Office Ent 2007 OLV 3Paymt 1 Yr English $365.00
38 269-09046 343647 Office Professional Plus English Lic/SA Pack OLV NL
1YR Acq Y1 Addtl Prod Office Pro+ 2007 OLV 3Paymt 1 Yr English $299.00
39 W87-00356 343635 Office SB Ed English Lic/SA Pack OLV NL 1YR Acq Y1
Addtl Prod Office SBE 2007 OLV 3Paymt 1 Yr English $257.00
40
41 Vista
42 MS Part# IMS Sku Description Description Language Sell
43 66J-01418 343648 Windows Vista Business English Upg/SA Pack OLV NL
1YR Acq Y1 Addtl Prod w/VisEnt Vista Bus Upg/SA OLV 3Pay 1 Yr English
$118.00
44
45 Small Business Advantage
46 MS Part# IMS Sku Description Description Language Cost Sell
47 B6K-00052 343649 Desktop Small Business Listed Lic/SA Pack OLV NL 1YR
Acq Y1 Ent Sm Bus Dsktp OLV 3Paymt 1 Yr Listed Languages $308.00


CH

 

[Guest]

Big deal Chad, this means absolutely nothing for anyone except a business
that wants a liscense for 5 PCs. I know because I personally went to a COMP
USA store to see if I could buy a copy for my wife for a Christmas gift.
Again, for the average user, a PC enthusiast who wanted to buy a copy of RTM
in good faith, this won't cut it. I would have loved to give Vista as a gift
this year. Unfortunately, the marketing genuises at Microsoft decided that
Christmas is a bad time to launch Vista. Whats the harm in selling RTM as a
download? I have a bad feeling for this new OS. Missing out on the
Christmas season will hurt sales, bigtime. IF I were part of the sales and
marketing of Microsoft I would be redoing my resume about now. When someone
at the top figures out the blunder, it will be too late.

 

[Richard Urban]

Microsoft, the corporation, - not only sales - made the decision to release
Vista on Jan. 30, so no one has to redo their resume.

If RTM was made available as a download to the general public, it would
likely bring the internet to it's knees.

Also, how long do you think it takes to manufacturer hundreds of millions of
DVD's and get them into the channel. Not a couple of weeks by anyone's
imagination stretch.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Guest]

Whatever- its still a bad move to miss Christmas. Microsoft has let people
down. Not only PC enthusiasts, but businesses that manufacture PCs, like
DELL, HP. If the Vista code is at RTM they should have released it. Imagine
people scrambling to get limited copies like the recent Sony Playstation 3.
I can easily imagine copies of Vista Ultimate going on Ebay for thousands of
dollars. Its supply and demand. This is a bad business decision. Its not
realistic that MS could not have released the OS on a limited basis.

 

[Chad Harris]

Yo Jon. Someone who continually teaches me on these groups had requested
this information and I supplied it.

And unless you can't read. I don't shill for MSFT. . I know what it means,
and people had asked about what is on sale and how early so I researched it
and this was on another thread which strangely had many of its posts deleted
including one by a MSFT MVP that was excellent on X64.

I've had RTM for a good while. I'd rather spend time drilling the software
than worrying about when and what and where and the rest of it.

I appreciate your opinion and respect it and certainly you should be
encouraged to express it, but remember John if you want to say it to MSFT
you're not doing that here. You can post a comment on the Vista Team Blog
where it will be read by them and can be forwarded to whomever. But things
are in motion now Jon.

If you describe to whom you want to give gifts, and your price range, I
guarantee you scores of us can come up with great ones including hardware,
software, or gadgets.

Check out www.extremetech.com

I know you are disappointed, but I tried to give you an accurate explanation
of Vista timing.

CH

 

[Chad Harris]

Jon --

What impressed me about PS3 wasn't just the poor planning that Sony had in
having supplies but a critical look at it showed remarkably naive planning
compared to J. Allard and the XBox organization on so many fronts.

You should not see Vista going on Ebay for inflated prices but anything is
possible. When it is released you will have significant opportunities to
use it. Meanwhile, you can still do a lot with what is available for public
download, under the hood belive me.

A nice gift when it comes out, probably not in time for Christmas but you
could give a gift certificate to the type of person you wanted to give Vista
to is Ed Bott's book.

Why not give the person you wanted to give Vista as a gift a gift
certificate so that when they can buy it, they will be able to?

CH

 

[Guest]

I get it now Chad, you're fat and happy. YOU already have a copy. Obviously
no one else matters, the economy, especially the PC business, which needed a
shot in the arm mass manufacturing, PC enthusiasts who certainly might've
been happy to try the new OS for Christmas, now won't be able to. If RTM was
released, this then is the final code. Over a month ago I believe. If this
is true, MS could have released it on a limited basis. What a letdown.

 

[Richard Urban]

You seem to want it both ways.

First you mention people scrambling to get limited copies of Play Station
3.

Then, in the very next breath, you say Microsoft should have released Vista
on a limited basis.

You really "are" confused.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Tom Lake]

Big deal Chad, this means absolutely nothing for anyone except a business
that wants a liscense for 5 PCs. I know because I personally went to a COMP
USA store to see if I could buy a copy for my wife for a Christmas gift.
Again, for the average user, a PC enthusiast who wanted to buy a copy of RTM
in good faith, this won't cut it. I would have loved to give Vista as a gift
this year. Unfortunately, the marketing genuises at Microsoft decided that
Christmas is a bad time to launch Vista. Whats the harm in selling RTM as a
download? I have a bad feeling for this new OS. Missing out on the
Christmas season will hurt sales, bigtime.

No, it won't. Vista is going to be around for a few years (I think it will be longer
than
the three years, MS is shooting for). One Christmas season won't make or break it.
Besides, MS is becoming more interested in corporate sales and less in consumer
sales.

Tom Lake

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Thanks for all the research. You put in a lot time. Now we wait for
Launch. It is clear to me now that there is no need to send the neighbor
down to CompUSA for a retail copy of Vista Business. That was a point I was
missing big time.

 

[Guest]

Chad

Please correct me if I'm barking up the wrong tree.

RTM is the code for Vista, and the manufacturers
will indeed take some time to manufacture DVD's.

But, aren't the manufacturers 'adding' further drivers
to the RTM code before they produce the zillions
of DVD's expected to be pressed ?

Just asking !

........................................................................................

 

[Chad Harris]

RTM could be made available to the public anytime if MSFT had elected to do
this via a variety of mechanisms including legitimate Torrents which are
now being used by a number of large companies and it is only a matter of
time until MSFT gets them. The Akami servers could handle it, and the
internet while facing some future problems if there isn't planning, would
not be "brought to its knees."

However what is available since Nov, 30, I have outlined in detail. I also
explained the decision MSFT made with accuracy. It would have been a far
better Vista if they had delayed further, and I know the licensing and
software assurance ramnifications well.

It was not just the DVDs into the channel,or the manufacturing and delivery
process of the software, but as the NY Times article I posted on MSFT's
delay pointed up, OEMs requested MSFT delay because of part considerations
for the new wave of computers. The parts are often delivered on large
cargo ships to your country. Right now in bricks and mortar stores and on
the web there is a small sampling of what will be available duo core wise
and beyond in different form factors.

There are plenty of mechanisms for RTM delivery on the web MSFT could
commandere in a 520 corridore heartbeat. A couple examples are covered
below in one of your favorite formats.

File Sharing's New Face


By SETH SCHIESEL
Published: February 12, 2004, Thursday


AFTER working for a parade of doomed dot-com startups, a young programmer
named Bram Cohen finally got tired of failure.
''I decided I finally wanted to work on a project that people would actually
use, would actually work and would actually be fun,'' he recalled.
AFTER working for a parade of doomed dot-com startups, a young programmer
named Bram Cohen finally got tired of failure.
''I decided I finally wanted to work on a project that people would actually
use, would actually work and would actually be fun,'' he recalled.

Three years later, Mr. Cohen, 28, has emerged as the face of the next wave
of Internet file sharing. If Napster started the first generation of
file-sharing, and services like Kazaa represented the second, then the
system developed by Mr. Cohen, known as BitTorrent, may well be leading the
third. Firm numbers are difficult to come by, but it appears that the
BitTorrent software has been downloaded more than 10 million times.
And just as earlier forms of file-sharing seem to be waning in popularity
under legal pressure from the music industry, new technologies like
BitTorrent are making it easier than ever to share and distribute the huge
files used for video. One site alone, suprnova.org, routinely offers
hundreds of television programs, recent movies and copyrighted software
programs. The movie industry, among others, has taken notice.
What Mr. Cohen has created, however, seems beyond his control. And when he
was developing the system, he said, widespread copyright infringement was
not what he had in mind.
Rather, he was intrigued by a problem familiar to many Internet users and
felt acutely by friends who were trading music online legally: the
excruciating wait while files were being downloaded.
''Obviously their problem was not enough bandwidth to meet demand,'' Mr.
Cohen said in an interview at a Mexican restaurant near his home in Seattle.
''It seemed pretty clear to me that there is a lot of bandwidth out there,
but it's not being used properly. There's all of this upload capacity that
people aren't using.''
That was the essential insight behind BitTorrent. Under older file-sharing
systems like Napster and Kazaa, only a small subset of users actually share
files with the world. Most users simply download, or leech, in cyberspace
parlance.

BitTorrent, however, uses what could be called a Golden Rule principle: the
faster you upload, the faster you are allowed to download. BitTorrent cuts
up files into many little pieces, and as soon as a user has a piece, they
immediately start uploading that piece to other users. So almost all of the
people who are sharing a given file are simultaneously uploading and
downloading pieces of the same file (unless their downloading is complete).
The practical implication is that the BitTorrent system makes it easy to
distribute very large files to large numbers of people while placing minimal
bandwidth requirements on the original ''seeder.'' That is because everyone
who wants the file is sharing with one another, rather than downloading from
a central source. A separate file-sharing network known as eDonkey uses a
similar system.

For Mr. Cohen, BitTorrent was always about exercising his brain rather than
trying to fatten his wallet. Unlike many other file-sharing programs,
BitTorrent is both free and open-source, which means that those with enough
technical know-how can incorporate Mr. Cohen's code into their own programs.
While writing the software, ''I lived on savings for a while and then I
lived off credit cards, you know, using those zero percent introductory
rates to use one credit card to pay off the previous card,'' Mr. Cohen said.
The first usable version of BitTorrent appeared in October 2002, but the
system needed a lot of fine-tuning. Luckily for Mr. Cohen, he was living in
the Bay Area at the time and his project had attracted the attention of John
Gilmore, the free-software entrepreneur, who had also been one of the first
employees at Sun Microsystems. Mr. Gilmore ended up helping Mr. Cohen with
some of his living expenses while he finished the system.
''Part of what matters to me about this is that it makes it possible for
people with limited bandwidth to supply very popular files,'' Mr. Gilmore
said in a telephone interview. ''It means that if you are a small software
developer you can put up a package, and if it turns out that millions of
people want it, they can get it from each other in an automated way.''
BitTorrent really started to take off in early 2003 when it was used to
distribute a new version of Linux and fans of Japanese anime started relying
on it to share cartoons.
It is difficult to measure BitTorrent's overall use. But Steven C. Corbato,
director of backbone network infrastructure for Internet2, the high-speed
network consortium, said he took notice in May. ''We started seeing
BitTorrent traffic increase right around May 15, 2003, and by October it was
above 10 percent of the traffic,'' he said.

Data for the week of Jan. 26, which Mr. Corbato said was the latest reliable
information, showed that BitTorrent generated 9.3 percent of the total data
traffic on Internet2's so-called Abilene backbone, which connects more than
200 of the nation's biggest research universities, in addition to
laboratories and state education networks. By contrast, no other file
sharing system registered more than 1 percent of the traffic, though Mr.
Corbato said his network might be underreporting the use of those other
services.
Just a few months ago, however, that success still had not translated into
dollars for Mr. Cohen.
''This past September I had, like, no money,'' he recalled. ''I was just
scraping along and doing the credit card thing again.''

But unknown to Mr. Cohen, BitTorrent was serving as a job application. Out
of the blue, he heard from Gabe Newell, the managing director of Valve
Software, based in nearby Bellevue, Wash. Valve is developing what gaming
experts anticipate will be a blockbuster video game, Half-Life 2, but it is
also creating an online distribution network that it calls Steam. Because of
Mr. Cohen's expertise in just that area, Valve offered him a job. He moved
to Seattle and started work in October.
''When we looked around to see who was doing the most interesting work in
this space, Bram's progress on BitTorrent really stood out,'' Mr. Newell
said. ''The distributed publishing model embedded in BitTorrent is exactly
the kind of thing media companies need to build on for their own systems.''
All along, Mr. Cohen had accepted donations from BitTorrent users at his Web
site, bitconjurer.org, but the sum had been minimal. In October, however,
Mr. Cohen's father prevailed on him to ask a bit more directly. Now, Mr.
Cohen said, he is receiving a few hundred dollars a day.
''It's been a pretty dramatic turnaround in lifestyle in just a few months,
with the job and the donations coming in,'' Mr. Cohen said. ''It's nice.''

According to survey data from the Pew Internet and American Life Project,
file sharing is on the wane, apparently as a result of the music industry's
legal offensive. Last May, 29 percent of adult Internet users in the United
States reported that they had engaged in file sharing; that figure dropped
to 14 percent in a survey conducted in November and December. Nonetheless,
the ranks of the BitTorrent faithful -- whether anime fanatics, Linux users,
Deadheads or movie pirates -- appear to be growing. And some are quite
thankful to Mr. Cohen.
''I think Bram is going to be like Shawn Fanning in terms of the impact this
is going to have,'' said Steve Hormell, a co-founder of etree.org, a
music-trading site that predates the file-sharing phenomenon, referring to
the inventor of the original Napster service. ''It is a bit of paradigm
shift and I can't stress the community aspect of it enough. You have to give
back in order to get. Going back 15 years, that's what the Internet was all
about until the suits came along.''

Not surprisingly, the movie industry is not amused. ''BitTorrent is
definitely on our radar screen,'' Tom Temple, the director for Internet
enforcement for the Motion Picture Association of America, said in a
telephone interview. While the association first became aware of the
technology about a year ago, BitTorrent's surging popularity prompted the
group to start sending infringement notices to BitTorrent site operators in
November.
''We do have investigations open into various BitTorrent link sites that
could lead to either civil or criminal prosecution in the near future,'' Mr.
Temple said.
For his part, Mr. Cohen pointed out that BitTorrent users are not anonymous
and that their numeric Internet addresses are easily viewable by anyone who
cares. ''It amazes me that sites like Suprnova continue to stay up, because
it would be so easy to sue them,'' he said. Using BitTorrent for illegal
trading, he added, is ''patently stupid because it's not anonymous, and it
can't be made anonymous because it's fundamentally antithetical to the
architecture.''

That said, Mr. Cohen is not in the nanny business.
''I'm not going to get up on my high horse and tell others not to do it
because it's not my place to berate people,'' he said. ''I just sort of
watch it with some amusement.''

________________________________________________


November 29, 2006


Wal-Mart Plans to Test Online Films
By BRAD STONE
The decade-old DVD moved two small steps closer yesterday to technology’s
endangered-species list.
Wal-Mart, the country’s largest seller of movies, announced that next year
it will begin testing a video download service on its Web site. Wal-Mart did
not reveal its partners, but media executives involved in the deal said that
all the major studios are either on board or in active talks with the
retailer, and that Hewlett-Packard is providing the technology for the
download site.
In another sign that the race to put video content online is accelerating,
the Internet firm BitTorrent, once a pariah for enabling vast unauthorized
video file-sharing, plans to announce today that it has struck distribution
deals with eight media partners, including 20th Century Fox, Paramount and
MTV Networks.


Beginning in February, the companies will begin selling TV shows and movies
through BitTorrent’s Web site, bittorrent.com.


It is a strange juxtaposition: BitTorrent, with 35 employees, and the
company whose dominance in video sales is so threatened by online file
trading, 1.8-million-employee Wal-Mart.
DVDs are not going away any time soon. A vast distribution system is still
built around them, and downloading can still be slow and cumbersome. But the
latest steps show that studios and retailers have concluded that the future
of home-video sales lies online.


That conviction has been reflected this year in a flurry of deals; Apple,
Google, Amazon and AOL have all rolled out video stores. Apart from Apple’s
iTunes, the online stores have enjoyed limited success so far, but that has
not stopped the momentum.


Media companies have even become willing to strike partnerships with firms
whose popular technology is primarily used for trading unauthorized content.
For example, YouTube, the video sharing site now owned by Google, reached
rights agreements with the music labels Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, and
some TV networks — despite the relative freedom users had during YouTube’s
early days in uploading and watching copyrighted material.

The media companies are not only attracted to the large online audiences of
companies like BitTorrent, but also want to enlist their support in
eradicating unauthorized content. The media companies in the BitTorrent deal
say that the Internet firm has pledged to police its network for illegal
trading.
“They are making a big commitment to us to filter the site,†said Jamie
McCabe, executive vice president at 20th Century Fox. “When anything is up
there that is not legitimate, they’ve pledged to take it down.â€
For now, at least, the move by Wal-Mart, which accounts for 37 percent of
the country’s video sales, is likely to make the larger splash.

Though its video download store will officially open for business next year,
Wal-Mart took a tentative first step yesterday. Customers who buy the
physical DVD of Warner Brothers’ “Superman Returns†in a Wal-Mart store will
have the option of downloading a digital copy of the film to their portable
devices for $1.97, personal computer for $2.97, or both for $3.97.

The dual approach, marrying downloads to the purchase of an actual DVD in
the store, reflects the retailer’s commitment to protecting its bottom line.
“We feel like it is really important that the DVD business stays healthy and
stays quite central to consumers’ lives,†said Kevin Swint, a divisional
merchandising manager at Wal-Mart.
Not every movie studio has yet formally signed onto Wal-Mart’s effort.
According to two studio executives involved in the negotiations, some
studios are grappling over the extra charge of $1.97 to $3.97 for DVD buyers
to download the movie. Some studios feel that it would be better to provide
the downloads free to DVD buyers, making them clearly a promotion, so that
those prices do not become fixed in customers’ minds as the going rate for
movies online.

While Wal-Mart’s coming effort might get more scrutiny, BitTorrent’s
approach to selling video online represents a more radical departure from
current video stores on the Web — and an attempt to fix some of the problems
that have plagued online video purchases, like excruciating download times.
BitTorrent’s founder, Bram Cohen, 31, introduced the network in 2001 at the
height of the legal battles over Napster, the peer-to-peer pioneer. His
service was remarkably efficient; when a user tries to download a media
file, the network fetches pieces of that file from the computers of nearby
users on the network and reassembles them on the user’s computer.

Fat video files that might take over an hour to download over iTunes can
take just minutes over BitTorrent if other, nearby users have the file on
their hard drives.
BitTorrent’s software currently sits on 80 million computers, and Internet
service providers say that file trading on the service — most of it
illegal — now accounts for 40 percent of all online traffic.
The company, which incorporated in 2003 and raised $9 million in venture
capital, has recently gotten more serious about policing its network. Last
year, it reached a deal with the Motion Picture Association of America to
remove infringing content from the search index on its Web site. And in May,
Warner Brothers agreed to sell its TV shows and movies through BitTorrent’s
network, though the effort was delayed until more partners were enlisted.

Other partners in the deal to be announced today include Lionsgate, the
technology cable channel G4 and Starz Media, a programming production and
distribution company owned by Liberty Media.
Ashwin Navin, BitTorrent’s president, said that as the firm built a business
in authorized distribution, it viewed piracy as a competitive threat. So it
plans to build a more attractive alternative that will convert its
traditional users while luring those who have not yet waded into the world
of digital downloading, he said.
In the new service, BitTorrent’s partners will upload authorized versions of
their TV shows and films onto the network. No pricing details have yet been
announced. Files will be protected by Microsoft’s content management system,
and files will play right inside the user’s Web browser. Users who buy
content will have to enter a special encryption key before watching the
movie, and they will only be able to view it on two computers — say, a
desktop and a laptop they might bring with them on a business trip.
Mike Goodman, an analyst at the Yankee Group, says networks like BitTorrent
shift bandwidth costs to users.

“You can argue that peer-to-peer will ultimately be the cheapest way to
distribute this content,†he said.
Studio executives agree, and think BitTorrent will take its place alongside
the giants like Wal-Mart in the emerging digital download world.
“I think everyone is going to do a BitTorrent deal,†said Thomas Lesinski,
president of Paramount Pictures Digital Entertainment. “You have to be in a
position where you make your content available everywhere the consumer is
interested in downloading it.â€
Laura M. Holson contributed reporting.


CH

 

[Chad Harris]

This is a good question Lone Wolf. You're barking up the right tree. The
bottom line answer to your question is absolutely but MSFT will deliver
further drivers via Windows Update and your enabling automatic update, and
manufacturers like HP and NVidia for example will keep rolling out drivers
in the months to come. While using MSFT via Windows Update or MSFT Update
or device manager to obtain generic drivers works well, I prefer to try to
go to the manufacture's site because the latest driver will be there unless
the device is out of date or they don't support it, and I can show you a
number of devices in Vista or XP particularly some of the new printers and
scanners where there are drivers and MSFT doesn't always have them.

RTM is the final release of Vista. That released on November 7, 2006. I'm
sure that it takes time to get the amount of DVDs in the pipeline which are
done by a contract company near MSFT. If drivers are added further, they
will be supplied both by MSFT Update and Windows Update in Vista and by the
manufacturers themselves.

Vista uses Windows Update and Automatic update so that there is no "stuck at
a certain time issue".for drivers. MSFT put over 19, 500 drivers on the
DVD that has what you call the RTM code or "gold" or what hsa been released
to TBTs, MVPs, TAP, etc. MSDN, Technet and will be on sale.

Win XP shipped with about 10,000 drivers on its CD. Further some drivers
support many different hardware models.

To quote Jim Allchin:

"While we worked hard to get a comprehensive set of drivers on the DVD prior
to release-to-manufacturing (RTM), the magic of Windows Update and Automatic
Updates makes this "frozen in time" distribution problem basically a
non-issue. For Windows Vista we are excited to have over 19,500 device
drivers on the Windows Vista DVD (in contrast to just 10,000 for Windows XP
when it shipped). The number of device drivers is really a small way of
looking at it, since each driver can usually support numerous actual
different device models. Indeed, sometimes a single driver can support
hundreds of different models, as often is the case with video drivers. But,
what is even more significant is that at the RTM for Windows Vista, we
already had an additional 11,700 device drivers on Windows Update compared
to just 2,000 for Windows XP when it RTM’d in 2001. And while we will have
significantly more drivers online by official availability, we will continue
to add more drivers even after the launch. Because of the improvements in
Automatic Updates for Windows Vista, users that choose the recommended
setting for Automatic Updates will have the latest drivers installed and
available when they add a new device."

Hth,

CH

 

[Jupiter Jones [MVP]]

"mechanisms including legitimate Torrents"
"The Akami servers could handle it,"

Really?
How do you know?
Please share the sources for these facts.
To do so you would need, but not limited to:
The total # of downloads expected
Failed/partial downloads
The capabilities of all available download servers.
Expected impact on the internet.
And more.
If you can not answer these and others in detail, you show yourself to be
little more than a writer of fiction...again.

 

[Alias]

I get it now Chad, you're fat and happy. YOU already have a copy. Obviously
no one else matters, the economy, especially the PC business, which needed a
shot in the arm mass manufacturing, PC enthusiasts who certainly might've
been happy to try the new OS for Christmas, now won't be able to. If RTM was
released, this then is the final code. Over a month ago I believe. If this
is true, MS could have released it on a limited basis. What a letdown.

Aw, the poor widdle baby can't play with his Vista toy on xmas. My heart
bleeds for you. Does the word "spoiled brat" mean anything to you?

Alias, who, at the soonest, will buy Vista by Christmas 2008.

 

[michael e dziatkowicz]

It was the manufacturers that ASKED microsoft to DELAY vista to after
christmas. They told Microsoft if they couldn't get it out by September to
please delay the release until after the new year so they could have more
time to prep their computers and stores for the launch and not rush to get
it out into consumers hands in time for thanksgiving and christmas. If you
had been following the Vista events since the beginning of the year you
would have seen that this is in case the fact not the opposite.

 

[Jupiter Jones [MVP]]

In other words you can not prove anything you said in your last post.
If you could even a little bit you would have.
Your ridiculous comparison between CPP and RTM proves nothing except you
seem to know little of either with respect to downloads.