From MS site (re: uprgrade versions of Vista)

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Frankly speaking, I feel all those measures are part of
gentle-forcing-people-to-buy-more theory by using one way or the other.

The theory is not without base - The US market has entered to the mature
stage since late 90's meaning new growth is very limited.

Other than foreign markets, it has to find new ways to grow - and that
includes all possible measures.

The only "subjective" question is what measures are better than other. But
I really believe many of what we have seen are pushing to the theme of
buying more.

By all means, all companies are obliged to do that for all stakeholders, but
again, it is the measures for how to accomplish it will be in question.

 

[David Wilkinson]

I see. Sure, they could. But...

The legacy cd doesn't mean anything. A copy of a Windows cd is
indistinguishible from the original so all the media means is that you at
least have a copy. It doesn't even prove you own it. The pk is not on the
cd, so typing in the pk for the legacy cd doesn't add anything since you had
to have a correct pk to have installed the legacy OS in the first place.
Why bother repeating it now?

Where I see the problem is that there are a lot of computers with Windows
preinstalled and for which the owners have no Windows cd. The major system
builders have long been shipping Windows preinstalled with only a recovery
partition, or recovery cd's with only a Ghost image of the hdd as it was set
up at the factory. There simply is no Windows cd. Most who could have
ordered a cd for a fee didn't.

My wife's Compaq laptop came with an OEM Windows cd but it a Compaq BIOS
locked cd. Since it cannot be used to install Windows on any computer
without the correct BIOS chip, there is no need to enter any pk and it is
preactivated. I did a complete restoration a few weeks ago and that's when
I noticed that Windows installed normally without my entering a pk.

These kinds of preinstalled Windows far outnumber the retail editions. They
are the norm. It looks to me like the methods MS is now using for the
Upgrade Editions more closely resembles where the majority of users are
rather than those of us who always like to be prepared for anything.

Colin:

Not all disks are the same (OEM ones are different, for example, and may
even be tied to the specific hardware). But I agree with you that the
disk is meaningless; it is the qualifying PK that matters. Many people
would lend their XP disk, but nobody in his right mind would lend his PK
for an OS that requires activation.

I still maintain that requiring the qualifying OS to be installed does
not prove anything. If the person has the disk and a valid PK (for the
machine if it is OEM), then clearly they could install it. But Vista can
check that this would have been possible, so the install itself is
useless. In fact all that is required is the PK; both the disk and the
installation are meaningless.

But I guess you are right about OEM systems for which the owner does not
even have a PK; my method would not work for them (unless Vista was
smart enough to be able to read the XP disk).

As it is, I think MS should drop the upgrade version altogether, and
lower the price of the retail one. Much better for everybody. Including
Microsoft, because there wouldn't be millions of people complaining that
they could not install the upgrade disk that they had paid for.

David Wilkinson

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

As it is, I think MS should drop the upgrade version altogether, and lower

the price of the retail one. Much better for everybody.

I agree and I don't know any technololgy enthusiast who doesn't.

One edition (Ultimate) for everybody and let Vista scale itself to your
system and offer the best it has for your system profile. No upgrade
editions (upgrade for convenience if you want, custom if you don't). One
price somewhere in between Ultimate full and Home Basic.

But MS Marketing is responsible for all of this, not the engineers and devs.
It is Marketing's job to determine what features are available in each
edition according to "adding value." It is Marketing's job to determine the
upgrade matrix.

I know that Marketing made the decision not to include certain features in
Home Basic, for example, in order to preserve the value of Home Premium, and
so forth up the food chain. In fact I know of one case where Marketing
needed to distance Home Premium from Home Basic a little more and so pulled
a significant feature from HB. Do you think there is a technical reason for
the Home editions not including CompletePC Backup? Or why automatic backup
scheduling is available in Home Premium but not in Home Basic?

"Preserve the value" translates to "Justify the greater price" to me. I am
not saying that isn't their job or that they shouldn't do it, but as
technology enthusiasts, of course we want everybody to have everything we
do. So do the dev teams at MS. Each team is proud of its own product and
wants everyone to enjoy it.

Besides, a universal Vista would be a lot easier to support.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

"I still maintain that requiring the qualifying OS to be installed does
not prove anything. If the person has the disk and a valid PK (for the
machine if it is OEM), then clearly they could install it."

It is not the legacy pk that matters but that the license was tied to
machine. That isn't done by entering the pk. It is done by activation and
verified by validation.

If you are following Janet Chen's comments elsewhere in the ng, she states
that China distributed the state's own XP volume licensing pk's to the
public by reading them out over the radio. XP vl keys do not require
activation. (Vista's do.)

Ms has passed from the Honor System to, as Gorbachev put it, "Trust, but
verify."

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