Channel speaks out on Windows XP Home

by Scott Bicheno on 9 July 2008, 14:06

Tags: Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)

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OEM XP home and XP Pro will be available until at least January 31st 2009. OEM can only be installed on new PCs.

The Microsoft Anti Piracy team are making it more and more difficult for users to install and use counterfeit product. For example non legitimate Vista will only allow internet access for one hour a day and will only connect to the microsoft.com Anti Piracy site.

With the large manufacturers now only able to offer Vista is there an opportunity to offer your clients a bespoke build tailored to their exact specifications using XP?

Mike Barron, Enta Technologies – Microsoft authorised distributor


I think the point is that we cannot buy laptops with XP Home installed. Who decided that Acer etc cannot do XP Home? Acer, I don't think so.

I don't build laptops so the OEM is no good for me. The choice is Vista, XP Pro or Linux. What runs better on a low end laptop? What costs the most?

Matthew Woolley – independent retailer


Matt is absolutely right, the large manufacturers like Acer only install Vista, XP Pro or Linux. I expect the XP Pro offerings will soon be withdrawn too. There are smaller OEM's that are still offering XP Home though. Fortune Technology for example, which is a Brigantia associate offer a choice of XP Home or Vista basic on standard builds.

My customers want XP Home, and speaking to and reading of other indie experiences, their customers do too. Consumers want a cheap OS from Microsoft and they prefer XP Home, so please Microsoft, give them the choice: XP Home or Vista basic.

Mike, I would certainly be interested in a bespoke tailor made specification laptop using XP from Enta.

Norman – independent retailer


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Posted by Andaho - Wed 09 Jul 2008 14:52
I think Microsoft should release a new light weight version of XP Home with no visual features such as shadows, fading menus and animations. It could be called XP Light or something similar.

It would be perfect for the new growing trend of low-power UMPCs, and low-power desktops or HTPCs too!

To narrow the intended use of it, they could also limit features such as workgroup file and printer sharing… they could limit it to only 1 workgroup connection instead of 10… that would put off small businesses from buying up loads of the cheap licences…

I would think a price in the range of £10-20 would stamp piracy figures down to a fraction…

There will always be people that will like pretty looks and animations, so there will still be a huge market for Vista! (that's why I suggest they take out visual features in my vision of XP light).
Posted by amwhite2008 - Sun 13 Jul 2008 18:39
£10-£20 is better for MS then letting people to to Linux as well - Back in the old days they let it go for pence in some cases, thats what they should be doing with XP now IMO.

Alex
Posted by leexgx - Mon 14 Jul 2008 02:07
or just buy an linux dell PC and use and use an purple Dell XP Sp2 install disk as thay do not need an key to install (As long as the PC is An Dell pc only if not the disk will ask for an key or will not even start the disk depending on the purple CD XP disk it is)

i had to do the above as Vista was intermittently refusing connections to it, for printer shareing so i had to give up and put Dell XP on it, the other one i left Vista on it as that had no printers pluged into it (the Dell pc came with Out of date drivers even Aero did not work as thay used 8.1 drivers that was incompatible with Vista SP1)

Vista networking is like WinME, very poor unless your conencting to an other pc its just the other way round it is not
Posted by digit - Mon 14 Jul 2008 14:16
leexgx
or just buy an linux dell PC and use and use an purple Dell XP Sp2 install disk as thay do not need an key to install (As long as the PC is An Dell pc only if not the disk will ask for an key or will not even start the disk depending on the purple CD XP disk it is)

i had to do the above as Vista was intermittently refusing connections to it, for printer shareing so i had to give up and put Dell XP on it, the other one i left Vista on it as that had no printers pluged into it (the Dell pc came with Out of date drivers even Aero did not work as thay used 8.1 drivers that was incompatible with Vista SP1)

Despite that all being illegal what you've mentioned? A copy of Windows is a license to be installed on one machine and in the case of OEM not to be transferred from one machine to another!