Personal M$ foulup tale. Please enjoy.

[EnderX]

I thought the group might get a kick out of this.

Last week, an older couple at my church approached the pastor after evening services, and said they had a prayer request they wanted him to pray for. Apparently, a woman they know is looking for a computer in order to work from home. I have/had a spare box that I haven't been using for a while, so I popped out the hd (wanted to save the files for future use) and went to the local area repair shop to purchase a replacement. I had the box with me, and the guy behind the counter took it, rather than simply allowing me to purchase a drive; I'm guessing they've dealt with too many 'users' in the past, although I hope I can prove myself on that count eventually. This happened Saturday afternoon; I was told I could come pick the box up on Tuesday. They intended to put in a used, reformatted drive running XP.

I got there yesterday for the pickup, and had the manager come over to speak with me. His first words were something like "I've never seen anything like this before in all my years here."

When installing XP, there comes a point when you're supposed to input the Micro$oft installation key numbers. On this box, said numbers were emblazoned on an official Micro$oft sticker pasted to the side of the case. The case was originally running WinXP, so you'd think to get another copy going, they'd just plug in the numbers and be on their way.

The numbers didn't work. The official M$ numbers on the official M$ sticker didn't work. It wasn't just a mistype on their part; I'm told that at one point there were four techs looking over each other's shoulders to make sure the numbers were entered correctly. One of these techs was present when I went in to get the box, and verified the story. The system wasn't connected to any kind of network, so the problem had to have been inside to begin with; the official numbers simply weren't valid.

It gets better.

When the manager called Micro$oft in order to have them check the numbers, their response was apparently something like "Yeah, those are invalid. But if you buy another copy from us, we'll validate them for you." In other words, M$ wanted an additional $60.00USD* in order to validate the official numbers they themselves shipped the system out with. The manager wisely told them "No thanks," and hung up.

Kind of makes me wonder how the system ever worked in the first place...

*(price stated by local manager; I unfortunately wasn't present for the call itself. Wish I had been; would have been interesting to hear first-hand, if only for 'are you crazy?' humor value.)

[dcc]

You gotta love M$, never give an inch without paying for it.

[pygmalion]

i guess my current signature says it all... ;) \/\/

[Sturm]

"If you buy Windows Vista, you are not a customer. You are a beta-tester."

heres a better one:
if you buy windows vista your a sap (of course that could be said with ALL windows products ;-)

[Infarction]

C'mon guys, love not hate. I'm actually liking Vista so far... :P

[meemeebbw]

I'm having some problems with my current system that I am trying to troubleshoot. That's actually how I found this website. I have been looking at a system that is running Windows Vista but I hesitate to purchase it because I was told there aren't many compatible programs for it yet.

Seems like Windows has figured out a way to make another bundle off the consumers by making them buy all new programs to work on their new operating system.

[Infarction]

Microsoft is taking [IMO] appropriate steps to improve their product. They're cutting out a lot of the old crap that's been bogging down Windows, especially from a security perspective. There are still a lot of program with which compatibility has been broken. Definitely do a little reasearch; now might be a bad time for an upgrade, depending on your needs.

[Sturm]

do you have a M$ zealot here??!??! ;-) (never knew they existed)

[jbennet]

C'mon guys, love not hate. I'm actually liking Vista so far... :P

Blasphemy! Lol!

I installed vista and hated it and the damn thing trashed my XP recovery partition so now im stuck using win2k grrrrrr (insert rant at m$ here - openoffice also, if it could open MS Access files right then i wouldnt even need to use windows......)

[Infarction]

Not a zealot, I've done at least my share of bashing. I've started to realize how much effort they put into testing their products, though, and some of their products are definitely nicer than the competition.

[jbennet]

Yes, i agree but Im just annoyed about vista. Vista just seems way too rushed for my liking (vista seems rushed like ME felt). Should be ok after SP1 though.

[Infarction]

It seems rushed, and in ways it was. There's a lot of changes that were put in that the entire rest of the industry wasn't (and partly still isn't) ready for. And there's always the issue of backwards compatibilty, which is obviously quite desireable, but also getting to be a very large burden.

[jbennet]

yes, i have major issuses trying to get Visual Studio / CE/ PocketPC development stuff working on vista.

[DimaYasny]

as to the story, I think the license was pirated. I've reactivated OEM XPs so many times I can't even begin to count them, and MS never asked for money.
Last week a client bought a 64bit edition of Server2003, and after he installed and activated it he realised his software wouldn't run on a 64bit box. We called MS and they sent us a temp. link to download an iso of server2003 32bit, which we installed and activated under the purchased number. Their service is actually improving.

As for Vista - well, give it time, maybe after SP1 it will start to look like a proper system :)

[jbennet]

Yes, also, does anyone know when vista's/2003 server's sucessor is meant to come out (vienna/fiji/blackcomb) ?

[DimaYasny]

summer 2008, that's what the locals say

[jbennet]

Hmmm.... thats when XP reaches end of mainstream support/ gets SP3 as well sint it?

On that topic, do you reackon XP SP3 will have any new content (lol aero) or whether it wil just be arollup of all the post SP2 hotifxes and updates.

[DimaYasny]

no idea really :) I work at CogniTens, soon to move on to Dell, no connection to Microsoft whatsoever :)

[Infarction]

Hmmm.... thats when XP reaches end of mainstream support/ gets SP3 as well sint it?

On that topic, do you reackon XP SP3 will have any new content (lol aero) or whether it wil just be arollup of all the post SP2 hotifxes and updates.

I doubt they'd roll much new stuff into XP. It's old, weary, and ready for retirement. And so much has changed going to Vista that it'd be a lot of work to change things around again for an older and soon-to-be dead product, I doubt they'd want to expend the resources on it. SP3 will most likely be a bunch of patches since SP2 and possibly a few new changes but with Vista out already I don't think there'll be much more effort going into XP

[jbennet]

Yeah, i bet it will just be a rollup of all the stuff since SP2. Thats what they did with win2k

[Sturm]

I doubt they'd roll much new stuff into XP. It's old, weary, and ready for retirement. And so much has changed going to Vista that it'd be a lot of work to change things around again for an older and soon-to-be dead product, I doubt they'd want to expend the resources on it. SP3 will most likely be a bunch of patches since SP2 and possibly a few new changes but with Vista out already I don't think there'll be much more effort going into XP

But are not there kernels the same? Thats what makes the difference right? (that said you cannot really advertise a kernel revamp to the masses ;-)

[John A]

>But are not there kernels the same?
No. Although the Vista kernel does use sections of the XP kernel, huge amounts of new code have been added to the Vista kernel (such as security enhancements), making it close to impossible to apply many of the features of Vista to Windows XP without some serious recoding.

>that said you cannot really advertise a kernel revamp to the masses
So true. :P However, new features that they add to the kernel can be advertised as "OS enhancements". It's all in the marketing.

[jbennet]

Vista has about as much ofXP's XP kernel code as XP had of 2ks kernel.

It would be difficult to backport changes to xp though as:

security has been revamped
the way I/O and NTFS is handles has changed
the HAL layer has been changed