[geeks] The Dog's Breakfast: Microsoft Windows Vista

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: Mike Murphy <mrm at mole.org>
>Date: 2007/05/06 Sun PM 12:28:01 CDT
>To: geeks at sunhelp.org
>Subject: Re: [geeks] The Dog's Breakfast: Microsoft Windows Vista

>On 5/3/07, Dan Duncan <danduncan at gmail.com> wrote:
>>I just bought a new laptop (my first new laptop ever) and booted into Vista
>>long enough to make sure all the hardware was present and working (and
>>what it was) before I wiped it off the drive.
>
>A friend acquired a shiny, new HP laptop with Vista Home Premium. He tried 
it
>for a day or two, didn't like it, and wanted XP. I helped him blow away 
Vista
>and load XP. That's when I went to HP's site to get the drivers for XP. 
Oops.
>No drivers for XP, thanks very much. Fortunately, before blowing away the
>rather bloated Vista, I had gone through the hour or two procedure to make 
the
>restore DVD's. Note the plural. Then I went through the hour or two 
procedure
>to reload and reconfigure Vista as though from scratch. I was just thrilled
>with the whole procedure. It all worked, including the install of XP which
>left the laptop minus audio, nice video, and networking.
>
>I received a bulk eMail from a MS VP of something important about how
>important it was for me that MS is putting in place anti-piracy in Vista.
>Newspeak. The anti-piracy stuff is bloated, the security stuff is bloated, 
the
>GUI is bloated, and if I hadn't conned my friend into getting the 2GB rather
>than 1GB system, he would only have 200MB free after the tiny system
>requirements were met. It was nice of HP to have drivers for Vista only; I'm
>sure that pleased MS.
>
>Do folks remember how quickly the UUCP network disappeard in favor of 
Internet
>connectivity? It seems that massive system change snaps from one state to
>another rather than blending. I wonder if Vista may be the force that snaps
>usage to Linux. It wouldn't make me sad at all.

Windows Vista OEM Business and Ultimate include "downgrade" rights to WinXP, 
and many organizations are taking advantage of that option. I don't think MS 
cares about included drivers, I *am* suprised that they have a new laptop 
with hardware components so "new" that they have no WinXP drivers...

Did you try and do updates online with the laptop (granted, you may need to 
pop in a different network adapter, like a USB or PC Card wireless/Ethernet 
adapter)? I would imagine MS would have suitable drivers for most hardware in 
your new laptop, HP just choose not to bundle them up and put them on the 
website...

Lionel