XP Home

[n1ydx]

I'm in my 4th hour of recontructing a Windows XP Home Edition computer for the young man across the street.

He had so much junk on the computer, the anti-spyware programs I have were gagging.

Finally I took 3 gigs of iTunes and 2 gigs of .jpg pictures onto my external hard drive and got out my old Win 98 Setup Disks and radically cleaned his hard drive.

Now that I've got his computer running lic-i-ty split with Home Edition and all 80 updates and SP2, it seems almost good.

I also installed a 2nd hard drive of 200 Gig for him so he has a place to put all his future programs ( taught him how to change the default drive and folders ).

So far I've gotten $40.00 and a case of 24 Corona Extras.

But I'm wondering why the Windows XP Pro upgrade is still being sold at $199.99 at Staples and Best Buy. Micro$oft is really out for the buck, even with Vista on the shelves.

N1YDX - Lee

[n6hcm]

you are a very generous neighbor ...

MSFT knows how their bread is buttered, and they know lots of people won't adopt a new operating system right away, and so they'd be leaving money on the table if they stopped selling win xp when they launched vista.

most business computing environments haven't switched to vista, and they won't for a while yet ...

[KG4RUL]

I recently bought a refurbished laptop and deliberately chose a unit that had XP Pro installed to avoid Vista. About an hour on-line and doing upgrades and I now have a fully up-to-date install. I also setup a dual-boot for Linux live CD distros.

[K1CJS]

Quote[/b] (n1ydx @ June 09 2007,19:33)]......I'm wondering why the Windows XP Pro upgrade is still being sold at $199.99 at Staples and Best Buy. Micro$oft is really out for the buck, even with Vista on the shelves.

N1YDX - Lee
A couple of years ago, I was shopping in my local office supply store. I glanced by chance at the OS shelf and saw two or three of Microsofts past offerings on those shelves--at the full price that was being charged when they were new.

Included were Win 98, Millenium and 2000, upgrade packages for about $100. and full install for about $200.
It makes you wonder..... If you look in some of the bigger office supply and computer stores, you'll probably still see Win 2000 and XP out even though Vista is now out.

BTW, just an off note--"upgrade" packaging and "full install" packaging are identical, the only difference is the upgrade packaging has an additional program to check for a prior Microsoft OS.

[KD6NIG]

They will be out for another year or so. There are people with computers that can't handle Vista.

You might want to suggest to your neighbor to invest $70 or so in a good antivirus package.

I have a feeling though if Vista doesn't get fixed pretty quick, you're going to see a lot of upgrade animosity http://www.qrz.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[WA9SVD]

Microshaft has pretty much admitted that VISTA requires almost all new (within the last year or so) hardware to run; not sure there's even support for parallel printers anymore. (Tell that to my LaserJet!) To that effect, they have said they have no plans to stop sale or support of XP for the forseeable future. They also pretty much recommend against an upgrade to VISTA, again, unless the computer is no more than a year old.
So it's time to take all our legacy devices (modems, printers, GPS receivers, anything that doesn't work on USB) and take them to the nearest recycler so the lead can be reclaimed. THANK YOU, Bill G!

[ve3sre]

Quote[/b] ] So it's time to take all our legacy devices (modems, printers, GPS receivers, anything that doesn't work on USB) and take them to the nearest recycler so the lead can be reclaimed. THANK YOU, Bill G!

Not quite yet! Alot of legacy devices will be supported by Linux.

Had an old parallel port scanner that wasn't supported past Win98...but is still supported by Linux. Same with an old 16 MB Voodoo 3dfx video card.

Anyway, with Linux it'll only cost you your time and the cost of a blank CD-ROM disk to find out if you're old stuff will still work.

BTW, one very handy tool at times like this...when you're "rebuilding" a machine and needing to rescue old data are "USB drive enclosures". These days you can find them for as little as $30 and they'll instantly turn any old hard drive into an external USB drive. You can even get them for notebook hard drives.