Vista and DRM

[Rackhir]

I've found Ars Technica to be a good resource for a lot of these sorts of issues.

Here's a quick search if you want to poke around some.

http://arstechnica.com/search.ars?search=vista+drm

Primer on the DRM at the heart of the issue
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/aacs-tentacles.ars

Ars Review of Vista
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/pretty-vista.ars

Cable Cards and Vista
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061128-8300.html

 

[Mercule]

Not impossible, but more difficult. Dell seems to only offer a few specific models with XP, and HP offers none. Those are the two computers we're looking at mainly because I get a discount on those.

Check the small business models. My understanding is that, because businesses usually lag in adoption, that area is still shipping w/ XP.

Myself, I've been running Vista on my tablet PC since November and bought a new desktop with Vista in January. The card reader on my laptop doesn't have a Vista driver, but they really expect you to not upgrade tablets so it's in the "not advised" category, anyway. Other than that, nothing of note.

I really like Vista. It has outperformed XP in virtually every way that I've used it, especially security and running multiple accounts (me, my wife, and multiple kids). I don't use the computer for movies, so I can't say much about the HDMI issue, though.

 

[azhrei_fje]

I had some friends (married couple) buy new machines from Dell early in the summer (shortly after they took over AlienWare) and they spent a bundle on high-end boxes. Pretty stupid to me, but they spent $5k PER MACHINE mostly to play Wow. Unbelievable.

Anyway, Don insisted and getting XP and they had no problem selling him a machine with XP. So I would say that it doesn't hurt to ask. And if they say, "No," then do your shopping somewhere else...

 

[Thanee]

$5K - LOL, that's kinda ridiculous for a desktop machine... especially for WoW, which has nowhere near the requirements these things must be able to cover.

I read somewhere, that Dell got a lot of angry customer responses and put XP back in as an option for every PC they make... surely not going to hurt to ask there.

Bye
Thanee

 

[TwistedBishop]

$5K - LOL, that's kinda ridiculous for a desktop machine... especially for WoW, which has nowhere near the requirements these things must be able to cover.

Tell me about it. I was running WoW on the integrated graphics that came with my budget Gateway machine back in early 2005. That game is made to run well for anyone.

I read somewhere, that Dell got a lot of angry customer responses and put XP back in as an option for every PC they make... surely not going to hurt to ask there.

That's true. Supposedly they did the same thing with Windows 98/XP.

 

[Frozen Yakman]

Upgrade your Vista machine to XP or Ubuntu. Dell actually sells both without probem.