7 flavors of Windows Vista

[Jammrock]

Will be interesting to see what sort of product activation they incorporate into Windows Vista.

I doubt that there will be a corporate style key.

What Gurm said. I work in enterprise IT as a desktop guy. No chance in hell anyone would buy an OS that would require activation, no matter whether the server was inside or out. If activation took 1 minute, time 75k systems ... that's 1250 hours in lost productivity. At a good corporate tech pay rate of about $20-$25 an hour, that's just about $25k-$32,250 in lost money just because of activation during roll-out. Now add in that during the life of the operating system that each system will, on average, be rebuilt (i.e. OS re-installed for some reason like HDD failure) and you double that amount, plus add on the lost productivity of the client waiting for the system, and those people often times make more money than the tech.

So let's estimate a $100k loss due to activation for a healthy enterprise with 75k system at an average of 1 minute per activation per 3-year period (the average life of a corporate asset). But let's say that the time it takes to generate encryption and secure connections to MS or the authentication server takes longer. for each additional minute activation takes you tag on another $100k.

Add that to the already astronomical cost of enterprise licensing ... people would suddenly start looking elsewhere for their OS, like OS X (which has the MS Office Suite available for it) or Linux (though less likely).

Thus ... it will never happen.

MSs attempt at curbing piracy will be Vista Ultimte Edition. My guess is that it will be priced at Home Pro prices ($150 upgrade, no questions asked, $250-$300 for a new license) and make it incredibly hard to pirate. By taking out advanced MCE and tweaker style features from Enterprise (the only non-activiation version) they are trying to get gamers and tweakers, the preceived #1 pirate of WinXP, an incentive to buy instead of pirate.

Just my $0.02.

Jammrock

[Dr Mordrid]

IMO this kind of fragmentation without lowering prices (or going partially freeware as in the article) is opening the door wide for OS X to walk right on in and take the home/small business market a lot faster than anyone ever imagined.

Dr. Mordrid

[agallag]

Also take into consideration that some corps, like mine, use third party proxy servers for internet access. You have to provide a username and password to get a connection out. Activation doesn't work at all from our network, so it would all have to be done over the phone. We only have about 40,000 desktops, but phone activation would probably take at least 5 minutes per. That's 3333 hours of work. Not gonna happen.

[Jessterw]

IMO this kind of fragmentation without lowering prices (or going partially freeware as in the article) is opening the door wide for OS X to walk right on in and take the home/small business market a lot faster than anyone ever imagined.

I'd love to see it happen, but I still have doubts.

Though when you look at it from the perspective of, "which edition of OS X do I need? Oh, there's just two... well of course I wouldn't need the server edition. I can get a license for five computers for only $199?" Of course, those five have to be Apple's own and they'll already come loaded with OS X, but the latter part sure makes upgrading cheaper.

Combined with the fact that I don't think we've seen the full scope of Apple's move to Intel. Anything is possible, including MS' continued domination.

[Kooldino]

There will always be a corporate key. When a fortune 500 company has to roll out TEN THOUSAND seats behind a one-way-only firewall, activation is simply NOT an option.

What if the info was just sent via a web browser?

[Jammrock]

What if the info was just sent via a web browser?

Would still require access through the firewall. Still wouldn't happen.

[Technoid]

Activation is THE most anoying feature MS has ever come up with

[Jessterw]

I'd disagree just on the level that I personally have never had any issues with it. To me the damn clippy and his pals were far more annoying

[Technoid]

Clippy could be uninstalled, or better yet not installed at all

Activation on a freshly repaired computer who needs drivers to conect to the internet and not letting you logon untill activated forcing you to phone MS IS annoying

Worse when you have to convince them that the computer HAS a freaking licence sticker on it and NO to my knowledge that Brand new OEM sticker has NOT been used earlier, then its #¤%& annoying

[Jessterw]

Well I didn't mean that Activation isn't annoying, just that I haven't had any problems with it. As far as Internet access goes, you can always hold off on activating until you've managed to download the drivers you need... at least I've always been able to.

Of course, doesn't make it any better when you shouldn't have to do it in the first place

[Dr Mordrid]

I with I hadn't had problems with XP's activation, especially when you have to call some person who barely speaks, or worse yet understands, English.

By the end of the call I was almost homicidal.

Dr. Mordrid

[Goc]

I wonder how much he's hallucinating. I wonder if it's possible...

What a load of crap. That guy really needs to get in touch with reality.

[cjolley]

John Dvorak's take:

"If there are going to be this many, Microsoft may as well go all the way and add a slew more."

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1858101,00.asp

[Jammrock]

John Dvorak's take:

"If there are going to be this many, Microsoft may as well go all the way and add a slew more."

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1858101,00.asp

They need to change the Ultimate Edition to:

\/\/1|\||)0\/\/5 \/157@ |337 3|)1710|\|



Jammrock