More restrictions, bigger prices
Is Microsoft in
danger of alienating the entire worldwide
community of PC self-builders by new conditions it's imposing for the
use of retail versions of Windows Vista?
We think it is - unless it backtracks before launch
time in the new year.
The first of those new conditions prevents the user of
any Vista retail version from carrying the
OS through two major PC upgrades. You will
be able to migrate Vista once to a new PC but not from that PC
to another.
The next nasty newcomer forbids the user
from running the same copy of the OS on more than one
partition or hard disk drive, whether or not it's the first machine on
which Vista was installed. So you'll have to buy a copy for
each boot partition or boot drive.
We
assume that Microsoft will enforce these
rules by preventing you from
activating the operating system, causing it to stop working properly 30
days after installation.
Those new limitations apply to
all Vista retail versions, Home Basic, Home Premium
and Ultimate. However, users of the two Home versions will
also find another new gotcha reserved just for them.
They won't be able to use their operating
systems on virtual hardware, such as
Parallels
Workstation or
VMware
Workstation, even if that's running on top
of the original Vista installation.
The only way to use virtualisation will be buy Vista Ultimate. And that
looks like it will
cost well over £300 - about 70 per cent more than
the Home Premium edition.
Yes, Microsoft could say that it's perfectly at liberty to choose what
features to include or not include in different versions of
Vista, and we'd have a job arguing.
But, frankly, this sort of hamstringing of Vista Home
versions strikes us as mean and miserable-minded (or may
be, just plain greedy), the more so
when even Home
Basic looks likely to sell for over £150 and
you realise that all the virtualisation hard work is
being done not by Microsoft but by
the companies who produce the virtualisation software.
None of these restrictions applies to XP. You can
use XP on a virtual PC running in the same copy of XP.
In our experience, you can also
migrate XP
to one machine after another and set one copy to run on multiple
partitions or drives in the same PC.
The XP migration process is far from ideal because the
operating system is itself too restrictive by far.
But it can be
done over and over again.
With XP, the need for activation is an annoyance but turned into
something far worse by
the fact that you can never predict which changes to
a PC's hardware might force you to have to re-activate.
And, just like an unexpected reactivation, each migration of XP can
involve a lot of time wasted having to authorise the
new installation over the phone because, all too often, you've
been locked out of the operating system and can't
use over-the-net authorisation.
XP presents a phone-activation screen and you make
a local-rate phone call that is routed to a
Microsoft support-centre in the Indian sub-continent. The idea is that
you're able to reactivate XP by keying into your phone
a huge group of numbers that XP displays for
you.
However, we've often found that those numbers aren't
accepted by the automatic system so you end
up needing to talk to
staff whose
first language isn't English - something
for which the staff can't be criticised but Microsoft can.
You tell the support person what numbers you see on
screen and,
in turn, are told a whole bunch of additional numbers that you
have to key
into the PC.
If you're lucky, that will do the trick. If not, you have to start the
phone-activation process again - without having any way to speak to a
support person until you've again keyed into the phone a mass of
numbers that XP shows you and they've again failed to be accepted by
the automatic system at the other end.
Vista may not put you through quite the
same re-activation treadmill as XP but even if it doesn't -
and lets you reactivate over the net in circumstances where XP wouldn't
- its new restrictions make XP
look positively virtuous (though
still irritating).
Not convinced? Well, just think of how Vista's usage
rights could affect you personally.
Take one all-too-possible scenario. You buy Vista, put it on
an existing PC and then - without thinking - authorise that
copy over the internet as a result of Vista's prompt during
the
installation.
What you've done is lock Vista to that
PC even before you had any hands-on time during which
to discover, perhaps, that you actually need a more
highly-spec'd PC to get the best out of the operating
system.
Having paid out £300-plus, you might not be able
to afford to buy what's really needed and so end up
with cheaper components that you think are just
about good enough to get you by until finances improve.
Half a year flies by. You've got enough saved
up to splash out and realise that, what with
component prices having fallen, you can now just about
afford a
lighting-fast CPU, an all-singing-dancing motherboard, a giant
SATA-2 hard disk, decent RAM and a nippy graphics card that properly
supports DirectX 10.
When the hardware build is compete, you do the sensible and decent
things.
Having backed up the previous Vista machine just in case, you
wipe its system
disk and restore XP.
Then you install Vista on your new pride and joy and whenever
to decided to get the activation over with, disscover that,
actually, you
can't - you're stuffed unless you buy a new copy, assuming you
even have £300 or so going spare.
Of course, the need to migrate to Vista a second time
might occur a
lot later - in which case you're still stuffed - or might happen much
sooner as a result of major hardware failure.
Say that there's a lighting strike or the PC falls off a desk
or you have a leaky roof (or cat). That's
traumatic enough - even if your insurance company is helpful -
but the way that PC hardware changes from day to day, could leave you
unable to buy exact replacements for the
motherboard, hard disk or graphics card - or all three.
We don't know how Microsoft will respond to such a plight and really
don't fancy having to find out for ourselves the hard way but, we
suspect - if its sticks with the new tough line -
that, once again,
you'd
be stuffed.
Another situation where you could find yourself unreasonably
having to buy a second copy of Vista is if you're into complex
video
editing or music making or any task that requires
all the grunt that a system has available.
In the past - with Windows 98, NT, 2K and XP, too - you'd
often set up
the PC so that it booted from two different partitions or from
different hard
disks mounted in removable caddies. One partition or disk was
optimised
for the heavy-duty stuff, the other for more general
use.
It's a perfect (and relatively straightforward) solution for
those who can't afford two separate PCs or, perhaps, just
don't have space.
Well, forget about having those sorts of helpful
configurations under Vista unless, that is, you're
willing to pay Microsoft for another copy of the operating system.
And, remember, you are going to have to do that despite the fact
that it's to be run on a PC that already has a
paid-for version of Vista installed.
Looking to twin-core to get you out of that hole? Don't.
There's no point kidding yourself that twin-core CPUs
make these
dual-booting configurations unnecessary. The
best-performing apps can
monopolise both cores
- and people who edit video, make serious music or
punt around massive graphics files will want them both fully
engaged to give
the speediest
results.
But will Microsoft rethink its imposition of these new conditions
with Vista?
It's unlikely unless it sees that a U-turn is in its own best interests
- and we can come up with two reasons why it might.
The first is fear of EU reprisals. We DIY-ers might be unimportant in
terms of sales volumes - the vast majority of copies of Vista will
be sold ready installed on new PCs - but we can be a noisy
lot.
If we turn up the volume, we might catch the ear of
the EU and get it to look into the situation.
If that happens, and the EU is once again unamused by Microsoft's
antics, yet another severe
kicking could follow those that have already resulted
in
it paying astonishingly large fines totalling many hundreds of millions
of Euros (fines that may explain Vista's exorbitant pricing!).
The second reason - and it's possible whether or not
the EU takes an interest - is that
leaving these restrictions in place opens the door just a
little further to Apple. Embittered DIY system builders might
just consider moving over
to Mac PCs and away from Windows machines.
Fat chance? Well, the lights-and-case-window modding
fraternity won't be that interested since there is far less
scope for modding with Macs.
But that's in part because Macs are so much better
designed than any Windows PC you've ever
seen. As a result, they don't need as much work as a Windows
PC and that could endear them
to folk whose DIY
activities are aimed at achieving a certain level of
usability and performance, not outwardly flashy effects.
It's worth knowing, too, that Apple let's
you buy a
five-user home license for its OS X operating system
for £139 - just £50 more than
the £89 ticket of the standard single-user
Mac OS X license.
And even the five-user version of OS X makes
the prices of all the Vista retail versions look very
sick.
Amazon UK is now taking
advance
orders for Vista, quoting £154.99 for Home Basic;
£189.99 for Home Premium; and a quite
staggering £325 for Vista Ultimate.
Actually, those prices alone may be enough to
prevent DIY system builders paying out for Vista.
Some may move over to Apple, but many, we reckon,
will do nothing and just stick with XP for a good while.
A significant minority, though, feeling ever more certain that
Microsoft exists only to rip them off, might decide that, hey,
it is okay to turn the tables and install bent copies of Vista
that they know are available for download.
And not one of these three scenarios can be of the slightest
benefit to Microsoft or anyone in it, whatever their motives
or reasoning.
Okay, we've rambled on for long enough - it's your turn to
have a say. Comment in
this
thread in the HEXUS.right2reply forum.
Before doing that, though, you may care to check out page two,
where
we've extracted the key sections of the end-user license
agreements (EULA) for Vista Home Basic, Home
Premium and
Ultimate and for XP (Home and Pro). If you've got the stamina, the
originals can be downloaded
in PDF format
here
and are also available in full on pages three,
four and five....
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