Consumers Demand XP Over Vista

Hi Ryan,

for years now I have been close to the whole MS OS development (read I had Palladium/Longhorn/Vista already end 2002, even before it was a known/official Build and was also alpha tester for XP), and know that companies hardly ever have jumped ship and switched to a new MS OS before the first service pack was released. And the reason for this is simple : SP1 most of time majorly is a bigfix pack, with hardly any new features rolled out. Those only come later.
And especially in the case of Vista (although it was the same for XP), first we'll see SP1, probably still this year, and then MS will release LongHorn, or Vista Server. Once this is released Vista will officially be called stable for every environment and many of the new features seen in Longhorn will find their way into Vista. Features such as the new file system and also the targeted/wanted Vista search. :)

Dell's move... just another, typical HOAX against MS I say.

No wait... there is another issue in the Dell case. Dell is known as an awesome driver manufacturer, always providing WHQL drivers. [/sarcasm]

ifranky, no doubt you're right. But why the hell didn't Dell know about this and plan for it in the first place? Why did they abandon XP from the very moment Vista launched and then have to re-adopt it?

Would you want to be a manufacturer, big as Dell and miss out on the launch? Sell not Vista Ready computers? Or not participate to the Vista launch?

But that is not where Dell's problem is. Their entire problem is the driver situation. Compared to other computer manufacturers Dell tends to run series/models pretty long, this resulting in 'Model XLastYear' being almost entirely different from 'Model XThisYear'. Of course they have found cheaper components that do the same. Specs still the same, components all different.
When Dell finds a decent offer for certain component, they buy thousands at once (in praxis Dell says : 'Can you make me a soundcard, rebranded Dell, with driver for $1.50' and some manufacturer will). When they run out of components, they have a new purchase round and probably end up with another manufacturer... and driver. Just check the downloads page for 2 or 3 year old series and you'll notice how many different hardware components are listed that do the same. And we know that the heart of hardware the driver is. And decent driver development is expensive. Getting the WHQL label even more expensive.

You must be thinking 'what about the reference driver?' now. Dell most of time can't use reference drivers, because the cheaper manufacturers don't always (most of time) follow reference design for their components, this would obviously make the component more expensive. So in the end, Dell now has 3-4 years of computer models, all capable to run (not Vista Capable!) and thousands of crap hardware components and even worse drivers.

Vista? Or XP even. Have you ever installed a Dell PC with a non-OEM installation disc? Remember how many standard components such network cards don't get recognized by XP SP2 (which recognizes most network card chips, if at least the card complies to some reference design).
Now if you say today as manufacturer that your models all are Vista Capable, I think as last year's customer it is my right to expect that that mega $3000 PC I bought also will run Vista. And even the 4 year old P$ 3.0Ghz Hyper Threading with 1GB RAM and a ATI 9800XT on board.
At least 70% of Dell's customers think that it is a great company because they promote and sell lots. But they have no clue, and often even don't know how to open the device manager, or to look online for a driver, or even crawl hardware/computer boards. They want to find everything at Dell's download site and don't find any drivers for Vista there. And of course... the $400 Vista Ultimate they just bought didn't recognize their network card, because no reference design.
Geekier persons discover that the reference drivers don't work on their Dell either.

But their PC technically is a speed bomb. They play Spellforce and Oblivion on (OK graphics for Oblivion kinda suck with a 9800XT, but it works pretty well). A large part of their life went lost in WoW. With the Dell PC.

But Vista doesn't run. Does Dell want to invest that much of money to write Vista compliant drivers for 3-4 years of hardware components. I don't know, maybe they do. But if they do they need time. And until time has passed it is easier, safer to say that Dell's main OS Windows XP is. Creates less pressure from the customer base. Every PC with Vista they sell will only have Vista prepared components (and drivers) from now on. Everything they don't sell as Vista Designed is still Windows XP (and have fun when you want to add more obscure hardware components, the web is full of that kind of incompatibility problems with Dell computers/cheap mainboards).

On another note, I have exactly the same problem with my Sony notebook. Only 3 years old, a PC with the same specs (only better components) has been for almost 4 years my Vista test PC and now runs Vista smoothly as media server and FTP server in our network (and even is part of a Windows 2003 cluster). But on the Vaio I can't even INSTALL Vista because the BIOS of the mainboard (BIOS to be correct) has a non standard USB driver which isn't recognized by Vista. Fatal freeze during setup already. And the BIOS options don't offer me the possibility to deactivate USB (for the installation). Cheap components, cheap BIOS/driver.

Sorry about the novel, but this is a story I already tell people since at least 4 years when they ask me about cheap discounter computers (and Dell). Actually most of time I offer them to build their new computer for free and probably only 12% more expensive than the discounter price, but with stable components.
Saves me the headache when after 3 months they encounter problems and bring their discounter box to me.