I plainly said it was OEM software. No support, media, manual, or fancy box, just a certificate of authenticity. Its up to you to procure a CD and install it.
To get around updating woes, simply buy a License to upgrade, and burn the full version. As long as you have the older version and you don’t use it on another computer this is legal. You know you have the old, qualified version, so why do you need the software to TELL you that you are authorized to upgrade? It’s the license that makes it an upgrade, not the software itself.
Activation becomes a Serious Problem when you plan to upgrade the computer, or your product simply decides that it needs to be reactivated on a whim or due to a software change. I’ve already heard horror stories of laptops demanding reactivation on business trips, which is not fun.
No you don’t. I’m running XP on a home network with 3 other computers, 2 with ME and 1 with 98.
Btw, there will be tons of good deals coming with XP. At Best Buy, you get rebate forms for RAM, a Rio Mp3 player, and a couple other things (You get 128 MB RAM with Home Edition, 256 MB RAM with Pro. It’s PC133 RAM, FYI).
well he meant for each pc you want to have xp on it but I think hes wrong anyway. the office/pro edition is licensed for any number of pc’s on a network I believe.
I’ve installed XP Pro on one of my laptops, and it DOES ask you if you’d like to boot and load XP to all of your network while you’re loading your first copy.
Even though it tells you to install XP on all machines, it can be run in a heterogenous environment.
Oh, and Omniscient…reply to my E-mail and I’ll tell you how to get XP for free…
My point here is OEM software generally is NOT available without the purchase of hardware and it’s possible that it should not be being sold the way it is.
The question was on buying the retail boxes what is the difference between the upgrade and te retail… and as I answered the difference is “nothing” Buying the retail upgrade package requires a preinstalled copy of an earlier OS or the CD or disks handy. As for burning the full version and buying a license this raises some questions around where you go to buy a “single upgrade license” and burning additional copies of the software.
How do you mean upgrading a customer? Upgrading the software or the hardware on the system?
Also making software changes to a WinXp system will not require reactivation and the “incident” you describe of a system requiring reactivation for no reason was a single isolated incident involving a very eary beta copy. Release versions will not see this same issue.
Again activations can be done quickly and easily online and even is a subsequent reactivation is required on the same computer (say due to a large scale hardware upgrade) this can be performed online as well in under 2 minutes.
BurnMeUp, doesn’t the Pro version NOT call in for activation, if so how does it activate?
Also, I was referring to the casual home user using a home version of XP. Im sure that requires that you buy a copy of XP for each machine you want to use it on, right?
OK, no more long extended replies. I lost about 30 minutes of composing when the HD on this thing crapped out. You’d understand the irony if you’d read the post I lost…gah!!!
OK, my networking needs are fairly minimal. I will probably in the future have at least 2 computers, probably a third laptop all sharing printers, peripherals, files and an internet connection. Thats about as intricate as I’ll get since I’m no power-user. What exactly are those “network management utilities” that XP Pro has? Is there really a $100 worth of software there that I’ll be missing? What if I come accross a situation where I need one of those tools, will I need to buy a new XP Pro or will I be able to d/l or buy the utility that I need?
OK, I understand that I need to have my 98 cd to do this install, but if I need to do a clean reinstall of XP in 3 months will I need to first install 98 and then install XP over it? Is this ideal, I’ve always been of the notion that a format and clean install is always the wise choice when dealing with new OSes. Does the “upgrade” do a format and install over the top of that 98, or is there going to be little 98 pieces and gremlins lurking undeneath (married too) this new OS?
Not to be too “me-me-me” here in this thread, but I’m going to lay my 'puter situation out from the start and let you guys fling advice at me like monkeys in the zoo and we’ll see what sticks.
OK, I have a 3 year old computer. PII (400 MHz) IBM that came preinstalled with Win 98SE. I have since done a clean install of a bootleg full version of Win 98SE.
The HD that came with this sucker is crapping out. I think the drive moter is giving out because I need to pound it every so often to make it spin up again. Classy, huh? Thats the impetus for the new OS. If I have to do a install anyways, lets take the opportunity to dump the annoying 98SE OS I’ve suffered with.
Since the machine is old, and it will be just barely up to snuff for the XP requirements I’m planning to probably swap in a new mothrboard/P4 processor. Granted that’ll be hell with the activation fiasco, but it has the side benefit of letting me use those parts to build a new second machine.
The second machine is where my networking needs are expected to come into play. But all this is probably going to wait til after the holidays.
Thats all probably irrelevant when it comes down to it, but I decided to give you some reference.
[depressingly blatant hijack]
Ok, first of all, as a hardware geek of the highest order I am bound by oath of geekiness to attempt to prevent people from purchasing P4s whenever possible. The following facts are in evidence:
P4s require a new case and power supply.
P4’s use a new standard, based on ATX. They have a different power connector, and the motherboard and CPU mount in such a way that a new case is required (the heatsink bolts into the case through the motherboard)
P4s are much more expensive than competing processors.
the P4 2Ghz is $500. This is 2.5x as much as AMD’s highest end processor, the Athlon XP 1800+. They also use Rambus RAM, which is rather expensive.
P4s are slower than the competing AMD processors. An AMD Athlon XP 1800+ is faster than a P4 at pretty much everything. The fact that it’s priced lower allows you to spend more money on other components, such as more RAM and a faster videocard.
AMD processors, contrary to popular opinion, actually run rather cool and don’t use very much power.
As you can see, I reccommend the AMD Athlon XP line of processors. the XP 1800+ is the fastest x86 processor currently available. there is a review at http://www.hardocp.com/reviews/cpus/amd/1533xp/
[/depressingly blatant hijack]
Back to the subject at hand, I’d really reccommend the OEM software route. Just burn Corporate Edition, no activation, fast and easy. $130 or so each at http://www.directdeals.com is quite decent for a nice OS.
Buying a license and burning corporate edition allows you to avoid activation and save money in the process. I use XP Pro and I like it a lot. The GUI is great, memory management is excellent, and it’s stable. Just make sure you install it to a FAT32 partition instead of NTFS, for optimal performance.
Why do you say this? Everything I’ve read goes out of its way to say the exact opposite, going so far as to recommend that you convert any existing file systems to NTFS on existing drives to take full advantage of XPs features.
I believe that it is supposed to be installed on an NTFS partition, however, if you’re planning on networking it, and the rest of the computers are FAT32, keep it FAT32…unless you plan on converting them all to NTFS later.
An NTFS volume will be able to navigate your existing FAT32 volumes, but your FAT32 volumes will NOT be able to navigate an NTFS volume.
The deal is, NTFS has more features, such as native encryption and better file recovery in the even of harddrive damage/failure. However, FAT32 is faster. If you need NTFS’s features, by all means use it. Otherwise, FAT32 is your best bet.
As for the quality of XP, the only downsides are that there are very few hardware drivers out for it (and Windows Product Activation). Otherwise, its the best OS MS has ever released, by a longshot.
And I would take your “good advice” with a grain of salt…I’ve been using XP for two months and I am having no issues with it. I’d agree with the statement that this is the best MS OS by a long shot.
The OS will take care of handling it’s native file system without you having to do anything at all (outside of configuring each node to talk to the network, of course).
On a local disk system, if you’re going to do a dual or multi-boot configuration and want all partitions available to all OS’es; your best bet is to install to a FAT 16 Part for any local OS that needs that kind of accomodation; or go with FAT 32 if you’re going to dual-boot (generally speaking) Win98 and later flavors and Win NT or Linux.
As far as I know, there isn’t a MS OS that will read the ext2 or ext3 file systems, so you’re stuck with FAT 32 if you’re a Linux fan and “need” MS something to read your local Linux partitions.
This only applies for the LOCAL machine that you may be doing boot tricks with. Any other machine (read that as remote network) doesn’t care about the partition type–otherwise most of you wouldn’t be able to access most of the Internet. <G>
At our home, Annie’s machine has ME installed on it, and we have a couple of W98SE machines :::rolling eyes:::, and the rest of the network uses ext2 and ext3 file systems for their Linux flavors. (No NT Server…I dumped it a couple of years back…what a pig!)
We all talk and exchange files just fine.
(Of course, the Windows machines crash ALL THE TIME, while the others NEVER crash…)
Another consideration is the restrictions MS places on the number of hardware changes you can make to a system before the OS goes belly-up on you. The way I upgrade my machines, XP would force me to call Microsoft every month or so.
BTW: with XP, changing the microprocessor or network adapter counts as three so-called “minor” hardware modifications, because the Processor ID and MAC address of the NIC are used in the product validation scheme.
Despite Enigma One’s post, the reality is that if you COnfigure XP with NTFS< and the rest of your computers are FAT32, the security of NTFS will not allow a FAT32 volume to have ANY access to the NTFS volume. Trust me.
So if all of your other computers are Win98 FAT32 volumes-stick with FAT32, cause it’ll cause you a lot less heartburn in the process. And if you decide that you’d like it to be NTFS later, there’s a conversion utility to convert FAT32 to NTFS.
Despite your use of Ext1 or 2 and windows, Enigma, FAT32 and NTFS aren’t compatible. GO do some reading on it or something…then we’ll talk later after you’ve read up.
Sam
PS- I have no Win2K Server or professional issues, I never restart, and it’s FAR from a pig these days. Oh, and my laptop with XP on it has no trouble at all.
I’d heard this, but my P4 uses SDRAM. Before I booted it up the first time I even took a 256MB stick out of my old computer and popped it in, no troubles.