Great XPectations
Let’s see if this works out better
Here’s what I’ve heard:
1.) There’s manditory registration on the software and your machine essentially locks you out until you agree to register.
2.) The software comes “pre-configured” so that those of you who like to tweak certain features to a degree are SOL.
3.) The ability to play WMF recorded on another machine is problematic. (Sometimes it works and sometimes it don’t.)
4.) The outside vendors who have to develop software aren’t happy about some things XP does or how it does them (no word on exactly what or why).
5.) No free tech support.
So far, it looks like there may be some truth to some of these rumors and others of them have yet to be proven. Anybody else know anything?
Just one geek’s totally unsupported, non-technically-based, wild-assed opinion:
It’s by Microsoft – of course it’s gonna suck. 
And I say this only because every Microsoft product I’ve seen in the last four years has annoyed me with its crappy performance, its monopoly-enforcing “features”, is overbloated requirements, and its general suckiness. The last good thing Microsoft put out was Word 5.1, for my money.
(Oh, and “Smart Tags” in the newest version of Internet Explorer is more sucky evilness from Unca Bill, too. I don’t want Microsoft inserting their own links on my web pages, dammit!)
I’m not normally a Microsoft basher, and I think Windows 2000 is a great operating system.
However, this new copy protection scheme of theirs is a total non-starter, and they had better yank it. If upgrading to XP means that every time I switch video cards, add hard drives, or otherwise change around my system I’ll have to phone Microsoft and beg them to let me keep using the operating system I paid for, they can forget it.
And as a sometimes IT professional, the added hassle of this stupid scheme will make a LOT of corporations shy away. Managing a couple of hundred PC’s in my office is tough enough as it is - having to deal with a zillion failed registrations and re-registrations every time someone switches a video card out would drive me insane.
Microsoft will lose a TON of customer good will over this. If I spend a couple of hundred bucks on an OS, only to have to re-register it again over and over again, I’ll say a little profanity for the idiot who devised this every time I’m sitting on hold waiting for someone across the country to tell me I can use my own product again.
I see no reason to upgrade to XP. It seems to be geared more towards the current MAC market. Why would anyone actually favor win 98 over XP? The main reason seems to be stability, and if I wanted more stability that badly I would switch to Linux.
As I said earlier, most people don’t like the Windows Product Activation simply because they do not understand exactly what it does. This link and this link both go into detail about WPA. It is not as bad as it’s being made out to be.
Tuckerfan’s 2, 3, 4, and 5…
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Installation and setup of WinXP can still be configured. It’s nearly the same installation process as Win2K.
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On Beta 2, I’ve encountered no problems playing WMF files or recording WMF files. No problems at all. However, my public Beta is not the same version as interim technical betas, so I’ll find out in RC1.
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Many software companies are unhappy because MS is including a lot of basic programs that appear to be attempting to edge into nearly every market. For example, XP comes with firewall capabilities (This firewall is really just to provide basic security, and is not intended to be a comprehensive defense against hackers and such), and WMP is supposedly capable of doing everything from playing music to DVDs. However, all of these functions are so basic that buying 3rd party software is definitely better. Also, WMP depends on having 3rd party DVD software to play, so you still need to get another program.
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I’ve heard this from a couple places too, but they weren’t from very credible sources.
rjung:
This isn’t exactly how they work, but in theory this could happen. Also, there is apparently an option to disable this.
Sam Stone, I highly recommend you read the two articles I linked above. Your post was a perfect example of the common misunderstanding of product activation, and I think those articles properly explain it.
I’d say you owe him a BIG apology, Chas, first for assuming he’s lying simply because he disagreed with you, and second for the instances where you accused him of trollery simply because he disagreed with you.
You’re a walking Pit thread waiting to happen, Chas.
Monster104: No confusion here - I know exactly what it is, and I’ve already used it. I have an MSDN universal subscription, and I’ve been following WPA since the beginning. And I maintain that it will be an incredible pain for a lot of people.
Being both a software/hardware developer and a home user, I have various pieces of machines around here all the time. I’m constantly moving cards from one machine to another. I’ve had laptops die and become unbootable, and friends give them to me to test. I sometimes set up a machine for short periods of time for a special purpose like testing memory chips.
Under WPA, this all becomes a big pain. Microsoft admits that if you change enough parts of your computer, internet activation will fail and you’ll have to call Microsoft and plead your case. My experience with calling Microsoft is that it can be a huge hassle, forcing you to spend half an hour playing touch-tone tag with a menu system, waiting on hold for 20 minutes, etc.
What happens to people who want to install Windows on their laptop and home machine? That’s within the old license agreement, but apparently not in the new one.
I can just see it now - I’ll be sitting here at 3 AM under a deadline working on one of our products at home, and I’ll have to re-configure my computer to make sure it works with the minimum spec. Yank the video card, take out half the RAM, and reboot. Uh oh! Microsoft wants me to re-activate, and it’s telling me that my system is too different and I must phone them. Won’t that be fun?
Or a friend will give me a dead laptop, with no Windows CD because it came from an OEM that doesn’t provide original CD’s (another Microsoft tactic to prevent casual copying, which has resulted in endless amounts of hassle for the people who actually buy their products). Anyway, under the old OS, no problem - I just load my copy of Windows, test the machine, and then format the hard drive. I guess I can’t do that with the new OS.
In the last six months, I have upgraded my hard drive twice, upgraded my sound card, motherboard, I doubled my RAM a week ago, and I’ve gone through three video cards. Oh, and I have an SCSI scanner card and a Firewire card that have both been in and out of my machine about five times in the last few months, because I’ve lent the hardware to friends. How many of those little changes would have triggered activation demands? I don’t know, because Microsoft keeps the exact formula a secret. So because I don’t know, I’ll have to err on the side of caution. I shouldn’t have to do that. If a friend wants to borrow my SCSI card for a weekend, I simply shouldn’t have to worry at ALL whether or not my operating system will stop working. It’s mine, I bought it. They have no right to force me to jump through their hoops to keep it working.
A friend of mine is a musician and uses his PC on stage. More than once he has had to switch cards or remove something before a show to solve a problem. Of course, he’s nowhere near an internet connection when he does this. How do you think he’ll feel 15 minutes before showtime when the software he PAID for stops working until he phones Washington and pleads with them to let him use his own property again?
And Microsoft is a large company so this is not much of a risk, but what would happen if they went out of business? Every Windows computer in North America is suddenly frozen in its current configuration? Great. WPA changes the fundamental nature of the product from something you own to something you’re borrowing for a fee.
I will reiterate:
The copy protection scheme of XP is not as bad as people have been saying, it is WORSE. People’s attempts at “correcting the misunderstanding” of how the registration/copy protection schemes work are based on early betas where the features were disabled. The newest builds are the first releases where these features are enabled.
If you only read ONE article about XP, read this one:
This article is based on the current beta, and is about two days old. Other articles that “debunk” the registration/copy protection issue are based on earlier betas with the features disabled.
Anyway, thanks go out to Sam, who has actually used the current beta and confirms my concerns about WMA. It is nice to know that there are people who understand the technical issues and can speak clearly about them without emotional outbursts. But you have only hinted at the biggest disaster lurking for XP. You mentioned that if MS went under, every box would be locked in its existing configuration because nobody would be able to get new registration keys for changed hardware. I know this is not a realistic scenario, but it hints at the biggest reason why XP will not be acceptable to corporations.
I recently did a consulting job at a huge Fortune 50 company. They develop Java apps for use in web-based financial accounting systems. They have about 2500 Wintel computers on the site I worked at. They have an absolute standard, Windows 95. If a user wants 98 or NT, they have to make a compelling argument to management that their work cannot be completed under Win95. Win2000 is absolutely banned, NT is their top level system. They have only 3 NT systems and about 5 Win98 systems.
As you can see, many large corporations are sick of MS’s upgrades, and they would rather deal with the bugs they know about than subject themselves to experimental OS’s with difficult registration procedures and new security holes. In some cases, the companies will pay extra money to hire external consultants (like me) to develop Win2k software, rather than allow a Win2k system in their local network. Corporations are drawing the line in the sand. XP will have a side-effect that BillG never anticipated, it will lock hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of corporate computer systems into Win95, Win98, and Win2000 forever. This is why MS is practically extorting companies to move to Win2k and XP, by changing their site licensing contracts. Corporations aren’t buying it. They’d rather keep what they know and can support. Corporations are prepared to go it alone, without further MS “upgrades.”
Well, Chas, I read your article. Some good, hard information, and then a good chunk of speculation.
I thinkt he reviewers comments can be summed up in one sentence: “I don’t know what it means, but it sounds sinister.”
Chas E.
I’m a little confused, Chas. Everyone of your references is the same site. Did it ever occur to you to look at other sites (ZDNet, for instance) and see what they say? Did it occur to you that your ONLY reference site might be slightly biased? I don’t see any of the posters who disagree with you basing their disagreements on information posted ONLY by Microsoft’s hype.
Monster, you know I respect you as a friend and a poster, but I do think that perhaps you have allowed yourself to be somewhat blinded by Microsoft loyalty. Yes, they are an amazing company and have done and created many good things, but they also have a long track record of being rather devious and underhanded in their dealings with other companies and the public. I, for one, find that many features of XP are quite ominous, and while their publicized functions are very straightforward, they do allow the possibility of functions which are not quite so apparent or innocent. I would suggest that instead of relying solely on Microsoft-based press reports and information, that you find credible non-biased sources also, to help you make levelheaded, non-biased judgements about their softwares.
Please don’t take this as an attack on your character or your ability to make judgements, but Microsoft is not as innocent, straightforward, and humanistic as we’d all like to believe.
And Chas, you DO owe Monster an apology. Making an assumption on someone’s character or actions because of their age is no better than doing so because of their race, sex, religion, or so on. You had no evidence of wrongdoing on his part and therefore had no right to make such an assumption.
As for my personal views on the license activation, I think that Microsoft is, or will, use this system to encourage the purchase of a complete new computer system instead of reconfiguration or upgrades by the end users. The reason for this is simple, many people will purchase a pre-built system from a company, and by the time that it is beginning to show it’s age, they have learned enough about the machine to upgrade themselves. By self-upgrading, MS only makes a sale of an OS every few years to such a user, when their OS is completely revamped, and often self-upgraders do not purchase the OS upgrade immediately or at all.
By making it a PITA to upgrade by yourself, MS has effectively discouraged people from learning enough about their computers to do their own upgrades, and forced people who do not know much about computers to purchase whole systems. The end result is that MS will sell many redundant copies of it’s software, it being packaged and paid for with each individual system. This redundancy of paid-for copies means that MS will silently reap incredible profits that would not have been realized without such a copy protection scheme. While this may make ‘good business sense’ and appear to be Microsoft ‘looking out for the customer’, this is actually yet another silent fleecing of the public.
On a final note, product activation will be hacked and cracked within days, if not hours, of the official release of the product, as will the smart tags, if crackers are half of what they claim to be. I, for one, fully support this, regardless of it’s legality. If I pay for something, be it software, hardware, music, or video, I own that information and have every right to do anything that I want with it. I do not obey laws, I obey morals and ethics, and the system that Microsoft appears to be building defies my sense of morals and ethics.
–Tim
>> On a final note, product activation will be hacked and cracked within days, if not hours, of the official release
Darn it! You beat me to that by seconds! I agree with you.
Homer, I know what you mean. No insult taken, and you are correct that no one should accept official press releases at face value. I always read MS reports with a grain of salt, and then look for 2, 3, or 4 3rd party reports to compare.
I’m not trying to say MS is in any way ethical. I am, however, saying that they’re not trying to take over the world and such. While the possibility exists for MS to take advantage of technology, the possibility also exists that there is a God, that the government controls our minds, or that Janet Reno really is a woman.
However, from 3rd party reports, MS is apparently trying very hard to make a good OS. We’ll just have to wait and see just how good (or bad), don’t we?
As many of you know, I am a big Mac-head. But, since I am cross-platform, I also like my PC. So, I have been kinda looking forward to Windows XP. Really. I like trying out “new” things, so I’ve been rather excited about it.
But all this news and speculation about it has got me worried. Man! It’s almost enough to push me away from being cross-platform, and just keeping to my Mac! Or else, just sticking to Win9x, ME, or 2K. Because I sure don’t need the headache that XP is sounding like it’ll be!
Look, I’m not going to let every thread where I discuss MS to become spoofe and monster’s personal anti-Chas flame fest. I don’t believe the mods will permit it either. But I will attempt put some closure on this matter.
No apology is owed, and none will be forthcoming. I did not make any assumptions about anyone’s character or actions, I made OBSERVATIONS about their character and actions based on their immature behavior. Everything they have done since that initial observation has only confirmed my opinion.
I have nothing further to add, except that I have the right to post on MS-related topics without being stalked and harassed. I will not be baited into flame wars.
If you are not feeling quite paranoid yet, remember this thread. What would happen if IBM and MS combine forces?.. 
This is simply a lie.
Now you’re getting it. What if Microsoft and the RIAA and the MPAA combined forces? Too late, they already did, the result is Windows XP.