Re: MS Politics

I.P. Nichols wrote:
"Richard Bayarri Bartual" wrote:

Perhaps you can enlighten me on the "because it's a significant downgrade feature-wise from XP Home" with specific features that XP Home users will not have available in Vista Home Basic.

Some (but not all because I don't know all of them) are listed below

No Windows Messenger., and therefore none of the old COM interfaces
that still work with MSN Messenger, and are used by a fair amount of
MSNM plug-ins and third.party utilities that exchange information
with it.

No Network Messenger Service (although to be fair this was disabled by
default with SP3).

No HyperTerm, meaning that network devices which use serial ports
for configuration (there are many of these because it prevents hacking
from outside) cannot be set up.

No Windows help-file viewer, so help for older software, including a lot of
MS stuff cannot be used without a download from MS (and how many
people will (a) know this, and (b) be able to find it?).

No hardware profiles on startup.

Even Paul Thurrot, well-known MS shill and Gates bottom-licker, reckons
Vista Home Basic is worthless: "I have some very basic (ahem) advice: Do not
purchase or use Windows Vista Home Basic. It's that simple."

> Your whole DX-10 argument sounds like a canard to me. How many people to you
expect this Christmas will buy new systems with XP Home and a DX-10 graphis card, few to none?

I'd say none, as the only one that might be available (GeForce 8800)
will retail at between $500 and $600, and draw around 300 watts of
power. Prices and consumption for such cards will of course drop
fairly quickly, but it will realistically take a couple of years before
they reach a level where the mainstream will be using them in machines
with normal PSUs. DirectX10 will therefore run in emulation on
DX9-compatible cards (it won't run at all on older stuff), which means
that the high-end features may well be slow or operate with restricted
quality, although shorter signal paths overall might well mean that
non-DX10 operations are a bit faster.

> As for eye candy, AFAIK the Aero UI will be in Vista Home Basic but not the
Aero Glass feature.

You are of course correct.

Even then I'm not all that sure they have "stripped out" the Aero Glass feature out of Home Basic. In RC2 and build 5840 Aero Glass was turned off in the Ultimate edition (and I assume all others) by default if you had only 512MB memory but with a simple registry change you could turn it on and it ran just fine. Could be the same trick would apply to Vista Home Basic allowing those that had a proper graphics card to turn it on. However that's pure speculation on my part.


MS claim that it isn't installed with Home Basic, but they've been known to
say all sorts of things that aren't true so this doesn't mean you're wrong. Note
also that they have a feature which allows owners of lower Vista editions to
upgrade on-line without downloading anything, and state that this can be
done because the media sets for any particular version of Vista contain
all versions (although it isn't clear whether this means 32-bit media will
also contain all the 64-bit editions). It appears that the upgrade process
works by obtaining a key which unlocks and installs the requisite features of
the higher SKU, but it is IMO likely that some of them are (as you say) installed
already but disabled.

NB: The general feeling among even the most ardent MS advocates is that
Microsoft are hoping this particular feature will prompt those receiving a
free XP to Home Basic promotion (or one of Microsoft's own $99 upgrades
for all XP owners) to then upgrade it to Home Premium after discovering
how generally unexciting Home Basic is.

On a final note: even if Vista Home Basic had been a significant upgrade to
XP home, the fact that by far the majority of Windows users stick with the
OS that came pre-installed means that few are likely to end up actually
putting Vista on their XP machines. The vast bulk of Microsoft's customers
have never had to install an OS on their own, so those without access to a
pet geek will either not attempt it, or give up part of the way through
after being asked some question that they either don't understand or can't
find an answer to.
.

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