Windows XP PRO SP2

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Im looking at picking up a copy of window XP pro with SP2 (full installation, not upgrade), and found that in amazon its about 260 quid. theres no way i can justify that amount of money. But i found a site selling the full version OEM for 73 quid. not bad not bad!

Apparently theres a rule that OEM has to be shipped with a piece of non-peripheral hardware - so they're shipping it with a mouse, which apparently counts as non-peripheral! strange.

Might have to pick it up though. But were to MS get off charging such an extortionate amount of money for a piece of software? its ridiculous!

Fergal

 

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How does Ford get away with charging £14,000 for a lump of steel and plastic on four wheels?
It's the world we live in...
As long as the majority will pay up, they're laughing.
Fair play if you've managed to find somewhere that beats the system, but then Microsoft would argue that it's because of people like them that the rest of us have to pay so much.

I'm actually an MS supporter. You can look at it in different ways, and I choose to look at the stuff that they give away rather than the commercial face of it.

 

my mom, mrobinson went to a MS confernece in fl and they gave her full version of a server. Can't remeber which one and the full version of Office 2003 pro. Which I got. Have to admit that it sweet when they hand out stuff like that.

 

Dont get me wrong. Im all about legit software. I could easily get hold of a pirate copy of Windows XP Pro, but i dont want it! id rather have the legit version and the support that entails. not to mention the risk of viruses etc on a pirate copy. I just think charging so much is ridiculous. especially for a product that isnt secure/bug free (the odd bug is acceptable)

 

I agree with you there.

 

man, 200 quid is NOT alot to ask for a copy of windows
had it been bought in 2001 at release you would already of had 4 years use out of it, and probably another 2

thats 6 years!! tell me what exactly makes the cost so bad?
its the core piece of software that runs your PC, it is required to run anything else, it manages everything in the system, its stable and secure as ever

I used to format my PC once a month, every two months at best, just to know I was workin with a nice stable machine
ive formatted the xp machine maybe 4 times in as many years

People pay that for a graphics card (and often more)
they pay it for memory
hell most spend it on beer in a year, so spending it on an OS that for many of us is part of our careers for upward of 6 years use

seems somewhat affordable to me

coupled with the fact an OEM copy is like 90 quid, a student copy is just over 100, your laughing really

 

Im willing to pay for the OEM. and if id bought XP when it first came out i might well have been happy to pay 260 for it, but after this length of time i think its a ridiculous price. i think 150 is more reasonable (though i still think its a bit much)

 

why pay 260 when its 204 on ebuyer for the same copy? :P

and it is 150 to anyone who has a previous real OS (real os, meaning 32 bit) (for pro, think that home lark is upgradable from 9x an its 16 bit counterparts)

u have been using a previous OS for the last 3 years right?

and not secure?? man i never get where people get off saying stuff like that lol
if you dont know how to secure windows by now, stay off the net is all i say

 

A good OS should come out of the box secure. Its ok for us, we know what we're doing and, if not, where to go to find out. But the average users dont know.

Think about it this way. In a company, you dont leave the users' PCs unsecured and trust them to secure it themselves or just not to do something stupid. No. you lock it down so tight they need permissions just to go to the toilet. You then couple that with courses on good and safe practices (making it that much better), but you dont give them the rope to hang themselves.

XP should be like that out of the box. and should have been from day one. users should be required to disable the settings if they want to make it less secure, not enable them in order to make it more secure.

I'll admit Microsoft came a long way with the release of SP2. They did exactly what i just said, and hopefully will continue to do so in future. It caused heaps of problems in the short term, for which they got bad press, but fair play to them, in the long run it was a great thing to do!

I've been using xphome on this machine for the past few years, but i only have a recovery disk, and i want a full installation disk so that, when i want to, i can format and reinstall and pick how its set up.

 

does an upgrade copy work from an XP Home installation?
would be silly not to, but it wouldnt be unheard of hehe

 

Yeah it still works, but id just personally like to wipe and start afresh.

Also, to clarify a point. There are actually few Os's around which are secure out of the box. and all are linux as far as i believe (also with SP2 XP is close behind), the problem with these distros are that (as per linux) they are hard for basic users to use (at least initially) and that they are less heard about, and last but not least, compatibility with programs!

 

I still don't get why they're offering you a mouse?
They'd be better off giving you another stick of RAM so that you could get it to run...

 

actually fergel theres very little thats 'secure out the box' including linux and mac osx, this is somewhat of a falicy, and why should security really be a companys concern anyway? to ford make sure your a top driver before selling you a car? hell no, thats down to you!, however seeing some drivers, and windows users, perhaps this policy should change all round! LOL

also linux is not hard for users, this is also a falicy
its hard for people like us, that know windows, have done for years, tweak it, and want to perform the same actions in linux

its NOT hard for someone that doesnt know linux or windows, and just wants to check email, browse the web, and write some documents

infact I used the live Ubunto CD to proove this to a few people undertaking the CLAIT course at a local collage, i arranged the icons similar, and renamed a few shortcuts to ones similar to windows

they could perform all the tasks they performed on windows without a problem

linux is only an issue for those of us who actually want to use the powerful features it affords us, as its a whole new learning curve, these 'users' never started on the windows learning curve to begin with.

 

grrrrrr. theres only one e in my name! grrrrrr. lol

I'll give you that Phoenix. as a general rule basic users wont really have too much of a problem with Linux for basic things. I do look at it from my point of view as it is difficult to learn after being so used to windows. And nothing in the world is totally secure, linux tends to be more secure out of the box than windows. for a start it tries to make you log in as a standard user.

The main problem for the average user is support. With windows, if your computer breaks, you have little trouble finding someone to fix it. with linux its like skydiving from the ground up to the plane (skyclimbing? jumping???)

 

I would have to disagree with you on this one Phoenix. I was looking on DABS today at some PC's. For 100 quid more than the RRP of XP Pro, you could have a HP branded PC, P4, 256 Ram etc... that comes with XP Pro.

If you can live with XP Home, you can have a Dabs value PC for 244 quid all in with XP Home.

One thing I did notice also on Ebuyer (since Linux has come up). They are selling a PC for less than 200 quid (resonable spec as well, dunno how they do it) that comes with Mandrake 9.1 and open office. Bargain!