Anilrgowda

I have recently being doing some research into the upcoming Windows Vista release. Some people may ask why I was doing such an “unethical” move, but I was quite impressed with the Beta 2, and RC1 builds.
About a week ago I noticed that Ascent had uploaded product data for Office 2007 and Windows Vista, so I started looking into the specifics of their offers. Initially I was quite impressed, until I realised what edition of Windows Vista was been licensed academically. Some of the prices (New Zealand Dollars) are listed below.

• Office Standard 2007, Academic - ~$270
• Office Professional 2007, Academic - ~$336
• Office Ultimate 2007, Academic - ~$490
• Windows Vista Home Premium, Academic, Upgrade - ~$175

In comparison to:

• Office 2003 Professional, Academic - ~$280
• Windows XP Professional, Academic, Upgrade - ~$180

Now, to be honest, I am quite impressed with the options for Office 2007. What I’m focusing on, is the fact that Microsoft plan to distribute Vista “Home Premium” as Academic software instead of Vista “Ultimate” edition. Why is this? It’s because even though it’s an “Upgrade” version, it doesn’t facilitate upgrades from the previous Academic release!
Conspiracy? I think so!
Microsoft recently published their upgrade pathways which clearly show that there is NO “in-place upgrade” from Windows XP Professional to Windows Vista Home Premium! Instead, you CAN buy the upgrade edition, but you have to perform a ”clean install”. Why? Microsoft clearly publishes at the footer of the page:

“If the edition of Windows Vista that you choose to install will result in a loss of functionality over your current edition of Windows, a clean install must be done or the installation must be completed to a new partition on your PC.”

So they now ADMIT that Home Premium isn’t as good as XP Professional!
Not a conspiracy now? I don’t think so!
The only upgrade path from XP Professional is to Vista Ultimate (and Vista Business which I don’t see personal users buying), so technically this is what should be provided.
I can somewhat see what Microsoft are trying to achieve here, but I think their actions are pretty unethical when it comes down to their motto “Your Potential, Our Passion”, yeah, when Vista is released you (Microsoft) hope we’ll be satisfying your “Passion”, when you find out that half the students that purchased Windows Vista Home Premium Academic (Wow, what a mouthful) edition have JUST had to do full backups, clean installation, then restoring from the full backups, a job that typically takes 2-3 days for someone that is a little busy. Is that really “Our Potential”? Surely “Our Potential” refers to the ability of students to study, and pass, isn’t that what “Microsoft’s Passion” is? Come on Microsoft let us concerntrate on more important things, like sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll! ^W^W^W^W^W^WStudy!
As far as I’m concerned, I doubt I’ll be upgrading to Vista in the end, when my Beta expires (or sooner), I will reformat and go back to plain old Windows XP Professional, and I will however consider buying Office 2007 as the licensing seems reasonable, that or I will go back to an earlier copy of Office and loose all the features I’ve begun to like.
I now conclude with a new tagline Microsoft should consider, just for their Academic websites:

“Microsoft – Your Inconvenience, Our Passion”