Will the upgrade to WinXP 64 be free?

[dawks]

Originally posted by: WobbleWobble

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Minor point upgrades (version 2.0 through version 2.9x) are almost always free.

Except for the NT 5.0 to 5.1 upgrade a lot of people payed for.

Or Windows 98 and Windows 98 SE... and even Windows ME (which is close enough to Win98 Third Edition)

OSX 10.0, 10.1 10.2 10.3.... Wonder why noone rips on Apple for charging $120 per each new 'version' of OSX.

 

[drag]

I don't think anybody is "ripping" on anything. It's just funny to think that MS will give away free OS just because somebody wants to upgrade a cpu, thats all.

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: drag
I don't think anybody is "ripping" on anything. It's just funny to think that MS will give away free OS just because somebody wants to upgrade a cpu, thats all.

:sigh:

Alright, I get the damned point. I thought they might give out a patch to upgrade the OS to support the 64-bit extentions of AMD 64.

 

[drag]

heh. I am sorry. I didn't mean to make it sound like a insult or anything.

If I was incharge of MS I would let you have it for free. After all a XP liscence is a XP liscence is a XP liscence. 🙂

Anyways. You could probably get a copy legally for NEXT to free. When you upgrade, I am sure that you could sell of you old liscence and use that money towards a copy of XP-64! Hell I bet MS will offer some discounts and stuff, so you could pick one up for cheaper then the actual retail price.

Anyways we all could still be wrong. Wouldn't be the first time.

 

[CQuinn]

Alright, I get the damned point. I thought they might give out a patch to upgrade the OS to support the 64-bit extentions of AMD 64.

I'm not sure you do. What you are asking for takes a hella lot more than just a "patch"
to the OS to fully and truely support x86-64 64-bit modes.

What you are asking is more like: "When I buy an AGP video card, will I get a free adapter
to run it on my ISA motherboard?"

There are some fundamental changes in the way AMD64 systems will work that require
a lot more R&D going into the port than you seem to expect. AMD claims that most apps
can run well with only a re-compile to 64-bit code, but than does not mean that the apps
(or an OS) fully supports all the benefits of 64-bit that might be available... That requires
some rewriting of older code, and even creation of new code, to take advantage of what
the platform has to offer.

And if you think that the "upgrade" is going to consist of "only" recompiled code, security
patches, and no new features or code tweaks/improvements that the design teams
have come up with since the release of Windows XP/2003, then you have not been following
Microsoft for long enough.

 

[Nothinman]

There are some fundamental changes in the way AMD64 systems will work that require
a lot more R&D going into the port than you seem to expect

But less than you seem to imply, there are already working Linux and NetBSD ports. A lot of MS' software is portable atleast in the OS because it was designed originally with NT 3.5 to run on x86, Alpha, PPC and MIPs (the CD included all 4 versions, so you got all the ports for 1 license). And since then the system has been ported to IA64 successfully, so AMD64 can't be that much work.

AMD claims that most apps
can run well with only a re-compile to 64-bit code, but than does not mean that the apps
(or an OS) fully supports all the benefits of 64-bit that might be available... That requires
some rewriting of older code, and even creation of new code, to take advantage of what
the platform has to offer.

That depends more on the compiler doing it's job than anything else, languages like C were created so that you didn't have to worry about what CPU it'll be compiled for.

And if you think that the "upgrade" is going to consist of "only" recompiled code, security
patches, and no new features or code tweaks/improvements that the design teams
have come up with since the release of Windows XP/2003, then you have not been following
Microsoft for long enough.

I doubt there'll be much extra in it, did you see the list of things missing from the IA64 port? Add on to that the lack of time they have since Athlon64s will be out soon and they barely have enough time to recompile and run regression tests.

 

[GonzoDaGr8]

OSX 10.0, 10.1 10.2 10.3.... Wonder why noone rips on Apple for charging $120 per each new 'version' of OSX.

Actually, 10.0 -> 10.1 was a free upgrade, But the 10.2 and 10.3 aren't. I agree though. I can see OS9->OS 10.0 costing the $120, but not the incremental upgrades.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: GonzoDaGr8

OSX 10.0, 10.1 10.2 10.3.... Wonder why noone rips on Apple for charging $120 per each new 'version' of OSX.

Actually, 10.0 -> 10.1 was a free upgrade, But the 10.2 and 10.3 aren't. I agree though. I can see OS9->OS 10.0 costing the $120, but not the incremental upgrades.

It's a little bit more then just a update... aside from the cosmetics I bet the difference between OS 10.0 and 10.2 is as much as the difference between w2k to XP...

The printing system is one example. In OS 10.0 apple spent quite a lot of time to create a brand new printing system. They advertised it and it was completely different then what was in OS 9. In the OS 10.2 upgrade they completely scrapped it and went with the excelent GPL'd CUPS (common unix printing system).

(edit: This is a bigger deal then it seems at first. Since with legacy programs you have sometimes 1000's of dollars of software that are specificly designed to create and print out the highest quality image on the highest quality printers aviable. So custom drivers are a must and a unwise change could alienate Apple's core group of users. If you ever used Quark express in classic mode you'd understand. Quark was designed to work with some crazy expensive stuff and took forever for the company that produces it to port all that crap over.)

I am sure that there was quite a bit differences other then just that, but that's the biggest example that I personally have experiance with.

I am also thinking that OS 10.3 was again as big of a difference.

I think it's from the differences in OS cultures that causes the difference between Microsoft vs Apple advertisements. MAC users want a computer that is familar and easy to use. So they downplay the differences, figuring computer users will be scared if there was a big difference between 10.0 and 10.3.

MS on the other hand has to create the notion that w2k and XP are completely difference OSes and there is a realy good reason to buy a new liscence to run the software.

But that is just my observations... don't know the internals to either OS as much as I'd like.