Easy Rhinotrue but why would you want to run windows 7 on old hardware?

I'm takin like the older intel boards like the Bad axe 2 and the other boards released at those periods.(like boards in '06)

And why woudlnt motherboards be supported? If the manufacturer doesnt keep up on the drivers, the OS will most likely contain default drivers for most chipests anyway. So it wont matter. Vista does the same thing.

Wile EWe aren't talking OEM. We are talking Retail. That's what this thread is about, the retail boxes. Windows is more expensive in the long run as well.

I don't know about you, but I don't care about retail, I care about aquiring them the cheapest way possible.

Winodws is cheaper over the course of time, OSX is cheaper up-front, even if you buy retail versions, considering Windows offers cheaper upgrade versions, which also isn't an option with OSX.

Even if you pay full price for XP Pro, Vista Ultimate, Win 7 Ultimate at $300 a pop for full retail versions, that is still only $900. If you consider that Win7 is likely to have a lifetime of 4+ years before we see the next installment of Windows, OSX will likely have at least 3 more releases in that time(based on the fact that an new version of OSX is released almost yearly). Add the extra $390 to the top of the $650 you've paid up until now, and its adds up to $1040.

In the long run OSX simply isn't cheaper, rebuying the OS every year isn't a good way to do it.

CrAsHnBuRnXpAnd why woudlnt motherboards be supported? If the manufacturer doesnt keep up on the drivers, the OS will most likely contain default drivers for most chipests anyway. So it wont matter. Vista does the same thing.

I don't believe XP does that, i never really tried out vista but from my long experience with XP i never had it automatically use default drivers, so thats all new news to me.

newtekie1I don't know about you, but I don't care about retail, I care about aquiring them the cheapest way possible.

Winodws is cheaper over the course of time, OSX is cheaper up-front, even if you buy retail versions, considering Windows offers cheaper upgrade versions, which also isn't an option with OSX.

Even if you pay full price for XP Pro, Vista Ultimate, Win 7 Ultimate at $300 a pop for full retail versions, that is still only $900. If you consider that Win7 is likely to have a lifetime of 4+ years before we see the next installment of Windows, OSX will likely have at least 3 more releases in that time(based on the fact that an new version of OSX is released almost yearly). Add the extra $390 to the top of the $650 you've paid up until now, and its adds up to $1040.

In the long run OSX simply isn't cheaper, rebuying the OS every year isn't a good way to do it.

idk anything about OSX and it's prices, but i definitely see windows 7 staying for quite a while, at least 4 years, as it's basically vista only sharpened and fine tuned. So a dam near perfect OS that will take probly a year or so for the majority of households and pc's sold to have it, and i'd like to think that microsoft would give game developers some time to catch up DX's pace, as i still don't think we've seen the best DX10 has to offer, especially since there isn't even a game out yet that was coded around dx10 instead of 9. So another year or 2 for them to catch up to DX11 would be nice and have a nice steady flow of DX11 games.

CDdude55I don't believe XP does that, i never really tried out vista but from my long experience with XP i never had it automatically use default drivers, so thats all new news to me.

XP does to a degree. It doesnt have the amount of chipset support out of the box that Vista and Win7 does though.

CrAsHnBuRnXpXP does to a degree. It doesnt have the amount of chipset support out of the box that Vista and Win7 does though.

No lie there.

I went straight from XP to 7 RC and had 0 exclamation marks in device manager after the 7 install. Granted, some of the drivers were generic versions, but it made it 10x easier to have everything at least "install" from the get go.

If Vista was anything like this than I am genuinely sorry I skipped it...

Back on topic.

My personal opinion is "boxes, schmoxes". It could come in a box with an apple on the front for all I care, as long as it works as advertised.

Oh no I disagree. I think the box is probably the single most important part of Windows. Next to that helpful manual they didn't include :p

newtekie1I don't know about you, but I don't care about retail, I care about aquiring them the cheapest way possible.

Winodws is cheaper over the course of time, OSX is cheaper up-front, even if you buy retail versions, considering Windows offers cheaper upgrade versions, which also isn't an option with OSX.

Even if you pay full price for XP Pro, Vista Ultimate, Win 7 Ultimate at $300 a pop for full retail versions, that is still only $900. If you consider that Win7 is likely to have a lifetime of 4+ years before we see the next installment of Windows, OSX will likely have at least 3 more releases in that time(based on the fact that an new version of OSX is released almost yearly). Add the extra $390 to the top of the $650 you've paid up until now, and its adds up to $1040.

In the long run OSX simply isn't cheaper, rebuying the OS every year isn't a good way to do it.

OS X's cycle has grown past a year. That was only true up until 10.4. Both 10.5 and 10.6 have moved to a longer release cycle. 10.5 was released in Oct 07. Your math is still flawed. Going by current release times, it would be an additional 130 or 260 for OS X.

Still cheaper. And that's also assuming somebody will be upgrading the OS on a machine that originally came with 10.0 or Win 2000.

Your argument's logic is flawed completely, on both ends of the spectrum. No matter how you try to look at it, paying $130 for the fully featured OS is Still better than paying $300.

Wile EOS X's cycle has grown past a year. That was only true up until 10.4. Both 10.5 and 10.6 have moved to a longer release cycle. 10.5 was released in Oct 07. Your math is still flawed. Going by current release times, it would be an additional 130 or 260 for OS X.

Still cheaper. And that's also assuming somebody will be upgrading the OS on a machine that originally came with 10.0 or Win 2000.

Your argument's logic is flawed completely, on both ends of the spectrum. No matter how you try to look at it, paying $130 for the fully featured OS is Still better than paying $300.

No, paying $130 every year is worse than paying $300 every 3. Cheaper up-front costs isn't better if the product lasts less than 1/3rd the time.

Even if we assume only two OSX releases in Win7's lifetime, thats still $910 over the lifetimes of WinXP, Vista, and Win7, which only cost $900...

I'd like to see where you are getting that OSX is cheaper or better?

Shame it's going to be really expensive, I want Windows 7 Ultimate but if it's similar to Vista pricing I would rather pay a hooker. I hope you can extend the 30 day evaluation like you could in Vista :D

newtekie1No, paying $130 every year is worse than paying $300 every 3. Cheaper up-front costs isn't better if the product lasts less than 1/3rd the time.

Even if we assume only two OSX releases in Win7's lifetime, thats still $910 over the lifetimes of WinXP, Vista, and Win7, which only cost $900...

I'd like to see where you are getting that OSX is cheaper or better?

What part about OS X is not released every year did you miss? And who is actually going to have to buy every single OS from XP and up or from 10.1 and up? Nobody, that's who. Most people would buy oem computers, which comes with an OS, before they would go and upgrade a 2000 or 10.0 era computer to the newest OS every time one releases. If people do upgrade their OS, it's usually only once or twice before buying a new computer. At least that's how everyone I know does it.

But if you insist on pursuing this path, $130 OS X is still better than $300 Windows, regardless of the amount of upgrades, because Apple puts features in their $130 OS releases that people feel are worth the money. How many people feel $300 is worth it for Ultimate editions of Windows? A great deal of them choose lower versions, or just go without. I point to Vista for that example. $300 is just ridiculous, no matter how you want to attempt to make it seem justified, as is having a million SKUs. At least take us to only 2 Consumer SKUs, lower the price to $100 for the Crappy sku with Aero and not much else, and make us pay $200 for the loaded edition, or something along those lines. Still moe expensive than OS X, but would be worth it.

And even if we did stick to your logic, most people are more willing to spend more money over a period of time in smaller amounts at a time, than they are willing to spend less money over time, but in larger chunks. It's a hell of a lot easier to scrape up $130 for an upgrade than it is to scrape up $300, even if you end up spending 130 more often.

MS releases several versions because it saves companies a lot of time from removing features so that their employees are working and not playing games, and also to not dump a ton of features onto a home user that they have no no clue how to use or have no need for - for example, Starter is aimed at people that only use their machines to run a browser to look at pron, myspace and email, while Home Basic is aimed at the user who likes to save the pron and view it while they listen to MCR and chat with their mother on MSN - Home Premium is for the ones that like watching pron and Holywood flicks via the media center on their low end LCD TV and 2 channel "5.1*" speaker system while several startup apps run in the background and maybe a DVD is being burned - Professional is for all those identical Dells that sit on the desks of customer support of the pron company and ISPs, while Ultimate is what spoiled gamer kids and MS extremists will be running on their multi-cored and multi-GPU rigs. ^_^

I personally will have Ultimate x64 compliments of MSDN, so price is not something I have to worry about - I may not use all the features, but I may as well get the super sized combo meal.

I like em especially the black one very cool. :cool:

Ill take Professional Anyday over Ultimate, As i can add and remove stuff I want/dont want.

beyond_amusiaMS releases several versions because it saves companies a lot of time from removing features so that their employees are working and not playing games, and also to not dump a ton of features onto a home user that they have no no clue how to use or have no need for - for example, Starter is aimed at people that only use their machines to run a browser to look at pron, myspace and email, while Home Basic is aimed at the user who likes to save the pron and view it while they listen to MCR and chat with their mother on MSN - Home Premium is for the ones that like watching pron and Holywood flicks via the media center on their low end LCD TV and 2 channel "5.1*" speaker system while several startup apps run in the background and maybe a DVD is being burned - Professional is for all those identical Dells that sit on the desks of customer support of the pron company and ISPs, while Ultimate is what spoiled gamer kids and MS extremists will be running on their multi-cored and multi-GPU rigs. ^_^

I personally will have Ultimate x64 compliments of MSDN, so price is not something I have to worry about - I may not use all the features, but I may as well get the super sized combo meal.

Simplistic and does kind of favor the old XP and old Vista boxes.

CrAsHnBuRnXpAnd why woudlnt motherboards be supported? If the manufacturer doesnt keep up on the drivers, the OS will most likely contain default drivers for most chipests anyway. So it wont matter. Vista does the same thing.

i have actualy instaled the 7 and they are pretty good, i didnt need to instal any kind of drivers except for my gpu..

I cant find drivers for my LAN port:(

h3llb3nd4I cant find drivers for my LAN port:(

Try the Vista drivers?

No, sadly ASUS does not recognise win7 :(

h3llb3nd4No, sadly ASUS does not recognise win7 :(

Wait, you didn't try the Vista drivers or they didn't work?

Yes!! I even downloaded the drivers again!!!
still nothing:(:ohwell:

Wile EWhat part about OS X is not released every year did you miss? And who is actually going to have to buy every single OS from XP and up or from 10.1 and up? Nobody, that's who. Most people would buy oem computers, which comes with an OS, before they would go and upgrade a 2000 or 10.0 era computer to the newest OS every time one releases. If people do upgrade their OS, it's usually only once or twice before buying a new computer. At least that's how everyone I know does it.

But if you insist on pursuing this path, $130 OS X is still better than $300 Windows, regardless of the amount of upgrades, because Apple puts features in their $130 OS releases that people feel are worth the money. How many people feel $300 is worth it for Ultimate editions of Windows? A great deal of them choose lower versions, or just go without. I point to Vista for that example. $300 is just ridiculous, no matter how you want to attempt to make it seem justified, as is having a million SKUs. At least take us to only 2 Consumer SKUs, lower the price to $100 for the Crappy sku with Aero and not much else, and make us pay $200 for the loaded edition, or something along those lines. Still moe expensive than OS X, but would be worth it.

And even if we did stick to your logic, most people are more willing to spend more money over a period of time in smaller amounts at a time, than they are willing to spend less money over time, but in larger chunks. It's a hell of a lot easier to scrape up $130 for an upgrade than it is to scrape up $300, even if you end up spending 130 more often.

What part makes you believe I assume OSX is released every year. If Win7 lasts 4 years, and we can all pretty much assume it will, that is at least 2 OSX release, assuming they move to a once every 2 years release schedule(right now they are at about one ever year and a half).

This still makes Windows cheaper over the long run, and OSX cheaper upfront. Yes, $130 is cheaper than $300, but what you don't seem to understand that if I have to put out $130 far more often than the $300, OSX isn't cheaper.

You bring up another interesting point, without even knowing it. For the most part, people do not even need the full Ultimate edition, I was simply using that as make make your side look as good as possible, because if I had used Home Premium as a measure you would have whined about how you don't get all the features with Home Premium. The fact of the matter is that Microsoft giving the option to have lower cost versions with fewer features is great, and lowers the cost vs. OSX even more. Giving the option to buy cheaper upgrade versions lowers the cost over time even more.

Over time OSX is more expensive for the consumer, it is as simple as that. Having a single solution with no options or customizability is never better...except in Mac land...

Anyway, no point in continuing to post the same thing over and over again. If you believe OSX is cheaper that is fine, I'm sure you also believe buying a $5000 car that lasts 2 years is cheaper than buying a $15,000 that lasts 10...

h3llb3nd4Yes!! I even downloaded the drivers again!!!
still nothing:(:ohwell:

Tried extracting the drivers, then manually installing the driver via Device Manager?

:p I dont know how to do that:(

The driver for Vista already comes in a Zip, so just unzip it somewhere on your computer. Then go into Device Manager, and right click on the LAN card that doesn't have drivers. Then select Update Driver, and tell it to install from a specific location, then point it to the folder that you just extracted, you might have to select one of folders inside that folder, just kind of keep selecting ones until it works.