While the tech media are all busy praising Windows 7, the operating system still obviously does have issues, it being Windows and all. Because we are talking about Windows, and not, say Ubuntu or Mac OS X, it comes with one big downside that will mostly hit new users of Windows 7 (meaning, everyone): the incredibly complicated upgrade paths.
As always, you can install Windows 7 in two ways. You can perform a clean installation, wiping everything off your hard drive and starting from scratch, or you can perform what Microsoft calls an in-place upgrade. However, because Windows 7 will succeed not only Windows Vista, but also Windows XP, the upgrade paths are a bit… Complicated.
If you’re using any version of Windows XP, there will be no in-place upgrade for you. You’ll have to backup your important files, perform a clean installation, re-install your applications, and move your files back in. Windows XP is kind of old, so I can see how Microsoft didn’t waste any time on implementing in-place upgrades for Windows XP users.
With Windows 7 being the logical continuation of Windows Vista, Vista users will certainly be able to perform an in-place upgrade, right? Well, yes and no. Only certain Vista editions can be upgraded in-place to certain Windows 7 editions. It’s all such a bloody hopelessly complicated and arbitrary mess that Microsoft helpfully provided us with a very clear and easy-to-understand table that shows us exactly what we need to know (be sure to read the additional limitations at the bottom).
Of course, most of you will say “a clean install is better anyway”, and I agree with you. However, most Linux distributions as well as Mac OS X are miles ahead of Windows when it comes to this matter, and they have little problems with performing in-place upgrades. It’s a shame Microsoft is unable to provide a similar experience.
Luckily, more than 95% of the people get Windows via a new computer, so technically it’s not that big of a deal. Let’s just say it irks me.
The table pasted into the middle is so blurry it screws with my head to look at it. But you know, I’d have thought you could downgrade your Vista Ultimate to any edition of 7. Guess Microsoft arbitrarily decided to lock Ultimate users to the highest price tier. Myself, if I were an evil bastard, I would have allowed upgrading Vista Ultimate to all 7 editions, and then double dipped on the upgrade license when they decided they couldn’t live without… whatever it is Ultimate users get…
Blurry? Uhm… You can click it to get the full table…
But your pasted version captures the table’s essence of meaning, at a glance, much more effectively.
Glad someone got the joke
.
Hey, I did the moment I saw it (both your version and the MS one)
Shouldn’t that be “unfortunately” instead of “luckily?”
Couldn’t resist. Perhaps, however, this is why Windows in-place upgrading lags so far behind Linux, as it’s rarely ever upgraded by the average consumer. They either get it with a new computer, as you point out (and often you need a new computer to satisfy the ridiculous resource bloat the next Windows version brings), or they bring the computer to someone who knows these things… and those people know not to do an in-place upgrade of Windows anyway. It makes me wonder if Microsoft simply doesn’t care about this since it’s done so infrequently.
In the first sentence, “doe shave” should be “does have”
On-topic, at least Windows 7’s pricing is lower than Vista’s was. It’s still not as low as the alternatives, but considering the relatively low volume of off-the-shelf purchases and taking consumer demand for Windows vs the alternatives into consideration, it’s not all that big an issue.
Edited 2009-08-09 21:18 UTC
Ubuntu can do in place upgrades from 32bit to 64bit and vice versa?
Edited 2009-08-09 21:33 UTC
Ubuntu cannot do in place upgrades from 32bit to 64bit (Using the normal upgrade routes).
The best way would be to leave the home directory (Hopefully on a different partition), Install the 64bit version and the ia32-libs and then re-install the set a packages that were previously installed.
Upgrading from 9.04 x86 to 9.10 x86 or 9.04 AMD64 to 9.10 AMD64 is usually a simple process. Anecdotally, I did not face any issue upgrading from 8.04 to 8.10 to 9.04, however attempting an in-place upgrade of Windows has lead to doing a fresh install each time.
(Nice blur effect Thom)
If anything, the table shows that the upgrade process is still faulty. Probably because of all the pointless versions, complex licensing and the registry.
I’d say personally that the purpose of the registry is to ensure that a Windows application can’t simply be copied (as a set of files in a folder) from one computer to another.
In doing this job, the registry necessarily gets in the way when trying to do an OS in-place upgrade. The upgraded OS will in effect “look like” a new computer to an installed application.
All of these types of problems arise due to the business method of selling binary-only copies of applications.
I would probably do:
– keep /etc/ and /home (and maybe some other dirs I cared about)
– dpkg –get-selections
– do a new install of 64-bit the same version with and install the needed packages with –set-selections
– put /etc/ and /home back
– then upgrade
or something like that, you get very close to an inplace upgrade from 32-bit to 64-bit.
People use Windows because it gets the job done. At the moment, using Windows XP or Windows Vista will allow them to get the job done. So why bother upgrading? Just wait until you need a new computer, then move over your software and data.
Now I understand that the story is a little different for people who hang around OSNews, since most of us have an unusual obsession about operating systems. There is nothing wrong with that, but it does help if we stand back and realise that the complex upgrade paths won’t affect the majority of users.
As for using Vista will get the job done… well that depends on one’s hardware. If their machine came with Vista but doesn’t run it well (most of those entry-level Vista-capable machines, anyone?) then it may be more of a hinderance than a help and these people may very well consider the upgrade path. I do suspect, however, that more Vista users will upgrade to 7 than XP users given Vista’s performance, or lack there of on many configurations, as well as the similarity between the two given that 7 is basically Vista sr2. People who are happy with XP, which many are, or who do not like Vista’s UI in the first place are much less likely to upgrade to 7 if they can at all avoid it.
The table seems easy enough to read. Find your version of Windows. Read straight across to see your options. Doesn’t seem that hard.
I use Windows Vista because of the apps I need. Vista is very stable and easy to use. And this is someone who hasn’t used Windows since 3.11.
Or you can just use this handy rule of thumb:
80% of the time the answer is “no”.
And in the remaining 20% of cases… well… is there a written guarantee somewhere?
My only other reliable source in such matters says: “Reply hazy. Try again”.
Edited 2009-08-09 22:40 UTC
Ummm complicated? Isn’t it as easy as:
Vista Home > 7 Home Premium
Vista Business > 7 Professional
Vista Home/Business/Ultimate > 7 Ultimate
Except: when you switch between 32 and 64 bit.
All else: custom install.
Simple enough? I guess, except for what a custom install entails. I hope the average home user is savvy enough to keep all of there documents on a separate drive and…oh, have their original program disks.
True, but every time I upgraded my Windows to a different version (I went up to XP SP1), I *always* did a custom install. For a long time there wasn’t even any other (proper) way.
If people have used the 32 bit Home Edition, let them stay with the 32 bit Home Edition and they can save the hassle of a custom install.
I don’t think the problem is so much that the table exists, but rather the mere fact that such a table even needs to exist. Because Microsoft has so many different SKUs of both Vista and 7, there are something like 30 different “upgrade” paths (in regions where the K and/or N editions exist) from Vista to 7. As a result, there are far too many options.
With Mac OS X and most distributions of Linux, your options are dreadfully simple: desktop or server editions.
With Vista in the US, you have Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate. The general rule seems to be that you can upgrade like to like or like to Ultimate, but you can’t go from Business to Home or vice versa, nor can you go from Home Basic to anything. Enterprise users will probably just deploy new hardware, so none of this matters.
The problem with this is that it’s taken me 1000 characters to explain something which should be able to be done in two sentences: If you’re running version N-1, you can upgrade to the same architecture (32/64 bit) of version N. If you’re running older than version N-1, you have to do a full install.
Of course, in a perfect world, Microsoft would steal one from Apple’s book and render the whole architecture discussion moot by releasing all architectures on one disc, but we can’t have everything…
The upgrade path looks very promising: the more you leave the past behind the more difficult upgrading will be.
I’d be inclined to call that “Half Empty”.
Half Full? Half Empty? At 46, they both sound equally dismal to me. 😉
You do know what the engineers answer to this is ?:
The glass is to large
While the tech media are all busy praising Windows 7, the operating system still obviously does have issues, it being Windows and all.
Pointless sniping in an article? Surely not.
Because we of course know that other operating systems have no issues, not being Windows and all.
I’m not even sure if you realise you’re doing this; it seems so ingrained it’s possibly even a subconscious response.
You kidding? Thom is, from what I’ve seen around here, the most vocal person on osnews who is “busy praising Windows 7” as he puts it. Calm down a bit there. No offense Thom, just the truth as I see it.
There are undoubtedly a number of issues (from a user’s perspective) that are in fact unique to Windows, viruses and malware perhaps being the most obvious of these.
The problem that was mentioned was the difficulty in upgrading Windows from one OS version to another, which is caused in large part by Windows itself, its use of the registry concept, and its basic paradigm that executables are copyrighted and yet still distributed as binary only (resulting in the need for backwards-compatibility at an ABI level), and the amount of version and license checking that is done on Windows.
The combination of these difficulties is also unique to Windows.
I cannot see any “pointless sniping” here at all. The sniping was entirely relevant to the discussion at hand.
Edited 2009-08-10 03:22 UTC
I don’t particularly like the registry, but it hasn’t been the main source of upgrade trouble for me. In general what has often happened is that certain system files either do not get replaced or get deleted without being replaced (possibly due to NT’s file locking). The end result tends to be a system that is partly upgraded which makes very odd things happen. It happens less within the same NT major version, worse the further away the major version is from the one you’re upgrading to. XP to Vista or 7, for example, does not generally work properly whereas Vista to 7 can work if you’re careful and do it from safe mode or by booting off of the CD instead of trying to do it via the autorun from your desktop.
You forgot to mention the inherent problems unique to Linux upgrades. How about running something like “apt-get dist upgrade” never working and deleting your system instead? That is a problem unique to some Linux distros. At least with windows upgrades work 99% of the time without hosing the system. Please get the facts. I am guessing you have not touched Windows for many years. Use the right tool for the job my friend.
That is actually kind of funny, switch Linux for Windows and Windows for Linux in your comment and that would be my experiences… basically the complete opposite of yours. And yes, I have touched Windows as recently as Windows 7. I make the choice not to run it myself but I still have to support it often.
I understand that, and not once said it is everyone’s experience. I see things all the time, as I work on windows daily as well. 99% of the time it is the user who has done something strange to bork the system. I see the same thing with Linux systems I support. My only point is there is no magic bullet, and clean installs are always better to do in the first place.
Well, I always recommend the “Jane Eyre” rule. If your wife goes loony, screams from the battlements, and sets the house on fire, it’s probably time to find someone else.
Of course, most Linux distros don’t have that problem. But looking at that Windows 7 upgrade table would make me consider at least hiring a Grace Poole, as a precaution.
Edited 2009-08-10 05:02 UTC
Most common Linux distros, such as Fedora, OpenSuse, and Mandriva, none of them upgrade cleanly and require a clean install to unclog the system. That is my experience, so I usually just do a clean install.
As for the table, maybe I am just used to looking at them, who knows. I find it easy to read. Though it makes no sense why you can’t upgrade to any version, the table itself is not hard to understand.
To be clear, I don’t agree with your Windows upgrade success percentage (99%). Everyone I know always does a fresh install for Windows upgrades. Even upgrading a single piece of hardware (e.g., ATI to Nvidia, and vice versa) is better served by a fresh Windows install, or driver issues remain.
However, I do agree with your statement above. I’ve never had an RPM-based distro upgrade well – including all of the above you have mentioned. There is always a dependency hell problem as well as dorked packages. Instead, I have to do a fresh install. On the otherhand, I have done dist-upgrades on debian-based systems with no problems. I have done Ubuntu dist-upgrades across 3 and 4 iterations (e.g., 7.04, 7.10, 8.04, 8.10) without a hitch. I figured it must be an attribute of the debian packaging system, but that’s another flame war waiting to happen!
While some around here might consider me a Fedora detractor… I do have a *lot* of experience with Fedora and CentOS (and Red Hat Linux previous to that) as an admin. For 12 years I used these distros on servers, thin clients, and my own desktops. And I can honestly say that “dependency hell” is something I haven’t experienced since the RH6.2 days, before up2date was released. My upgrades have never, themselves, had any problems relating to dependencies. (Though I have had plenty of Fedora upgrades where the software *in* the packages is newly broken. But that’s not a packaging issue.) Even my totally unsupported side-grades between Fedora and CentOS (and back) have gone surprisingly smoothly. Upgrades from even very old versions to a brand new one have gone well.
I do like apt and debs better than RPMs. But only because apt is so much faster and uses so much less memory, and because nothing in the RPM world holds a candle to Synaptic for ease of use, and flexibility. Especially when you don’t know the exact name of the package you want to install. And the standard repos for the deb-based distro I currently use are about as complete as any in the OSS world. (Almost 29,000 packages. If it’s not there, it doesn’t exist.)
However, I don’t have a lot of recent experience with The Suse family or Mandriva. Perhaps one or both of those have dependency issues on upgrades. apt/deb and yum/rpm have very similar capabilities. Dependency problems are much more likely to be distro related than package system related. But for some reason, when people speak of dependency hell, they often don’t specify which distro.
Edited 2009-08-10 15:33 UTC
It did happen the most on Mandriva (2008). On Suse (10) I also experienced this frequently. I haven’t used either since those versions. On Fedora, it happened less often. More often on Fedora, even a new install didn’t work – because it was usually a release issue (such as network manager). I have had one RHEL box, and I did not have a problem with it – so maybe that what a paid, supported version is for!
For my own machines I always do a fresh install. It is at work that does mostly upgrades due to the licensing issues, and the cheaper cost of upgrade media. It is a small company, so they go that route. The hardware does not change, so that is not an issue.
I have not run into dependency hell for a very long time. The problem I have seen is more or less not uninstalling the previous package and just doing an upgrade over the top of it. I have only tried Ubuntu, not used it regularly due to not liking it one bit, so I have never tried to do an upgrade for it. Debian proper is where I always have the upgrade issue, and can re-produce it 100% of the time. Maybe I’ll try Ubuntu again, as it seems to have come a long way from what I have read.
I’ve never had “aptitude dist-upgrade” fail. “apt-get” … maybe, so why not use “the right tool for the job” and use aptitude?
http://pthree.org/2007/08/12/aptitude-vs-apt-get/
Windows does not work 99% of the time. The registry gets clogged after some period of use, and Windows invariably slows to a crawl and becomes unusable. I’ve known Windows to take longer than five minutes to boot sometimes (I know this because most places at which I work require one to use Windows, so I have used it daily, for years). BTW, my own (home machine) version of Kubuntu can boot in less than 10 seconds.
BTW, I’m not your friend, especially if you are trying to mislead people by claiming that Windows is OK.
Edited 2009-08-10 11:12 UTC
I’ll give aptitude a try. Funny how your the first one to mention that for upgrading a whole distribution, since everyone else over the years has written to use apt-get. In fact, the Debian docs say to use “apt-get dist-upgrade”.
Then you have no clue how to use windows. It really is that simple. I am not slamming Linux, it has it’s uses as a damn good desktop. Also it works damn good in the server room. It is also not the second coming as you seem to think. I use both depending on what the job happens to be, as well as some *BSD’s, Solaris, HPUX, etc. Glad to hear it boots in 10 seconds, but what does that have to do with the price of tea?
I was keeping things civil. It is not misleading to say that an OS works when it does. You are misleading people into thinking that Linux has everything that windows does, and will suit everyone’s needs just fine. In fact it won’t, though it will do for a lot of people, including me most of the time. This is Operating Systems, not a religion, please treat them as such.
Edited 2009-08-10 13:33 UTC
It was just one example of where Windows doesn’t work.
No, it doesn’t work. It is so borked that the most often-quoted remedy is “try rebooting”, and if that doesn’t work “re-install Windows”. Have you ever tried to install Windows (say after some non-technical friend has had their system utterly infected from malware and brought to its kness)? Its a bloody nightmare. Most of the hardware will not have proper drivers, and you have to work in a kind of “fallback mode” until you can locate all the drivers to get it to work. Most people don’t have the CDs that came with their hardware, and if the network card or USB support on the motherboard doesn’t work after first install you are snookered.
Please do the same courtesy for me, and the vast majority of IT-using people, and not treat IT as a God-given religious right for Microsoft to rip money off of people, but rather take their best interests at heart. Linux is PERFECTLY fine in all respects for the vast majority of people and use cases, and telling people so can reduce their costs in the vast majority of cases, and perhaps provide them with a digital freedom that would otherwise be beyond them.
http://linuxagainstpoverty.org/
It certainly is misleading people to try to tell them that they need Windows. I am not misleading anyone when I tell them they are better off by far with Linux.
Example: the other day I had an elderly grandmother show me an old black-and-white (well, sepia actually) photo of herself and her sister taken when they were about six and two years old respectively (circa 1933). The photo was is a fairly poor state (tears and other blemishes), but it was of great value to her. I told her I could fix it up.
She lent me the photo, I scanned it into Linux using my modest HP Print-Scan-Copy all-in-in-one inkjet, I saved it as lossless .png (patent free) format file, I editied it with GIMP to repair the blemishes using the clone tool and a bit of additional touch-up suing blur and spraycan, and I re-saved the resulting file again as .png. I copied the file onto a low-capacity USB memory stick (128MB USB 1.0, read old and cheap, people will give these away) and I took it to the local variety store where they had a quality photo printer, and I had them print two copies of the repaired photo. It cost me just a few dollars all up.
The resulting prints, when I gave them back to the elderly grandmother and her sister, were priceless.
Don’t try to tell me that Linux isn’t perfectly capable for what people actually want to do with their systems. Don’t you dare try to imply that people really need to buy a $1000 copy of Photoshop for Windows.
I never said people need Windows. Far from it, what they need is the right tool for the job. As I indicated, Linux works for a lot of people.
I never implied that. For the scenario above, I would have used the GIMP as well no matter what OS. No one really needs Photoshop.
I have an open mind, so let me ask this. Do you know an alternative to Quicken Home and Business? Gnucash is the closest, and that still does not have all the functionality. There are packages that cost hundreds of dollars, but why pay more than what they do when the already own Quicken? Do you know an IM program that is compatible with and supports Yahoo voice and video? According to what I find, none of them do. Those are the 2 biggest questions I get, and the reason why people have me switch them back to Windows. Now the Quicken does run decent under Crossover Office, just not good enough for some people. If you have viable alternatives to those, I am more than ready to listen.
I never implied that. For the scenario above, I would have used the GIMP as well no matter what OS. No one really needs Photoshop. I have an open mind, so let me ask this. Do you know an alternative to Quicken Home and Business? Gnucash is the closest, and that still does not have all the functionality. There are packages that cost hundreds of dollars, but why pay more than what they do when the already own Quicken? Do you know an IM program that is compatible with and supports Yahoo voice and video? According to what I find, none of them do. Those are the 2 biggest questions I get, and the reason why people have me switch them back to Windows. Now the Quicken does run decent under Crossover Office, just not good enough for some people. If you have viable alternatives to those, I am more than ready to listen. [/q]
Quicken Home and Business?
http://moneydance.com/
Keeping your old data intact:
http://moneydance.com/features.shtml#import
IM programs are plentiful, but why Yahoo? I’m imagining that that particular one is one that open source programmers haven’t cracked yet.
Let’s have a quick look, shall we?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Messenger#Compatible_software
Lots of choices listed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Messenger#Interoperability
Looks like a deliberate attempt to reduce interoperability … even with “partners”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopete
… that didn’t work.
Personally, I’d just choose a better (i.e. less exclusive, less “lock-in”, less proprietary) IM protocol.
Edited 2009-08-11 03:53 UTC
Moneydance does not even come close. It does not generate invoices or handle business finances. Yes, I actually own that and have tried it, sadly it is lacking severely.
Yes, there are lots listed. None perform or support the voice and video features.
The sad thing is the best supported on Linux is MSN…which is Microsoft Network. People ask me specifically for Yahoo compatible as that is what their friends/family uses. It is not up to me to pick what they use. Kopete is a good IM client, however, again, it does not support Yahoo voice and video. Sad actually as the Yahoo protocol is open, and the library is even used by Kopete, they have just chosen not to support the voice and video, focusing on MSN instead, as do most of the open source IM clients.
I have had a look at those lists, and under testing they really just do not work. The only one that comes close is Gyach-E, however that is very unstable under normal usage.
I took it that we were talking about “consumers/end-users” use cases, not buisness. Therefore, personal finances.
According to reviews:
http://personal-finance-software-review.toptenreviews.com/
moneydance is rated as much-of-a-muchness with Quicken there.
I can find no reference which says that Kopete doesn’t work with Yahoo voice and video. It certainly supports Skype. I’ll get back to you when my search ability isn’t as constrained as it is here.
Pidgin is another matter … it supports only file transfers under Yahoo.
Are you sure? You certainly seem to be struggling valiantly to try to find an actual reason why people should use Windows.
Edited 2009-08-11 04:46 UTC
We are talking end users, just end users that run businesses out of their homes. That usually means people that are self employed and have only themselves to account for. They like to keep business and personal finances separate. That is why Quicken Home and Business was specified, not just regular Quicken. For normal Quicken, Moneydance does the trick.
The reference is to actually install it and try it. Yes, it does support Skype, just Skype is not Yahoo. I do hope you actually test things before reporting that they work because it says so on some website?
Exactly.
Yes, I am absolutely sure. I am not struggling at all, and the above 2 reasons are the main pieces of software I am asked for when installing a system for people. When I have installed Linux for them and they do not have these capabilities, I end up having to install windows for them at their request.
You however should open yours just a bit and realize that there are not alternatives for everything yet sadly.
I don’t think so.
http://kopete.kde.org/faq.php#SincetheendofJuneIcantconnecttoYahooW…
In fact, the exact opposite would appear to be the case. It appears that, far from being open, Yahoo actually deliberately obscured the protocol.
I remember when that happened. That was also 5 years ago.
You should go with yout linux somewhere else. Nobody cares. Linux doesn’t work for most of the people, unless all you want to do is check email and browse newspapers or watch youtube videos.
Linux has a plethora of problems that are unsolvable by users.
It’s a nice OS for some things, but horrible at others. E.g: Professional Music recording. No Linux package comes close to a Protools or Logic Pro.
I want to play WoW (like other 12m players), I can’t on Linux. (Or I’d have to hack through WINE to make it work at -50 FPS).
Give up, Linux is ok, so is Windows for other things. OS X is ok too. Each OS has strengths. After reading all this thread… you sir, look like an id10t. You don’t need to defend Linux in front of other OS News users. They know. Their opinion may be different, but that doesn’t mean yours is better. Stop trolling.
Of course nobody needs Photoshop, until you need to do serious publishing work.
There are also positive aspects that are “unique to Windows” too. Not that you’d ever acknowledge them.
There are indeed myriad aspects that are unique to Windows that are positive from a corporate/business point of view, as a proprietary software and/or commercial service provider.
Look at it however from a consumer/end-user point of view … and the perspective instantly changes one-eighty-degrees. There are no positive aspects to Windows from that point of view (it is is all costs, costs, costs), other than the artifical one of being compatible with the Windows-using corporate world. This is the entire reason why Microsoft feels eternally compelled to hold user’s own data to ransom by storing it in closed, sceret, locked-in-to-Windows-only formats, and why Microsoft consistently blocks or impedes the adoption of open (can be freely implemented by anyone) formats.
Anyway, whatever the reasons, the latter group of people (consumers/end-users) outnumber the former (IT-related corporate/business interests) by perhaps a hundred to one or more. Therefore, in order to help by far the greater number of people, one should do everything one can to encourage them to use alternative products to Windows.
Edited 2009-08-10 23:39 UTC
I am a flight simulator enthusiast. I play X-Plane, Flight Simulator X,IL-72 Sturmovik among others and have loads of peripherals (Yokes, Rudders, Instrument Panels, etc.) that work with that.
Please. There are lots of areas where linux doesn’t even exist. Thank Austin Meyer for making x-plane even compile and work on linux… Other than that, good luck with Minesweeper (GNU licensed).
Windows is unique because of its never ending history of hostile actions against OS/2 rsp. eComStation.
Of course, this doesn’t bother the majority. Nevertheless, Linux folks should be careful who is hugging them.
Ugh you have *NO* idea where Thom stands right now, do ya? *sigh*
Thom actually will use Windows 7 ’cause he’s so enthousiasted about it & he finds Macintoshes depressing. It’s just that he’s being a realist too; any version of Windows has had its typical problems.
But it’s funny, every time a new Windows release comes out, one is not allowed to have some skepsis (which is actually well-grounded based on prior experiences with any version of Windows that had just been released). Same thing happened with with Vista. Nobody was allowed to bad talk it because “that was the ultimate release to date” after so many years of development. But you should hear people moan about it now!
Remove the 32 to 64 and 64 to 32 bit moves and the table becomes much simpler. Few people are going to move from 32 to 64 bit in upgrading the Winodws 7. You either have a PC that can benefit from 64 bit, or you don’t. If you do, you’ve got a server-type hardware, or a Core i7 MB, and probably got it because you wanted to run 64 bit Vista.
Actually, 99% of desktop computers sold, and most laptops, are now sold with 64-bit x86 processors and many already come with 64-bit Vista as it is. Whether they really benefit from it or not is a point of debate, but you’d be hard pressed to find a desktop being sold today that does not have a 64-bit CPU in it aside, of course, from some of the nettops. Not all such systems come with a 64-bit os installed, but a good majority of them do. It’s hardly limited to gaming machines these days.
And if we could eat rocks, we could use them for food.
Again windows shine in its user unfriendlyness in data presentation
with something that look like better on powerpoint than on a paper.
The table looks nice with colors (at least if your a little bit color blind)
but is not (as the article point it out ) clear at all.
They (microsoft marketing people ) shouldn’t have use a table for
this kind of information, it is compact (yes), at a glance (yes).
But people who are choosing one edition don’t care about the others,
( I want a pro edition and don’t want to be informed at the same
time about the upgrade path of the home or ultimate edition ).
So I wouldn’t vomit these information on the regular user,
just show them in different table ( either from origin os perspective
which is more interesting, or by target os which is quite irrelevant).
Well at least they provide the table, and you can look it up instead of asking
a “professional”.
If you can upgrade from Vista Home to 7 Home and 7 Ultimate, why couldn’t you upgrade to 7 Pro?!?! It’s all the same operating system?
It is baffling.
Ah well, if I buy it, I will install from scratch anyway.
Well, if people complain enough they may consider releasing a ‘multi-pass’ edition with the price of all editions rolled into one. Nope, Ultimate isn’t it.
I think MS is betting on people not buying a retail copy of 7 but rather a PC with it. Think about it, how often have you seen shelves loaded with retail copies of Windows? This way they won’t get the backlash they got for Vista from the likes of Acer. MS does have a part to play in driving PC sales, this is a piece of the puzzle.
I don’t see any other reason for this sudoku-like upgrade chart.
-Ad
Edited 2009-08-10 10:52 UTC
I saw this in a few blogs a couple days ago, and they all point to Mossberg’s article as the source. But for the life of me, I can’t find that chart anywhere on Microsoft’s site? Where did Mossberg get this from?
I don’t doubt that the chart is genuine, but I’d like to see where it came from. Maybe some context is missing or something.
The http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/get/upgrade-advisor.aspx page has no chart like this.