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The Hard Upgrade Path From XP To Vista To Win 7
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft executives have been telling the tech industry that if hardware supports Windows Vista, it will support Windows 7, but it now looks like that may not entirely be the case. According to CRN: 'But after a series of tests on older and newer hardware, a number of noteworthy issues emerged: Microsoft's statement that if hardware works with Windows Vista it will work with Windows 7 appears to be, at best, misleading; hardware that is older, but not near the end of most business life cycles, could be impossible to upgrade; and the addition of an extra step in the upgrade process does add complexity and more time not needed in previous upgrade cycles.' And here is CRN's overview of the difficulties Microsoft faces in asking enterprise users to walk this upgrade path: 'Across the XP-Vista-Windows 7 landscape, Microsoft has fostered an ecosystem that now holds out the prospect of a mind-numbing number of incompatible drivers, unsupported devices, unsupported applications, unsupported data, patches, updates, upgrades, 'known issues' and unknown issues. Sound familiar? That's what people used to say about Linux.'"
It may make more sense for many businesses to just forklift-upgrade their desktops.
EG, a Intel Atom dual-core, dual-thread-per-core motherboard should be just fine for most business desktops. Yeah, the graphics aren't great, but at 2GB, an 80 GB disk, and a price of a hair over $300 for a complete system, the hardware costs are so dwarfed by software and support costs that just throwing all the old systems out may be cheaper.
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Same with the vista-ready label/lawsuits. And no, i'm not talking about microsoft. What kind of stupid company running older machines would bother upgrading OSes? What would be the point? To make the machine run slower and cause compatibility issues? Let home users work out all the bugs over a year or so and then upgrade AS you upgrade machines. I never upgraded my old dos machine to windows when it came out because even if it could run it would run slow as shit. Same reason i wouldn't install KDE on a netbook. New OSes shouldn't HAVE to explicitly support old hardware. People on old hardware should use the OS that they had when they bought it, maybe the next gen.
I know Linux is pro and can support like every part made but is there a requirement to do this? No, its the same as putting linux on a toaster. Windows should be keeping minimal winXP support for a few more years and have win7 be for only new machines, fuck supporting outdated hardware. This is one of the reasons ps3 games suck, because they are supporting xbox, pandering to the lowest common denominator.
I salute both the pro and anti MS crowds who shall soon mod me troll.
Well, has Microsoft ever released something with poor driver support before? NVIDIA and Vista come to mind.... But check this out from TFA:
That's a real problem, from that it sounds like Windows 7 is a pig. However, if Microsoft would be honest about the situation they might be able to save themselves. E.g., Apple has no qualms about dropping support of their newest software on older machines. However, what happens if they lie about it and say that older machines are supported and they aren't? (As they are apparently doing.) You can say that's unfair too, but again Microsoft when and lied about what computers Vista would run (well) on, so I'd say that experience teaches us that a little healthy skepticism is warranted.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
That's the consequence of hardware costs often being lower than the cost of wages (and licenses) to upgrade the old systems. I suspect the $300 GP cited are not unrealistic, especially for a company that buys dozens of computers at once. Now calculate the cost of having your support guys reinstall the old machines, possibly do a few hardware upgrades along he way, and buying your licenses separately from hardware (hint: there is plenty of evidence OEM licenses are MUCH cheaper).
Of course the license part is Microsoft's fault, but the rest just follows out of an unemotional cost calculation. The best the company can do with the old computers is donate them to nonprofit organizations who can use them and have volunteers who reinstall them as needed for free.
C - the footgun of programming languages
If it isn't 99.99% compatible, it isn't getting on my machine.
Your statement assumes that you require an OS to be compatible with at least 9,999 out of every 10,000 components in your system. Between my keyboard, mouse, harddrive, monitor, usb slots, firewire, ethernet card, wireless card, motherboard, and power adapter (ten components)... I'd say the OS should be 100% compatible. Beyond that, I'd blame device manufactures and software development companies for not provided me with the right code to use their products. But 99.99% is simply a fun number you pulled from your ass, because even if you did have 9,999 completely functional components in your computer, if there was no compatibility for a mouse, you'd be pissed off.
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Well the US Military for one. Every computer is imaged from a tested image for that particular hardware baseline. We do not allow a vendor install, with all the crapware no less, on our networks. And for anyone out there who wants to chime in with an anecdote of when this did happen ... yeah no kidding, it CAN happen. Fortunatly if the network admins did their job right the machine won't be allowed to get an IP address and the person who did it got fired after it was discovered.
Any sufficiently large IT infrastructure such as the military networks would not just buy their boxrn with W7 installed. And I'm not talking about our secure side (SIPR), I'm talking about the unclass side (NIPR).
If you can't be good, be good at it!
Wait... you think that, and you use a MAC?!
Here's a challenge: try to run a MacOS 9 application on your beautiful, shiny Macintosh. Can't do it? Hm. Weird, I can run like 95% of apps that old on Windows. Heck, try to run a MacOS 6 application on MacOS 7 and odds are good it wouldn't even come close to running right. (Yes, I'm still bitter about System 7.)
I mean, the funny thing is that I basically agree with you, but you holding that position and then using a Mac as your main computer is pretty mind-bendingly oxymoronic.
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I call bullshit on that dude.
I've worked for some large companies that supply services to large corporations, ALL of them had their own specific versions of windows, and yes, they did upgrade with the times if justified (2k to XP). These were corporations like banks, supermarket chains, telcos, universities, the list goes on. They REFUSED to go to Vista, all new machines were shipped with it, but got reimaged to their own corporate versions of XP.
I don't know where you've worked, but it sounds like they are small companies, not corporations. Either that or you're blowing it out of your arse.
Slipstreaming your own version is quite common practice, and to justify ANY change in your image as it will impact the company - whether positive or negative. I have yet to see a corporation move to Vista, the cost is too high and the risks too great to justify it. If they are going to sell 7 to corporations they are going to need to fix this mess they call an OS, and fix the upgrade path. Why buy a new machine and 2 OSs when you can buy 1 machine with 1 OS (Mac), or even just 1 OS (Linux).
Time is money. You can either wait five to ten minutes for everything to load once you've hit the power button, or you could wait a couple of minutes. Imagine 50 people having to wait an extra five minutes. That's a total of 250 minutes per day, or a little over 4 man hours each day being lost.
My take on that is a properly designed and planned out OS shouldn't have to break half the planet on each upgrade cycle to make progress.
Considering how hard it is to predict the future, I expect OSs to occasionally have to make a major change. DOS to windows 3, 3 to 95, somewhat 95 to xp, but I don't see a distinct major change since then, so why do things have to break in vista and then again in 7? At least give us some sincere major improvements for the headache, and space them out a bit will ya?
Ideally, OS upgrades should be a major pain once a deckade, and smooth in between, without sacrificing added functionality and progress.
Linux and Mac OS both seem to have a much better track record here. Heck, Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X happened in what, 2001? OK that was a major breaker for software and hardware alike, but we haven't had to suffer it in 8 years and there's no threat looming in the future. Why can't MS work this way?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
#1: Acer Aspire 6930 bought on post-xmas sale from Staples. Core 2 Duo T5800, 4GB DDR2 667, 250GB SATA HD, Integrated Intel 4500MHD, Intel 5100 wireless.
Problems: Sometimes audio driver doesn't automatically detect headphones plugged in and switch speaker output to headphone jack. Oh and HDMI audio may have the same issue if turned on while hooked to a TV that's off.
#2: Piece of Junk (literally) desktop. Core 2 Duo E6300 @ 3.63GHz on Asus P5B, 2GB DDR2 1066, ATI HD4850, 400GB SATA HD.
Problems: None.
#3: Toshiba Portige 4010 (So old it came with Windows 2000 installed because XP wasn't even out yet): Intel Pentium III mobile 933MHz Low Voltage, 512MB RAM, 30GB IDE HD, Intel 2200BG wireless, Ali integrated video and MB chipset from hell.
Problems: Newest Video driver for integrated Trident Blade3D (DX7 class) video is circa 2002. Windows 7 build 7000 automatically detects the install issues and retries with compatibility settings and succeeds . The driver works, except when it tries to create an overlay surface it locks up. This is not a bluescreen, the chipset actually freaks out because it's crap and the driver is badly written. Same issue under XP (which the driver was written for) on this machine. Using the video in SVGA mode solves the crash problem but is too slow for video playback. Fine for browsing and word processing though.
Performance is slow, but usable on a 9 year old laptop. Checking memory usage with the default install of "Ultimate" edition using Win7's Resource Monitor shows it defaults to only using about 300MB of RAM, leaving about 200+ free for apps and cache. This is with all the bloated defaults running like Homegroup services etc. Despite the fact that it's still beta, it fares much better than Vista and I say even on par with XP in terms of running within limited resources, while delivering more features than XP.
So yeah, color me impressed. No it's not going to render Toy Story in realtime on a 386 with EGA while making toast and finding Sarah Conner, but still that's a decade old laptop (which means it's a steaming turd of proprietary crap) and Win7 is still usable on it, without a week of fiddling with settings first. Considering MS is talking about "Netbook versions" of Win7 I'd say there's definitely a chance of them producing a contender for the lower-spec hardware out there that fares much much better than Vista did.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
Shuttle GNC engineer Phil Hattis stated that it cost NASA around $1 million in 198x dollars for each line of code they wanted changed by IBM in the Shuttle's AP-101 programs after the codebase was set (coding wasn't done in house, but done by IBM based on specifications). After a line of code was changed, the entire program had to be hand verified to make sure that no bugs were introduced.
Sheepshaver works just fine on Intel Macs for your crappy old OS 9 software. Runs just fine on PCs for that matter.
planet texture maps and more
99.9% of recent name-brand components will work flawlessly.
Counter example: HP Multifunction devices.. XP software and drivers for these devices provide functionality that does NOT work in vista and is NOT duplicated in the Vista drivers/software. Even if you bought a top-o-the-line HP Multifunction within ±1 year of Vista coming out, you are _STILL_ S.O.L. if you want your "scan" button to work properly to scan documents. You also cannot scan documents directly to PDF (without multiple conversion steps) like you could in XP and you are stuck using the craptastic built-in scanning functionality in Vista (that scans multi-page documents at a snail's pace).
I like Vista and all, but that's pretty shitty. Ask my Mom if she's willing to buy a new printer/scanner/copier because HP doesn't properly support Vista.
I've had Linux installs fall flat on their face after a few years of not being kept current followed by an attempt to upgrade the system to current-spec code.
Generally, I can revive these systems, given enough time. But lately I find it's easier to start them over with a fresh install.
It's possible, though obviously insane, to do the following:
Install Windows 3.1. Upgrade to Windows 95. Upgrade to Windows 98SE. Upgrade to Windows ME. Upgrade to Windows XP. Upgrade to Windows Vista. Upgrade to Windows 7.
But that's just retarded, as anyone here (with their blinders off) should be able to recognize. Real men don't upgrade operating systems -- they just buy the upgrade kit (because it's cheaper), and Google a good method for doing a clean install with it.
In my own experience: I bought a laptop with XP, almost four years ago. It's a good machine, and was pretty quick at the time. I kept XP around because most of the stuff I need for my daily work needs Windows, though I'd really be a lot more pleased to see Slackware, Gentoo, or FreeBSD on the machine. When Vista was released, I upgraded (er - I did a fresh install). Vista worked fine, though I also doubled the RAM to 2 gigs and gave it a bigger, faster hard drive at the same time. A year or two later, the hard drive crashed -- probably from being used too much outside in sub-zero Ohio winters. I had a choice: Reinstall the backup DVD of a fresh, clean, working Vista install in less than an hour, or download Windows 7.
I decided to see what Windows 7 was all about.
Spent a day or so shoving my usual software back into the machine, and it all works fine. The box suspends, hibernates, and resumes faster than it ever did with XP or Vista, both of which had occasional issues. Performance once it is running is good. I haven't been tempted -- yet -- to disable the Readyboost service, as I often do on Vista machines to improve speed. It bluescreened exactly one time, while copying files from the old (crashed, littered with bad sectors) hard drive over a cheap IDE-USB adapter, and I don't think it's been rebooted since (aside from updates).
It just works. So far. I hate Windows, but 7 seems to be OK.
Kid-proof tablet..
People are still bitching about the PPC emulation layer and the Classic environment?
That was 5 years ago. They provided that 'bridge' from the old to the new so people would cross it. The reason for doing this is not "none" it is "because perpetual support of old shit would get us into the same mess MS is in now, and we have to design our OS to plan for the future, not let it grow organically with slipshod additions".
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