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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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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.
Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
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).
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.
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.
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..