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Windows 7 Licensing a "Disaster" For XP Shops

Posted by kdawson on from the punished-for-cautious-waiting dept.

snydeq writes "Enterprise licensing for Windows 7 could cause major headaches and add more cost to the Windows 7 migration effort, InfoWorld reports. Under the proposed license, businesses that purchase PCs with Windows 7 pre-installed within six months of the Oct. 23 launch date will be able to downgrade those systems to XP, and later upgrade back to Windows 7 when ready to migrate users. PCs bought after April 22, 2010, however, can only be downgraded to Vista — no help for XP-based organizations, which would be wise to wait 12 to 18 months before adopting Windows 7, so that they can test hardware and software compatibility and ensure their vendors' Windows 7 support meets their needs. XP shops that chose not to install Vista will have to either rush their migration process or spend extra to enroll in Microsoft's Software Assurance program, which allows them to install any OS version — for about $90 per year per PC."

2 of 567 comments (clear)

  1. XP Support forever by _pi-away · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    By the time that XP downgrade issue comes up XP will be 9 years old, how long are they supposed to be supporting this OS? People love to bag on microsoft for security, but when they try to kill off the largest security flaw on the internet today, the ubiquity of the XP machines where (almost) everyone is running as administrator, people freak out. Windows 7 finally brings the ability to actually use windows effectively without being administrator and without getting asked for your permission to allow something every 6 seconds. This is a very Good Thing(TM).

    You've had plenty of time to test for incompatibilities, and if you haven't done it yet start now; Win7 beta is freely available for you to test with right now, I think you'll find most things work fine. As a side note, if you find some legacy apps that don't play with Windows 7, a good workaround to get the abilities of windows 7 while still using that app is throwing it in a VM. Not painless but better than sticking with a dead OS.

    If you truly want the internet to be a safer place then you should want XP gone as quickly as possible.

    --

    "The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw."
    1. Re:XP Support forever by _pi-away · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      You see, this is why slashdot sucks these days. You post something reasonable that isn't "OMG M$ Sux0rs!" and you get marked as flamebait.

      Yes, feel free to mark this the same or worse, I didn't say "Go linux!" once so I know it deserves to be ignored.

      --

      "The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw."