Full Upgrades To Windows 8 Only From Windows 7?

CWmike writes "Microsoft will support full upgrades to Windows 8 only from the three-year old Windows 7, according to a report Thursday by ZDNet blogger Mary Jo Foley. Citing unnamed sources, Foley said that Microsoft has informed select partners of the upgrade paths to Windows 8. While Microsoft may be revealing upgrade paths to some partners, it has been much more reticent to keep customers informed than three years ago when it rolled out Windows 7. Among the details the company has not disclosed are the on-sale date and the pricing of the two retail editions. By this time in 2009, Microsoft had revealed both: On June 2 that year, it pegged a launch date for Windows 7, and by June 25 had not only posted prices for the operating system but had also kicked off a pre-sale that discounted upgrades by as much as 58%. The increased secrecy from the company was demonstrated best last week, when it unveiled its first-ever tablet, the Surface, but left many questions unanswered, including the price, sales date, and even the hardware's battery life."

Comments

Re:And...

[Karmashock]

corporate america is full of old legacy programs that most of the company has forgotten but are essential to the operation of the organization. Somewhere in the sub basement there are a few machines only a few members of the IT department are aware of... they are often the reason it takes "two days to process" certain requests... you could argue they whole thing should be reprogrammed from scratch but you're dealing with proprietary programs that could be very complicated and were built bit by bit in spaghetti code fashion over decades.

It's something of a mess. But the companies work and if everyone does their jobs the system runs.

You see this sort of thing in big international banks. Large retail chain head quarters. Or even medium sized businesses that have been operating a few franchises since the 80s.

Requiring them to upgrade isn't going to work. They're already trying to move these system to VMs. But compatibility for these old programs even in VMs is spotty. It's a serious problem.