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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."
I don't see the problem with this. Firstly, I've not purchased a Windows upgrade for 13 years (NT->2K). Secondly, Windows 7 is supported until 2020 so it's not like you have to upgrade it. Corporate customers need not worry as their license agreements give them the new OS for no additional cost.
No, XP is used in so much environments for just about everything still.
- Scientific tools are still mostly XP-only (or DOS still), Vista/7 is possible sometimes with XP compatibility but it's not guaranteed
- Most corporate programs still run only on XP including IE6
- XP is fine on 10 year old computers without all the bells and whistles, 7 is a lot heavier on the resources and requires a more recent computer to run well even with all the bells and whistles turned off.
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Free upgrade to Ubuntu from any version of windows.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
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.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Back in the day a computer was $3000 and often a new OS version was actually an improvement over the previous one, so I could see why somebody would do it. But paying $100 (wild guess) to upgrade a $400 computer to an OS that is marginally better, if at all, with the time it would take and ever-present risk of it breaking something, isn't worth it. I wonder how many bother.
The corporate WORLD is full of old legacy programs. But that's only half of the deal. The other one is how corporations work.
First of all, we're talking about a serious budget position. The licensing fee for a corporation wide system upgrade isn't something your average IT department can rubber stamp. This can easily run the six to eight digit range, and that often requires the ok from some C-level goon. Sadly, to my eternal regret, it is rarely the CISO or even the CIO, i.e. the two Cs that would actually know what they would buy.
More often than not, such a "problem" finds its way to the CEOs desk. Where it sits for a while because CEOs don't make decisions. No, I'm not kidding. They do not make decisions. They wait 'til some "meaningful" (read: economic) paper writes something about the item. If you want something approved from your CEO, don't come with facts or university studies, subscribe to the same economy papers he reads and wait for them to push an article that goes in your favor, then ask him "oh, sir, have you read..." and you're in.
This is, sadly, not a joke.
And until that time, you will not see a CEO make any decisions about upgrading Windows.
Then, when they finally get their butt into gear, integration tests come. That alone can take a year in larger enterprises. Another hint, never ever volunteer to be one of the test subjects. Unless you don't have anything important to do anyway, or if your boss understands that due to IT issues your reports are late. You will lose days. Not hours. Days. Because one of the proprietary tools you use every once in a blue moon won't work and you get to figure out by yourself how to make it run. Which is in turn a huge headache for your security department, but I digress.
In other words and in a nutshell, I know quite a few companies that still run on XP as their main system, who have been running integration tests for Vista and 7 for a while now and are just about to roll it out... unless of course their CEO notices that 8 is around the corner and he halts the program because he wants to leapfrog the "obsolete" versions...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I agree, except between Windows 8 and the Cisco cloud silliness, Apple will probably follow the trend and push OSX users to iOS instead. More control and all that.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
The article is about how much data gets preserved during the upgrade process not about pricing. Since Windows machines should be re-imaged anyway periodically, that is pretty irrelevant. As for the pricing, the relevant issue, yes, XP evidently qualifies for upgrade pricing: