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Windows 7 Is the Next Windows XP
snydeq writes "Windows XP's most beloved factors are also driving business organizations to Windows 7 in the face of Windows 8. 'We love Windows 7: That's the message loud and clear from people this week at the TechMentor Conference held at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Wash. With Windows XP reaching end of life for support in April 2014, the plan for most organizations is to upgrade — to Windows 7,' indicating 'a repeat of history for what we've seen with Windows releases, the original-cast Star Trek movie pattern where every other version was beloved and the ones in between decidedly not so.'"
Well, Windows 8 isn't even out out. It's not surprising that businesses are going to most likely migrate to Windows 7 first. From an administrative perspective, most admins already know how to deal with all the Windows 7 nuances.
Windows 8 is a bit of a black box right now, especially from an admin perspective. I suspect it'll probably be a couple of years before Windows 8 becomes more mainstream in corporate environments.
From a personal perspective... I plan on upgrading to 8 as soon as it's out. For $40 bucks (for a 7 - 8 upgrade), I don't see why not. As a developer, it's compelling to easily transition your desktop app to tablet (and vice versa).
Did anybody else feel the "FUD" when XP was announced? It's evil, your software won't run on it, it will have stronger DRM than 98, etc. etc. etc.
I remember the same thing when Vista was announced, and now 8 is coming and they're playing it up as the big new scary OS.
I think it's a short-term ploy to drive sales of systems with the old OS "while you can still get it" without a downgrade charge.
And you hit a key point. XP worked and does work. It worked from the beginning. Vista was crippled by know it all GUI designers who choked on their own fumes because they had their heads up their asses too long when designing things like UAC. Anyway, does it work or not? That is the number one point for business. If it works it wins. If you have two competing pieces, say Windows XP and Apple whatever, it doesn't matter how cool one or the other is (according to fans), to business it matters if it works. And once that is settled, the cheaper of the two wins.
A lot of people like to cut up Windows but the fact is, it does work solidly. And for a competitive price. It can't crash and get fucked up as bad as some say (at least not in offices/businesses, and not in a way that impacts the bottom line too badly), otherwise businesses would get rid of it. No, paying to have someone to blame is not the reason. Having someone to blame doesn't bring money in. Having working equipment does. Having someone you pay who is accountable and who won't get paid again if they don't solve problems does help make money. Getting something for free and not ever being sure something will be fixed doesn't make money. Paying 4 times what you need to pay on the cool product is a loser too. Especially once enough of the cool products sell to be a profitable target for malware makers.
No, Windows XP isn't really sexy, but it works, and it runs business software like no tomorrow. Windows 7 works even better. And as far as that goes, I thought Window 2K worked pretty damned good too. Now they hired the same hycrapsia victims to design the interface for 8 as they did for Vista. Hey, we can't use some retarded UAC to make people insane, let's dumb it down so we (the GUI designers) might be able to use it; who cares if the rest of the world aren't as stupid as us? Ah, marketing + graphic artist + pop psychology courses makes GUI designer from hell. They need to get interface designers who understand the real world and not just some abstract thing they got from university and inward focused "industry conferences". And as a bonus they should fire the president. The place has done nothing but go downhill since he took over. Ballmer not Oballmer.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Which was one of Microsoft's biggest mistakes. They backed down from the original requirements for Longhorn (which 2g BTW). They cut them again because the OEM's were concerned about a falloff in sales. So they had "Certified for Windows Vista" and "Works with Windows Vista" which was a disaster. Hopefully they don't make the same mistake with 8, though it seems like they are going to.
If Microsoft just announced that capacitive touchscreen or high end trackpad (min) was required for Windows 8 a lot of the complaints about hardware would go away. By pretending that Windows-8 is going to work well on traditional hardware Microsoft is shooting themselves in the foot.