According to this story, there’s no direct upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7. Given all the stories of people “downgrading” from Vista to XP, or not upgrading at all, it seemed obvious to me that Microsoft should make upgrading as smooth as possible. Instead, XP users will have to backup data, re-install programs, and restore data.
Having used the Windows 7 beta on a spare laptop for awhile, I can say it’s a distinct improvement over Vista. It’s just a shame that Microsoft has decided to make the upgrade experience more difficult for XP users.
Seriously? I think they’ve completely lost their minds over there at M$. Marketing seems to be running all of the basic decision-making, and they seem to think they can sell anything they want.
When I was there I remember project managers making too many decisions as a reaction to our competitors, but this isn’t even as reasonable as that kind of thinking.
I have never, ever, ever, upgraded a MS Operating system willingly. There is so much cruft that builds up on a Windows system as it is, to try to bring that stuff over via an upgrade is not going to be healthy for the system. My motto is: back up data to another place (and you should have already kept your data in a single location anyway) and do a full new install.
As far as whether MS has lost its mind – I don’t know. I think people keep forgetting that its a VERY large company with a VERY large market share. It does things how large companies do things. Sure, we want them to be hip, progressive, and perfect – but that’s just not the culture they have going there.
Let’s see what Google is like when they turn 30. I bet it will be a completely different company than they are today. Just like Microsoft is.
Hey Dave,
I grant you the reality of “Windows Rot”. It’s the #1 reason I use VMs for my work now. That said, given the abject failure of Vista adoption (which made Windows 7 necessary to begin with), Microsoft had an opportunity to build some goodwill with users. Even something as basic as automating the process we currently do manually would have been an improvement. Instead, Microsoft said to the majority of their user base the following: “You want to skip Vista? We’re going to make it as hard as possible for you.”
I think Microsoft’s primary problem is that they’re too big. They try to play in every market and tend to deliver more and more mediocre products as a result. Customers couldn’t care less what size they are–they just want their computers to work. Apple and Google aren’t perfect either. But far more often than not, their products deliver what their customers want with a minimum of fuss. If Microsoft doesn’t get that this is why people like me only use their platform now because I’m literally paid to do so, they’re going to have more problems.
I am so out of the loop on this! Does this mean MS will forever abandon any more Vista related ideas? I still have XP, of course, because of all the horror stories I kept hearing about Vista. In my little corner of the world I just want to know I’m safe from having to deal with some of those issues myself.
Also, any word on what MS has done to rectify the latest (from three months ago) scare over using explorer? I asked a few friends when the story broke if I should continue using the browser and they said I should be fine….then I went and got a horrible virus that took forever to resolve! I’ve been using firefox ever since. I’d appreciate hearing your take on it.
Hi Cecilia,
MS is definitely not abandoning Vista-related ideas. As far as I’ve seen, Windows 7 is a repackaged version of Vista (faster, better-looking, fewer crashes, etc).
I’m not sure what MS has done about IE. I’ve been using Firefox instead since before version 1. The only reason left to use IE (unless you’re on Mac OS X), is if Firefox won’t render a website properly.