So Windows 7 is out! That’s great. The world needed it. When we consider most folks are still on a operating system released in 2001. Though it has been improved upon, none of the Windows XP patches has drastically changed the OS. Then came Vista, an upgrade most IT professionals put in par with the failure of Windows ME. Being bloated, resource grubbing, and buggy was only part of the problem. Vista also was very heavy handed in the protection department, interrupting basic usage to verify the user wanted to do what the user was already doing and a lot of mission critical software had not been upgraded to work with Vista.
But ah… Windows 7 is here and all will be better. It is a much better OS. Cleaner, faster, stronger, etc. Everyone that has reviewed it has been impressed. My virtual machine of Windows 7 is working great. I really have nothing to complain about, but there are some people that might.
My install of 7 was clean. There was no OS on the machine before it (actually in my case it is a VM so it’s like a brand new machine waiting to be molded). Folks upgrading from Windows Vista need to block off some time for the upgrade.
A base upgrade can take in upwards of two hours. If you are a “super user” you can expect an upgrade time of up to 20 hours! But that’s only if you’re upgrading from Vista. It gets better.
There is no upgrade path for XP. If you are currently running XP you will have to back up all your data, clean install 7, then use Windows Easy Transfer tool to restore all your data, which will take an indeterminate amount of time based on how much data was on your machine. Easy enough, but anyone who has restored a machine knows that’s not all. Some (most) XP application will not work without an upgrade which will take additional time.
Though the end result is a much needed improvement, Microsoft didn’t make this easy.
Categories: Business.
The big question I have: is it worth the cost of upgrading? Cleaner, faster and stronger enough for dishing out $80-$150? When current system is working fine, and other operating systems on the horizon that could be better?
That’s the problem Microsoft faces. Will people upgrade? After Microsoft finally fixed all the issue with XP, folks started to like it. Now, after the Visita failure, people are cautious to upgrade. That said, Microsoft has already sold over 200% more copies of 7 than it had Vista this many days after launch.
People will make then change when software becomes incompatible and Microsoft stops supporting XP.