EnterpriseIT

Typical case of MS shooting itself in the face ... Ed Bott has shown that chart to be horribly inaccurate - LANjackal

More simplicity from the propeller heads at Redmond :P I wish they had better coffee over there! - Susan Beebe

MS need to sort something out so that users aren't required to re-install their apps after upgrading the OS. It's a ridiculous situation that hasn't improved a single bit over the various release of Windows. It's in Microsoft's own advantage to make upgrades less of a pain in the ass for its customers. - Paul Grav

AFAIK that's not the case with 7. None of the reviews I've read say re-installation is necessary. As a matter of fact, they all report it going smoothly. That said, apps that weren't specifically developed for 7 or Vista may have issues, but given that the RC's been available for a while and Vista's been out since 2006 that's more of a 3rd party dev problem than an MS one - LANjackal from IM

Paul, see here: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott... FTA: "The most recent upgrade, over an installation of Windows Vista Home Premium on a Hewlett-Packard small-form-factor PC used as a Media Center PC in the living room, was almost effortless. Every installed program worked with no modification. The only manual change I had to make was to replace the included Nvidia driver with... more... - LANjackal

Yeah, but if you have XP, then you're fucked. - Paul Grav

Yeah but what kind of argument is that? XP is 2 whole generations and 8 years behind, and there was a HUGE under-the-hood shift between XP and Vista. You can't be suprised that XP -> 7 upgrades will be problematic. That's why AFAIK MS' XP policy is that you either have to do a clean install or go through Vista. Sounds reasonable to me. I find it funny when people argue that MS should... more... - LANjackal from IM

It's not an argument, I'm just suggesting that MS can make upgrading easier. XP might be 8 years old but it's installed everywhere. I'd wager that Win 7 would sell a lot more if companies could easily upgrade their XP boxes. Wouldn't you at least agree that it'd be worth the development effort? - Paul Grav

Paul, XP and 7 are *fundamentally* different. Binary compatibility isn't the end-all of similarity between systems, and any app that choked on Vista is also going to choke on 7. MS has been making this point pretty clear from the start. Since many companies that stayed with XP did so for that reason, an XP-7 in place upgrade option wouldn't make sense. Not to mention that thanks to... more... - LANjackal from IM

But the apps aren't fundamentally different. - Paul Grav

How much about Windows app development do you know? You might want to read the Windows Blog about developing for 7 to see just how WRONG that assertion is - LANjackal from IM

Every app on my XP machine can run on Windows 7. - Paul Grav

Paul, please read about W7 app development before mouthing off. I mentioned the official Windows Blog. There are numerous posts there about exactly how *different* proper app behavior/devlopment on XP and 7 are. It's not just binary compatibility. There's a LOT more to it than that. Please inform yourself before requesting features whose difficulty of implementation you clearly have no idea about - LANjackal from IM

Lets take Firefox as example. It's installed on my work machine in XP, why can't I just copy the folders across and it just work? It's the same bloody install binary. - Paul Grav

Paul, READ UP. Jesus. Do you see me going around suggesting stuff for OS X or Linux out of the blue? First of all, Windows apps don't work like that because the installer and the app itself are 2 different things. You don't install Windows apps by copying folders of existing programs. You need the original installer, which was most likely deleted after the program was installed anyway. Holy hell. No offense but obviously have no idea what you're talking about. Windows apps do NOT function like OS X apps. - LANjackal from IM

I know! I suggesting a change, to make things better for Windows users. You're making it sound like it's a problem that not solvable. It clearly is. - Paul Grav

Paul, like I said. READ. Such a change would 1)WIDEN the gap between Windows versions and make even Vista -> 7 in-place upgrades impossible 2)not fix your upgrade complaint because the XP apps would still have been installed by the "old" (read: current) method 3)break every current existing Windows app, which would undoubtedly result in another round of whining from you and others who refuse to inform themselves about the systems they criticize - LANjackal from IM

1. Widen the gap, just employ more programmers. 2. I'm not suggesting MS find a way to allow easier upgrades from XP to 7, I'm suggesting easier upgrades for future versions of Windows. - Paul Grav