Not Believing Microsoft's Calendar

[dr_phil_physics]

The First Day Has Come And Mostly Gone

Microsoft Windows 7 Release Day. Oh boy. Oh thrill. I even forgot it was October 22nd, except they did a segment about Win7 on WOOD-AM radio and a couple of people I follow online were installing it today. (And like everything else which falls off the truck early, I guess there were a few machines out with Win7 back on the 13th.) Everyone seems to want to know if it's faster than Vista. Who cares? It needs to be faster than XP Pro, doesn't it?

But the best thing is the new Mac Ad: "Broken Promises" shows a litany of promises that Windows N will not have any of the problems of Windows N-1. Going all the way back to Windows 2. (hee-hee)

The End Of Life As We Know It

Of course Redmond still wants to stop updating Windows XP the end of December. Which is just two months and change away. I'm so sorry Microsoft, but if there are problems with Windows 7, you'll still be giving out customer service ticket numbers two months from now -- way short of Windows 7 Service Pack 1, and certainly far from Win7 SP2, which is pretty much the gold standard for some people's idea of stable upgrades.

I don't see that they can convince the multitude of XP users to upgrade to 7 in two months. And Lord knows that no one in their right mind who has put it off this long is going to choose to do an interim upgrade to Vista.

And what's this crap about ending XP updates anyway -- you've still been selling Windows XP Home netbooks all summer. And now they have to upgrade? On low powered, low memory machines? Remember when I said that Win7 has to be faster than XP, not faster than Vista? And not on top of the line machines, either.

Another Shot In The Foot

Oh and what's this? There's no direct upgrade path from XP to 7? My motivation for doing a cold install of an OS and complete reinstall of all my software for an OS I don't know will work properly is... what? Vanity? Hubris? Stupidity? On Microsoft's part?

Because all MS has been touting 7 for is... children touting Win7. And that's not a sales pitch or a crushing inspiration for the rest of us.

This is developing into a clusterfuck epic fail -- and I don't even know whether Win7 does work or doesn't. It might. But Microsoft's Convert Or Die policy, based on a history of upgrades which didn't go well, is absurd.

Dr. Phil

PS - Remember, Microsoft, I own and use computers to do work, to run application software -- not to run Windows. Or any OS. I need to have one, but it's not the bottom line unless it insists on making it the end of the line.

Comments

[aloysius7.livejournal.com]

I admit to not being a big fan of Windows, but having experience with it, Mac OSX, and a couple of flavors of Linux, I find all of them have their issues. Modern operating systems are very complex, and there are so many lines of code in them that major, uncut flaws or inevitable. But I wish all of them would quite adding eye-candy (like Aero on Windows) and other non-essentials (like media players, games, etc.) and concentrate on on making operating systems that are as stable, secure, and easy to use as possible.

As to Windows XP, Extended Support for the operating system will continue until April 8, 2014. This means free security updates, so all users will still receive security patches as Microsoft issues them, and fee-based per-incident support via phone and Web for everyone. Note that the fee support is only for people who bought XP separately; if you purchased a machine with XP on it (and an appropriate support package from the company) then support must come from the machine's manufacturer (which has been standard policy since at least Windows 3.0). If you're a business and are enrolled in the Extended Hotfix Support program, then non-security hotfixes will be available to you as well.

I agree with you about the lack of an upgrade path from Windows XP to Windows 7. But let me say this is Microsoft's defense. It is highly unlikely that most machines that currently runs XP (unless purchased with an XP downgrade where XP was installed on the computer but it also came with Vista) will run Windows 7. I still have business clients that run Windows XP on systems with 512K of memory, often with less than this available because some of that memory is used by the graphic on the motherboard.

I currently have 3 systems - one with XP, one with 32-bit Vista and one with 64-bit Vista. I have no intention of upgrading any of them to Windows 7, as I have found that Windows upgrades (and even OS X Mac upgrades) work best when you wipe the hard drive and start from scratch, which is a real pain, especially with Windows. I'll wait until I buy a new computer.

[dr-phil-physics.livejournal.com]

What you say is quite true. And therein lies the problem. Computers can last for a long time -- I'm still using a number of 1996 vintage Pentium and Pentium Pro machines, though for work and not connecting to the Internet. (I'd have to scrounge around for an antivirus and a firewall which would work. And it's not worth it to me because I get more work done by having to go to another machine for net access -- grin.) They've bloated Windows so much that an XP machine a few years old can't run Vista or 7? Or Vista machines just a year or two old can't upgrade to 7 because they're obsolete? This is a problem.

If you want me to believe that you've got a better, more secure OS, it should operate on a leaner machine. Otherwise you are just trusting that more machine cycles and more memory devoted to the OS is the answer. That sounds more like a kluge than a new OS. Which is very much the Windows programming paradigm.

I still know a number of businesses running critical systems on Windows 2000 Professional. And I routinely do writing on machines running Windows 95/98SE/98Me/NT4. The release of Windows 7 doesn't break the previous OSes.

I hadn't seen the April 2014 date. What I had seen a while ago was MS trying hard to push the December 2009 cutoff date. If they're still doing security patches for another 4½ years -- I could be happy with that. In two years I might be able to trust a Windows 7 Service Pack 2. In four years, I suspect my XP machines will have gotten long enough in the tooth to be consider another wave of hardware upgrades. But until then...

Dr. Phil

[steve-buchheit.livejournal.com]

It'll be interesting to see what happens in January, of how many people are looking to downgrade to XP (and how many can with the new specs).

[dr-phil-physics.livejournal.com]

What Microsoft hasn't figured out is that it's not just a matter of reluctance, it's a matter of distrust. There are people who are using Vista not by choice, but because it was that or buy a Mac or install another OS that they didn't understand. There are people using Windows XP (Windows N-2 today) and Windows 2000 (Windows N-3 today), because they have work to do and need their computers to do the work.

Why is it so hard for Microsoft to understand that it's MY computer and MY work that has to be done? And not theirs.

Dr. Phil

[notreallyrandom.livejournal.com]

(I finally remembered my livejournal login!)

I'm running four different operating systems at work: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Mac OSX (Snow Leopard).

From a support standpoint, the biggest issue with Vista is that it won't run a LOT of older software packages. Since Vista came out, the vast majority of new computers that are bought are immediately wiped and have Windows XP installed, because we have proprietary programs that do not run on Vista. It's not as much of a problem with us as it is with the hospital, where more than one critical software package won't run on Windows XP.

Similar issues are common with educational of health care systems that don't have the budgets to upgrade multi-million dollar programs--especially with the push to switch to electronic records. Technology dollars are going to those upgrades.

And of course you have a different set of issues with equipment. If your research equipment cost half a million dollars, and requires Windows XP and Excel XP, you aren't going to upgrade. And of course you don't do data analysis on those machines, so you're stuck keeping your desktop machine in that configuration.

If MS really wants people to upgrade, they're going to need to make sure their OS supports legacy software programs associated with really expensive equipment.

[dr-phil-physics.livejournal.com]

This is exactly part of my point. It isn't just machines running poorly, it is the inability of some versions of Windows supporting older software.

In my case I still use Microsoft Office 95 Professional. I have Office 97 Pro and Office 2003 Pro (with 2007 file capability) as well, to read files from students. But I write in Word 95. There is no reason for me to upgrade. The newer versions don't work the same way as the older ones, and I prefer Word 95.

There is no reason for me to upgrade as long as someone doesn't force me to upgrade. Office 95 works in XP. Don' know if it works in Vista or 7. I suspect there are problems with Vista, so I've had no incentive to go there. Absolutely none.

Oh, and yes I still have some DOS programs I used daily. I need a robust MS-DOS box (cmd.exe on NT class OSes). Period.

Dr. Phil