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Why is it this way? Is Microsoft just lazy, doing this for marketing reasons, or is there a legitimate reason for this? People might be annoyed by Apple for th
by Oompa 17y ago
Why is it this way? Is Microsoft just lazy, doing this for marketing reasons, or is there a legitimate reason for this?
People might be annoyed by Apple for the App Store control, but you must admit, at least they have their OS upgrading makes sense.
- wmf 17y agoIf this came from anyone but MS, I would say it's a good example of how to lie with charts. The upgrade rules are pretty simple, but drawing it as a chart makes it look complex. You can't upgrade to a different bitness, because that might break apps or drivers that depend on the old bitness. You can't "upgrade" to an OS with fewer features (e.g. Ultimate to Home). I don't know why they don't allow upgrades from XP or Vista Starter; that sounds like plain laziness given that IIRC it is possible to upgrade XP -> Vista -> 7. In general Apple tries to configure things at runtime, while Windows does more install-time configuration which inevitably breaks when things change.
- Oompa 17y agoThe bit change makes sense, but why not upgrade to an OS with fewer features? Maybe I bought Vista Ultimate, and it wasn't worth it, so I want to just stick with the normal home version this time around. I have to do a full clean install for that? I think MS could easily add support to upgrade to a "lower" version of the OS if you bought the premium last time.
- ajg1977 17y agoTwo reasons; 1) You begin to get a combination explosion of all the scenarios Microsoft would have to test "upgrades" with. 2) Some people may appreciate this, but others would complain about program or feature X/Y/Z suddenly going missing from their machine after an "upgrade".
- Oompa 17y agoI guess it simplifies down to Microsoft has too many versions of Windows, but I guess it allows them to pull more money out of the market.