5 ms·

I think it's a fair point to say that apathy is Windows 7's biggest competitor. I would never recommend somebody "upgrade" their home computer to Windows 7, I

by koblas 17y ago

I think it's a fair point to say that apathy is Windows 7's biggest competitor. I would never recommend somebody "upgrade" their home computer to Windows 7, I might recommend they buy a new computer with Windows 7. There is a school of though "if it aint broke don't fix it" which really does dominate. ps. I do have a home machine - it runs Windows XP. My laptop (newer) does run Vista - I work on a bunch of terminal windows connected to a linux box (which has been up for 600 days).

nopassrecover 17y ago
Apathy is the biggest competitor to any upgrade - you simply have to give enough reasons to upgrade. The price probably outweighs these benefits, but if price isn't an issue I'd recommend the upgrade.
- CWuestefeld 17y ago
  From my POV, the biggest cost of an upgrade to W7 isn't the dollars, but the need to completely rebuild my environment. That's many hours of work, probably burning an entire weekend plus several evenings. I can't fathom why MS didn't work their tails off to make the upgrade path from XP to W7 as easy as possible. It's like they're being spiteful, just saying "we told you that you should upgrade to Vista". But since XP is really their competition, and they need to minimize the costs -- not just monetary -- to the upgrade, why do they make it so hard?
  - jsz0 17y ago
    That's a great point. Windows 7 is one of the first Microsoft operating systems in a while that is suitable to upgrade older hardware with. Do they have any option to at least transfer the home directory and installed apps to the fresh install?
  - nopassrecover 17y ago
    Can you elaborate? I didn't encounter this at all.
dgallagher 17y ago
Geese, what made your Linux box crash? ;)
- koblas 17y ago
  UPS Failure at the colo
dtf 17y ago
Exactly, and this is also the reason many people are still using IE6. If your computer does the things you want - sends email, browses your favorite websites, lets you write a letter, maybe plays music - then what's the point? Until recently, Apple's market has indeed been these "straw-man fanboys" - people that will always upgrade to Apple's newest kit, covet their latest OS or shiny thing. But that's not the case any more, and Apple have been selling to the common man, and they're eventually going to get bitten by the same bug as Microsoft - consumer apathy - as their market share rises. I have a Macbook running Tiger, and a PC running XP. The only OS I regularly upgrade is Ubuntu, and only then because it's (almost) automatic.
- thaumaturgy 17y ago
  It's not entirely consumer apathy. There is a perception among Windows users that you don't "upgrade" Windows. You get a new machine with a new version of Windows, and then you spend a lot of time trying to get all of your files moved over and your programs working again. And then, after all that -- the user interface looks different. Things have moved around. You'll have to spend some time learning how to use your computer again. Meanwhile, the perception among Apple users is that they can put in a disk, run an installer, and they get to upgrade their old hardware to run the new thing. There might be a few user interface differences, but most of them are subtle. They don't have to learn how to use their computer all over again, and somehow it's better now. In both cases, the perception isn't quite reality, but that doesn't matter. Those perceptions are both Apple's strength and Microsoft's weakness in the vast majority of their markets.
  - rbranson 17y ago
    Essentially Mac users get used to the upgrades, which are much more incremental, fairly painless, and much cheaper. Mac OS X also seems to actually get faster (Quartz Extreme, launchd, 64bit+LLVM) with every major release, rather than slower.

by koblas 17y ago

nopassrecover 17y ago

Apathy is the biggest competitor to any upgrade - you simply have to give enough reasons to upgrade. The price probably outweighs these benefits, but if price isn't an issue I'd recommend the upgrade.

CWuestefeld 17y ago
From my POV, the biggest cost of an upgrade to W7 isn't the dollars, but the need to completely rebuild my environment. That's many hours of work, probably burning an entire weekend plus several evenings. I can't fathom why MS didn't work their tails off to make the upgrade path from XP to W7 as easy as possible. It's like they're being spiteful, just saying "we told you that you should upgrade to Vista". But since XP is really their competition, and they need to minimize the costs -- not just monetary -- to the upgrade, why do they make it so hard?
- jsz0 17y ago
  That's a great point. Windows 7 is one of the first Microsoft operating systems in a while that is suitable to upgrade older hardware with. Do they have any option to at least transfer the home directory and installed apps to the fresh install?
- nopassrecover 17y ago
  Can you elaborate? I didn't encounter this at all.

dgallagher 17y ago

Geese, what made your Linux box crash? ;)

koblas 17y ago
UPS Failure at the colo

dtf 17y ago

Exactly, and this is also the reason many people are still using IE6. If your computer does the things you want - sends email, browses your favorite websites, lets you write a letter, maybe plays music - then what's the point? Until recently, Apple's market has indeed been these "straw-man fanboys" - people that will always upgrade to Apple's newest kit, covet their latest OS or shiny thing. But that's not the case any more, and Apple have been selling to the common man, and they're eventually going to get bitten by the same bug as Microsoft - consumer apathy - as their market share rises. I have a Macbook running Tiger, and a PC running XP. The only OS I regularly upgrade is Ubuntu, and only then because it's (almost) automatic.

thaumaturgy 17y ago
It's not entirely consumer apathy. There is a perception among Windows users that you don't "upgrade" Windows. You get a new machine with a new version of Windows, and then you spend a lot of time trying to get all of your files moved over and your programs working again. And then, after all that -- the user interface looks different. Things have moved around. You'll have to spend some time learning how to use your computer again. Meanwhile, the perception among Apple users is that they can put in a disk, run an installer, and they get to upgrade their old hardware to run the new thing. There might be a few user interface differences, but most of them are subtle. They don't have to learn how to use their computer all over again, and somehow it's better now. In both cases, the perception isn't quite reality, but that doesn't matter. Those perceptions are both Apple's strength and Microsoft's weakness in the vast majority of their markets.
- rbranson 17y ago
  Essentially Mac users get used to the upgrades, which are much more incremental, fairly painless, and much cheaper. Mac OS X also seems to actually get faster (Quartz Extreme, launchd, 64bit+LLVM) with every major release, rather than slower.