[There's a reason that Yoda is the unofficial mascot of SBS. Size indeed matters not.] Here we go again - THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS DIVA
Thu, Feb 26 2009 20:15 bradley

Here we go again

"The upgrade process is ugly on a 3 year old system"

"Upgrade path can be ugly"

Windows 7: Trouble on the upgrade path - Apple 2.0:
http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/02/25/windows-7-trouble-on-the-upgrade-path/

First off, only geeks, people that love to torture themselves and Computer magazines that have turned the corner on "I want to drool about Windows 7" to the "Now I'm ranting to get a headline" UPGRADE to Windows 7.  The rest of the reasonable universe buys new systems. 

When the information technology guys discover how painful it can be to upgrade their current PC hardware to Microsoft’s (MSFT)  Windows 7 — the successor to the much-maligned Windows Vista — they may be tempted to switch to Linux or Apple’s (AAPL) Mac OS X.

When all of my applications get up in the cloud call me.  When all of my line of business stuff runs on anything but Windows, call me.  When any of you guys running these reviews and articles run a BUSINESS instead of a journalism shop where you've been on the Mac platform for years, call me.  Don't give me this "it will run on WINE" crud either.  Or the "oh you can use this alternative Quickbooks killer", no we don't kill off Quickbooks, it's the 800 pound Elephant in the room that we embrace because it's where our business sends out invoices to our customers in.  And the Mac version pales in comparison and the Ubuntu version is non existent.

Oh but you can use Parallels to run Windows on top of your Mac.  Okay but then I'm back to running Windows, aren't I?

Yes, upgrading is hard.  Yes it will be many years that people will be running Windows XP.  It's officially supported until 2015 in fact.  But this idea that tomorrow entrenched businesses are going to move lock stock and barrel to a new platform and buy all new support tools in this economy?

Exactly what are you guys smokin'?

Want the best experience for Windows 7?  You buy it with the hardware.  End of story.  You do not take 3 year old systems and upgrade them.  Only us geeks that want to prove a point do that.  In the meantime all of us who have Vista deployments now will be a good year to two years in our IT knowledge ahead of you guys in your Win7 deployments.  That's why the best path to Win7 is still through Vista. 

But folks, when 7 comes out, your best experience is still, and always will be, with a nice shiny new machine.

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# re: Here we go again

Friday, February 27, 2009 12:41 AM by scipio

Finally, a voice of reason. Even for a home user with a modest 5 computer network, (2XP Pro - 3 Vista), it makes no sense to run out and spend $1000 for Windows 7.

# re: Here we go again

Friday, February 27, 2009 9:51 AM by Dean

I agree with you but I think you need to modify it a little.

You want to buy new hardware but you don't want to use the preload on the system. You want to load fresh from your volume license media or whatever you have. I never trust preloaded systems in a business environment.

# re: Here we go again

Friday, February 27, 2009 1:01 PM by DaveN

Well said.  And I can't wait until 7 ships so I can get a new PC : -)

# re: Here we go again

Saturday, February 28, 2009 2:45 PM by JohnK

Exactly... as far back as the Bible times they knew this... "no one puts new wine into old wineskins" Matthew 9:17... will people never learn?