Windows 7 Upgrade Can Take Nearly a Day 706
Eugen writes "A Microsoft Software Engineer has posted the results of tests the company performed on the upgrade time of Windows 7. The metric used was total upgrade time across different user profiles (with different data set sizes and number of programs installed) and different hardware profiles. A clean 32-bit install on what Microsoft calls 'high-end hardware' should take only 30 minutes. In the worst case scenario, the process will take about 1220 minutes. That second extreme is not a typo: Microsoft really did time an upgrade that took 20 hours and 20 minutes. That's with 650GB of data and 40 applications, on mid-end hardware, and during a 32-bit upgrade. We don't even want to know how long it would take if Microsoft had bothered doing the same test with low-end hardware. The other interesting point worth noting is that the 32-bit upgrade is faster on a clean install than a 64-bit upgrade, regardless of the hardware configuration, and is faster on low-end hardware, regardless of the Data Profile. In the other six cases, the 64-bit upgrade is faster than the 32-bit upgrade."
Re:Only Vista (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:FUD (Score:4, Insightful)
Installing win7 from a usb stick on a medium computer took me 20mins or so maybe a little less. What is the point of bringing this up. Its like. 'Well the ferrari enzo is pretty shitty. It's 0~60 really drops when it has bare tires and is driving up a 70 degree slope in the rain.' (Car analogy just for you guys.) If it will likely never happen that way, who gives a flying fuck?
Since when do they distribute Windows 7 Retail on a USB stick? This article is not FUD, it is the recorded time from installing from a DVD-ROM drive.
Re:What is the cost to a business ... (Score:1, Insightful)
The question you should be asking is, 'What is the cost to you, as the IT guy, to spend all evening upgrading the CEO's PC so he won't have any down time during the day?' At least, that's been my experience over the past decade
Re:Mid-end?! Really?! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, I order from the dollar menu to get the same food mass for half the price of the regular menu items. I like the double cheese burgers and their flame broiled goodness...
Re:What is the cost to a business ... (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't "upgrade" your CEO's PC. You buy a new one, you build it, you rip an image of his/her old PC, load it on a VM and copy what you need. You stop by his/her office the next morning and show them the new PC, introduce them to any new OS functionality they'll need to become familiar with, and ensure that all of their applications and data exist and work.
If anything goes wrong, you still have the VM of the old machine you can fire up on any box to keep them working till you fix the issue.
If you are running off with the CEO's PC for 20 hours (especially over business hours), you should fear for your job's security.
-Rick
Re:Almost competing (Score:1, Insightful)
Protip for your friends: Get broadband internet. The actual Ubuntu upgrade doesn't take very long. Trying to download the new release over 56k might not be fun. But then, they could have just gotten a cd an upgraded from that.
Re:This is why ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Just to remind you of Windows XP SP2:
* A tiny sip for each time you have to confirm that yes, that file should also be upgraded, even if the upgrade routine itself just blocked it.
It took me a full working day just to install a service pack.
Note: Even though it states a "tiny sip", this one is guaranteed to ruin your liver if this "feature" is still there.
Re:Only Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
After 14 years of living with Windows (holy pants, has it been that long?), I'm resigned to installing clean every few years whether there is a new OS or not - it's like a mini-upgrade I give myself, and best of all it's free (for very low values of own time and soul). Basically, in my experience, Windows is sort of like a giant ball of playdough rolling down a city street - it gets dirtier and heavier over time, less appealing and not so colourful, not to mention the used condoms and syringes it occasionally picks up, and so you need to break out a new batch of playdough once in a while. I'm not saying that this is right and that it's a reason to not get angry about these results, but can you imagine the tubs of crap that are being sloshed around in the bowels of your computer when your two-year-old Vista install is being digested for 20h? Are you going to get a pretty result, all clean and good with everything working? Will you be able to uninstall something that didn't quite make it when all is said and done?
Just start clean, it's easier on the conscience...
Why does more data mean a longer install? (Score:4, Insightful)
What the hell is the upgrade doing to all that data... identifying all the non-DRM'd illegal media and sending a list of it to Microsoft?
I don't get it.
Re:How many times do I have to tell you, (Score:4, Insightful)
Until Microsoft can get Windows to upgrade cleanly from one release to another, it'll never be ready for the desktop.
Re:Only Vista (Score:1, Insightful)
Quite honestly, a clean install is a Good Idea when doing a new major-version operating system install! I even did it when going from Leopard
Re:What's a day (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, the misery of having a machine that runs video games, can use modern peripherals without extra work, can inter-operate with the most possible other machines and users and actually get stuff done!
Attention bearded folk: (Score:2, Insightful)
Hi. I work with small businesses. I'm here to explain to you why Windows 7 will dominate this market for the foreseeable future, and why Linux will not. It is my hope that you will get some inspiration to create products that I can sell to customers besides file and web servers.
1. Windows 7 does not force a user to edit any configuration files for any normal desktop user. I cannot stress how important this is for most small business owners. This is not the 1980s. No one has any interest in programming or fiddling with tens of arcane text files to get work done. They just want to turn on their computer, use it to process data, and then go home. If you claim that this is not the case, you're just ignoring reality.
2. Windows can run on most hardware. It can run most applications. This means it's cheaper to deploy than Apple solutions, and you can actually do something once the OS is installed.
3. After years and years, there is still no multi-user, end-to-end solution for creating quotes, orders, and invoices, that integrates with an accounting solution to keep track of payables and then print checks to pay them. You are being beaten by a company, ironically called Intuit, that just switched from a flat file system in 2006.
I realize a lot of this has to do with driver support. I realize most of you don't care if your software is popular or not. I realize that you will reply with some alpha and beta stage software which you think can do the job, but won't.
However, bashing Windows is a complete waste of time. I'm not saying I can do better, but I am saying that you need to stop pretending that you are doing any better. The future is not going to be using a computer like a computer. The future is turning a computer into an appliance that Just Works Every Time.
Don't get me wrong - newer distros are amazing. Synaptic is like a revelation of the way things should be done. OOo is so close it's almost unbearable. I'm learning Python on the Linux side because it's easier than trying to configure windows for the same task. But you've got to start expecting more out of yourselves than of your end users.
So let me be your James Carville for a moment. My big banner says:
1. Users are not programmers
2. It's the applications, stupid!
3. Don't forget about accounting software
4. Laptops are people too
I have an immense amount of respect for the people who work on these projects, because you all know a hell of a lot more about computers and computer science than I probably ever will. However, I am pleading with you to abstract your knowledge so that everyday people can use it. Otherwise, it's not going to do the world much good.
Re:What's a day (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, the misery of having a machine that... can inter-operate with the most possible other machines and users
Windows isn't exactly a good example of support for open standards. The only reason it "inter-operates" with other machines is because the designers of software for other OS's made them "inter-operate" with Windows. Don't give Windows developers credit for something they not only have not done, but have never cared for.
Re:Almost competing (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Almost competing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's a day (Score:2, Insightful)
Giving credit isn't my point. My concern is hardware that installs and software that runs the games i want and MSO that will let me get work done. i don't care about open as much as "works with minimal effort on my part". Winblows does that. Yeah i'm lazy, but that's why i have a computer in the first place. Yeah, it's a self perpetuating problem, but i care more about playing PlanetSide and a working video card than about sticking it to the man.
When Wine or another distro can do all that, i will gleefully switch. Until then, the Linux fanboi smugness just annoys me.
Re:Almost competing (Score:3, Insightful)
The only suggestion I've gotten that I haven't followed up on was the generic, 'Well - did you buy Linux compatible hardware?!'
Yeah, that was more of something to check BEFORE you go to amazing lengths trying to install.
Re:Why does more data mean a longer install? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is Slashdot, remember. It gets kinda hard to tell whether some of the paranoia here is serious or not...
Re:Time for business to go mac on the desktop. (Score:2, Insightful)
What accounting system?
There is a solution for that too. Better know as Fusion or Parallels...
There is also a 3rd, cheaper, solution: Don't pay for OSX and Windows when all you needed to begin with was Windows.
Re:Almost competing (Score:4, Insightful)
When Linux "just works" it really does just work. However, when it doesn't, there's a good chance that you have to either dig up a strange workaround or ask a developer to fix things for you.
Things rarely "just work" on Windows, but the annoying installation step that precedes using most hardware/software usually has a higher overall chance of succeeding. However, when stuff breaks on Windows, it can be very bad too (anything from strange workarounds and processes that rival Linux manual configuration steps to "magical fixes" involving installing, uninstalling, or reinstalling specific versions of software). Windows has a handicap here in that sometimes it doesn't matter how experienced you are, the only way of fixing some stuff is with magic voodoo steps or a complete reinstall (under Linux, you usually can dig around enough to find the root cause and fix it).
So when things work as designed, Linux is easier, though things work as designed more often under Windows. When things break, it can equally suck for both OSes, and if you're an advanced user Windows can be even more frustrating.
Re:Only Vista (Score:4, Insightful)
Comments like this remind me of why windows will never hit the mainstream. "Regular" users will never be able to preform complex tasks such as installing two operating systems instead of one, or not using their operating system so that it doesn't break...
oh wait, something's wrong here... ;)
Blame the app and driver vendors (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, from my experience the "cruft" that supposedly gets Windows bloatier and slower, isn't as much a Microsoft issue, but the result of all those crap half-arsed 3'rd party installers and (more importantly) uninstallers, that placed crap all over the place and then forgot to uninstall it.
On my home machine I must have thousands of copy protection DLL's and drivers from all those paranoid game publishers alone, because God forbid that they don't place yet another obfuscated and untested driver on the DVD chain. You know, what with all the pirates running a cracked version without that anyway, God forbid that they'd stop punishing us honest paying customers instead. I must have such an unholy mix of StarForce, SafeDisc, SecuROM, and a few other things shat by the bowels of Hell, that it's got to reach either critical mass or sentience one of these days and start WW3.
And of course half the uninstallers forget to take _that_ crap out.
Then there are all the non-game things that just have to try to keep themselves resident, load their DLL's or custom libraries deep in Windows, and whatever. Last time I installed even Mozilla or Open Office from scratch (admittedly, that was way back in 2.0 days), they just had to try to keep themselves resident in memory, to appear that they launch faster than the MS alternative. Using the user's few RAM as your own private RAM-Disk has got to be an acceptable substitute to optimizing your own freaking code to actually load faster. But nah, the user surely has nothing better to do with his RAM than to help with out willy-waving, and will gladly buy another gigabyte just to help one more incompetent company brag about loading faster than MS.
Or here's an idea: how about using the standard widgets of whatever OS and window manager you run on? Now that ought to shave off the time of loading yet another cutesy skinned UI.
And then there's stuff loaded apparently for my convenience, that is "mine" only if I happened to be a marketroid for one of those vendors. Like EA's auto-downloader trying to stay resident in the tray, for no other reason than that apparently they don't want to let me download patches with a browser. Sun's Java trying to stay resident in the tray, just so it can pester me with reminders to get the latest Java 1.6... when I'm deliberately trying to test code that _must_ run with Java 1.4. Etc.
And then there's the occasional screw-up like an older version of McAffee antivirus which, I swear to the elder gods, actually couldn't cope with being installed in another directory than the default. So the first update actually installed a second copy, at the default location, but let the old one active too. So suddenly I had two antiviruses stacked in memory, and of course uninstalling only removed one. Took some grumbling and digging through Windows innards, just to get rid of it.
Then there's the stuff which plants its bits so deep in Windows, that you almost have to kill the host to get the parasite out. Goa'uld style. And I'm not even talking actual viruses and trojans, but antiviruses, and the occasional program which just has to bombard you with ads at all times. (And I'm still not even talking proper malware. An older RealPlayer version did just that... and that's why it was the last version I ever tried.)
Then there's stuff which just has to add some unneeded functionality, apparently just because they can't trust the default Windows implementation to do its job. I'm talking stuff like Creative adding its own disk change detector, never mind that Windows's auto-play works perfectly well as it is. Or that if I disabled that, I don't want Creative automatically starting to play anything either.
Then there are all the tons of custom skinned widgets, libraries that I need just for one single program (yeah, I sooo always wanted a display driver that needs .Net, thank you ATI), etc.
It's just sad. It used to be that you needed a virus to get your computer to crawl, while your hard drive icon and modem LEDs blink like crazy. For the last decade increasingly you only need to install legit paid-for software.
Re:Almost competing (Score:5, Insightful)
This is typically how my Linux experiences go....
Linux Community: X works in Linux! And it's free!
Me: Huh, that's pretty cool....
Linux Community: Yeah and it's super easy. Easier to setup than Windows. And you'll never get a virus. And it's free!
Me: Wow, that does sound pretty cool...
Linux Community: Heard you had a problem with Vista's power management stuff? Yeah, you should run Linux - no problems there....
Me: Wow - that does really sound great...
Linux Community: Hey - Windows 7 is coming out - but look at this chart. It shows how much faster Linux is. And look, the install took less clicks and is much easier. Ant it's free! My Grandma runs it now. It's awesome.
Me: I have to say, that really, really sounds great....
Linux Community: I see you play WoW. I dunno if you know this but Linux can totally do that. Linux is like everywhere man. Why don't try it? It's free. It's everything Windows does, only free and less problems. It just works. Just download it man. Piece of cake.
Me: I don't know - that sounds great. I really don't like Windows; and I'd love to be able to play with the source of my OS....God Linux sounds great.
Linux Community: Oh - yes - it is! Here's a link man....go for it. Just download it and burn it. It's yours. Free. And just like Windows, only better. It does everything. Everything you want - it does. Better. Faster. Free! Try it. Don't be a chicken....try it.
Me: Huh - yeah - Linux seems cool but um...I'm having a problem. (The specific problem varies depending on the year I was trying it. Internet back in '03, RAID in '06, Wireless in '07, Installing in '09).
Linux Community: Oh yeah - that's nothing just do X (where X is something ridiculous like 'download it again')
Me: Umm yeah - so, that's not working for me. I still can't this working.
Linux Community: Did you read the guide? It's this page here - you should have read this before you did the install. It's really long and complicated and it will make you change your BIOS settings. It's called 'DO THIS BEFORE YOU INSTALL.HTML'. Go there, do it, try again.
Me: Umm - Okay. WTF? I don't know what any of this means but I just changed four things in my BIOS. But I still can't install.
Them: Did you verify the download? Use this MD5 tool to verify that the download was correct. I mean, you can't just trust a file to download correctly these days...it's really a gamble.
Me: Umm - Okay. I installed some program in Windows and it says it has the same number as what it should be...but it still doesn't work.
Them: Okay - well, go to this random guys blog. He has four pages of detailed instructions. You'll need to download a Windows driver and run this program that will, maybe get it to work.
Me: Alright - I spent FOUR HOURS screwing with this and I still can't get online unless I disable security on my wireless router.
Them: Well, just disable the security on your router. Yay! Linux works great!
Me: WTF? I don't want to disable my security. I want to be able to use it like it worked in Windows.
Them: Then buy a wirless router that works in Linux.
Me: Okay - which one can I buy off NewEgg that will work.
Them: Well, a lot of people have good luck with XYZ - but it depends on what chipset is used.
Me: WTF? How do I know what chipset is used?
Them: Well, buy it, and if it works, you'll know it's the right one.
Me: You want me to buy something that 'might' work, but if it doesn't work I'm SOL?
Them: Yup! If you don't like that, you can just buy a brand new PC with Linux installed from Dell!
Me: Is it any cheaper than the Windows version?
Them: Nope.
Me: WTF?
Them: Geez man, chill out. Linux *isn't* windows. It's not just going to magically work. Hardware manufactures don't support Linux, so you need to make sure, in advance, that your hardware will work.
You also can't expect Lin
Re:Almost competing (Score:5, Insightful)
Upgrading Windows is just asking for trouble.
The OS on my MBP, 10.6 is upgraded from 10.5 which was transferred over from an installation on a different notebook, which was upgraded from 10.4, which was cloned over from yet another notebook, which was upgraded from 10.3. I think that was the last clean install, although it could have actually been 10.2. So this OS has been upgraded through at least four major versions, run on three different machines, with two different major processor architectures (PowerPC and x86).
And it works just fine. I'm sure there are people running Linux with even more impressive provenances.
Re:Attention bearded folk: (Score:3, Insightful)
For hobbies, there are tons of programs. For professional users, there are zero.
For instance, you could create a demo record in Linux. However, there's no way in hell you could master and release a studio quality album.
You could create a nice home video with cinelerra. I can almost guarantee no studio quality movie has ever been released using only linux for post processing.
You could make a nice flyer for your lost dog with OOo or GIMP. You could not produce an image for any major magazine without using a real suite for color correction.
And as far as desktop accounting goes, there are 0 options available that provide anything close to the functionality of quickbooks. That's why Intuit, despite their idiotic business practices and piss poor program quality, is still making billions.
Re:Almost competing (Score:3, Insightful)
Things work as designed
under Windows 98%
under Linux what? 30%?
This is all only talking from personal experience and is not supposed to be misinterpreted as anything even remotely resembling fact but the above numbers are what I have experienced with Windows since XP SP2 and with Linux since about year 2000 (several distributions). The two percent missing on Windows have usually been some tools hastily put together by some stoned dude or games where the developer rushed the product. For the latter, there were patches.
While I agree with you, real life makes Linux unusable for me. Windows seems near perfect compared. And that's truly a sad state of things.
Re:Almost competing (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the problem is that there is a big difference between "experienced" Linux users, and "experienced" Windows users. If people who think they were an "experienced" Windows user really were, they would know how to use various tools available to diagnose problems on Windows.
Mark Russinovich's blog [technet.com] contains many examples of how one can find the root cause of those odd problems using free tools.
Re:Almost competing (Score:3, Insightful)
It is true that Mark's tools and a lot of knowledge will let you dig quite more into Windows than you'd expect. However, you still hit the inevitable brick wall that is closed source. At some point, if there's a bug in the source, you're not going to be able to figure it out without digging into assembly language, which is undesirable.
I also get the impression -and this may very well be caused by my relative inexperience with Windows internals as opposed to Linux internals- that Windows is more complicated on several levels, or at least requires tools that are more engineered and advanced, to diagnose certain issues. Again, this may just be my unfamiliarity with the OS, but it feels like stuff on Linux is just based around simpler system primitives (UNIX filesystem, pipes, sockets, command line, environment variables) that are easier to grasp, as opposed to the more complex APIs available under Windows.
As an example, this [pastie.org] is what a system call trace of "ls" looks like. Compare that to a procmon trace [pastie.org] of "cmd /c dir" on a nearly vanilla Windows install (and this only includes certain system call categories).
Re:Almost competing (Score:3, Insightful)
No you don't, which is why you post AC. Stupid troll.
\
Run-time compilation is what interpreters do, all the way back to stupid runtimes like basic, that took each line of a program, and, at runtime, converted it into instructions the machine could use. Study the history of languages, retard.
JIT "compilation" shows that the languages aren't compiled - they still need to be run through the interpreter and converted to something the computer can actually use. "JIT" is a catchy marketing phrase first made popular with Java. It's the same story, for example, with those stupid "Smarty Templates" - the "compiled" output isn't - it's just more php code that still needs to be interpreted.
Too many people are using the term compiler too loosly, because of their ignorance of how computers work. There's a world of difference between a statically-linked c program and a piece of shit like the .net runtime or even the not-so-crappy java runtime. Only the c program doesn't need further interpretation to be run.
So grow up, fat boy.