Full Upgrades To Windows 8 Only From Windows 7? 222
CWmike writes "Microsoft will support full upgrades to Windows 8 only from the three-year old Windows 7, according to a report Thursday by ZDNet blogger Mary Jo Foley. Citing unnamed sources, Foley said that Microsoft has informed select partners of the upgrade paths to Windows 8. While Microsoft may be revealing upgrade paths to some partners, it has been much more reticent to keep customers informed than three years ago when it rolled out Windows 7. Among the details the company has not disclosed are the on-sale date and the pricing of the two retail editions. By this time in 2009, Microsoft had revealed both: On June 2 that year, it pegged a launch date for Windows 7, and by June 25 had not only posted prices for the operating system but had also kicked off a pre-sale that discounted upgrades by as much as 58%. The increased secrecy from the company was demonstrated best last week, when it unveiled its first-ever tablet, the Surface, but left many questions unanswered, including the price, sales date, and even the hardware's battery life."
I don't see the problem with this (Score:5, Insightful)
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I don't see the problem with this. Firstly, I've not purchased a Windows upgrade for 13 years (NT->2K). Secondly, Windows 7 is supported until 2020 so it's not like you have to upgrade it. Corporate customers need not worry as their license agreements give them the new OS for no additional cost.
Pity you got modded down for making the reasonable decision rather than just blindly arguing because everyone should hate M$. If I were selling software, I'd take this tact too. Not that I'm a Microsoft lover in particular, but I figure if you're going to hate a company you should do it for the right reasons.. which in the case of MS I would describe as them abusing their monopoly to dissuade users and OEMS from using other software.
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Given their past history, I'll never be an early adopter of the new Windows version anyway. Especially since they are delving into new territory - something they're not particularly good at IMHO - by the time I get around to it, Windows 7 will more than three years old.
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Well Apple's Mountain Lion is $19 for starts. Even if you had to buy Lion at $29 at's still less than the traditional Windows upgrade.
I think there will be FEW upgrades this round because Microsoft wants Windows 8 tied to the proper hardware. I think they are making the consumer push first to grab some hardware sales, companies aren't going to upgrade for 6-12 months anyway.
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Well Apple's Mountain Lion is $19 for starts. Even if you had to buy Lion at $29 at's still less than the traditional Windows upgrade.
Sure, those are nice upgrade prices but how much did the user pay for the hardware? And it's not like they can just throw Lion discs into any old machine and have them run. It must be supported Apple hardware.
Windows is supported for much longer compared to OSX releases [wikipedia.org] as far as software support and backwards compatibility are concerned. The general rule for Apple support seems to be the current and last release and you're on your own. As a developer it's nice to have users running current versions of th
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with a format/reinstall i most certainly can
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Wait, you didn't take a backup first? What were you thinking !?!
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I think I'm going to wait until Windows 9 or 10 before I start yelling at kids to get off my lawn...
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Might see re-emergence of "downgrade" ads (Score:3, Insightful)
After MS shipped Vista, MicroCenter used to advertise desktop systems with Vista preloaded and "XP downgrade rights". Expect similar with Windows 8 and "Win 7 downgrade".
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After MS shipped Vista, MicroCenter used to advertise desktop systems with Vista preloaded and "XP downgrade rights". Expect similar with Windows 8 and "Win 7 downgrade".
We have a firm quote that the Microsoft TAX on Windows 8 to have Microsoft safely remove the crapware their partners load on top of each copy of Windows 8 will be an additional $99.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/microsoft-to-charge-customers-99-to-remove-oem-crapware/20446 [zdnet.com]
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They always have their upgrade program when a new version of Windows is coming out to keep people from holding off a few months to get a new computer since it would be dumb to buy one now when a new version is coming out in two months.
What the OP is talking about is that new computers that came with Vista on them came with the ability to downgrade to XP. We'll see if 8 is as hated as Vista, but forcing Metro down everyone's throat might lead to that. I also don't understand forcing metro into the new vers
Even better (Score:4, Informative)
Free upgrade to Ubuntu from any version of windows.
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Who gives a fuck? Ubuntu is a train wreck. If you're going to promote Linux, at least promote a good distro.
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the flavor of Ubuntu known as Xubuntu is fine. Even the KDE flavor Kubuntu fixed the initial crap of KDE 4.0/4.1 a couple years ago.
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Nothing wrong with lubuntu either, which is a standard flavor of Ubuntu these days. Indeed, it's even lighter than xubuntu.
Re:Even better (Score:4, Funny)
Sorry for offtopic, but I've been trying for ages and cannot figure it out: How do you get a shell in the latest version of Ubuntu? Somehow I can't seem to find it...
Re:Even better (Score:5, Informative)
IIRC in the apps menu, type "terminal" into the search bar
Re:Even better (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry for offtopic, but I've been trying for ages and cannot figure it out: How do you get a shell in the latest version of Ubuntu? Somehow I can't seem to find it...
Ctrl+Alt+t
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Sorry for offtopic, but I've been trying for ages and cannot figure it out: How do you get a shell in the latest version of Ubuntu? Somehow I can't seem to find it...
Ctrl+Alt+t
Best answer by far. The other answers are mostly wrong. You just hit the windows key (or whatever key you have there) and start typing terminal and click on it when it appears. You don't need to click anything first.
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hit windows key, type "Terminal", hit enter
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Click the icon that looks like a terminal in one of the dock bars, tap Windows T E R M, and select Terminal, Alt-F2 and enter gnome-terminal, or press crtl-alt-T.
Re:Even better (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that you have to ask is the problem (even if you were just joking).
Even where Linux is concerned, what's so hard about having a "cheat sheet" available in an obvious location? Over the last 25 years, manuals gave way to pamphlets, which gave way to online documentation, and now interfaces are so supremely well-designed *cough* that even a list of hotkeys requires you to do a web search on online fan clubs.
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So I can upgrade from Windows to Ubuntu keeping all my existing apps & settings unmodified? Impressive.
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So I can upgrade from Windows to Ubuntu keeping all my existing apps & settings unmodified? Impressive.
Yes, that is very easy. It is much harder to upgrade from Windows to Ubuntu and still be able to use your apps and settings, although Ubuntu DOES have some profile migration now (as of Precise, if not earlier.)
Re:Even better (Score:5, Insightful)
Free upgrade to Ubuntu from any version of windows.
No free Linux upgrade or port for every significant software package that runs under Windows.
While damn near everything client-side in FOSS is ported to Windows or begins as a native Windows app.
The parent post gets a predictable mod-up here.
But the truth of the thing is that only 1% of desktop users have seen any added value in Linux. I do not expect that to change,
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To avoid upgrading your desktop to a new OS with crappy tablet UI (Windows 8), you recommend upgrading to a new OS with a crappy tablet UI (Ubuntu)???
Mint Linux, etc, would likely be a more comfortable upgrade for most folks.
Free upgrade to REACTOS as well. (Score:3)
I think Microsoft is coming close... very close... to a spontaneous shift towards open-source Win32 [reactos.org]. The butchery of Windows 8 is certainly moving things right along.
When a major corporate donor emerges, Microsoft's final phase has begun.
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Now, I'm not saying my son isn't brilliant. He is my son afte
doesn't matter... (Score:3, Interesting)
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Since when has buying a new Windows version been a matter of "wanting"? Usually you just wanted some piece of program to run sensibly that was designed for $your_windows_version + 1 only.
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There's a department in my company that does risk underwriting, and because of some vitally important legacy programme, each one of them has two computers- one running the stock corporate Win XP, one stained beige box running Win NT 4.0.
I presume a relevant brain has at some point been bent to the task of somehow porting the programme to XP, and I can only assume that they failed.
MS doesn't see the demise of Windows (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems to me that MS is shooting itself in the foot. If I were in charge of Microsoft, I would be afraid of OS X and iOS. Once Apple starts leveraging its market share in iPhones and iPads to push people towards OS X, Microsoft is going to feel a lot of pain.
MS is no longer the 800 lb gorilla in the room. The integration of iOS and OS X is going to create an OS that has enough applications to really take off.
Re:MS doesn't see the demise of Windows (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree, except between Windows 8 and the Cisco cloud silliness, Apple will probably follow the trend and push OSX users to iOS instead. More control and all that.
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As long as Microsoft don't shoot both feet and make it impossible to stick with Windows 7, they will still retain most of their marketshare.
I don't like Windows 7 that much, but I actually prefer it (and XP ) to OS X. I think 10-20% or so will really love OS X, but the rest will be fine with Windows XP/7.
If Microsoft sells Windows 8 but allows "downgrade rights
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"Once Apple starts leveraging its market share in iPhones and iPads to push people towards OS X"
Apple will have to take their own antitrust lawsuit and likely lose just as hard as Microsoft.
What is the problem? (Score:4, Interesting)
So you have to have the previous version to upgrade... what is the problem? Doesn't everyone do this?
Off hand: Adobe, Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian all require the immediate previous version to upgrade.
Honestly, I didn't even know you could upgrade Windows from a version older than the previous version.
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When upgrading someone's machine from Ubuntu 10.10 to 12.04 recently, it came up with an 'upgrade' option, which surprised me a bit. I thought they only supported previous versions and LTS->LTS upgrades, but it appears that at least some other upgrade paths are available.
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> Off hand: Adobe, Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian all require the immediate previous version to upgrade.
Nope, using debootstrap on debian lets you install debian from whatever previous version, and whatever other linux distro. Stuck with only one partition? The system is in a folder you can chroot into, so you reboot from another media and move the current install to a backup folder, the chroot to the root, rerun the update-grub or whatever is needed by your bootloader.
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If you're still running Windows XP and you want to upgrade to Windows 8, you'd have to buy upgrade packages for both Windows 7 and Windows 8 (or a full copy of Windows 8, and accept that you have to wipe and reinstall from scratch). That's a copy of Windows 7 that you'll only see as you whiz right past it.
If you're running an ancient version of Ubuntu, and you need to daisy chain the upgrades as you plough towards the latest version- at least all those intermediary copies are free.
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I usually follow the same path for Ubuntu also, back up the home folder and reinstall from scratch. I was pleasantly surprised with the upgrade from Oneiric to Precise this time around.
Does anybody still "upgrade"? (Score:5, Insightful)
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"I wonder how many bother."
Only those suckered into it buy unethical PC repair shops and similar.
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I wonder how many bother.
I know you are talking about Windows, but on the Apple side of things I have taken my $1300 iMac from Leopard to Snow Leopard to Lion and expect to take it to Mountain Lion. I would have taken my Dell laptop from XP to Windows 7 (or even a hackintosh) but it only has a core duo processor and not a core 2 duo.
I'm not going to get rid of a perfectly good computer when it still does everything that I want it to do.
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Don't expect to take your hardware much further even if it still does work. Apple will phase out the support the version after (judging by the timeline of your Apple OSes mentioned) and you'll be fucked despite having quite a capable system.
In the meantime, I still have a hyperthreading P4 that handles *ALMOST* everything just fine. I paid $800 for my PC versus your $1300 iMac. I'll still be able to run a few more upgrades of my OS (plus the one I've built myself) and you're stuck like Chuck.
Get off my lawn.. (Score:2)
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Re:Get off my lawn.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, a nuanced old-version supporter... cool. I wonder how many of us are left here on slashdot. I am not a true supporter anymore: at some point it my systems just stopped sticking around long enough.
Leaving them behind for a relative when moving out, equipment death and robbery have forced me to PURCHASE newer hardware. I'm surprised to see your system survive this long. A truth younger slashdotters need to know is that you cannot easily add new programs to old machines.
Kudos if you have seen your share of errors of missing dotnet, DirectX, Flash 7+, VisualC++ DLLs, Visual basic VBRUNDLL and bad HTML support for hotmail/yahoo. Cheers if you've known the joy of working around some or found alternative browsers and programs. It's sad that the only people using older software are either poor old people or their grandchildren. Middle aged people I know just fork over money for overkill hardware and pirate their way through Windows version upgrades.
That makes it harder on us given they perpetuate adoption of things (remember the first year of docx files?) and proliferation of overkill RAM amounts / bad coders who assume everyone buys a new machine every 3 years.
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"Is anyone else tired of the never-ending upgrade/version parade?"
No.
I benefit greatly from early adopters buying "new stuff". I benefit even more from not being one of them.
"Im tired of chasing the mess."
I never chased it, and so am not tired.
"Now get off my lawn."
I paid off my lawns because I never chased the mess. Everyone ELSE, however, should race after it with gusto.
I smell a marketing plot (Score:2)
To get people to buy a new PC with 7 while they still can get it.
So what? It is a Moore's law world (Score:3)
Should I also upgrade your wall mounted rotary phone to an IPhone 5? Should I upgrade your Model-T to a Tesla Roadster? Geez!
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Thats right, they dont care about how old the OS is, they want windows and they want what they know how to work. they dont care if its xp vista 7, but they will care that 8 doesnt work like they have known since 1995, and looks like a toy phone.
this seems like a flamebait article (Score:3)
Well, that's interesting only if MIcrosoft promised to ship and reneged. If it hasn't been pegged to ship, then I don't see how you can fault them for secrecy for not making announcements. I don't see why the article sites the "by this time in 2009" as a reason either unless there was some requirement to announce exactly three years after the last one.
Who upgrades as opposed to replacing the... (Score:2)
...machine or doing a clean install?
Why is this news?
Special Offer! (Score:2)
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I'd buy that.
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Ok. Now you learn that the wording was slightly wrong and instead, Steve Ballmer will throw a chair AT your purchase.
XP qualifies for upgrade pricing (Score:5, Informative)
The article is about how much data gets preserved during the upgrade process not about pricing. Since Windows machines should be re-imaged anyway periodically, that is pretty irrelevant. As for the pricing, the relevant issue, yes, XP evidently qualifies for upgrade pricing:
7 was the same (Score:3, Interesting)
You could only do a 'true upgrade' from Windows Vista to Windows 7, so how is this any different? I don't think you could upgrade from Windows ME to XP either.
Vista is how old now? It came out in 2006. How many years old will OS X 10.8 allow upgrades from? Snow leopard from 2009.
They aren't saying XP or Vista don't meet the requirements for an upgrade edition, just that you can't do an in place upgrade. Of course you can't, the file structure isn't the same.
This is even better, it means once again you will be able to use the upgrade pricing for clean installs. Good deal!
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You could only do it by incrementally installing each following version. GP was talking about going from XP straight to 7 - it wouldn't let you upgrade that way. XP -> Vista -> 7 did work.
's ok (Score:3)
No plans to upgrade to Windows 8 anyway. But this does remind me that I need to buy a few copies of 7 while it's still available. And then, wait until something good comes out.
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Not a matter of hate. Not at all. It's a matter of being unnecessary. Why pay a couple bills for maybe a few minor improvements?
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Gotcha, that makes sense. But why then would you buy Windows 7 assuming 8 is going to be the same price when it comes out? I would agree that it might not be a big enough improvement to justify paying a significant amount of money, but its at least better than nothing.
Because 7 is a known quantity. I have it running on a couple machines, and after the compatibility issues were ironed out (for instance, I had to retire a scanner that had no Windows 7 driver, and the XP driver did not work), it became an environment that I could easily reproduce and add to our workflow. Windows 8 would require starting over in that process, and there is quite literally no reason to do that. There is nothing in Metro that I need.
What about tablets? I own a Windows 7 tablet, it sucks. I
I just got rid of my corporate XP laptop (Score:2)
A 4+ year old Lenovo Thinkpad T61 running XP SP3 and I had to raise an enormous fuss to get it approved since it was on the schedule to be replaced sometime next year.
Corporations aren't upgrading now. They're going to crush every dollar out of their organizations until things start to fall apart and the wheels come off.
Anyway you assume Microsoft will have a cheaper upgrade path than simply starting over. That remains to be seen.
Re:And... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, XP is used in so much environments for just about everything still.
- Scientific tools are still mostly XP-only (or DOS still), Vista/7 is possible sometimes with XP compatibility but it's not guaranteed
- Most corporate programs still run only on XP including IE6
- XP is fine on 10 year old computers without all the bells and whistles, 7 is a lot heavier on the resources and requires a more recent computer to run well even with all the bells and whistles turned off.
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"XP is fine on 10 year old computers without all the bells and whistles, 7 is a lot heavier on the resources and requires a more recent computer to run well even with all the bells and whistles turned off."
I respectfully disagree. XP SP 3 runs shittier than a stock Windows 7 when the UI dialed down and the background processes tamed. I would not run either without 4 GB of RAM (and by that I mean XP SP3 which recognizes 3.5 and thus is maxed out) and Windows 7 recovers from dumb shit like accidentally brows
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I respectfully disagree. XP SP 3 runs shittier than a stock Windows 7 when the UI dialed down and the background processes tamed.
*Emphasis mine*
I'm curious, was XP similarly optimised when you did that comparison?
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you are funny. XP has been running fine for me for almost a decade with 768MB of RAM for running websites that require IE, Microsoft Office & H&R Taxblock, try that with your windows 7
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XP SP 3 runs shittier than a stock Windows 7
You really didn't need to install all those "toolbars" into Explorer...
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"XP is fine on 10 year old computers without all the bells and whistles, 7 is a lot heavier on the resources and requires a more recent computer to run well even with all the bells and whistles turned off."
I respectfully disagree. XP SP 3 runs shittier than a stock Windows 7 when the UI dialed down and the background processes tamed. I would not run either without 4 GB of RAM (and by that I mean XP SP3 which recognizes 3.5 and thus is maxed out) and Windows 7 recovers from dumb shit like accidentally browsing a dead network share.
He said 10 years old. Of course XP runs better but I doubt many of them are still running as PSUs die, fans lose their bearings and get nosy and die out, capacitators blow, and so on.
Windows 7 runs supperior if you have a SATA drive and at least a phenom II hex core or Icore5 or greater with more than 4 gigs or ram. This is because Microsoft crippled the SATA driver on purpose with Vista/7 so it doesn't support command queing. Worse, the paging/swap algorithm in XP/NT is terrible and very aggressive compare
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Re:And... (Score:5, Interesting)
corporate america is full of old legacy programs that most of the company has forgotten but are essential to the operation of the organization. Somewhere in the sub basement there are a few machines only a few members of the IT department are aware of... they are often the reason it takes "two days to process" certain requests... you could argue they whole thing should be reprogrammed from scratch but you're dealing with proprietary programs that could be very complicated and were built bit by bit in spaghetti code fashion over decades.
It's something of a mess. But the companies work and if everyone does their jobs the system runs.
You see this sort of thing in big international banks. Large retail chain head quarters. Or even medium sized businesses that have been operating a few franchises since the 80s.
Requiring them to upgrade isn't going to work. They're already trying to move these system to VMs. But compatibility for these old programs even in VMs is spotty. It's a serious problem.
Re:And... (Score:5, Informative)
The corporate WORLD is full of old legacy programs. But that's only half of the deal. The other one is how corporations work.
First of all, we're talking about a serious budget position. The licensing fee for a corporation wide system upgrade isn't something your average IT department can rubber stamp. This can easily run the six to eight digit range, and that often requires the ok from some C-level goon. Sadly, to my eternal regret, it is rarely the CISO or even the CIO, i.e. the two Cs that would actually know what they would buy.
More often than not, such a "problem" finds its way to the CEOs desk. Where it sits for a while because CEOs don't make decisions. No, I'm not kidding. They do not make decisions. They wait 'til some "meaningful" (read: economic) paper writes something about the item. If you want something approved from your CEO, don't come with facts or university studies, subscribe to the same economy papers he reads and wait for them to push an article that goes in your favor, then ask him "oh, sir, have you read..." and you're in.
This is, sadly, not a joke.
And until that time, you will not see a CEO make any decisions about upgrading Windows.
Then, when they finally get their butt into gear, integration tests come. That alone can take a year in larger enterprises. Another hint, never ever volunteer to be one of the test subjects. Unless you don't have anything important to do anyway, or if your boss understands that due to IT issues your reports are late. You will lose days. Not hours. Days. Because one of the proprietary tools you use every once in a blue moon won't work and you get to figure out by yourself how to make it run. Which is in turn a huge headache for your security department, but I digress.
In other words and in a nutshell, I know quite a few companies that still run on XP as their main system, who have been running integration tests for Vista and 7 for a while now and are just about to roll it out... unless of course their CEO notices that 8 is around the corner and he halts the program because he wants to leapfrog the "obsolete" versions...
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I'm not talking about that.
And the CEOs frequently ask what it would cost to upgrade these systems. They say 'wow, those are old, get back to me with an upgrade proposal.'
They're proprietary backbone systems. They're frequently the soul of the company's electronic infrastructure. Old legacy databases processing some critical but arcane transactions that can't be done by any system that hasn't been specifically programmed from the ground up to do it.
Trust me. They want to upgrade. The cost is just a signific
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I agree but I actually see it as a good thing.
I actually think conventional OSs are a bad idea in general.
Imagine performance isn't an issue. Lets just assume you have more then enough processing power that emulation just isn't relevant.
Okay, imagine how much easier it is to manage drivers if the drivers only have to be compatible with a master VM OS. All venders just have to test their hardware with that one OS. No need for mac drivers. No need for Windows drivers. No need for linux drivers. Just port ever
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It sounds good. I would really like such a system.
But it all depends one that one thing: "more than enough processing power".
That is not going to happen. Sure, there is Moores law, but programs just keep on using whatever power is available.
Also, I would imagine MS fighting such a movement with tooth and nail, as they would lose one of their lock-ins; Almost all hardware has a windows driver, but if you want to run Linux, you lose a lot of hardware options.
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As to processing power, machines already have more power then workstations need. The five or ten percent loss of performance isn't a big deal especially if you consider that you can bring your old OS along with you from one machine to the next without having to dump it unless you want to... and you get to use the latest hardware. Imagine how simple full system back ups would be as well. You just copy the VM to another drive. Drag and drop.
What about viruses? No problem. You can restore to an older version o
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1. You're only sending the information through one extra process. I've run 3d games in VMs before and not had a problem. There is a performance hit but it's not a big deal.
What is important is that the VM have a comprehensive emulation of the environment. Some VM emulators half ass it. That causes problems.
2. As to overhead, this is a question of optimization. If you've done it properly this shouldn't be a huge deal.
3. The hypervisor OS by definition should be emulating specific environmental conditions. Th
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First of all, we're talking about a serious budget position. The licensing fee for a corporation wide system upgrade isn't something your average IT department can rubber stamp.
Sounds like a fairly shitty IT department/management. When you roll out a large project thats going to cost a fortune 5 years down the road to upgrade, you don't wait 5 years and ask for 500k. You roll it out, including an additional 100k in yearly operating costs/maintenance, and then have 500k sitting in your pool ready to purchase the upgrade at the 5 year mark. This is basic business planning. If you didn't think of that, you aren't qualified to do any planning for a project that costs that much, an
Re:And... (Score:4, Interesting)
Spoken like a true novice!. Well done partner!
Have you ever seen a multi-year budget survive, intact, the five-year you period are postulating?
What sort of company you work for? Any company I have worked for, in the last 35 years, will NOT let you bank $100 thou yearly towards some future whatchamacallit... At least you will be reprimended for over-budgeting. At worst, you'll be fired for cooking the books
If the auditors don't get you, then a couple of years into your fantasy, a downturn will occur and, wham!, your budget is cut so that your precious $100 k will be gone and if you did indeed happened to bank away any money, it will be used to cover running expenses.
I just spent a fucking week putting together a Pentium III computer so that a fricking old system could run again. Imagine, get a P-III refurbished with a 20 GB IDE HD, with 256 MB RAM running Win-2K... But the upgrade was only $145 k, no dice in this economy, get it working or else...
Please provide the name of your employer, I do need a job like yours
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There is usually soooo much bs in the systems, because people with connections can get the system set up to favor them. I do consulting on sales/configuration software. Everything goes fine until the sales assholes get on it and find out the super secret discount that gives them a fat bonus that they used to be able to do on the paper system wasnt put in.
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Your software isn't customized to their business. This is just the sort of problem that kills upgrade deals.
The software MUST be dynamic.
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Oh it is. But you cannot customize to infinity. These people would have it so they upload a cell phone picture of a few scrawls on a napkin and it creates a complete configured "x" on quote with all proper backend integration everything. They also want to import ALL their old deals, even stuff from 30 years ago that is completely custom to the company, and has decades worth of addons made up at the time and never used again. It goes on and on. And of course, upper management is littered with people who ca
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I agree on the X bit... on the importing old deals into the new system.
You have to do that. It's non-negotiable. And that's the problem. It's a HUGE pain in the ass. And what you're saying is that your company can't offer that feature at a competitive rate. I know that. I've asked around repeatedly.
The only solution is to keep the old system going or reprogram the whole thing from scratch.
It's just what "is."
The only reasonable solution for most of these companies is to VM the old systems so they can mainta
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Based on Microsoft's track record, there's a significant chance that Surface will be canceled before it ships.
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Hang out in the vicinity of IT-reporters, if you're lucky you might snatch a Surface someone "lost" before he gets it.
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Taking a leaf out of Apples playbook then. I wonder if Apple patented it?
One can only hope they haven't taken a leaf from anything resembling a Playbook...
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Since installing a clean, "free" version of 7 has been effortless for years, and MSFT gets your money of a version of 8 you don't want, it's your call how you wish to "downgrade".
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Haha. Locking up is the worst beta experience you've ever had? There was a bug I had in a game that I was beta testing which shall remain nameless. On uninstalling, the uninstaller would nuke the entire Program Files tree. Locking up apps is, painful, and recoverable, this required an entire windows reinstall.