Why Windows 7 Take Up Maybe Slow but IT'S Successor May Thrive

OK I'm sure that lots of you will disagree. However the basis of my argument is this:-

1. You cannot upgrade directly from Windows XP to Windows 7 (unless I'm missing something here). To be honest, I've got enough to do in my life without having to reinstall ALL my software. Also why oh why, hasn’t Microsoft learnt from their experience with vista.

2. Windows XP is supported until 2014

3. Most users will replace their equipment within a 5 year timescale, so they will get a fresh copy of Windows 7 or the latest OS and will go through the pain barrier of reinstalling updated versions of their software (because we all love nice shiny new boxes don’t we!)

Given the above, users may choose to stay with Win XP on the basis that it WORKS! And wait for Windows 8 or whatever mystical name is decided in the future. I suspect that future upgrades are more likely to be driven by new hardware and the requirement to have an OS that supports it than anything else.

OK I'm sure that lots of you will disagree. However the basis of my argument is this:-

1. You cannot upgrade directly from Windows XP to Windows 7 (unless I'm missing something here). To be honest, I've got enough to do in my life without having to reinstall ALL my software. Also why oh why, hasn’t Microsoft learnt from their experience with vista.

2. Windows XP is supported until 2014

3. Most users will replace their equipment within a 5 year timescale, so they will get a fresh copy of Windows 7 or the latest OS and will go through the pain barrier of reinstalling updated versions of their software (because we all love nice shiny new boxes don’t we!)

Given the above, users may choose to stay with Win XP on the basis that it WORKS! And wait for Windows 8 or whatever mystical name is decided in the future. I suspect that future upgrades are more likely to be driven by new hardware and the requirement to have an OS that supports it than anything else.

#1. I think the upgrade limitation is just for the beta...if not then that's a big mistake.

#2. Even though it's supported until 2014, most users will have purchased a replacement PC by then.

#3. Most of the software that works on XP works just fine on Vista, so I imagine that they will work just fine on 7.

So it should be!

Writing software is hard and I don't want to write software that is thrown away as soon as an update has been made. I want to see a world with Win 98 -> Win 7 and beyond. Just because people still use an older version of software  does not mean the new version of the software is a failure.

You just need to realise that operating systems have been developed successfully by Microsoft (post Win 95), and that they are so good at what they do, people don't want to throw their software away.

Yeah I think WinXP will have a sizable usage up to 2014 and maybe beyond. It's the OS that never goes away!

Its hard to take you seriously if you have style definitions in your post

sushovande said:

Its hard to take you seriously if you have style definitions in your post

Copy and paste from Word into any Rich Text Editor makes it such a mess. Must be some nasty sort of a bug.

Bass said:

Yeah I think WinXP will have a sizable usage up to 2014 and maybe beyond. It's the OS that never goes away!

Win95 (first real consumer grade Windows system that's not based on DOS) released in 1995, and we still see people playing with DOS around 2000.

Win2000 (first consumer grade Windows system that uses NT kernel) released in 2000, and we still see people using Win9X around 2005.

It make sense to predict people will need around 5 years to move to Windows Vista families (first consumer grade Windows system that have widespread x64 support).

This could be longer because we've been idled for too long in WinXP, that quite some developers do things in WinXP specific ways and got away with it. But the process could be shortened if more software companies produce bloated applications that won't fit in 2GB RAM or less. [6]

sushovande said:

Its hard to take you seriously if you have style definitions in your post

I agree but you cannot see the stylesheet info until the article is posted as far as I'm aware.