Colin Barnhorst said:
You are correct. Anyone running XP Pro x86 who wants to buy either an
upgrade or full edition of Vista Home Premium will have the upgrade
install option disabled and must perform a custom installation. This is
not an upgrade-in-place, of course, so the user must do a migration in
which he saves his files and settings for restoration later and must
reinstall his apps.
I think that the problem is one of expectations. Users read the words
"upgrade edition" and assume at first that this means a quick, simple
upgrade-in-place. Unfortunately, upgrade edition refers to the pricing
and licensing rather than to a set procedure all can use.
Well, no-one but Microsoft is to blame for that, then. Previous upgrade
Windows disks I have all say they are upgrade editions. It was as simple as
booting your machine in its old OS, putting the CD in and saying yes you did
want to upgrade and away it went, did its thing and then an hour later
(generally speaking) you had the new OS in place. If they meant something
different to all that with Vista (and please, I am not doubting you), then
they should have been one hell of a lot more careful in their wording. This
is only going to cost them a lot of money with people on the phone
needlessly.
A home user running XP Pro can easily forget that he is running a business
OS so it is quite a surprise when he finds out that he cannot just upgrade
the bits when adoping a home OS for XP Pro's successor.
Yes, that is true but you seem to forget - as is evident that Microsoft
does - that these days, thanks in no small part to Microsoft Windows XP -
many businesses are one person affairs running from home. Xp Pro is used for
various reasons that are valid by these single person companies. While they
are single person, often they hire someone for a few days to work on things
that can only be accessed at their computer. I even have a law firm customer
who had an office fire and lost all records. The partners moved the work to
everyone's homes while they decided where to move to, next. Ultimately they
decided that things were happier and more productive where they were forced
to go - home. Now they use internet the way that you would think a business
should use it, everyone reports to their computer, they have teleconferences
(though really they are only within a 30 minute drive of each other) and if
something is hand written it is scanned and sent for typing to the right
person and if a dictation for typing, recorded directly to the computer and
emailed to the right person yet again. No office means no rent cost. Whoever
needs a printer, a scanner, whatever to get the business done had one bought
for them and they get to use them for personal needs. It really is a very
good setup and was forced upon them but with discussion they realised that
it could stay this way. Imagine getting out of bed and turning the computer
on to go to work for a law firm. Everyone loves it. These people wont be
able to upgrade unless the more expensive Vista is bought for them.
But then, now is the time some will take advantage of upgrade pricing to
migrate from x86 to x64 and that can only be done by a migration anyway so
things are not so bad.
From the user point of view, I have to disagree emphatically.
