I am an MVP also, and I too am surprised about the lack of outrage
about the new requirements. I think it will raise to a din when the
upgrades go public. It is hard to tell what percentage of upgraders
during the pre-RTM perion were successful. Those consumers that can
successfully upgrade their XP version will not care. Those of us who
either prefer to clean install or who are forced into it due to a
failed upgrade are going to be screaming when we have to install to
another partition and those who don't want to dual boot are going to
have to go thru contortions to get the os and the boot files
unscrambled and set up the way most consumers want theirs (C as
system and Vista drive) usually no other partitions unless they have
a recovery partiton. I assume that having to do the upgrade from an
installed and probably
activated qualifying os is being done to cut down on the passing
around of the qualifying CD and using it to install multiple upgrade
copies. I really wonder if the public relations nightmare and the
cost of the service calls they are going to have to field when
customers can't get thru the upgrade quagmire will compensate for the
extra revenue from full versions (which is shared with the retailer,
and can't amount to that much). Hope their help desk is well staffed
or that they have an extraordinarily good manual to explain the
process.
David Wilkinson said:
Darrell Gorter[MSFT] wrote:
Hello,
There is no option to insert a DVD for verification. There is no
option to insert a product key.
Setup has to start from with-in the downlevel OS.
Thanks,
Darrell:
I am an MVP, and I try to maintain a positive attitude, but taking
off your Microsoft hat for a moment, don't you think that these new
rules have made upgrade versions an extremely bad proposition?
The initially announced new terms of the full Vista retail license
(only one change of hardware) created such a level of protest that
it was modified to allow unlimited transfer to new machines (like
XP). I am really surprised that this change in the upgrade rules has
not created the same level of protest.
David Wilkinson