Microsoft has confirmed that customers can purchase upgrade media and an upgrade license at a discounted price to move from Windows XP to Windows 7. However, customers need to do a clean installation of Windows 7. The pricing details of XP upgrade licenses are not yet known.An operating system upgrade offers users the option of choosing between in-place upgrades, with installed applications & data in-place in the machine and a fresh installation which overwrites the hard drive's contents. By eliminating in-place upgrades, users can have a reliable installation after backing up all their data and applications. But still considering the huge number of XP systems in use, it is going to be a tedious upgrade as a lot of backup has to be done.
Microsoft has been working on ways to help Windows XP users make the move by providing other tools and ways to get through upgrade process, but declines to provide further details on how it intends to simplify the upgrade process.
Microsoft also plans to shift XP from mainstream support to extended support on April 14, 2009. Mainstream support delivers free fixes for security patches and other bug fixes to everyone. Extended support delivers security updates to all users, but nonsecurity hot fixes are to be provided only to companies that have signed support contracts with Microsoft.
Till now Microsoft has issued 3 service packs for XP. In December 2008, Microsoft extended XP's sales life span to mid-2010 to account for netbooks. Michael Cherry, an analyst at Directions commented about XP's popularity as it is the first time he can remember that we have a situation where people will be continuing to buy devices (netbooks) with an operating system no longer in mainstream. He added that for any pre-installed copy of Windows XP, support that customer buys is not tied to the Microsoft Support Lifecycle policy, but rather to the OEM's support policy. So, if a consumer purchases a netbook today with Windows XP Home pre-installed, their primary support would be through the OEM. It is also clear that Microsoft is taking Windows 7 and netbooks seriously.
If you are looking to upgrade your Windows Vista to Windows 7 beta, you can read our upgrade process overview here
Anyone who uses a computer should already be making backups to begin with.
Unfortunately few do. Actually, I have no data worth backing up, so I don't bother.
So you don't have any sentimental photos? Any music which took you ages to acquire and edit the tags of?
Wow!
If I lost my music (all 6000 tracks), I'd be devastated! It took me over 2 years to get album artwork on every track and I have to have it on there otherwise I find listening to my iPod painful
Wow!
If I lost my music (all 6000 tracks), I'd be devastated! It took me over 2 years to get album artwork on every track and I have to have it on there otherwise I find listening to my iPod painful
I've got about 30K tracks myself. Don't know what I'd do if I lost all that music. Maybe cry?
You can do a clean install without reformatting...
Wow!
If I lost my music (all 6000 tracks), I'd be devastated! It took me over 2 years to get album artwork on every track and I have to have it on there otherwise I find listening to my iPod painful
Burn then to a disk if they are that important.
Wow!
If I lost my music (all 6000 tracks), I'd be devastated! It took me over 2 years to get album artwork on every track and I have to have it on there otherwise I find listening to my iPod painful
This is why partitions are still important to have.
C: Vista
D: Seven
L: Data
M: Music
N: New
S: Saved
Smaller partitions are easier to backup and easier to recovery.
System partition gets backed up everyday while the data and music partitions get backed up once a week if anything has changed on them.
Fully agree. Upgrading an OS generally results in serious trouble with all sorts of problems, many of which can be very hard to track down.
got a whole lot of CDs to burn.....
got a whole lot of CDs to burn.....
What the heck are you doing to necessitate this? I've got a lot of DRM licensed music through Zune Marketplace, and if I login I can listen to the song...no need to burn CDs lol.
I don't have Zune because i'm not american and microsoft has no intention of expanding Zune to the rest of the world.
All my DRMs are from the "Play for Sure" days. The thing that Microsoft ditched a while back, and many of the stores i bought the music from are no longer around.
so yea, it'll be messy when Win7 beta expires and I've to reinstall Vista or Win7 final.....
All my DRMs are from the "Play for Sure" days. The thing that Microsoft ditched a while back, and many of the stores i bought the music from are no longer around.
so yea, it'll be messy when Win7 beta expires and I've to reinstall Vista or Win7 final.....
Why do people buy DRM music to begin with? Its the stupiest thing ever. I buy music online all the time and its good quality stuff not that 128 kps crap either. Buying means you are asking for it.
All my DRMs are from the "Play for Sure" days. The thing that Microsoft ditched a while back, and many of the stores i bought the music from are no longer around.
so yea, it'll be messy when Win7 beta expires and I've to reinstall Vista or Win7 final.....
"Play For Sure", damn I'm sorry. MS should provide you with DRM-free versions of your tracks. The only reason why my tracks from Zune Marketplace are DRM is because I use a subscription service. If I want a track sans-subscription I'll go through a non-DRM source.
EDIT: After reading the article again, it seems to imply (to me at least) XP users *might* be getting a cheaper deal. It makes sense when you think about it, Vista users aren't the problem as MS know they will upgrade regardless. The XP users are the "problem", as these guys stuck to their guns and refused to upgrade to Vista (and got XP's support extended so they didn't need to upgrade - now that is dedication!), so MS needs to give them more incentive to ditch the aging OS for something newer and since there are so many of them, MS stands to make a massive profit from getting them to move of cause
Last edited by Xerxes on 04 Feb 2009 - 03:28
Uhm... why?
It's your own fault though. The upgrade will of course not be cheaper for Vista - also because of the reason that it would make XP users much less likely to upgrade to Win7, greatly hurting MS.
The article is as the title suggests
No, they don't!
I haven't tested this, but is there some reason this solution won't work to help XP users migrate everything Windows 7 (via an in-place Vista upgrade)?
Last edited by excalpius on 04 Feb 2009 - 19:36
I'm glad i never paid a cent for Vista...
Same here.
Same here. Got Vista Home Premium for £60 from Amazon back in March 2007.
They should also get compensation for how bad Vista is to XP.
I wonder if the same hardware companies will take the same stance and not have drivers ready for Windows 7 like they did with Vista.
They should also get compensation for how bad Vista is to XP.
Blah blah blah...
Maybe a more realistic version would simply be to offer the product at half the price to individuals with valid Vista numbers. If not, maybe we should start crying and blogging in the media like the anti-vista individuals from two years ago.
They should also get compensation for how bad Vista is to XP.
I wonder if the same hardware companies will take the same stance and not have drivers ready for Windows 7 like they did with Vista.
*sigh*
They didn't have drivers ready for Vista because it was brand new and they were lazy. Windows 7 is extremely close to Vista, and most Vista drivers work on Windows 7, so they should be ready.
No, I'm a Vista user, and I do not think we should get a bigger discount. It'll just anger the XP users... and it's not good business for Microsoft.
Vista really isn't bad compared to XP. I really prefer it.
Gotta love this sort of corporate thinking. "Let's keep developing hotfixes for a while longer, but just DON'T hand them out to our customers! We need to force them to jump ship! OK, we can be kind to our enterprise customers, but not the rest!" Why not just simply support everyone until they don't support anyone instead of this hypocrisy?
XP needs to be killed off ASAP.
XP needs to be killed off ASAP.
Impossible! Windows XP can only be killed by stabbing him in the heart with the ancient bone saber of Zumacalis!
XP to Seven: $99
That would be fair price. I'll hold my breath.
XP to Seven: $99
That would be fair price. I'll hold my breath.
Not gonna happen.
What "M" are you talking about?
http://techpp.com/2009/02/07/upgrading-win...s-7-wait-a-bit/
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