Windows Vista isn't a bad OS - now. But it's had its problems. Third parties didn't make drivers fast enough, bugs affected obscure features such as, er, copying and deleting files, and Vista Capable PCs were nothing of the sort.
Not all of the problems were Microsoft's fault, but Microsoft's name is on the box - so if people have a less than stellar experience with Vista, it's Microsoft they're going to blame.
Credit where credit's due, Microsoft appears to have got it right with Windows 7. It boots in less than a fortnight. It doesn't make our laptop shoot up to 100% CPU usage for no good reason, generating enough heat to cook a moose. It goes like lightning on machines that struggled with Vista. It's very good. In fact, it's great. Which is why Microsoft should give it away.
People paid good money for Vista expecting to receive a racehorse, and Microsoft sent them a pig in a wig instead. If that hasn't already scared them into the arms of Steve Jobs, they're still going to be wary about giving Microsoft any money ever again. So Microsoft shouldn't ask them for any.
Instead of flogging eleventy-two badly named and badly differentiated versions of Windows 7, Microsoft could easily offer two. The first, which it could call Windows 7 Essentials, would be the core OS, and it would be an upgrade for Vista SP1. The second would include touchscreen support and other sparkly things, and it would be Windows 7 Ultimate. Essentials would be free, with Ultimate as a reasonably priced upgrade.
Madness? Nope. Microsoft doesn't make that much money from OS upgrades: the real cash comes from new PCs. Giving Vista users a free upgrade wouldn't affect that much, but it would make a lot of people feel warm and fuzzy about Microsoft. Many of them would upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate. Many of them would use Windows Live, and Office, and other Microsoft products. And when it's time to buy a new PC, it might just keep them out of the Apple Store.
Microsoft won't do it. But it should.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now read TechRadar's Hands on: Windows 7 Beta 1 review
Sign up for the free weekly TechRadar newsletter
Get tech news delivered straight to your inbox. Register for the free TechRadar newsletter and stay on top of the week's biggest stories and product releases. Sign up at http://www.techradar.com/register
Your comments (19) Click to add a new comment
joelgm
June 9th
19. Good point. It really could be like Visual Studio.net. They have free flavors and paid ones.
Alert a moderator
kasino72
May 3rd
18. You know, you could argue that the exceptionally long life of Windows 7 RC1 - basically, you can have it for nowt on as many machines as you want for more than a year - means MS *is* giving Win7 away for free...
Alert a moderator
gigajosh
January 15th
17. Microsoft *will* make Windows 7 a free upgrade for Vista users, but not for XP'ers (obviously I guess)
They'll also make a very very exciting subscription cost for 7 - something people will just pay for without being bothered about it. Ahh, the world of Micropayments is coming!
Micorsoft - get your bloody finger out and bring back COOL
(source: crystal ball)
Alert a moderator
jhochberg
January 15th
16. Umm...fat chance. Look under the hood, simply look at the version numbers. Then think about history.
Windows 2000 Professional was, for lack of a better term, Windows NT 5.0.
Not too long down the road, along comes XP, which if you look at the version...is actually NT 5.1...basically Windows 2000 Pro with a lot of polish.
Then we hobbled along for a long time with XP and it finally became something we could use.
After a while, along came a gigantic TURD called Vista (6.0). We know how that story goes.
Now Windows 7 (aka 6.1) comes out and gives similar polish to Vista as XP did for Windows 2000.
Apple charges customers for every '.dot' release. 10.0, 10.1...10.5...each one requires paying the piper. Microsoft isn't wrong.
I'm happy to pay my money for Windows 7 when it ships as long as it stays on the track that it's currently on.
It's dead sexy....
My $.02. I'll get off my pedestal for now. =)
Alert a moderator
mikeg
January 15th
15. Always been a wish of mine, but perhaps too good of an idea for them to implement.
I stuck with Vista on both my laptop and PC. Works much better now than originally, a lot of problems and dog slow back then. If anything, my loyalty should be paid with a free upgrade, for my trouble.
Alert a moderator
penguinpete
January 14th
14. I would be extremely happy if Microsoft gave free upgrades for Vista because I am living proof that Vista sucks. I have a laptop and desktop that had Vista on them when I bought them. The desktop was unuseable with Vista so I wiped Vista and loaded XP and have not had problems with it since. I still have Vista on my laptop and it is better than it use to be. I use to get the Blue Screen of Death and the computer would reboot when I was using it, among other problem. Vista hasn't given me any serious problem lately, but just about everytime I boot it I get popup that tells me that a program did not start and it will be terminated. I also have problmes with wireless networking where it will drop the connection and I have to reboot to get it to function again. I have Linux loaded on the same laptop and it is pretty much flawlwess.
Windows needs to be less of a resource hog, my laptop has pretty good computing horsepower and it is still a dog with Vista.
Alert a moderator
Tell us what you think
You need to Log in or register to post comments