Would this happen if Bill Gates was still the active CEO ?
Somehow I doubt it. That his wife has remade him into
Mother Theresa, Mark II, is ridiculous. Doesn't MS
know what it is doing any more ?
Bill Gates has been "pussywhipped" out of all recognition.
Billy
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PCMAG.com
The Great Upgrade Upheaval
For those
with older computers, upgrading to Windows 8 will be
more trouble than it's worth.
The final rollout of Windows 8 is
now beginning and it will be loaded on all the new machines.
I can assure you, though, that just as with the transition
from XP to Vista, nobody will want to upgrade from Windows 7
to Windows 8. What's the point? Windows 7 works fine and
Windows 8 is odd.
I already know trying
to upgrade from XP/Vista/7 to Windows 8 will be a
headache. Nothing will work correctly. You'll have to track
down updates and with old software from forgotten vendors,
you may never get to upgrade your applications.
Also, upgrading to newer operating systems too often
requires so many reinstalls of your favorite packages that
it is not worth the aggravation.
The upgrade barrier, which mostly
stems form the Windows registry architecture, must have cost
Microsoft billions of dollars. I still have two XP machines
around the house and I am totally reluctant to upgrade to
anything new.
There are at least a dozen programs that I would need to
reinstall but I have no idea where the original disks or
serial numbers are. Even if I was that organized, things
just get moved around. Some downloadable software is on the
machine but the serial number is somewhere else.
None of this would be so problematic if Microsoft abandoned
the registry and put individual programs into easy-to-move
folders.
Besides the issue with the registry, there is the problem
with the AppData folder. This contains odd data that the
program needs to operate. It's in a folder with other
programs that need to have what amounts to "cookies" in a
bunch of folders in the AppData folder. You never know what
is in there.
Meanwhile, the programs themselves are in the Programs
folder. Why couldn't the AppData be in there with the
programs? You know, instead of being scattered all around
the machine?
In the early days, one of the best things about the
Microsoft DOS when compared with the Macintosh was that
there was simply a logic to everything. You didn't have
components of every program scattered all over the place
with no rhyme, reason, or consistency. That slowly
deteriorated when Windows took over.
Some of this is due to greed. Microsoft knows that you'll
probably buy a newer version of Office if you cannot simply
move the product to a new machine by copying one folder with
everything.
In fact, the company loses the opportunity to sell more
copies of the newest OS since everyone quickly learns that
upgrading wrecks your workflow. So, nobody ever wants to
upgrade and Windows 8 will be no exception. Just you watch.
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