Windows 7 upgrade may take up to a day

Microsoft has done it again. It really never stops to amaze me how low quality software and insulting assumptions from the side of Microsoft quality assurance team result in crappy Microsoft products. A Microsoft engineer posted on his blog the results of internal experiments on how long it takes to upgrade Vista to Windows 7.

The experiments involved 3 different hardware configurations and 4 different system condition as far as the data and the installed programs where concerned. One of the experiments took 1220 minutes, over 20 hours to complete the upgrade and that was not even on the worst case scenario. The worst case scenario was not even reported.

Data Profile	Low End Hardware	Mid End Hardware	High End Hardware
Clean No data and 0 applications	32-bit: 40 minutes 64-bit: 50 minutes	32-bit: 30 minutes 64-bit: 35 minutes	32-bit: 30 minutes 64-bit: 35 minutes
Medium User 70Gb of data and 20 applications	32-bit: 175 minutes 64-bit: 185 minutes	32-bit: 115 minutes 64-bit: 95 minutes	32-bit: 100 minutes 64-bit: 85 minutes
Heavy User 125Gb of data and 40 applications	32-bit: 345 minutes 64-bit: 355 minutes	32-bit: 185 minutes 64-bit: 165 minutes	32-bit: 160 minutes 64-bit: 150 minutes
Super User 650Gb of data and 40 applications	N/A	32-bit: 1220 minutes 64-bit: 675 minutes	32-bit: 610 minutes 64-bit: 480 minutes

It is stated that the transition from XP to Windows 7 is more complex and it will take significantly more time. How much more? Are they kidding us?

Realistically speaking I would say that most users(at leats the ones I know) fall between the Heavy User to Super user. Even simple users have not formated their XP installation for years and have all sorts of crappy software installed on the machine(let alone the dll nightmare). How long will it take for them?

Comparing this with the upgrade process of Mac OS X or certain Linux distros such as Ubuntu makes me lough out loud. System upgrade is something that should be painless and automated but I guess in Redmond they have diffferent ideas(they still live in mid 90s wearing funny shirts).

Microsoft is trying to commit suicide

After the, possibly, worst IT product ever (yes ...thats Windows Vista), Microsoft is harrying out an new Windows version. After the first initial good ruser eactions to the beta of Windows 7, Microsoft simply couldn't wait to let everyone down with stupid decision-stunts.

Some time ago Microsoft announced that Windows 7 would come in 6 different versions with different features and price. That is the same strategy that was used for Vista that was heavily criticised because it confused the consumer and basically, it was plain stupid and looked as a scam to get more money. Microsoft simply unable to learn from past mistakes decided to "pull a Vista" on Windows 7 and do it again.

A few days ago Microsoft announced that the starter version of Windows 7 would only allow 3 applications to run at the same time. If you want to start a fourth one, well... you have to close one down. The argument behind this was that the average user has only 2 application open at any given time. Thus, providing you with a generous limit of 3 is super-sweat of them. I can picture it right now: You have A Firefox window open, winamp to play music on the background and you are killing time with solitaire. You want to open up a Thundebird to check your emails. Pop quiz: "Which one do you close in order to be able to lauch Thunderbird". Answer :"Screw you..." .

Why limit it to application? I say in windows 8 you restrict the number of threads that could run at the same time. A limit of 2 threads sounds reasonable. You could have 2 single threaded programms runnning or for "heavy" stuff you could have a single double-threaded application running. Sweat!....

Now lets be serious. What is microsoft trying to do? The only thing that I can think, is that microsoft is trying to commit suicide and that Ballmer has lost it completely. The company aims at being more rediculed and hated. Microsoft is literally trying to create worse products. What can I say...we live in a crazy world.

Skip Vista...What's Next?

A few days ago Microsoft announced that the next version of Windows will be called Windows 7. Not a very imaginable name if you ask me but I do not like or dislike an Operating system based on a name. I like it or dislike it based on performance, stability and features just like any other user. Vista lacked all of those things and I am one of the fortunate people that do not use it on my daily life.

Despite Microsoft's efforts to push it into the market Windows Vista is a technological and market failure. It simply sucks. Just after almost two years from its release very few companies have adopted it and even fewer are planning to do so. Most of them are waiting for its successor to move on from XP. Microsoft can just wait and loose money for years or harry out a new release.

The thing is that, up until Vista, all of Microsoft's releases were better than the previous version. None was perfect, but all where better than its predecessor. Vista was failure and for the first time in History Microsoft is loosing millions because of it. Will the new version be a marketing trick to get all those companies to move from XP and fill Microsoft's coffins with coin, or will it really be a better operating system than Vista. Only time will tell.