I want to say, without thumbing my nose at Woody, that “Woody’s first edition 7-in-1 book about Win7 is not an adequate tool for judging the relative merits of WinXP versus Win7. It goes too easy on Win7’s many obvious flaws, and because it was written in Win7’s beta-version infancy, it can’t have a comprehensive list of whatever unexpected but inevitable Win7 flaws will be discovered as we play with it in the coming years.”

Firstly, we’re in a global economic recession, so paying for a new, unneeded O/S is likely not a top voluntary item on anyone’s budget.

Secondly, Win7 is a nightmare of relearning tasks for IT helpdesks, further driving up the cost of migrating to it.

The IT helpdesks, and the often clueless end-users, have had 9 years to learn XP. Win7, far from being rich in new fixes and legacy solutions, seems to have been written by programmers who were coached to “hide and rearrange any menu or feature that works”. IT support guys don’t go looking for headaches in an environment of shrinking budgets, and end-users want the job DONE, not glitzy new Aero with inexplicably re-obfuscated menus.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve said to unhappy Win7 users, “This is easy in WinXP; we’d be done in 10 minutes if this had been WinXP. In Win7, though…!”

Thirdly, coding errors and security flaws: Everyone knows that first editions are practically beta, and that rule goes double for Microsoft products. Who can forget DOS 4.0, which didn’t format a hard disk unless it was labeled “IBM_PC”? Or WinXP before massive 250mb Software Patch #2, which almost rewrote the O/S from scratch?

And let’s not forget MS’s outright failures: WinME and Vista. Microsoft is clearly in the business of releasing a high precentage of junk backed by glowing reviews. Let’s wait for the after-glow win Win7, a year from now, before deciding whether Win7 is laudable.

WinXP is a turd, sure, but it’s a turd that’s been polished and polyfilled for the last 9 years. Win7 is a brand new unexplored turd with gourd-knows-how-many as yet undiscovered deep flaws.

Hence, even the IT guys who’re foolish enough to want Win7 are almost all waiting for Software Patch #1 before they move off secure WinXP onto Microsoft’s latest minefield.

Fourth, Win7 fanbois pulling us toward Win7 often rationalize by saying “Hey, by migrating to Win7 you become impervious to a whole lotta virii which exploit WinXP weaknesses.” True, and it’s equally true that there aren’t yet a lot of Win7 virii, but that may be true merely because Win7 is not yet popular enough to attract virus writers’ attention. As Win7 gains acceptance, so it will also gain its own collection of O/S-specific viruses. Arguments that Win7 is built to better withstand viruses don’t hold much sway, since a) it’s a new, untried O/S and b) we’re talking about Microsoft here: the kings of “oops!” programming.

Fifth, the upgrade (even ignoring the retraining and helpdesk costs) is not nearly as cheap as Win7 PR would have you believe. Even if you are lucky enough to score a $50 Win7 upgrade as part of a 3-license “family pack”, you’ve still got other big costs. Let’s take a look at the additional costs:

5.1) Is your WinXP or Vista pirated? Kiss that cheap upgrade g’bye and substitute a higher pricetag.

5.2) Live outside the US, in a place like Europe where the software’s doubly pricey? Keep your wallet in your pocket and put a guard on it, boy.

5.3) Hardware upgrade costs are NOT negligible. Hardware for which no adequate Win7 driver exists are likely to STAY that way: hardware vendors make more money if you’re forced to upgrade than if they’re forced to go backward and write free drivers for stuff they sold in years past. Good luck if your “hardware” is even a slightly non-new laptop: its hardware can’t be upgraded and very likely, if a Vista driver exists it’s only a half-good driver under Win7.
And, even in the best of cases with a desktop PC, chances are strong that you’ll need to replace a printer, add another .5 or 1gb of RAM, and replace the video card in order to match WinXP’s preexisting performance (as Woody did on his 6 Internet cafe PCs), so add fifty to a hundred bucks per PC, plus the cost of installation.

5.4) Cost of discovering, upgrading, and/or replacing programs that ran under WinXP but not under Win7. If your toolkit includes Partition Magic and so many other tools that won’t run under Win7 (and for which there are as yet no Win7 equivalents), or your standard office tools include some older software, you may want to refuse an upgrade…or figure in the costs and major headaches.

5.5) Although Win7 does INITIALLY install smoothly and rapidly, it’s not an easy upgrade path from WinXP. Because you reformat the O/S partition (unless you buy a new hard di$k and try dual-boot), you’ve got to back up everything, including passwords, settings, and drivers..and pray that their restore goes smoothly. After the initial install, you may find that the right drivers and 3rd party programs’ software patches still need to be hunted down…if they exist.

If you’re the IT guy and the end user has heavily used & personalized his PC, figure on a full day of work and a wavy wake made up of lots of complaints from the L-user.

5.6) Strap on your tinfoil hat for this part. With the rollout for WinXP, people lamented a loss of privacy and control from Win2k. The same happened on a far greater scale for the up(set)grade from WinXP to Vista: there was a monumental shift to the software mistrusting the user and giving absurd controls to both DRM mechanisms and MS-via-Internet. This trend has continued in Win7: from EULA to drivers to rewritten menus with lost options to say “no”, Win7 represents a large fundamental shift away from “this is MY computer and I control it” to “this is a PC into which MS may peer and stick its meddling fingers at will.” (For the sake of space, I’ll forego examples here. This post is getting too long!)

5.7) Cover to cover, I’ve read Woody’s Win7 7-books-in-one “for dummies” book. It’s strongly skewed toward “Isn’t Win7 luuurrrvely? It’s new and shiny, and therefore probably faultless.” Partly, this is because at the time of writing WinXP was a shiny new unexplored toy, and therefore had that Christmas day appeal while not yet revealing whatever flaws it’s got. Hey,if someone paid me to write a stack of books about a shiny new toy, I’d be in the midst of a giddy cloud of happy feelings too.

Partly, though, I think Woody has inexplicably chosen to ignore Win7’s super-obvious shortcomings. Peer-to-peer networking, for example, is still plagued by the same old problems, plus brand new ones. WinXP features that worked, like the extended file search options, are damned near impossible to find if they exist at all: Win7 is less a collection of upgrades than it is a collection of rearranged, shrunken stuff that works and a light dusting of eye candy. If WIndows can be likened to a church, MS has with Win7 simply rearranged the furniture, made doctrine more conservative, and knocked out the stained glass windows while announcing “Whoopeee! Now windows are CLEAR and aero-airyyyy!”
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Stick with WinXP (the devil you know), with zero upgrade costs. Resist MS’s FUD about “up”grade, and ignore the fanboi fiction about Win7. Rest assured that your polished turd will work reliably and be easy to support for years to come.

It’s WinXP for me, and for smart IT folk, for years to come.

The myth for home users (often supported by the Big Chain Electronics stores) is that Windows 7 Home Premium needs new hardware, compared with Vista Home Premium (or even Windows XP Professional). In many cases, this is simply not true. I read a blog entry from Randall C. Kennedy at InfoWorld.com, in which he happily used Windows 7 Home Premium on a good-quality NETBOOK for a whole week, and hardly ever missed his Desktop. That says it all for Home and Small Business users, I think.

Personally, with my six-year-old laptop, I would be wise to do a full replacement. But most Vista users or XP Home or Pro users would be just fine changing over to Windows 7 without major hardware upgrades.

Personally, since I am in the market for a new Windows 7 laptop, I want to wait a couple of months while manufacturers switch over to the new Intel Core i3/i5/i7 chips. That is the major reason for Home Users to wait. Nothing else makes me think sticking with Windows XP is a good idea. Nothing.

And with your All-in-One Book For Dummies, we all will always have good guidance as we learn how to use Windows 7.

2. XP WORKS! Call me when Win7 gets to SP2. Then I’ll think about it.