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WinExtra’s Daily Brief Ep. 11 … strokin’ and rantin’

Steven
  • On September 16, 2010
  • http://www.winextra.com

Back after an unplanned day off Paul and I get to do the show we had planned on doing yesterday, well at least part of it anyway. However today we get the added bonus of a small rant from Paul over lazy people making stupid complaints.

Show links.

Make sure to subscribe to the WinExtra channel on YouTube to get the latest episodes.

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  • Pierre

    While I agree with Paul on the necessity to move up from XP to Win7, you have to recognize that Microsoft isn’t making it easy. In addition to the hardware upgrade cost, you just cannot do an in-place upgrade from XP to Win7. Even with the best-integrated corporate networks with a razor-edge administrator, the upgrade process will be lengthy and error-prone, let alone the (usually clueless) home user. And the same goes when you wish to switch from 32-bits to 64-bits – not to mention that Win7′s Mobile Device Center does not support 64-bit Outlook and there are officially no plans to correct that…

    • http://pauloflaherty.com Paul O’Flaherty

      Why should you do an in-place upgrade of XP to Win 7? The two have very different hardware specs so why would you expect Win7 to run on Win XP hardware?

      I’m sorry, but if we accepted this attitude we’d all still be back on the Commodre 64 because Commodore didn’t make it easy to move your tapes to the Amiga.

      Either upgrade or become a dinosaur. I don’t want to hear about it. It’s the same stupid argument that people who use self-hosted WordPress but then get hacked because they didn’t upgrade and blame WordPress.

      If you can’t perform the necessary maintenance then go find out how, get someone who is qualified to do it, or quit whining.

      I am sick to death of people who defend their not investing time to learn stuff and expect the entire world to stay in the technological dark ages (because thats what XP is) because they are too lazy, or stupid, or ingrained in their ways, to learn how to make the switch or to perform the switch.

      And don’t give me any BS about them only recently stopping selling XP machines either. Those OEM licences were extended under the strict knowledge of when XP support was ending. It was up to the OEMs to inform consumers and up to the consumers to do a little bit of research before buying products.

      There will be no sympathy from me. Next thing you know, Windows bloody 95 owners will want an upgrade path.

      • Pierre

        My, my, you’re being agressive today, aren’t you? Tssk, tssk… [vbg]

        My point is, it’s fairly easy to make a high-end XP machine able to run Win7, by adding a bit of RAM and maybe a second HDD. I know quite a few like that, and what bothers their owners most is the requirement to do a clean install, either because they’re not sure they have all the software installation media, or because some useful programs can no longer be activated by dint of their manufacturing company having gone under. For heavens’ sake, I know people who still run a DOS-based accounting package, because they have never found a proper equivalent for Windows (or for Mac, for that matter). If you look closely around you, I’ll wager you too will find some like that.

        • http://pauloflaherty.com Paul O’Flaherty

          So what your saying is – we have to support everything, forever, because old stuff still exists. Bollocks – By that logic EVERY original X-Box game that I own MUST work on my 360 – they don’t. They never will. Doesn’t stop them being good games doesn’t stop me from wanting to play then even thought they AREN’T capable of running on my 360.

          I’m sorry, but people who are running a 10 year old operating system and want the features of brand new operating system need to grow up.

          And this arguement that Microsoft should provide an upgrade path because a third party company has gone out of business – utter BS. I hope those same people never have to reinstall when their 10 year old machine gets PWNED by a virus. Or is that Microsofts fault too?

          As for people still running DOS apps – besides being idiots who are probably just too stuck in their ways to move to something more modern, or shell out a couple of hundred to a coder to code whatever script they need to replicate functionality in Excel or something – why the heck haven’t they done their research and use the entirely free DOSBox or other similar apps to allow you run ancient DOS programs on modern versions of Windows.

          There is no excuse for not upgrading except laziness or the desire to freeload.

          XP is dead. Move on.

          • Pierre

            Paul, in an ideal world, you’re perfectly right. In the real world, you’re behaving like an idiot – or worse. When you have worked with professional computer users for as long as I have (that’s 44+ years), you may come to see the error of your intolerant ways. Just come off your high horse, take a deep breath through your nose, and have a Guiness or whatever other stout you’re obviously deprived of, your withdrawal syndrome is quite blatant ;)

            Just FYI, there are some things you can’t do with Excel (an accounting system that’s compliant with fiscal laws is one of them, at least here), and developing custom “scripts” is just as expensive and difficult as having custom software written – it’s essentially the same thing. As for DOSBox, I never said how these people ran their DOS package, did I? And how is that relevant to the current topic?

  • http://pauloflaherty.com Paul O’Flaherty

    Quite frankly Pierre – If you, as a company are relying on software that hasn’t been updated since DOS then you deserve to go the way of the DODO, and when it comes to the development of custom scripts, if the need to have that functionality is that important to your company, then shelling out to have it developed would be prudent.

    When you purchase hardware or an OS for any company you know it has a life cycle, and when that life cycle comes to an end, ranting, moaning and complaining like a baby because your software isn’t supported 10 years after release only makes you look irresponsible.

    Everyone knew this day was coming and would come.

    When people upgraded to XP from 98 then knew that 98 support would come to an end and they’d have to make provisions. But now, because we’ve gotten used to service packs, free updates and the “everything for nothing web”, people want something for nothing.

    You cannot expect Microsoft to fix problems caused by the ignorance and complacency of ordinary customers and companies.

    A line has to be drawn in the sand somewhere, otherwise we get stuck with massively bloated systems that are inherently insecure due to the need to support legacy software and hardware.

    If this was Apple, they would be calling it a genius move.

  • Pierre

    Can you point out where I have required the ability to continue with XP? Why is wrong to expect an upgrade path? Have you stopped beating a dead horse?

    • http://pauloflaherty.com Paul O’Flaherty

      There is one – it’s called Vista. Win 7 and XP are too different to simply “install over the top”. Again, companies, business and people who made the choice to skip a generation of operating system, can’t complain.

      • Pierre

        As far as profile file/folder structure and registry contents go, Vista and Win7 are practically identical. There is no valid technical reason for in-place upgrade from XP to be possible for Vista but not for Win7. It’s a marketing decision more than a technical one, especially as hardware requirements for Win7 are below those of Vista.

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