

Windows 7 Upgrade Chart - ams1
http://mossblog.allthingsd.com/files/2009/08/windows-upgrade-chart.png

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Oompa
Why is it this way? Is Microsoft just lazy, doing this for marketing reasons,
or is there a legitimate reason for this?

People might be annoyed by Apple for the App Store control, but you must
admit, at least they have their OS upgrading makes sense.

~~~
wmf
If this came from anyone but MS, I would say it's a good example of how to lie
with charts. The upgrade rules are pretty simple, but drawing it as a chart
makes it look complex. You can't upgrade to a different bitness, because that
might break apps or drivers that depend on the old bitness. You can't
"upgrade" to an OS with fewer features (e.g. Ultimate to Home). I don't know
why they don't allow upgrades from XP or Vista Starter; that sounds like plain
laziness given that IIRC it is possible to upgrade XP -> Vista -> 7.

In general Apple tries to configure things at runtime, while Windows does more
install-time configuration which inevitably breaks when things change.

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Oompa
The bit change makes sense, but why not upgrade to an OS with fewer features?
Maybe I bought Vista Ultimate, and it wasn't worth it, so I want to just stick
with the normal home version this time around. I have to do a full clean
install for that? I think MS could easily add support to upgrade to a "lower"
version of the OS if you bought the premium last time.

~~~
ajg1977
Two reasons;

1) You begin to get a combination explosion of all the scenarios Microsoft
would have to test "upgrades" with.

2) Some people may appreciate this, but others would complain about program or
feature X/Y/Z suddenly going missing from their machine after an "upgrade".

~~~
Oompa
I guess it simplifies down to Microsoft has too many versions of Windows, but
I guess it allows them to pull more money out of the market.

------
marcusestes
That's a whole lotta blue.

