Migration Questions? Ask Dell

Migration Expert Zone

Dell recommends Windows 7®

Windows 7 Migration

Microsoft: No Direct Upgrade Path From XP to Windows 7

Rick Broida | Date: 2009-02-05


Still planning to skip Vista and move your organization straight from Windows XP to Windows 7? Might be time to rethink that: Microsoft said yesterday...


    Skip Vista.jpg
    Still planning to skip Vista and move your organization straight from Windows XP to Windows 7? Might be time to rethink that: Microsoft said yesterday that it will sell Windows 7 upgrade licenses to XP users, but the path from old OS to new will require a clean installation. Traditionally, an OS upgrade overwrites the previous OS with the newer one, preserving the user's applications and data in the process. But that's not an option for XP-to-7 upgrades; although customers will get the discounted upgrade-license price, the OS itself will be "full" Windows 7. Believe it or not, some industry analysts are actually in favor of this decision, according to a report by Computerworld:
    [Gartner analyst David] Smith and other analysts applauded Microsoft's decision to not provide in-place upgrades from XP to Windows 7. "I'm not a big fan of them," said Smith. "They're tough enough from one version to the next, and from two versions [behind], it would be pretty challenging, technically."
    Of course, this will present some headaches for organizations that had intended to skip Vista. For every legacy system that you want to migrate to Vista, you'll have to archive the user's data and settings, perform a fresh Windows 7 install, reinstall all necessary applications, and then restore the data and settings. Or, you could upgrade your legacy systems to Vista right now, then upgrade to Windows 7 down the road--after the OS has had time to work out its seemingly inevitable compatibility kinks.

blog comments powered by Disqus