Community poll forum: Poll: When I do an operating system upgrade, I...

Probably NOT the soft-touch response you wanted, but..
after dealing with this stuff for 25 years, I will vent -

If you are talking Windows, you often don't have the choices
you put out there:

Back in the day, I did whatever MS DICTATED I MUST do.
There were times you could not wipe the hard drive,
as the "upgrade" was dependant on having a verified
copy of a previous version of Windows. Want to install
XP on a blank HDD ?? Better have the right version. An
upgrade version won't work - doesn't detect a pre-existing
version of Windows. (MS needs more money$$)

Have a second-hand machine you bought from a friend
who wiped the drive but who didn't give you the CDs to
re-install ?? Won't work, no pre-existing version.
(MS needs more money$$)

Bought a refurbished machine from an on-line retailer but
didn't get the restore disks ?? Tough break for you...
(MS needs more money$$).

Anybody see a pattern here ??????

It is this attitude that pushed me to Linux. Being of very
limited budget, I looked into the future and saw.......ever
increasing prices for Windows, and ever decreasing control
by the user over the OS. Not a good situation.
Not to mention the security holes of ALL MS products which seem to
have created a whole sub-industry of anti-virus/spyware/malware
companies .....at our expense. All of this, in an operating
system which has been around OVER 20 YEARS...and they STILL have
weekly updates on the exploit vulnerabilities....good grief...!!!

No, I'll stick with Linux, whose structure is geared more towards
security than "any user is God" attitude. Apps run crisper, and I
never have to download package-X or package-Y to protect me from
all the malware/spyware/hackware on the net.

I'm actually ashamed to admit it took this long for me to
"see the light", especially since I worked for so many companies
that used UNIX as their primary OS.....shame on me....I won't ever
go back to Windows....

DOH_1 -

Yes, all software is written by people. All HARDWARE is made by people as well. So now I ask the question:

Suppose Intel, back in 1989 (before there WAS anybody else),
decided NOT to make the I-486 chip instruction set
backward compatible with the instruction set of the 8086,
or 80286 ?? Wouldn't we have one heck of a mess ??? Software makers
would be forced to sell all different versions of their apps,
based on what the consumer had. And then, if the consumer
decided to buy a newer machine, they would be forced to buy
all new software as well - not a good situation. So, Intel,
with eyes to the future, made their cpus backward-compatible
in the instruction sets. THIS is the real reason home PCs
took off. Apple/Mac had their own virtues, of course, but Apple
essentially did the same thing. If MS had taken this position,
we could still run Win-95 apps on Win-7. BUT NOOOoooo...

While I thank MS for bringing us OS's for years allowing us to
do lots of things, I am saddened by their lack of effort to
protect us from ....whatever....and it goes back to the attitude
that "any user is God". Unix has never been that way, as it was
first and foremost a business (commercial) system. and is a
prime factor in why it is less vulnerable. Even today, as I check
the lastest threats as posted on C-net, there are some 260,000+
threats to be blocked in Windows.....good grief.

Granted, the Linux platform is not hack-proof, but there is SOME
reason the majority of web servers are running it....

And as far as your post where you said -
--------------------
"Or they can fairly easily re-install if it comes to that, painful but very d0-able, and once you're done you can move on."
-------------------

... I think that's a pretty drastic penalty for just clicking on a link..
how 'bout an OS that doesn't allow that site to execute 'X' to begin with.??

I stand by my original reasoning - as long as MS sees all users as God,
the virus/antivirus circle will continue. Or malware/antimalware, etc.

I have over 80 (actually - I just counted and it is 93) applications installed. My businessis is data processing consulting and I have a lot of software I use for a variety of clients' environments. Sometimes I connect to their systems (mainframe and/or network), sometimes not. But there are still apps that I use every day. An upgrade install alows most of them to stay (depending upon the upgrade from and the upgrade to). When I do have to reinstall all of them, they generally need to be done in a specific order and it is time consuming. It has taken months to get everything up and running again. I upgraded from XP Pro to Windows 7 Pro (I had to downgrade from Vista Home Premium to XP first as Dell sent this machine with Vista Home Premium on it - the absolute WORST operating system I have ever used on any platform from the PC to various mainframes) and everything went smoothly. I did not lose anything. A couple of the apps wanted to be upgraded to their Windows 7 specific version, but I was able to complete the upgrade in less than one day even with the upgrades. Was there garbage left? Probably. I have the luxury of having a lot of disk space 2.5 Tb in total and my 'C' drive is about 300 Gb of that. Even after the upgrade, my 'C' drive is still only 40% used. I know I took a chance, bup upgrades are getting better. My NT upgrades were not so easy.

I have always just upgraded. This time Vista was using 80%-100% resources, so I did a clean install. I had over 100 programs installed on Vista. When I buy a new computer and have to install all the software again, I only install 2-3 programs a day to make sure the system runs properly. It takes a long time! This time, with the clean install, I am only installing programs as I need them and have only installed about 50 programs. The first 2 months I had Win 7 it ran at less than 10%. I have only added 2-3 programs in the past week and my cpu usage is up to 30%. I'm guessing it is because MS keeps adding updates every couple of days and pretty soon Win 7 will be just as bloated as Vista. I'm a retired grandmother who has built 3 computers from scratch hasn't played much with operating systems. Can someone refer me to a site to learn about Linux?

When you're talking about Windows it's not an upgrade, because it will still be Windows; it's just an update. I'm about to replace Vista with Windows 7. The last time I "updated" a PC was from DOS to Windows 3.1. Everything else has been to "iffy" to contemplate.

MS has the same options. I used some of them when installing Win 7.

i have tried the up grade thing before twice from w2k to xp xp to vista both ended in the same result SNAFU... clean install new drives is the only way for me to go at this point if i were actually up grading to any windows OS. if i were using any microsoft product anyway. usually its the same old stuff though with microsoft pay a premium price for a bit of major flawed software that has an announcemet of doing major security update only 1 week after it was released come on what the hell is that?? now with the next version of windows microsoft is seriously entertaining the idea of self destructive disks. by having a format command at the end of the install which would format the cd/dvd thus guaranteeing that it would only be installed ONCE. tough sell for such a shaky system for me!!??
i'll stick to my trusty ubuntu/mint machine no need to drop my hard earned money on something that will never run right anyway..