Vista to 7 for free?

[Theblacksheep]

"The Windows 7 Upgrade Program is designed to assist Microsoft's OEM partners in minimizing the number of end users who may postpone acquiring a new computer because of the impending release of the Windows 7 operating system."

http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.a...tno=609&pgno=0

Educational licence probably wont qualify?

"The Program does not support multiple upgrades for medium, large, or enterprise customers. Customers that want to upgrade multiple PCs should use the appropriate Microsoft Volume Licensing program."

program eligibility will begin on July 1, 2009.


"Microsoft is targeting an April '09 release of their Release Candidate (RC) build. If tests of the RC build proceeds according to plan, Microsoft is confident of launching Windows 7 before the December '09 holiday season."

[tmcd35]

From the same web page...

Fulfillment Limitations

Microsoft expects most users to submit single upgrade requests, but allow qualifying end users (consumers or small businesses) to upgrade multiple eligible systems. In this draft though, they have tentatively set a maximum limit of 25 upgrades for each qualifying end user's mailing address.

You will need to purchase a Open/Select license media and product key for Windows 7 separately if you want to use something like Ghost.

This free upgrade media would require the PC to be running the OEM version of Vista and for you to go around and run the upgrade cd on the PC using a different product key on each.

Only the first 25 would be free. After that you will have to purchase Windows 7 licenses through your Open/Select license agreement.

This of course assumes that the OEM will be willing to send out the 25 upgrade disks to a large institution, like a school. It also assumes that there is no clause in either the EULA of this upgrade scheme or the Open/Select license agreements that means the Windows 7 COA's provided do provide reimaging rights.

In short. This is great for primary schools. Secondary schools will probably have to just fork out for the upgrades throught their license program.

[SteveBentley]

Grr. Windows 7 should be a free upgrade from Vista, as it's basically a bug fix.

*FX: Pigs flying past Steve's window*

[RobC]

Grr. Windows 7 should be a free upgrade from Vista, as it's basically a bug fix.

But it's not really. If you wanted to use that analogy, then WIndows 98 would be classed as a bug fix of Windows 95 and therefore should have been free. At the end of the day, both 95 & 98 were the same code-base, were released around 3 years apart and used the same driver model, etc. Sounds remarkably similar to Vista/Windows 7.

Another thing that irks me about peoples opinions of Vista are to blame a lot of the initial driver issues on Microsoft. In reality it was the hardware manufacturers who didn't get their act together to release suitable drivers on time. God knows they had long enough to test the new driver model!

[DrPerceptron]

Wouldn't 98/98SE be a better Vista/7 comparison?

[tmcd35]

Wouldn't 98/98SE be a better Vista/7 comparison?

I was just thinking that. Or XP pre SP2 and XP post SP2. So long as the change (when it comes) from Win7 -> Win8 isn't comparable to 98SE -> ME, other whys we're in for some rough time ahead

[sparkeh]

Another thing that irks me about peoples opinions of Vista are to blame a lot of the initial driver issues on Microsoft. In reality it was the hardware manufacturers who didn't get their act together to release suitable drivers on time. God knows they had long enough to test the new driver model!

I think its more realistic to say that there were issues on both sides. MS is not blameless in the Vista compatibility nightmare.

[Jamo]

Wouldn't 98/98SE be a better Vista/7 comparison?

Windows 7 really is a huge step up from Vista, in terms of speed and the functions available. I acutally havent used Vista since I installed Windows 7 as its more stable and faster than Vista and has some slight GUI advantages, which I do tend to use a lot and miss when I come to work and im using my damn awful celeron 1.5 with 512mb RAM (only just upgraded from 256) with XP pro and SO much RM stuff its unreal lol.

At home i use a Q6600 with 4gb RAM