Delaying Windows Upgrades: Do You Feel Lucky?

I know what you're thinking. "Do I really want this new Start screen? Do I want go go through a learning experience to deal with this?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this Windows 8 pre-release excitement I kind of considered this myself.

But being as this is the most important upgrade to Microsoft's desktop OS in over a decade, the most widely used desktop OS in the world, and that XP is now eleven years old, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

My ZDNet colleague, Steven J. Vaughn-Nichols has suggested that if you're currently using Windows XP, you should probably stick with it.  He doesn't like the way it changes things, and feels that Windows 8 offers "no real improvements over Windows 7 or XP." 

• Also Read: Don't Kill my XP! (Steven J. Vaughn-Nichols)

I do agree with Steven that Windows 8 does change things, and some minor adaptation by the end-user is going to be required. There's no getting around the fact that the new Start screen with its live tiles-based UI ("Metro") and full-screen Windows Store apps is going to be a big surprise to end-users that have never encountered it before.

However, when Steven and I recently crossed lightsabers in the ZDNet Great Debate on whether if Windows 8 should be installed on older PC's, I took the position that one should still do it despite the learning curve.

And while you cannot entirely discount the learning curve, it's not as serious as many industry pundits are making it out to be, and certainly not as confusing as some writers at more mainstream news outlets are purporting it to be.

So to quote our own Vice President, any concerns that there's going to be a major panic or that the public is going to reject Windows 8 en masse because the Start Menu has changed is "a bunch of malarkey."

If you've been using a modern version of Windows at least since Vista or Windows 7, you've got maybe a day of adaptation to deal with and learning some new behaviors, if that.

To test this theory out, I gave the release code of Windows 8 Home Edition to my wife, who is running it on an Intel Atom-based all-in-one desktop PC with 4GB of RAM, which is hardly a powerful machine. I showed her how to switch back and forth between the new Start screen and the traditional desktop, and how the new tiles UI and Windows Store works.

That took a whole 15 minutes. I haven't had one complaint since that she's gotten "lost" or is "confused" hasn't been able to get her work done. And while my wife has been using Windows for 20 years, she's not an IT geek by any stretch of the imagination. She's just a competent end-user, which probably puts her in with the majority of people who are in the workforce and have to use and own PCs.

• Also Read: Windows 8 is the new XP (Ed Bott)

Sure, there are still folks who struggle with very basic concepts such the differences between folders and files, don't understand what a URL is, or know how to connect to a wireless network. No, really, these people still exist.

These are the same friends and relatives that need constant hand holding and the yearly PC software refresh and cleanup. Thanksgiving approacheth, and I suggest some of you think real carefully before handing out Windows 8 upgrade DVDs as stocking stuffers, because you will have to give these folks training. I guarantee it.

But these people probably aren't working the type of jobs that require using PCs on a daily basis and they may not even be productive members of the workforce, period. And they sure as heck aren't reading this column or any of the articles on this web site.

So to quote our own Vice President, any concerns that there's going to be a major panic or that the public is going to reject Windows 8 en masse because the 17 year-old Start Menu has changed to the new live tiles Start Screen is "a bunch of malarkey."

After all, if a 3 year old child can figure it out, why can't a 43 year old adult that's been using PCs in some form for their entire career?

• Also Read: Windows 8: No, I AM YOUR OS UPGRADE!

I've been dogfooding Windows 8 all through the early Consumer Preview, the Developer Preview for about a year and I've been running the release code since late August. Overall I'm really impressed with this OS in terms of how well it performs, the breath of its hardware support and the massive feature set it offers for the money. 

You've all heard about the new technologies that Windows 8 introduces, and as a consumer, how inexpensive it is to upgrade to the new OS.

• Also Read: What are the cheapest and easiest upgrade paths to Windows 8?

I think we've beaten that horse enough over the last year to make a good argument that given everything the OS offers, it's definitely a worthwhile upgrade over Windows 7 and Windows Vista. So it should be a given that it's a significant upgrade over XP.

But maybe you're still not convinced.

Obi-Vaughn says you should stay with your XP. You know what? So did I. In June of 2008. And that's when the OS was seven years old, it had its most recent Service Pack, and we were all facing the horrifying prospect of moving to Windows Vista.

• Also Read: I'm sticking with Windows XP (2008)

That being said there's been a lot of positive changes in the last four years to Windows. The hardware support has improved tremendously and Microsoft has done a lot of great work in improving all-around system performance and efficiency.

But they've also made the OS a lot easier to continue to maintain and it is far less of a malware target due to fundamental architectual changes that have been made, beginning with Windows Vista. I don't have to tell how how much more sophisticated malware has gotten since 2008, and how inadequate XP is to being up to the task of dealing with them, particularly with Zero-Day attacks.

Windows 8 comes with integrated antimalware in the form of Windows Defender, which completely elminates the need for 3rd-party antivirus and antispyware software. That alone in my opinion is worth the price of admission if you're a consumer considering taking the plunge.

It is also worth mentioning that by continuing to run XP, you run the risk of eventually being abandoned by software and hardware/device vendors with future patches and updates. Currently, the most current and standards compliant web browser you can run on XP is Google Chrome, and it's questionable as to how long the company is going to support browser builds on XP. There's also Firefox, but again, it's an Open Source project that is going to have to make its development priorities based on limited resources and targeting the most popular OS platforms.

Additionally, if you're one of those folks or small businesses that finds themselves having to re-fresh the OS once every year or so due to some random malware infection or some other software or hardware failure (cheap PC commodity hard disks, anyone?) you've probably noticed by now that re-installing a Windows XP system and getting it up to current patch levels with all the required device drivers is an exercise that essentially throws your entire day in the toilet. 

That is, unless you've purchased some kind of bare metal back up and restore system like Acronis, or you're an enterprise environment that has maintained XP master images and uses Windows Deployment Services (WDS) or some other integrated workstation build and patch managment solution.

Which, by the way, is a huge investment in time and energy to continue to maintain legacy OSes like XP with. Ask any desktop support person in any IT support organization, they hate it, and they hate you for continuing for make them do it. 

So if you're an enterprise and have put off your Windows 7 deployments, you're just asking for more pain and continuing your exposure. Do you feel lucky? Well do ya?

If you still have concerns about upgrading, here's a simple decision matrix. 

• If you're a consumer currently using Windows 7, the need to upgrade is far less than if you are a Windows XP or a Vista user, but you'll enjoy the benefits of several years of performance enhancements and bug fixes, being able to eliminate your existing antimalware suite in favor of a much more integrated solution, as well as enjoy the new Windows Store apps and integrated cloud services. This is even more of a no-brainer if you purchased your PC as of June of this year, in which case you're either eligible for a free upgrade from your OEM or it will cost you a whole $14. 

• If you bought a Windows Vista system (or you "Downgraded" from Vista to XP) and passed on Windows 7, it's time to move on. Get the $40 cheap upgrade download from Microsoft. You'll be happier for it.

• If you bought an XP system that was just on the cusp of the Windows Vista upgrade in 2008, and you passed on Vista and Windows 7, by the same token, move on, and get the cheap upgrade.

• If you've got an XP system that was purchased between 2001 and 2006, then you probably should be considering replacing the computer. I realize there are people out there that are hesitant to spend any kind of money on computer equipment given the economy, such as older folks with fixed incomes, but PC prices are cheaper than ever these days. 

You could always breathe life into your old clunker with Linux, but if we're talking learning curves, Linux isn't even on the same planet as Windows 8 if you've grown accustomed to using Microsoft OSes. If you really think that the Windows 8 Start Menu is going to give you fits, then don't even try Ubuntu. Good luck getting all your favorite Windows applications to work in that too, especially without virtualization technology.

Are you going to stick with XP and assume the risks, or are you going to take the Windows 8 plunge? Talk Back and Let Me Know.