[LINK] Win XP to Win 7

[Greg Taylor]

On Fri, 31 Jul 2009 06:33:56 +1000, Stilgherrian wrote:
> On 31/07/2009, at 12:27 AM, Greg Taylor wrote:
>> As for data files (photos, videos, music, documents etc.) surely
>> most users would have those on separate partitions/drives anyway.
>> The days of storing everything (even programs) on C drive are
>> long gone.
>>
>
> If by "most users" you mean "most users who are IT professionals
> with sufficient experience to know what a 'partition' or 'drive'
> is", then perhaps your comment might approach the trust [truth].
>
> No, "most user", as in "the majority of people who use a computer",
> store things in  whatever default location the file gets saved in
> when they are confronted with a dialog with a button marked "OK" in
> whatever application they're using at the time.
> ...

Maybe so, maybe not. The original proposition was "It appears that the end of the dominance of Microsoft Windows, in favour of OS source [presumably meaning open source] operating systems, may date from October the 22nd this year", on the basis of an article that suggested that it was too hard to upgrade from XP. The demise of Windows has been predicted since Adam was an ankle-biter, but I can't see it happening anytime soon, for a variety of reasons:

- many (most?) users of XP are in a work environment where the IT dept will have implemented policies such that data location is transparent.
- many home users will have Vista because that was what they were sold.
- many home users have become wiser about data storage and backup owing to the availability of cheap disk drives, memory sticks and USB drives, even home NAS. They may not be knowledgable about partitions, but they know about drives other than C.
- many home users will simply take their XP machine to the nearest computer shop and have them upgrade it to Win7.
- many home users will continue using XP till they need a new computer, and then they have to deal with data preservation anyway.
- many home users are becoming better educated about computers than they once were, even if only because their kids are.
- any small remainder (if any) will not change to open source anyway because that's a much harder proposition (and the data management issues still exist).

So I reckon the original proposition is bunk.

Greg