In reply to a post by Pipexer:

There seems to be a very "applications-centric" mindset going on here

That's what computers are for.

OS's are just a necessary overhead.

In reply to a post by MHC:

READ THE POST. An application not running on Win8 is a good enough problem. £320,000 to fix the problem is a real issue.

Is this hypothetical or real world?

What are you on about?

Yes, but I refer you to what I said immediately after that......

Not particularly relevant.

As MHC said, if a needed application, in use on a large number of machines, won't run on a new OS then the cost of upgrading may be prohibitive. And that's the real world.

Computer systems should be driven by applications, not by OS's.

In reply to a post by MHC:

What are you on about?

Your "£320,000 to upgrade applications to work on Windows 8 yet they run perfectly fine in Windows 7" comment. Did you just imagine this figure and use it as a reason to stick with Windows 7 or do you actually know of an organization or business with this dilemma.

Even if this is true, then as an anecdote it proves nothing, for example has this business contacted Microsoft to see if an application shim can be created to make it run, heck Microsoft might even release a hotfix if this business is a big customer of Microsoft. How much is this application earning the business? If it is earning them billions of pounds, then £320,000 isn't very expensive.

Like I say I think we've got into hypothetical land with this. Surely most home users just want to create documents and browse the web, Windows 8 doesn't have compatibility issues with that as far as I know.

Of course it is relevant, it is part and parcel of computing. The operating system is a key player in the ecosystem, and we don't live in a world where the operating system never needs to be updated and all we need to worry about is applications. If this wasn't important, then there wouldn't be a massive scramble going on by many of enterprises right now to get their systems off XP and move them to Windows 7 and 8.

Since we are on about real world can you give me a real world example of a line of business application that works fine on Windows 7 not working on Windows 8... at the moment this seems to just be a hypothetical application... There is not going to be many out there.

Edited by Pipexer (Thu 02-May-13 23:10:35)

Yes eventually some computers will have to be upgraded away from XP, but not because of network management issues. They either use VNC or just walk 10-20 metres.

Functionality and useabilty is far more important, then out right performance.
A formula 1 car is fast, but cant transport a suitcase or shopping.

You are in an unfortunate situation and I can sympathize ... getting away from XP definitely introduces some costs. My point in this thread is not XP -> Windows 8 but Windows 7 -> Windows 8.

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

Since we are on about real world can you give me a real world example of a line of business application that works fine on Windows 7 not working on Windows 8

Not really... I retired from that lark about 10 years ago, and at home I use Macs

But whether it's MS or Apple the same principle applies.

I stuck with OS X 10.6 long after Apple introduced 10.7 because they dropped Rosetta support, and I had some PPC apps that worked fine and I didn't want to have to buy (and get used to) newer Intel versions.

I still miss one of them... even it was only Solitaire

Edited by billford (Thu 02-May-13 23:25:54)