End of the Road for this Road Warrior: Hanging up my hat on giga-pig Windows 7
Windows 7: Microsoft’s Latest Catch-22
My trusty old laptop that I have dragged all around the world for the last few years was finally due for an upgrade. Microsoft has come out with a new version of Windows, so I thought I would reward the old typewriter with some new internals.
Wanting only the best for my baby, I sprung for Windows 7 Ultimate – which is, as the name suggests, the ultimate version with all the whistles, bells, lights and siren. The MSRP on that is (or was) $319.99. I think reception for this program has been rather chilly, because it isn’t selling anywhere near that price anymore.
Anyway, I was excited that Microsoft promised (red flag!) that this time an upgrade would be easy! (Yeah, we’ve heard that before.) But I had the full version of Vista (Microsoft’s most recent blunder) and I was assured that anyone with Vista would have a seamless upgrade experience. That was good news, because when I tried the “seamless” upgrade three years ago from XP, the net result was everything on my hard drive was toast.
This time, my laptop met all the requirements, I slid in the installation disk and pushed the button.
After a lot of preliminary steps, whirring disc drives, and checking and double-checking of the validity of my copy of Windows, I got the inevitable error message. Windows 7 could not be installed on my computer because this pig needs more than 16 gigabytes of free space!
Good grief! That would mean I would have to kill 6 gigabytes of stuff already on my computer to make room for it. Admittedly, a 60 GB hard drive isn’t a lot, but when I bought my laptop a few years ago, it certainly was.
So what is taking up all the space on my computer? Wouldn’t you know: It is bloated, over-written programs from MICROSOFT! Vista Business, Office 2007, Works, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Media Player, Movie Maker, blah, blah.
Hoisted again on Microsoft’s petard. I must say, however, that I am absolutely madly in love with my new MacBook Pro.
Jerry Garrett
January 23, 2010 (Happy Birthday, May!)