Microsoft's Windows 7, as viewed by the Mac faithful

What is it about operating system launches that get computer geeks so
riled up? Judging from the early reviews, at least, Microsoft’s Windows
7 appears headed for a successful debut — promising to erase from our
collective memory all those problems we had just getting our printers
to work with Vista.

But rather than waiting for Oct. 22 to try Windows 7 and judge for
themselves, some of the popular Apple enthusiast blogs are taking a
hard line and looking for every opportunity to declare Microsoft’s new
OS a disaster even before it hits store shelves.

Last week Mac Daily News picked apart a favorable but evenhanded Windows 7 review by the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg. And today Mac Observer is spotlighting a Microsoft video tutorial that explains how to upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7.

“We’ll be honest, it could take a couple hours,” concedes Kellie
Eickmeyer, a Windows senior program manager, at the outset of the video.

The problem, as we’ve documented in the past,
is that the upgrade from Windows XP requires a clean install, backing
up data and applications and then reinstalling them after Windows 7 is
on the machine. The shift from the newer Windows Vista to Windows 7 can
be done “in place,” sidestepping that hassle.

As Mossberg pointed out in his WSJ review last week, “It’s tedious
and painful to upgrade an existing computer from XP to 7, and the
variety of editions in which Windows 7 is offered is confusing.”

But at least Microsoft is being up front about it. And don’t forget
that Windows XP is almost 8 years old. Given the underlying changes in
computers since then, some level of difficulty is to be expected.

Yes, it’s Microsoft’s fault that so many people are still using the
ancient operating system. Many of them are terrified about upgrading to
Vista, given all the problems the OS has experienced with device and
application compatibility. Apple, in contrast, deserves credit for
steady advances and regular releases of Mac OS X.

But we’d challenge even the most expert Mac user to make the upgrade
to Snow Leopard from Mac OS X 10.1 “Puma” — released around the same
time as Windows XP — in less than two hours.

Oh wait, that’s right, Puma ran on PowerPC machines, and Snow
Leopard requires Intel processors. In other words, we’d challenge the
most expert Mac user to make that upgrade at all.

Read more of Todd Bishop’s posts at TechFlash.com, and follow him on Twitter @toddbishop