Ask Microsoft: Will you consider fixing the most fundamental issue with Windows? | Hacker News Reader

Ask Microsoft: Will you consider fixing the most fundamental issue with Windows?

6 pointsrebootthesystem9 comments

We have dozens of PC's in need of OS upgrades from 64 bit Vista. Why? Because that was our last upgrade cycle and migrating hardware with Windowns is, well, you avoid it for as long as you can.

Windows has always made this a painful experience. Our machines take several weeks to build. You have to install, configure and license dozens of applications and take a couple of weeks to make sure all is well before replacing old machines.

Why is this the case?

Because the underlying design of Windows OS does not create a separation between OS and apps.

If "C:\Program Files" could actually be an independent entity (the "P:" drive?), upgrading hardware and OS would be child's play. Buy new pre-built computers, move the P drive over and you are up and running. Your employees could even have machines at home and be given a drive with all the apps installed to work from home. It would be fantastic. Licensing could be dealth with through some TBD mechanism.

There are tens of millions of machines in the world that are not being updated because of this problem. Companies with thousands of workstations just can't deal with the painful realities of having to reinstall applications.

This business of OS and hardware upgrades requiring full from-scratch application re-installations is, well, getting old.

Why do we have to reinstall applications such as Notepad++ or our JetBrains tools? Why do we have to reinstall any application at all?

Simple app migration as described above would see PC and OS sales would go through the roof.

Today we are contemplating migrating to W10 on new hardware. It will be a costly nightmare. And we will be stuck with this hardware for many years. If it weren't for this we would probably migrate hardware every 2 years rather than when absolutely forced to do so, as it is starting to be the case now with some of our software.

Think about it. The status quo makes no sense. Not in the context of the next generation in computing.

The thing about Windows is that each app has registry settings and installs some system files. You can't just move apps to a P: drive and then move them to another machine.

It used to be that way with DOS, each app was in a different directory and you could copy all of the files to a different machine, or just stick a floppy disk in the floppy drive and run it.

Upgrading from Vista is hard because Microsoft doesn't support Vista going to 10. You'd have to get a Windows 7 upgrade DVD and then update it to the point it gives you an option to upgrade to Windows 10.

I'd like to see more tools like Ninite: https://ninite.com/

It can install Notepad ++ but I don't think they added Jetbrain to it yet.

You find the same problem with GNU/Linux where each app installs library files and then text files for configuration.

Windows still suffers from DLL Hell where different DLL files conflict between installed apps. You have to place the DLL files in the same directory as the program to get around that.

Well, I am asking that they consider fixing this problem. They have lots of smart people working for them. It ought not be to difficult to wake up one day to Windows 15 that makes hardware migration an easy decision every couple of years. It would have a huge impact on the hardware ecosystem.

I think Microsoft did this stuff on purpose to force people to keep buying new Windows versions and reinstall all the apps or buy new apps when the old apps don't work.

Microsoft made billions in bundling software apps with Windows including Internet Explorer, Media Player, and others and even including a MS-Office license.

Your best bet is to find a way to make an app a stand alone app that runs from a USB external hard drive or something. http://portableapps.com/ http://www.howtogeek.com/186132/how-to-create-portable-versi...

> Upgrading from Vista is hard because Microsoft doesn't support Vista going to 10. You'd have to get a Windows 7 upgrade DVD and then update it to the point it gives you an option to upgrade to Windows 10.

This is scary at so many levels. I'd have no problem doing this with home machines but doing that to stable Vista machines used to develop product every day is just unthinkable.

Also, remember that part of the goal is to also migrate to new hardware. New drives, memory, motherboard, etc.

I want the OS to provide services to my apps. The model should be that of providing services to clients. The services stay the same as the OS deals with version and hardware transitions.

There's no justifiable reason to have to reinstall the vast majority of apps today. Simple examples are apps such as Notepad++ or Java based stuff like JetBrains. You should be able to move all of that over instantly with licensing managed in some sensible way.

My vision of that future is that I carry my apps and data in a small 1 TB solid state memory drive with a suitable high speed interface and any machine fast enough and with the right hardware should provide OS services to run my apps. Maybe the vision is "OS as an appliance". I should be able to come to your office and run my apps on any of your qualifying machines inside of a second. When it comes to my own machines, the apps could reside on internal storage yet be easily movable to new hardware as needed.

The OS holding me hostage to my hardware simply makes no sense at this stage. These are solvable problems.

Yeah this was always a problem with Windows. I remember converting Windows 95 machines to machines that ran Windows 2000 Pro in one of my past jobs.

I programmed in Visual BASIC and used API calls and many of them changed.

I wrote ASP based web apps and the newer IE version broke compatibility with some of our OCX controls we licensed.

Microsoft Dotnet changed things, Visual BASIC changed with some mods from Java/C++ like on error goto was replaced with try and catch etc.

Windows 10 is supposed to be the last version of Windows, but never say never they might make a 10.1 or something.

You can add that in as a suggestion to Microsoft: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/preview-updates-f...

You should look into app management solutions.

~10 years ago we managed apps on Windows machines using Novell ZENWorks. I'm sure there are still options, probably even first party Microsoft options.

This means you don't have to spend weeks building a machine. You have a base image and then app profiles/packages.

I guess my point is that the OS should get out of the way and let me own my apps and hardware. There's no good reason to impose such restrictions. These problems can be solved and, if they are, they would reinvigorate the industry and push computing forward in many ways. Now your apps can be on your key-chain and you can run them on any machine by just plugging in.

> Because the underlying design of Windows OS does not create a separation between OS and apps.

This is not the problem. In Linux you don't have this distinction either, but somehow it's not PITA.

> Simple app migration as described above would see PC and OS sales would go through the roof.

False.

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