"The Great Windows 95 Trade-In Program"

Oh man, Richard Childress nailed it.

We should let people walk into their nearest Comp-U-Buy with their copy of any flavor of Win9x and give them a copy of Windows XP SP2 for free. And, if they happen to need a beefier computer to run XP, and they trade in a copy of Win9x at the time, we should take the cost of the OS off the price of the computer.

Not only do we get rid of a significant portion of Win9x in the world, reducing our support costs, but we get XPSP2 into more hands, stimulate PC purchasing and reduce the number of versions of Windows that ISVs have to support. Of course, we eat it on the price of XP itself, but I bet the savings in support would make up for it.

Who else thinks that Richard Childress is absolutely right?!? Let's hear it!

That's just insane.

I bought Windows XP. What do I get? A free copy of Longhorn?

And are you totally insane? Have you ever worked in tech support? "My printer/scanner/copier/1541a/video/sound/modem doesn't work under XP" would be compounded with 1995 hardware.

By giving something away for free, you imply it has no value worth paying for.

Hmmm... 100% of the respondants so far disagree with me on what a great idea Rich had. That doesn't bode well...

Go for it. For the security improvements, it would be worth it. Any incentive to upgrade is a great idea.

That'd be awesome.

From a "I want to use the tools available" developer point of view. Who wants to support IE 4 or 5? Is the .NET Framework installed by default yet? Can I do more Smart Clients yet?

Yes, gain some customer love and do it. Please.

Wow...a great idea, if only simply to give people a really easy way to minimize system instability, weird and totally ununderstandable error messages, and security problems.

The problem is that upgrading the OS on any computer is VERY hard, and will give a lot of support problems. I always tell my friends that are not in IT, to NEVER upgrade the OS on there PC (apart from service packs) and to wait until they buy a new PC to use the new OS.

I like the ideal of being able to trade in my old OS (OEM versions) when I buy a new computer. Often I find that people do not have the CD for all there applications, (they got binned with the box the PC came in), therefore they can not afford to upgrade to a new PC (with new OS) due to the cost of Office.

It about time that there was a CHEEP (£50) version of Office for home usage.
Only able to read documents from local disk. (.e.g not network servers)
            Only able to run on a PC that is not part of a domain.
            Can Read/Update 100% of the documents that the full version of office can produce.
Think of how quicker this would get home users choosing LongHorn!

After all most people already have a licence copy of Office on there work PC, but if they are force to use something cheep at some, they may decide that it is good enough for work usage as well!

Most all the users files onto there new PC is not easy, there needs to be an easy (FREE) way to transfer (and find!) all thier data. What about including something like “LapLink” with windows XP, and provide the client for all other versions of windows on a floppy disk?

Please don't! It seems disrespectful to customers who upgrade their OS every time Microsoft releases a new one and they have to pay good money for it. I know I would feel at least a bit offended. A better alternative could be to give an (extensive) discount on the Windows XP Upgrade and use some more money on advertising and explaining the advantages of XP (and yes, why not, SP2) over the "legacy OS'es".

It marginalizes the value for everyone that paid for it, and it rewards behaviour that isn't necessarily desirable, while effectively penalizing/taxing the people that actually upgrade regularly.

It would do a disservice to everyone who sees the value of the OS and is willing to pay for it.

Perhaps the evangelists need to spend more time articulating the value of the current OS and not simply trying to give it away.

"You gets what you pays for".

"It marginalizes the value for everyone that paid for it"

Eh, no it doesn't. Thanks to product activation, your copy of Windows XP has *zero* resale value.

"and it rewards behaviour that isn't necessarily desirable, while effectively penalizing/taxing the people that actually upgrade regularly."

You mean being careful with one's money isn't desirable? And how does someone else getting something for free "penalize" or "tax" you in any way - other than agitating your envy, that is?

Your argument is a complete non-starter from an economics viewpoint.

As for the issue at hand, getting people to upgrade to Windows XP, I myself happily remain a Windows 2000 user, and have no intention of *upgrading* to either XP or Longhorn when/if it ever makes it out of the vaporware stage, for the simple reason that I find Product Activation an unbearable restriction. The only way I'll be moving to Microsoft's new operating system is if I am either given it for free, or have it forced down my throat as part of a PC purchase, though hopefully I've seen the end of the latter tactic, as I prefer to build my own machines from scratch. Product Activation is a lousy, customer-hating idea that is all about a monopolist extracting a greater share of the consumer surplus for itself, and I see no reason to waste my money on crippleware that requires me to report to Microsoft every time I feel the need to make significant changes to my hardware.

If you're using a nearly 10 year old operating system, you don't want change - you fear change. Real, palpable fear... You may have seen these people - they flinch and cringe every time they push a button. They constantly curse at the screen and automatically assume everything's completely hosed every 3 minutes. They have the money to upgrade, oh yes they do, in fact they had oodles more money than your broke butt had during the dotbomb, but that won't make them buy a new computer. They have to have their current one because getting anything new would mean changing *something* and that requires cracking open a book and Friends is on. Doesn't matter if it's a re-run, it's on and it's more interesting than cracking open a book or (dear god..) opening up the program's help features. Friends is on and then it's Everyone Loves Raymond - I don't have time. No thank-you Mr. Computer-guy. I'll keep my computer just the way it is - thank-you very much!

Yes, yes, yes! This would mean the end of the old "my crotchety/cheapskate relative has Windows 95 and screwed something up and now I have to help them out."

Thank God for Remote Assistance!

Dead on brilliant from my point of view. I've still got my original 95 disc and a number of 98's since I rarely throw out software. I've still got original DOS 5.0 upgrade disks and a binder filled with Microsoft OS/2 stuff in a box in my basement... This serves two purposes: regaining storage space and saving cash.

Maybe they could take 25 AOL discs per SP2 disc in trade too? :)

The folks that are still running 9x are not going to upgrade. If they haven't by now, they won't. That said, I think it's in everyone's best interest to take 9x away from as many people as possible.

* 'You'll offend the people that buy windows'

 Do you know what the ratio of people that buy the upgrade to people who just get it on a new pc? Not even close.

 Doesn't offend me, I see the value so I don't have a problem paying $$$. These people obviously don't see the value, show them in a meaningful way.

 As a software developer, I'd like to see 9x go away and more dotnet 1.1 clients come online.

* 'People won't do it, 'cause blah blah blah'

Okay so a $450 PC becomes a $400 PC. Almost a 10% discount. Believe it or not, this makes a difference to alot of people.

New PCs get sold to people who otherwise might not have bought one and said people get to a great chance to see where we are today as opposed to (geez) 9 years ago.

9x is like the 'screendoor on the submarine' at this point, I think it would be in EVERYONE's best interest (customer, pc retailer, pc manufacturer, software vendor, entire computing population) to see this OS just go away.

- rc

Start an AOL marketing campaign, that would have Windows XP marketing and also all the service packs that are currently available for Windows OS

Should car dealerships offer endless warrenties and let you trade in old cars for new ones even up so they don't have to pay maintenance?

Just cut the cord on support, they don't need it anymore anyway since they have had that computer running for 9 years as it is.

I love the idea on the surface, but I agree with the other comments about the pain of upgrading 9 year old hardware with the latest OS. That could get ugly. I just spend 4 hours on the phone with my computer-illiterate dad trying to remove all the spyware he accumalated on his Win98 machine. I would love to tell him to upgrade to XP SP2, but I know his hardware just wouldn't handle it. And why should he buy a new computer just to do email and occasional web browsing?

I do think it is important for Microsoft to get XP SP2 out there however they can. I definitely think they should mass mail SP2 CDs (just the service pack, you still need to have XP) to EVERYONE, like an AOL disc. At least let people sign up online to have it mailed to them at no charge (not even shipping).

Damn it! Now I know why so many people are choosing LINUX, given the other alternatives. Could it be that we're actually driving them to LINUX, and one of the free versions of an Office-like software suite?

No way!

The support costs of mom and dad trying to install Windows XP over their Win95 install would probably be greater than the Win95 support calls. There's a reason why most users only upgrade their OS when they get a new machine. It's hard to get it setup correctly. Not to mention that some of the hardware is probably not even WinXP compatible.

Chris,

how about not giving it away for free to everyone, but giving it to isvs so they can ship an update from 9.x to xp sp2 with their apps.

people might have an incentive in this case to actually update.

WM_MY0.02§

Well, as far as improving security and decreasing tech costs later and, oh yeah, promoting newer versions of software, it is a great idea. And frankly, I don't think the long run cost to Microsoft should be that bad. After all, Windows is not the only thing they make; this may promote upgrades.

The biggest problem is what some of the other comments already say. Getting it installed on an old computer is well... basically impossible. Nothing with even 98 on it has usually is up to spec for XP. So you are looking at the mentioned trade-ins. A fair deal for the consumer, and still not too bad of an idea. Good for the undustry, and the consumer in the short term. The down side is it makes a bunch of still useful hardware "obsolete" (but only because of XP's insane hardware requirements - many, though not all, of those machines would make reasonable non-gaming systems with, say, oh, Linux on them; memory is the big sticking point). Economically that is good, but environmentally it could be a disaster - nobody is going to recycle all those old computers, and computers make a mess in landfills (businesses may recycle, but we are talking average consumers). It would be nice if OS vendors (okay, a certain OS vendor, since really there is only one) could improve hardware requirements to prevent that problem in the future. Too late for this round, but in the future, please!

And I even happen to know people who do not update to XP just because they do not like the default blue-luna look and the default effects and folder settings. Even after I show them how similar it is to win2k when toggling all the "bloat" off, they go on to say how win2k is so much faster with their less than 1 GB of memory (which is true atleast with less than 512 MB of memory).

I don't think this type of people is going to update whether they get it free or not.

although I'd never go back to it after falling in love with WinXP, Win2K is a real operating system and if folks like it, that's fine by me. Win9x, on the other hand, is DOS and needs to die, die, die.