Beyond Binary

There's a bit of a tempest in a teapot brewing over what one can and can't do with a Windows 7 upgrade disk.

My hope with this post is to help things simmer down as opposed to boiling over, but we'll see. So here goes.

The upgrade version of Windows 7 (as opposed to the higher-price full version) lets one move from any properly licensed version of Windows XP or Windows Vista to Windows 7 on that same computer. Only certain of these upgrades, however, can be done as a simple update--what Microsoft calls an "in-place upgrade." Users moving from Windows XP, switching from 32-bit to 64-bit versions, or moving from a higher-end version of Vista to a lower-end version of Windows 7 can use an upgrade disc but will have to do a more cumbersome upgrade, known as a custom, or "clean," installation.

The difference between an in-place upgrade and a "clean" installation, in this instance, means backing up one's data, installing Windows 7, restoring the data, and reinstalling all Windows programs. Windows 7 upgrade disks can be used to do this clean installation and will recognize the previously installed version of Windows. So if you don't have any previously installed Windows on the machine, you will want to get yourself a full copy of Windows 7.

While it might be technically possible to use the upgrade disks to do an installation of Windows 7 without a previous version, doing so, as Microsoft points out, is not properly licensed.

Some of the confusion has come after enthusiasts noted a way to get an upgrade disc to install on a fully erased hard drive.

Again, the main issue here is whether one is properly licensed to do so. If you have a licensed copy of Windows XP or Vista for that computer, you are good to go, and Microsoft technical support should be able to help you activate that machine. If not, you may be able to get it to install, but you could well run into technical or legal hurdles.

I think that ZDNet blogger Ed Bott put it well in his post on this topic:

The answer is really simple. If you qualify for an upgrade license, then yes, you can use any number of work-arounds to install the operating system legally. If you don't qualify for an upgrade license, then those same workarounds might technically succeed, but your license is not valid.

Will you get away with it? Probably. But if you're running a business, you run the risk that an employee will turn you in to the Business Software Alliance, which could lead to an audit, civil charges, and eventually some stiff penalties.

It should also be pointed out that beta test and pre-release versions of Windows don't count as a previously licensed version of Windows, but if you have the RC installed over a previous version, for example, you can do a custom upgrade rather than having to reinstall XP or Vista before installing 7. (The upgrade version can detect the previous versions used before Windows 7.)

Nor is it allowed to count the version of Windows that came installed on a previously bought PC, if that's not the machine you're upgrading. (Retail boxed copies can be transferred from one machine to another; ones that came pre-installed on the PC are licensed only for that machine.)

This is also relevant to Mac users who want to run Windows 7 on their machines. Such users also need to have a previously licensed full copy of Windows to properly qualify for upgrade pricing, whether they are using Windows in Boot Camp or using a virtualization product like Parallels or VMWare's Fusion.

I hope that this overview helps more than it adds to the confusion. Either way, please let me know.

Microsoft appears to be getting relatively strong early adoption of Windows 7 in the 10 days since its official launch.

According to Net Applications, more than 3 percent of PCs accessing the Web in the past two days have been doing so using the new operating system. Usage of the operating system has been growing strong in recent days, though Windows 7 already accounted for 2 percent of global Web traffic in the days ahead of its formal launch.

"The early adoption of Windows 7 looks very strong, and I don't believe Vista enjoyed the same early success," said Vince Vizzaccaro, an executive vice president at Net Applications. "Plus, we've seen surges the past two weekend days, and Windows has historically seen much higher usage market share on weekdays than on weekends."

However, weekends tend to see stronger usage by consumers. And consumers are more likely to move quickly to a new version of Windows than businesses, which tend to do extensive testing before adopting a new operating system.

The news is not all positive for Microsoft, though. As a whole, the Mac OS continues to gain on Windows. As of October, Windows had 92.5 percent of the worldwide operating system market, but Mac OS reached 5.27 percent, up from 5.12 percent in September. (Past numbers from Net Applications showed the Mac OS with significantly higher market share, though the market research firm says it has changed its methodology to better reflect the relative traffic of the countries from which it is getting data.)

Apple's recent anti-Windows 7 advertising has touted that if users are going to upgrade their Windows XP machines and have to transfer their data anyway, they might as well move to a Mac. Vizzaccaro said the early numbers suggest that the Mac might indeed be benefiting from such a trend but said it is too early to know for sure.

"We'll know much more in the months ahead," he said.

NEW YORK--If consumers like the new Windows 7 operating system, they'll have the much-maligned Windows Vista to thank.

In part, that's because Windows 7 actually builds on the under-the-hood changes that came with Vista. But, it also turns out that the vast headaches created by Vista were just what the PC industry needed to improve their cooperation.

With consumers lukewarm to Vista and many businesses shunning it entirely, both Microsoft and the computer makers realized that the standard way of business just wasn't cutting it, particularly with Apple coming on strong.

Windows 7's 'XP Mode' is among the features that evolved from close communications between Redmond and the PC makers.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Redmond, in particular, was humbled by the response to Vista. When it came time to planning the next version, newly installed Windows development chief Steven Sinofsky took the company's earliest ideas and met with PC makers.

That marked a huge change from past releases, where, as some PC makers described it, Microsoft would just develop windows in secret and then "throw it over the wall."

"Until Vista, Microsoft was fully thinking on their own and implementing their own ideas and then releasing it," said Gianpiero Morbello, a vice president for Taiwanese PC maker Acer.

This time around, though, Microsoft shared its earliest plans, sought input, and held regular meetings with the PC makers. In addition, it dedicated engineering teams to work with each of the biggest computer makers to help them work through any issues specific to their designs.

The result, which goes on sale Thursday, is Windows 7. Although its changes are more modest than those made in Windows Vista, the product has been both on time and well received by testers and reviewers alike. Close cooperation with the PC makers has resulted in a product that adds few blockbuster features but is roundly praised for making everyday computing tasks simpler and more elegant.

Many of the new features, such as support for iPhone-style touch interfaces, have been heavily influenced by the work with PC manufacturers. Among the first things Sinofsky did upon taking the reins of Windows development in 2006 was to study what happened to Windows when the bits left Redmond and made their way onto new PCs.

When finally asked for their early input, computer makers were not shy with their ideas for how Microsoft could do better. Indeed, the computer makers' fingerprints can be found all over the product from the way it supports touch input to which features are included in which versions of the product.

"I think I was hated in Redmond," said Sony senior manager Xavier Lauwaert. "I just spoke out every time."

Among the changes that came directly from the computer makers was the about-face that Microsoft did with regards to Windows 7 Starter--the entry-level version of the product aimed primarily at Netbooks. Initially, Microsoft wanted to impose a limit of three open applications at a time, in part to distinguish the version from higher-end editions.

PC makers complained loudly that the restriction was too onerous--and might tempt consumers to stick with the older and less secure Windows XP. Microsoft eventually relented and, though it has maintained other limitations, Netbooks with Windows 7 Starter can run as many applications as their limited memory will allow.

Another feature that grew out of discussions with computer makers and business customers is the addition of an "XP Mode"--an option that allows Windows 7 users to run a free, virtualized copy of Windows XP to run older applications that aren't compatible with newer operating systems. In some cases, one incompatible program was keeping businesses from even considering a move off Windows XP.

Phil Osako, director of product marketing for Toshiba's PC unit, said there may be some businesses that never even use the virtualization option, but will be more comfortable moving by knowing that they have the virtualization option to fall back to should they encounter problems.

Tami Reller, the VP in charge of the business side of Windows, said that Microsoft's now-bendable ear really is a different way of doing business. "We have become very good listeners over the past several years," Reller said. "We are imperfect human beings, but we have become very good listeners."

Phil McKinney, CTO of Hewlett-Packard's PC unit, filled in for his boss at one of Microsoft's regular meetings with computer makers in 2007.

"I walked out of there going 'This is a different Microsoft. This is a different relationship," he said.

McKinney noted that Microsoft's initial overtures to the computer makers were met with a fair bit of skepticism. "Is this legit or is this just trying to appease frustration," McKinney recalls thinking. "It quickly proved out that Microsoft was serious."

That said, McKinney noted that neither HP nor the other PC makers got exactly what they wanted. "It wasn't like Microsoft just sat there and took up every piece of feedback," he said. "There was give and take."

Microsoft also had harsh messages for the PC companies. The vast amounts of preinstalled software that they were shipping on consumer machines, so-called "crapware" were slowing down systems and hurting the PC's image.

The computer makers and Microsoft began looking at each piece of software, whether it came from the PC manufacturers or a third party, and measuring its impact on the system. Those that were bogging things down were told to fix their software or else got pulled from new PCs.

The result is that Windows 7, in many cases, can boot up more quickly and go in and out of sleep in a matter of seconds. Consumers will also notice they get systems that are a lot less cluttered, in some cases with nothing more than a recycle bin on their desktop when they first boot their PC.

Another big influence was Apple's recent success and, in particular, the benefits it was getting by linking its software and hardware.

"I think there was a recognition by PC (makers) and Microsoft that, for the best experience, the software and the hardware really need to work hand and hand," Osako said.

At its best, McKinney said that things felt more like a hardware and software division working together than it did a collaboration between different companies.

There are still examples of Microsoft and PC makers each deciding they can do things better. Even though Microsoft has a new taskbar, for example, Dell is carrying over the dock it built to help launch Vista applications. The result is that some PCs still feature multiple interfaces, each trying to accomplish a similar tasik.

Microsoft, too, still has room for improvement, PC makers said. Acer's Morbello noted that Microsoft is trying to transform itself from a nearly "obsolete" engineering-driven approach that adds features simply because they are possible to one that focuses on what customers actually want.

"These changes are a transformation of the company," Morbello said.

The task is critical for Microsoft, which depends on Windows for a huge chunk of both sales and profits. At the high end, it faces never-ending challenges from Apple, which now has significantly more resources to invest in the Mac. At the low-end, meanwhile, Google is preparing its Chrome OS, which makes the case that people really just need a fast and efficient browsing experience to handle most computing tasks.

For her part, Reller promised that Microsoft plans to continue seeking PC makers' input as it builds the successor to Windows 7.

"This is the new Windows," Reller said.

Photos: Windows 7 launches in New York

Although Windows 7 has been praised for loading and shutting down faster than prior versions of Windows, one software company says that, in many cases, the new operating system can take longer to get started than Windows Vista.

Iolo Technlogies, which sells PC tune-up software, said its lab unit found that a brand-new machine running Windows 7 takes a minute and 34 seconds to become usable, as compared to a minute and 6 seconds for Windows Vista. Iolo notes that it measured not the time it takes for the desktop to appear--which can be as little as 40 seconds on a fresh installation of Windows 7--but rather the time it takes to become fully usable "with CPU cycles no longer significantly high and a true idle state achieved."

The results are also fairly similar to what CNET found in its testing of the operating system. A Microsoft representative was not immediately able to comment on Iolo's findings.

Iolo plans to release more details on its findings and methodology next week. Although it remains to be seen just how it reached its conclusion, the report is clearly not good news for an operating system whose primary selling point is doing the basics better than past versions of Windows.

I will say that for my part, I have been using Windows 7 for months now and find myself rarely doing a full reboot and instead going in and out of sleep for days at a time--a process that moves particularly quickly.

As is often the case with Windows, Iolo found that things only get worse over time. It found that a three-month-old machine can take up to a minute longer to boot, or 2 minutes and 34 seconds. Windows 7 did outperform Vista at the three-month and six-month marks, Iolo said, but it generally "trailed the older version significantly" in its boot-up tests.

I plan to follow up on this on Monday, when more details about Iolo's conclusions--and how they were reached--become available.

Updated at 7:20 p.m. PDT: On the plus side, Wall Street Journal reviewer Walt Mossberg is out with his review of Windows 7 and gives it high marks, saying Microsoft now gives Apple a run for its money.

Dell has come up with a novel way to allow customers to pre-order machines with Windows 7.

Under its Windows 7 Free and Easy program, launched on Monday, customers can order a Windows Vista machine now, but elect to have Dell upgrade the PC to Windows 7 before it ships the computer. As a result, customers can order now and get their machine right around the time Windows 7 ships.

It's kind of the reverse of programs that PC makers did after XP could no longer be sold on most new PCs. In that case, computer makers, including Dell, allowed users to order Vista machines that were pre-downgraded to Windows XP.

Dell's latest offer is more about convenience than price. For some time now, those who buy a Vista machine with Home Premium or above have been eligible for a free upgrade to Windows 7. However, that requires a user to sign up and upgrade the machines themselves. The Dell program eliminates that step.

Of course, one could also just wait until October 22 and just get a Windows 7 machine without the semantics. But who likes to wait?

(Credit: CNET News)

Ruston Panabaker, Microsoft's principal program manager of strategic silicon partnering, shows how later builds of Windows 7 were able to let the processor enter low-power states for longer periods of time, saving more power.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

SAN FRANCISCO--Upgrading a newer machine from Windows Vista to Windows 7 might mean that you get to see the last few minutes of that DVD on a long flight.

At a demo on Tuesday, Microsoft showed two identical laptops playing the same DVD, with the Windows 7-equipped notebook getting 20 percent better battery life than one running Windows Vista. In general, users can expect newer systems running Windows 7 to offer 10 percent to 20 percent better battery improvement when watching a DVD.

"We're achieving a very significant amount of battery savings," said Microsoft principal program manager Ruston Panabaker.

Microsoft and Intel declined to say just how much overall battery life improvement Windows 7 might offer as compared to Vista, saying there are too many factors that can influence such results.

"I don't want to state a number," Panabaker said at the event, which was organized by Intel and Microsoft.

Microsoft and Intel showed these power consumption improvements results for a system running Windows 7, left, and Vista. The left chart shows consumption while the system was idle; at right, when playing a DVD.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

The event was designed to outline the joint work that the two halves of Wintel have been doing to make Windows 7 perform better in areas such as virtualization, power management, and performance.

On the performance side, Microsoft and Intel showed a reference system that can boot up in 11 seconds, although again real-world performance is likely to vary a lot based on what's inside the PC and how well tuned it is. For instance, the system shown Tuesday had a solid-state drive and other high-performance componets.

The move comes as Microsoft gears up for the October 22 launch of Windows 7.

Perhaps the most encouraging thing for Microsoft is the fact that Intel itself is willing to use Windows 7 within its own corporate walls. The chipmaker has been an XP-only shop throughout Vista's life. In an interview here, Intel VP Stephen Smith said that Intel had some internal applications that weren't Vista-compatible and the benefits of moving to Vista didn't justify the costs.

By contrast, Smith said several hundred people inside Intel are already running Windows 7 on their corporate machines.

CNET News' Stephen Shankland contributed to this report.

Playing a DVD, a Windows Vista Ultimate system, left showed an estimated battery life of 4.14 hours, but the Windows 7 Ultimate system on the right showed 5.5 hours.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

In a reversal on Friday, Microsoft said it is now open to allowing users in Europe to select competing browsers in Windows 7.

Essentially, Microsoft is offering to put into Windows a way for consumers to easily install a rival to Internet Explorer. PC makers, as they can today, could still install a rival browser and could also disable Internet Explorer, if they choose.

"Under our new proposal, among other things, European consumers who buy a new Windows PC with Internet Explorer set as their default browser would be shown a 'ballot screen' from which they could, if they wished, easily install competing browsers from the Web," Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith said in a statement.

As first reported by CNET News earlier this month, Microsoft had hoped to comply with Europe's objections to the inclusion of a browser in Windows simply by removing the browser entirely from Windows 7. However, the European Union indicated that such a move might not satisfy its concerns.

Microsoft has had "preliminary talks" with European Union officials with the hopes of settling several regulatory probes, according to a Bloomberg report.

According to the report, Microsoft is aiming to settle the matters before EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes steps down at the end of the year. One issue is the EU's well-publicized concern over the bundling of Internet Explorer into Windows, while the other pertains to Office software, Bloomberg said.

The EU earlier this year issued a preliminary finding that the inclusion of a browser in the operating system violated European antitrust law and has been exploring a variety of potential remedies, including forcing Microsoft to distribute rival browsers with its operating system.

Last month, CNET News reported that Microsoft was planning to ship Windows 7 in Europe only in versions that had the browser feature removed, aiming to sidestep regulatory action. However, both the EU and rivals issued concern over that approach.

As for the Office inquiry, Microsoft has said it was opened in January 2008 and resulted from complaints filed by a trade association of Microsoft's competitors.

An EU spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report of settlement talks and a Microsoft representative declined to comment. Both Microsoft and an EU spokesman declined to comment in the Bloomberg report.

Microsoft appears likely to offer a "Family Pack" version of Windows 7, according to language in a leaked test version of the operating system.

This week enthusiasts started buzzing over wording in the license agreement in the test build that suggests Microsoft will have an option to buy a license for Windows 7 that covers up to three PCs in the same household.

Wording in a leaked test version of Windows 7 suggests that a long-anticipated Family Pack option may become reality.

(Credit: Microsoft)

According to blogger Kristan Kenney, the license agreement included with the recently leaked version states that "if you are a 'Qualified Family Pack User', you may install one copy of the software marked as 'Family Pack' on three computers in your household for use by people who reside there."

Microsoft would neither confirm nor deny that it plans to offer the family pack.

"We will continue to work with our partners and expect to have other great offers in the future as we lead up to and beyond general availability," a representative said. "We have nothing to announce at this time."

Since 2002, Apple has offered a Mac OS X family pack that covers up to five Macs in the same house. Microsoft briefly offered a deal with Windows Vista that allowed Vista Ultimate buyers to purchase discounted copies of Vista Home Premium for additional PCs, but discontinued that offer after just a few months.

Vista Ultimate users are already upset that Microsoft's first discount offer for Windows 7 allows for discounted upgrades to Windows 7 Home Premium and Professional, but offers no upgrade options for them. Microsoft said it may have more offers, but users will have to gamble if they want to skip the current pre-order program.

That option allows $49 upgrades to Windows 7 Home Premium and $99 upgrades to Windows 7 Professional. Microsoft said that those deals will be offered only until July 11.

Windows 7 is slated to arrive on store shelves and new PCs on Oct. 22.