Welcome to Orcmid's Lair, the playground for family connections, pastimes, and scholarly vocation -- the collected professional and recreational work of Dennis E. Hamilton

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Instant Upgrades: A "That Changes Everything!" Moment

Ed Bott's Windows Expertise » Instant Windows Vista upgrades are on the way.  Last night at the Seattle Eastside (aka the Bellevue-Redmond axis) Weblogger Meetup, I met a fellow who works on Microsoft’s own IT systems.  We talked a little bit about what a big deal IT is for Microsoft, the global enterprise, and how it seemed to me that led Bill Gates to publish Business @ the Speed of Thought: Using a Digital Nervous System in 1999. 

He mentioned off-hand that he was working on systems that users (that is, Microsoft customers) engage with.  I commented that I often forget to think of Microsoft as a consumer business, even though half (actually far more than half) of all my Microsoft software has come directly from Microsoft.  He nodded and said they were now preparing their systems for Windows Vista.  “Oh,” I said, “that’s right, you’ve got this new way for people to upgrade their systems” realizing that there will be substantial IT support for handling the new way to purchase license keys and turn on more features.

{tags: Microsoft Windows Vista OEM software licensing orcmid}

[update 2006-03-13: A minor refresh of Ed Bott’s post landed in my RSS subscriptions and I happened to read it again.  What I missed the first time is Ed pointing out that upgrades go back through partner sites, and that would imply that upgrades could provide post-sale juice for OEMs.  Interesting, and more interesting]

Deer in the Headlights

That’s when I was given a deer-caught-in-the-headlights look: “I didn’t know that information was announced already.”  I allowed as how the word is out, and we quickly moved on to other topics.

The word is from those who are putting the Vista Community Technology Preview (CTP) builds through their paces, such as Ed Bott noticing new Control Panel features:

I listed some of the upgrade scenarios that will be possible when Windows Vista ships. All three consumer versions - Home Basic, Home Premium, and Ultimate - will be included on the same CD or DVD. You don’t need to go to the store and purchase a new shrink-wrapped box to upgrade; all you have to do is go to Control Panel and run the Windows Anytime Upgrade program.

Sometime around 6:30 am this morning, when the cats were beginning to demand breakfast and I was keeping my eyes shut and resisting being awake, I had my system-architect moment: “Oh, this changes everything!”

The Home-Premium-Ultimate levels are all part of a single distribution, as are the features for Tablet PC and Media Center configurations.  It’s one big installation and configuration set.  (Whether market segregation is being introduced in the Business configurations as is happening for the 2007 Office System is not clear.  Although I didn’t think of that last night, I wouldn’t have put a Microsoft employee on the spot with questions like that anyhow.  How businesses arrange purchase agreements with OEMs and Microsoft might shift too.)

So What Changes?

Think about the three-legged Microsoft-OEM-user stool and the problem of OEMs shipping selected configurations (XP Home, XP SP2, Media Center 2005, Tablet PC 2005, etc.).   Now OEMs can ship the pre-installed Home Basic on everything, and the user can upgrade the license as desired.  Configuration arrangements are between Microsoft and the customer.  This has a very big potential impact on OEM approaches, and I bet Microsoft’s licenses to OEMs will make it attractive to do that, whatever level arrives pre-licensed as part of OEM configuration positioning.  I also hope it means that we will always have the equivalent of a retail install disk shipped with our systems for the times when we really do need to rebuild the sucker, even if we have to burn the backup CD/DVD ourselves.

I have no idea how Vista will show up in OEM configurations, but smooth extension of the instant upgrade approach has got to be much on Microsoft’s mind.  We’ve all heard that people mostly use the software that comes with the machine, along with other essentials that are usually run forever once installed the first time.  I also foresee, but have less basis for [as of 03-13], Instant Upgrade having a great impact on the consistency of OEM platforms in terms of how OEM-specific drivers and motherboard capabilities are tied into the operating-system distribution.  I expect that there will be some new ideas about after-market upgrades of OEM systems to future operating systems and suites as well.

However It Plays Out, This Changes Everything

I don’t have the kind of sense that someone in the financial organization of a computer manufacturer has that makes them sit up and redo their spreadsheets in anticipation of this kind of change.  But I’m sure that is happening and that it involves looking farther out than the end of this year.

This reminds me of what I was told about some famous computer system architects, such as Paul D. King and Bill Lonergan on the Burroughs 5000 Project.  If you told a 1960’s-era computer system architect that semi-conductor diodes were about to become 1% of their current price (but smaller and switching faster on less power), he’d start telling you how that changes everything and you could now start think about building X (and had better prepare to stop building Y real soon now).  I am sure that there have been similar conversations around transistor size and speed, the shrinking footprint of integrated circuits, and packaging breakthroughs for circuit assemblies and what was once accomplished by wiring. 

I don’t have any grasp on the ripple effects of Instant Upgrade, other than to recognize it as a major tremor in packaging and distribution, possibly as big a deal as the Kodak Instamatic camera was for film and processing consumption.  I also expect to see harmonization with web-based distribution and the desktop-web-mobile spectrum for hosting and deployment of applications as this all plays out.

posted by orcmid at 3/08/2006 10:52:35 AM