In addition to questioning the ethics of sending bloggers laptops preloaded with Windows Vista, some are now questioning why laptops were sent as opposed to a simply Windows Vista installation disks. Dave Taylor asks:
why didn't they send out the OS and let us install it on our own computers?
The answer, once you think about things this way, is obvious, and that's the real story here:
Microsoft Vista is in fact a bear to install and has prohibitive hardware requirements.
That's the only conclusion I can draw, because if it were a breeze to upgrade from WinXP to Windows Vista, with all your apps backwards compatible, all your data intact, and all your files untouched, you'd be happy to install Vista on your existing PC and enjoy the new OS.
This argument is wrong. Firstly some of the bloggers who received the laptops may be using Macs. Others focus on nontechnical areas such as parenting or photography and they cannot be expected to upgrade their computers to review something outside their primary area of focus. For them receiving Windows Vista preinstalled on a laptop matches how most people get a new operating system – on a new PC. Even those focusing on technology cannot be expected to install a new OS on their own machines for a review. Getting a preconfigured machine does mean that the upgrade experience is missing, but does make it more likely that more bloggers will review the operating system as a whole.