The issue I have, is that WinXP enjoys ~85% marketshare of all installed PCs. Why would you make a new OS, that will very likely result in users losing data? This is a customer relations nightmare. “Here, buy my new $300 OS, that does nothing really substancially more or better than your current OS - and I will wipe all of your data, your tax records, your digital pictures and other ‘priceless’ data from your PC for you”.
Previous versions of Windows let me upgrade my OS, and they also changed FAT32 to NTFS without destroying my data. So, why do I lose any data that I fail to backup, if I upgrade from WinXP? I can upgrade WinXP to Vista, and you can upgrade Vista to Win7 without losing data. Why can’t I upgrade WinXP to Win7?!?
Vista / 7 doesn’t cost 300 and it has a considerable number of improvements over XP.
That is the problem. If MS continued to allow in place installs over old OS’s the systems get bloated and contain gremlins, eventually they have to do a Apple and say enough is enough let’s start from scratch. The importance is educating the public about this. Make sure that those who don’t want to start from scratch or to take the time to back up and reinstall applications that this is not for them.
Otherwise go find a Vista Upgrade for XP, install that(no need to register) and then install 7 over that. But that is too much bloat IMO or you can install on a new partition or just bit the bullet and start from scratch.