Its quite fashionable to bash Microsoft and normally I don't but in this case it is so easy. My wife has Vista on her machine, and when I got a new PC with Windows 7 it was so much better that I persuaded her to give it a try.
Problem 1 - Buying the software. She took 5 days to persuade Microsoft to give her a download location and send the disc out. We still don't have the disc, but yesterday I decided to give the download a try.
Problem 2 - Downloading the software. Yes we may not have the fastest BT connection in the world, but it took over 2 hours to download.
Problem 3 - Installing the software. This took over four hours to install and tied up the machine for an entire afternoon.
Problem 4 - Updates. The software that I downloaded required 51 updates. That means that Microsoft deliberately allowed me to download a significantly out of date piece of software. Because I had to remove my wireless driver (incompatible with Windows 7) I couldn't do this at the time the software was installed.
Problem 5 - failure to update. So far we have spend over 2 hours trying to get the software updates to download and install correctly.
If I really costed my time correctly, it would have been cheaper and better to trash the current PC and go uy a new one with Windows 7 installed. Except then, I would have had to install all the applications on this PC all over again.
Shame on you Microsoft for creating such a poor experience and for not warning people BEFORE they buy that it is likely to take days.
Last minute update - elapsed time of 17 hours (with a night's sleep included) and the computer appears to be working now. Phew. My credibility as the tech support manager for my household is in shreds, but it is finally working.