First, I agree with you on the Vista argument. I never upgraded to Vista because there are absolutely ZERO reasons why I need anything more than XP. Most of what I do is in the browser, and my apps are running fine. I have ZERO reasons to upgrade to 7 as well.
However, you lost me on the Blu Ray argument. If you have a 19" TV, no, you are not going to notice, or care, if you are watching a movie in HD or not. But on 50"+, it's so awful watching a regular DVD it completely ruins the experience.
So, back to your response, if you have a small PC with basic needs like coding, website updates, browsing the web, email, upgrading the OS is a waste of time and money. But, if you have a big PC and big needs from your apps, you may have a reason to upgrade.
The sad thing I have seen many times is when people buy a new HDTV, but don't bother to buy a progressive upscaling DVD player. They watch their dvd's with their old dvd players that output ntsc resolution. DVD's already come in a resolution that is higher then their tv (720x480) so having a player that can upscale or even just send the 720x480 to their htdv rather than sending a downscaled ntsc signal will give them the "wow" they can show their friends without having to spend money on a BluRay player and disks.
However, you lost me on the Blu Ray argument. If you have a 19" TV, no, you are not going to notice, or care, if you are watching a movie in HD or not. But on 50"+, it's so awful watching a regular DVD it completely ruins the experience.
I'm going to politely disagree. I have been lucky enough to be able to afford a pretty sweet home theater setup. The screen is ~8ft (I don't know the exact size, sorry) and while I might care about the difference between DVD and Blu Ray on it, most people really just don't.
Once the "omg that is cool!" affect wears off, people forget about it. They certainly don't care enough to spend the thousands of dollars it takes to upgrade their theater systems to it. I suspect that they also won't want to spend the hundreds of dollars to upgrade their computing equipment.
Don't take this the wrong way, but I think you fall in the "videophile" category. My wife doesn't usually notice the difference between fuzzy broadcast SD and 1080 HD unless I point it out -- let alone the difference between upconverted DVD and blu-ray.
> But, if you have a big PC and big needs from your apps, you may have a reason to upgrade.
I upgraded to Vista on my old laptop because I wanted the new Media Center, however my work PC qualifies as a "big PC with big needs" and it's doing just fine on XP.
Don't take this the wrong way, but I think you fall in the "videophile" category.
Maybe. I'm not a videophile, but watching Football in HD is amazing to the point that I think anyone who likes sports with large fields and/or small balls would appreciate it. With movies and television I don't think it's nearly so important.
I agree, sports in HD is nice but I find it acceptable on standard. For movies or anything else, it doesn't matter. VHS tapes are good enough for me, and in fact preferable because they are so much more user friendly than DVDs.
However, you lost me on the Blu Ray argument. If you have a 19" TV, no, you are not going to notice, or care, if you are watching a movie in HD or not. But on 50"+, it's so awful watching a regular DVD it completely ruins the experience.
So, back to your response, if you have a small PC with basic needs like coding, website updates, browsing the web, email, upgrading the OS is a waste of time and money. But, if you have a big PC and big needs from your apps, you may have a reason to upgrade.