ZDnet’s David Berlind complains that upgrades are painful:
Upgrading to new systems is one of the most painful things you can possibly do. If you’re a vendor of desktop/notebook systems, it also represents that point where you can keep or lose a customer. Today, most system vendors have pretty much nothing from a technology point of view that “encourages” loyalty. Upgrading from an old Dell to a new Dell is no easier than upgrading to a system from a competing vendor. The system vendor that figures out how to make it less painful to upgrade to their own systems than to their competitors’ is the one that will get more loyalty out of their customers.
Of course Apple’s been doing this for a while with their Migration Assistant tool.