With Microsoft's latest operating systems, Windows 7 , due to ship next week, businesses are running out of time to get themselves ready for its arrival.
Organisations should at least know what Windows 7 has to offer and where it comes up short. You might be planning to do this on your own schedule and ignore the launch that's just days away, but you will find that you pretty much have to do some of your preparation on Microsoft's schedule.
That's because the marketing push by Microsoft and its partners will be huge, possibly exceeding $1bn in cost. Your users are going to know about Win 7, and a certain percentage is sure to start clamouring for it, or even taking matters into their own hands. What will you do if your schedule gets pressured by events?
With Win 7 betas available for months, it's been pretty easy for most people who are interested to assess the new operating system. After my own assessment, I see four major benefits that are compelling about Windows 7 and four big problems. Here's what to look forward to and what to watch out for.
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Improved reliability and security
You'd think that security and reliability would be table stakes by now, but Windows 7's stability and its security features should make it an attractive alternative for the millions of PCs that are still running Windows XP.
There were a lot of reasons to stick with XP, which was a good operating system, but let's face facts: It came out eight years ago, when no one expected the amount of security and reliability issues that would plague PCs today.
Microsoft has learned a lot since the launch of XP, and it shows. Windows 7 is much more stable and secure than any previous version of Windows. Admittedly, though, it's not easy to justify the cost and migration headaches of a new operating system on the basis of features that should have been there already.
A better IE
One of the biggest vulnerability points for Windows environments has been Internet Explorer. IE7 addressed a lot of older issues, but IE8 running on Win 7 takes security and overall browser usability to the next level.
The problem is that many of IE's features can be had in Chrome, Safari or Firefox.
Aero Glass/Aero Peek and Aero Shake
Computers on TV never run XP. They have slick-looking user interfaces unavailable in the real world. It's mostly eye candy, but it's really nicely done eye candy.
Win 7 has some of that appeal. In fact, it's slick enough to possibly become the operating system of choice on Star Trek. Running Windows 7 with the all of the Aero UI elements enabled is a joy, and returning to XP after using it is a real letdown. Aero is how computers should look in the 21st century.
Media centricity
Media is a first-class citizen in Win 7. Tight integration with Windows Media Player and the Windows Media Center makes it really easy to browse, navigate, tag and play all the content that's important to you.
Music, pictures and video all work just the way you think they should. Even better, through ‘home group', you can access your media on any machine, wherever in the world it is.
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NEXT PAGE: The cons of Windows 7
Comments
Cyteck said: YES I have to completely agree that sadly Microsoft have really badly shot themselves in the foot here In the sense of not making a simple amp easy upgrade pathway from XP to Windows 7 and from Vista to windows 7 Yes this will definitely loose Microsoft customers who would otherwise have certainly bought windows 7 the fact that a full clean installation rebuild is required for running windows 7 is OK for those people who are technically skilled or advanced windows OS users But that also excludes millions of users that would have otherwise just put the disk in the drive run the upgrade installeretc OK some of those people might go and buy new machines with win7 pre-installed to avoid this but Im sure millions wont do that Its microsofts loss really no matter what the media hype says it was a poor choice on Microsofts behalf perhaps Linux or Apple will gain such users as a consiquence
Jurgen Klingemann said: Id hold back on migrating to Windows 7 for the moment I have been running Win7 RC for some time until I received some updates that included KB967723 It failed to install correctly security code error and generated 86 Problem Reports and Solutions before Windows finally gave up and crashed
Laurie said: Ive said it on here beforeHaving run the installation of around 300000 PCs within certain government depts and very large businesses I cant see that there will be much interest in Windows 7 for these groups due to the lack of the Classic Windows option In the organisations I dealt with that used XP or Vista Classic Windows was always used after the migration from NT4 or Win2000Ive seen the arguments that people should move on and forget about Classic Windows I think from people who maybe only run 1 or 2 PCs but when youre talking about introducing a completely alien interface to millions of workers you have a problemThe cost of re-training will far outweigh any advantage for large organisations to move over to Windows 7 from XP or even Vista so I think Windows 7 will be dead in the water except for individuals small businesses technical users and those with a very good re-training budget