Most IT pros not planning on Windows 7 rollout The recessionary squeeze on IT departments' manpower and finances will hinder the rollout of Windows 7, according to a major poll of IT professionals. Nearly 60 per cent of those in small, medium and large organizations currently have no plans whatsoever to deploy Microsoft's next client, says Windows management specialist …
Hell, I still don't have the slightest intention of moving off from win2k until there's really no software that's compatible with it any more at all. Every successive version just gets worse and slower and more bloated and resource hogging and buggier than the one before...
What kind of person claims to have deployed pre-release software across their company? What sort of company would let them?
Alpha male? More like Brownshirt Vanguard, if you ask me! Personally, I think I'll start considering it once they stop coming back with arrows in their backs.
The article talks about XP and Vista compatibility, I’ve been running 7 as my main OS since the beginning of the year, my experience tells me if it runs on Vista it will run on 7, unless the software manufacturer has included version checking to ensure it will only run on a specific OS. Even then there are workaround to get software like this to work
With XP most relatively recent apps will run and if you are a business you will have professional 7 or greater deployed where you can use the XP mode feature to run applications that don’t like 7 in their own window directly on the win 7 desktop. There is a little bit of config to set this up, but it does mean that if you have vital apps that are years old, you will be able to keep them working post upgrade.
So, are the 1.4% percent of respondents who *claimed* to have gone live with Windows 7:
a) muppets
b) lying
c) about to be fired (either before or after their boss finds out what they've done).
Windows 7 RC is a good system (and I say that with no great love for M$) - it's the OS Vista should have been - but to put it in a business situation smacks of a lack of common sense.
Then again, these surveys do have a margin of error of (I'd guess) +/- a couple of percent. Which could mean anything.
MS hung themselves on this one. First they turned out Fista which was completely unsuited for anything but landfill. Now they've outdone themselves with win7 which can't upgrade over XP that most business and homeowners have. Since most business and homeowners with XP aren't even ever going to think about going the Fista route; they aren't going to go to win7 until they need a fallover amount of new pc's and have been able to test it with all their software. Any major failures will push win7 implementation onto the back burner for a long period of time.
Although a linux advocate, i almost feel sorry for MS over windows 7.
Vista was a very very small step in the right direction, but as the first try at a decent system by MS it was not up to mainstream standards. Finally it seems that companies are refusing to just take the pain for MS and pay for the privilege, perhaps this recession is a good thing if it makes companies focus on what exactly they get from MS for the millions they put in through software licenses.
So 40.8% of SMEs intend upgrading to Windows7 within 15 months of it's launch? I find that incredible. I quite like Windows 7 (then again, I didn't have any major problems with Vista) but I won't be making a business case for our company to upgrade to it. That not too far from half of companies plan to before the product has even shipped I find almost unbelievable.
What a surprise, big companies won't spend money moving from something that they've got working (i.e. XP) to something new. Look at the recent IE6 set of posts, and you'll see all the same stuff again and again. One company I recently worked at was just rolling out Vista after 2 years of prepping, (to replace Win2000, not XP), they won't move, and none of the other places I've worked at will show any interest in 'upgrading'.
I have installed win 7 rc on a couple of pentium m machines and I must say that once I got the graphic cards drivers to work, it's been a joy to use.
It is the first version of windows that I'd actually recommand to neophyte users (if they really don't want to buy a mac)
And with which I haven't had an irresistible urge to shutdown immediately to get back to mac os x.
This said, I understand the cto/CIO/Helpdesk/sysadmin who doesn't want to start the install/test/image cycle all over again when what's there is good enough for them...
Any IT pro who wants to be an early adopter and recommend an unknown system in a professional environment really deserves all the headaches they get!
The only reason you started to see Vista in the business workplace was because new machines came with it... Although most got back-graded to XP.
Remember the moto, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. So why would businesses, or anyone that depends on their PCs "need" to move to Windows 7? What is the "must-have" feature?
The only things that do push businesses along the upgrade path are the aforementioned machines that arrive with new OS, and M$ dropping security updates for the earlier OSs.
We'll wait for the first service pack and all the hardware drivers to catch up thank you very much.
"ScriptLogic polled 1,100 IT professionals, spanning IT administrators and mangers at organizations of all sizes"
Do they mean "Managers" or "Mingers" - personally, I wouldn't trust anything a minger said. 8-)
I suspect that it would actually come down to the way the question was asked. We avoided Vista for a number of reasons, not least because of the compatability issues. We might have similar issues with 7, but won't know until it is fully tested..
However, so far the OS looks a LOT better than Vista and it has a couple of features that would be really good to see in operation. BUT, we won't be rushing to get it place due to hardware requirements. It's likely we'll see a couple of machines in place in the next year, but a mass roll out, not until SP1.
I've been using Win7 for a few weeks and have come to the conclusion that it's a great operating system for home users, with software tweaks and changes baked into the desktop engine that in XP you'd need a fistful of freeware apps to handle. I'm pretty much convinced I won't go back to XP now (I only boot into XP when I have to use my scanner, which is not catered for in any way by Canon that I can use on Win7x64).
However, it will be a nightmare to actually try and use it in a busy production environment to do any actual real-life work, even with all the Aero extras turned off (which are in themselves more than half the reason for upgrading). And networking is proving a bit of a 'mare, though I accept that may not be an issue everyone has found (yet).
So I couldn't recommend to any business that it should consider upgrading any time soon. Maybe if MS creates an "XP-clone" theme for Win7 and returns the Windows File Explorer to its easy-to-use XP form (this is why I almost exclusively use XYPlorer inWin7)...
Ugh. The part that they don't mention is that there's more than a few Giant Applications, which require large amounts of setup and testing (like, years...) to implement, even after their years of development in the first place, which are even today still wedded to IE 6. Which means even upgrading to Window 7 isn't a simple matter of getting the latest versions of desktop applications, it's also running a VM with XP installed on it ANYWAY, in order to have IE 6 available. Which means double the support headaches, twice as many places for things got get broken, and (unless I'm pessmisitcally wrong -- I hope I'm wrong) most of the improvements that Windows 7 might have get burned up because a large chunk of work is being taken up running that VM in the first place... My Fine Employer has been backleveling desktop machines to XP since Vista comes out, and will still need IE 6 available until at least 2011, probably 2012... It's not just the rollout that's expensive, the upkeep and ongoing support is a killer as well.
Haven't you realised the whole business world has changed ? You can't go writing memos and adding up sales in Office 2000 as if it was the olden days when business were profitable.
The new features of office 10 are vital for dealing with modern business needs, in Excel cells are default filled in red and all $values are automatically negative , the new Word has one button redundancy notice generator an Outlook now automatically sends your CC details to Nigeria .
For those of us running bootcamped Macs it'll be a useful install - better than Vista, and the ability to have multiple websites in IIS without mucking about with virtual directories will make development easier.
That's going to be the *only* reason I'll be nuking my XP partition and installing Win7.
Don’t laugh; I got to deal with one of those ‘bleeding edge’ alpha male morons back in ’99. He had loaded the W2K test on his company’s server. It timed out, bringing everything down. Who does he call? The company that sold him the server! I got to take over from the poor sap that took the call (after hearing our tech tell him at least ten times to contact MS). All I asked him until he answered was ‘where did you get the software FROM?’ when he finally admitted he didn’t get it from us, I suggested he contact them.
I will confess I just upgraded from W2K to XP. Main reason was issues replacing failing hardware and no longer able to get kit with the needed drivers. Of course the only way to not get vista was to get one of those netbook toys. Only real down point was having to hang everything off USB ports.
Like others it appears to me this research is a bit wierd. If 1.4% have deployed it already, they are most probably small IT businesses with one or two machines. I don't see it having been installed in any corps unless they are truly suicidal.
I did my new deployment back in January, with Vista killing my laptop and W2K filling up my desktop.
Deployed Ubuntu (dual booting W2K on desktop), and everything fine. WINE got a couple of legacy apps working, and the rest were replaced with equivalents. It worked for me, but my work is moving ever faster web-based management tools , etc etc. Oo suffices for my local data crunching and graphic/print design is covered by other apps.
All of the above was achieved from Newbie status in about four hours over two days (I was online and working in 30 mins - through wireless! plarp!).
I'm no huge fanboi, just a small businessman who needs quick working, simple tools and quick disaster recovery. The reason I mention it? Because there's no mention of the word 'never' in the responses to the survey. Probably because it wasn't an answer... yes there is "We have no current plans to deploy Windows 7", but that's not quite the same, is it...? Then again the company are Win specialists, so...
I'll get the fire extinguisher...
nK
@ Steve Evans: If people didn't try to fix things that weren't broken then there would be no innovation. Take the iPhone for instance... It took them 3 versions to get it to take video.
@Mage: Yes most games only need DirectX9.0c but if you have the hardware, Crysis in DX10 on Very High is amazing. DX10 will only really come into use with Windows 7 because any graphical advantage that DX10 gave was shot by the extra system requirements Vista needed so you had to turn the settings down anyway. Gaming-wise, I see very little difference between Win7 and XP requirments .
I have been using Windows 7 RC as my main OS at home for a few months and it's honestly the best OS I have used (yes... better then OS X). Pity MS failed so magnificently with Vista. Anyone still have a mental breakdown when UAC is mentioned?
AC above, did you wait for SP1 on Server 2008?? that is such a pointless excercise as service packs are often as major a release as a new OS. When YOUR TESTING is complete is when you deploy. start now and you'll be ready for launch. Simples.
Daniel and Jimmy, those 1.4% are probably on the TAP and therefore required to roll out. Microsoft have probably rolled out too. This does not make them crazy, it usually ensures good support and a good environment in which to test. These people are probably using best practice and won't have an issue. It's the people who wait until SP1 and pray that everyone else has tested that have issues. always has been always will be.
Really people are either gonna deploy them aprt from each other or all at once. Common sense says test test test before using a new OS. Wait til SP1 (at least) . Expect the home market to get Win 7 a lot quicker like all those punters I deal with vista machines*shudder* . So once again M$ is trying to please the home market and the business market which will take longer to adopt new OSs.
Boards of businesses don't care about OSs. They care about contributions that people and systems make to the business and the costs of doing the business. Anyone proposing to change infrastructure has to present the business need for scrapping the old OS, buying the new, training the staff in its nuances, investigating the current inventory of hardware and software to make sure that both will cope with the change, repairing and replacing both where necessary, and then doing the rollout. The more costly, the more justification. Win XP is eight years old? It hasn't been installed for eight years in any sensible organisation that existed before eight years ago.
If the IT infrastructure is mostly MS then rollover costs will be greater by shovelling MSO into the mix but then only one rollout exercise would be needed. But people care about that because--unlike the OS--they use it to type stuff and calculate stuff and the rest. Most people don't give a toss about the football field, they care about what they can play on it. But that's even more cost in scrapping-purchasing-retraining.
They're not dinosaurs if they keep something that's working for more than a few years. Remind me: where is the business justification?
There speaks a man who's never rolled out a new desktop to an organisations with a complex desktop infrastructure. I expect it will work fine if all you run is Orifice, but when you have niche applications and business critical applications, you can't just blat a new operating system down to the workstations without doing an impact analysis, asking some fairly basic questions like:
a) Will the workstations run it, memory drivers, etc.
b) Are all my applications compatible with it. (Technically, Support wise)
c) How much training will my users need
d) How much will it cost me to upgrade all my applications to be compatible.
e) Will my third party suppliers support it
f) can my network support the new operating system during and after upgrade.
g) Can I afford to do all the changes I need to do.
And so on and so forth.
I wonder how much the 14000 desktop organisation has to spend, and if they are really doing it to all, or just new desktops.
A cardinal rule of IT is, that if it isn't broken don't fix it. And most companies have a general policy of n,n-1 for any software, so any company that upgraded to Vista, probably won't be that interested in 2007. It costs a lot of money.
So why was it again that I need this?
In our organisation comprising somewhere in the region of 5,000 PCs we are looking at the upgrade to 32 bit Win 7. The OS is a hell of a lot better than XP (we skipped Vista lol) and we are also planning Office 2007 rollout concurrently so there is going to be a hit in terms of user training but we are working at completely re-engineering the desktop at the same time. Legacy apps will not go the route of XP VM but rather 2X virtualisation which will also allow us to run Outlook and IE6 on OSX (goodbye crappy old Entourage!) so letting certain apps that only run on IE be available to Mac users.
Do we expect some lost productivity? Yes Do we think the business will be more effective after the upgrade? Yes Has the business case been made and approved? Yes
We think that Win 7 will enhance business functionality and desktop security so why stick with XP when mainstream support is winding down and then have to rush through Win 7 testing?
Management meeting: "... and Windows 7 is free! think of all the money we're saving!"
Manager to IT:"You MUST roll it out to all 14000 PCs. If you don't you're fired."
Pats on backs all round, large bonuses come Christmas... then next June when PCs start shutting down every two hours....
Managers:"Fire everyone in IT."
Yeah yeah "Complex applications" yada yada
After 25 years in the industry, I can assure you that 95% of users do in fact run nothing but "orifice"
A couple of bods in accounting will have their "complex" financial package and the rest might have access to an inventory system of some type, and these days such things are increasingly browser based,
If your network is set up correctly, your clients shouldn't have critical dependency issues, it's only the windows world where such things have become standard operating procedure.
Hence all the businesses that are unable to even migrate to newer versions of the same OS!
Good on you Mickeysoft! Way to create a virtually unmanageable software ecosystem!
You see, the biggest problem with any new Windows release is often the lack of decent driver support, especially where you have hardware that goes back a way. That's one reason why I tested using the oldest bit of kit I could get away with.
One of the reasons why W7 was "written" was that its immediate predecessor, Vista, was unable to fit onto a lot of the kit out there that WXP would happily run on. The most likely thing to go wrong, therefore, will be those bits of kit that would never have worked on Vista so will not have valid drivers later than WXP drivers, which don't necessarily work on W7. That's before we even get to those bits of hardware that still don't have decent drivers in the first place...
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