Biz bods: Tile-tastic Windows 8? NOOO. We lust after 'mature' Win 7 Windows 8 won't become an enterprise IT standard as customers dump Microsoft's legacy PC operating system XP. Instead, corporate IT departments will stick to what they know and install Windows 7. That’s according to technology analyst Forrester, which reckoned Windows 7 is fast becoming the de-facto PC operating system for big …
"...there are some real benefits to the Windows 8 operating system over Windows 7."
LIKE WHAT??
It amazes me that some 'experts' come out with exceedingly narrow-minded and outright STUPID comments like that. I am sure that you claim to be a professional yet here you are, believing that "new" = "better" without a single stitch of proof to justify the claim.
"Windows 8 IS NOT Windows 7..."
Exactly. Corporations have spend, on average, at least 1 year in pre-rollout testing to examine the impact that Windows 7 will have in their environments. They have tested stability, network configurations, security, maintainability and most importantly critical applications compatibility and, only after Windows 7 passed their internal certificate processes, are they rolling it out to the users. Companies are rolling Windows 7 out to their users now, as Windows 8 itself is trying to replace Windows 7.
What, exactly, has Windows 8 proven? Does it have a proven track record? What is WIndows 8's proven track record of security? Had a lot of time to test its hardening against all in-the-wild threats, have you?
How about Windows 8's device drivers? Are they stable, secure and are the needed drivers available for legacy hardware, including specialty products?
Windows 8's mission critical application compatibility? You have that proven, yes, judging from your comment.
So, judging by the comment and the several upvotes you've acquired, you - and the people who think as you do - have done a complete and exhaustive in-house test of Windows 8's compatibility with current systems for the number of companies you are openly recommending its rollout to. Well done! Considering that the rest of the world hasn't even started their Windows 8 tests, I'm sure that makes you amongst one of the most valuable Information Technologists available today - a person so advanced that they can get the equivalent of up to 1 year of painstakingly thorough analytical testing done in 7 months time, even before they knew exactly what kind of testing was needed.
Superb! [/s]
Note: I don't recommend Windows 8 in production, but it does have benefits in business:
* Support for encrypted SMB shares from Server 2012
* Better proactive exploit mitigations
* Free anti-virus/anti-malware
* Free in-kernel whitelist/blacklist of signatures (and checksums of unsigned apps)
* Cheaper access to corporate BitLocker functionality
* Access to better application sandboxing through an additional Integrity Level
There was a time when car manufacturers produced a "new" car each year, that, more or less, destroyed the whole industry in the US. Trial and error each year, not much time to improve quality or production methods. Microsoft is in that same loop today and it did work for many years but I can understand if companies are getting a bit fed up with having to replace computers and start all over again just because its good for Microsoft.
We are already considering 7 as the last Windows OS in our organization. 20% of our users are on Linux and we see no reason not to go whole hog. There is nothing we cannot do on Linux to conduct business. As older XP PC's get phased out, we replace them with Open Source solutions. We've been burned too many times and paid through the nose for the privilege. Our ERP server has not been rebooted for over two years.
"There is nothing we cannot do on Linux to conduct business" "Our ERP..."
Meanwhile us little guys are still locked in... Unless you can point out for us a half workable non-enterprise accounting system, that is. Or time & attendance, or practice management, or banking, or service & dispatch, or...
I am not surprised really, Windows 7 is a good OS and fits in with the Enterprise atm.
Whilst I have no fear of using Windows 8 for myself, I can easily understand the reluctance for business users to take it up. Of course if you are in the business of writing Windows 8 based apps via Visual Studio, then you will need Windows 8 installed to do so. I think that is a bit naughty myself...
You have a mature enterprise environment with a mixture of XP desktops that are imminently going unsupported and all those Windows 7 desktops you bought to replace broken XP machines, or during that last expansion you had.
Do you, replace the XP with Windows 8 (with all the planning and checking necessary) and give yourself another heterogenous desktop setup
OR
Replace the XPs with Windows 7 - which has years in it yet - and take advantage of all the work your IT department has already invested in 7.
Mmmm, tricky......
Have an upvote from a grateful end user. At work we are on Windows 7 with roaming profiles (or whatever they call that now, where you can log into your desktop from any machine) and it works well, something like 500 screens worth.
Given the questions some of my colleagues ask me in our spacious open plan staffroom, I'd suggest any major change in the UI should be avoided for a few years until they see TIFKAM at home.
Commercial users want stability and reliability. They don't want the latest whizz-bang UI, or tiles, or widgets. They want computers on the desks of their employees to run whatever software they need to run to do their jobs, with minimal support requirements. Don't go changing things, just for the sake of changing them. That just costs us more money in lower productivity, while our employees learn how to use the new features at our expense.
Is this so hard for Microsoft to understand? Just give us something that works and will be supported for "a while", the longer the better. Of course, if it's robust and resistant to malware, all the better, but perhaps that's a bridge too far...
They don't necessarily make it just for enterprise or consumer now do they.....
Besides if your IT departments are worth a damn they could easily customize anything needed to limit access to anything non-productive.
Win 7 to me though is the way to go for biz, that could change with future updates but not right now imho.
You fail to understand the real issue:
How do you get people to spend more money on your "new product" when the "old product" performs those tasks already???
Change for changes sake!!!!
How else do you insure that the cash spigot does not run dry??
...that 38% that prefer Windows 8 are coming from, but the initial reaction here when users have been confronted with a Windows 8 UI is complete vapour-lock; people draw comparisons with the Office changeover to the Ribbon, but this is not that. This is a hard mental bluescreen followed by a request for "proper Windows". So we'll stay on 7, thanks.
Stop, naturally, followed by INACCESSIBLE_USER_INTERFACE...
If my previous experience is to go by, enterprises will not upgrade Windows until the current version gets near to going end of life. Windows 7 EOL date is currently 14th January 2020. So 6.5 years from now.
Working on a Windows version every year, by the time Windows 7 EOLs Microsoft will be up to Windows 14. Drop a version number (because it'll probably be seen as not mature enough) and you're looking at enterprises jumping from Windows XP to Windows 7 to Windows 13.
If we work on a Windows version every other year, then you're looking at enterprises jumping from Windows XP to Windows 7 to Windows 10.
First I'm missing a link to the research summary (link to Forrester.com summary). And when reading through that article I can't help wonder if the research isn't a bit flawed here and there.
Not saying that the end results aren't true, but lets face it: a lot of researches also predicted the end of the PC as we knew it, and that has actually yet to happen because although tablets are becoming more popular, they're usually an extension of what people already have. It's extending on the "PC experience", not replacing it perse.
And of course they also make sure to add catchy results, such as stating that a majority of end-users would prefer Windows 8 over Windows 7, all according to their own research data of course.
Yet the thing is; there's one very important factor we need to keep in mind here, this company is selling access to their survey data (link to forrester.com dataservice page). As such it has a commercial interest in making their researches as appealing or provoking as possible.
And let's face it; didn't a majority of the so called experts also predict huge successes for Windows 8? When looking at the Forrester blog some people associated with this company sure seemed to think so, what to think about Windows 8: Think you can skip it? Think again! (link to Forrester blog post dated March 8, 2012).
Seems people have little problems with skipping it though...
Researches may be flawed, in both ways, stats are always a lie.
But collapsing chain supply due to millions of unsold W8 machines with CEOs starting publicly blaming Microsoft and investing in Android machines + millions of W8 machines NOT showing up in ANY web stat hinting large part of the 100M licenses so much trumpeted by MS are, well, unsold + widespread public uproar and laughter... all of this probably is not lying.
Of course CEO's are going blame the OS. They're going to blame anything for the fact they by and large missed the tablet boat while they were dicking around with ultra books. They chose poorly.
That being said Win8 is a horrible user experience but when have horrible user experiences stopped people from buying tech? They will always buy the new shiny that BestBuy or WalMart will provide with 0% interest and 12 months to pay.
Anyway, listening to CEO's identify the reasons they are struggling is like listening to them justify their next big product: It's all bullshit. Only lunatics, journalists and analysts pay them much mind.
I've given up paying any real attention or not suspending belief whenever I see the source as Forrester...
They're just paid to write "research" articles that reflect whatever their customer wants. Therefore there's the inevitable BYOD mention in this report and a lot of statistics that frankly given the source figures, or even reality, could be spun to reflect whatever message Forrester's paying customers want.
> researches also predicted the end of the PC as we knew it
No one is trying to take your desktop machine away from you, but it is less likely that you will replace it with another PC in the same format. You may get a laptop, or use a tablet to augment it, or use a phone like device plugged into a TV as your next 'desktop'.
"The end of the PC" isn't the end of _using_ PCs, it is the foreseeable end of manufacturing them and selling them as current machines are 'good enough' to last out the decade.
To point out the bleeding obvious, a touch screen desktop is utterly useless to all bar the graphics folk, who have higher resolution tablets (read wacom) anyway, why screw up productivity for a 'shiny' UI?
I can just imagine the next RSI from people who have to move their extended arms about slowly all day.
If its not touch; whats the point additional crap?
Our IT dept finished the transition to 7 about 6 months ago, I can't see them wanting to go through the process again for a while.
As for the machines I help look after, we're currently looking at Win7 Embedded to replace the butchered, er, customised XP build we currently use, and with it's 15 years of support that should keep us going quite nicely.
*Top concerns are the potential for significant end-user training and support and the need for application re-design to take advantage of the new interface,” Johnson writes in the report.*
Are you (Forrester) serious? What need? What complete idiot wants to rewrite a desktop application using WinRT when the desktop application runs fine on Windows 8 as-is?!?
Johnson needs to do some research, whatever his feelings toward Windows 8.
It's still sales for MS. Many businesses skip a version anyway to save time & money, as long as they are buying Windows what does MS care... and many businesses will wait 1-2 years for issues to be discovered and fixed so we might be on 8.1/Blue by then and find they start switching at this point.
Who knows, if MS are going the Blue route maybe a business edition will allow even more of the Mettro stuff to be turned off as a policy?
Just wait until the next Service Pack download causes BSOD issues, lost functionality (it's not a bug, it's a FEATURE), and random freezes. The appropriate apologies will be made, but the CEO's will get the message, loud and clear - "Time to move on to Windows 8 - It's better"!
I would use Linux if I knew beans about programming (which I don't - casual user here). You can make Linux do anything - provided you know how. Windows ? If you don't like programs opening their windows over each other (not remembering where you closed them last time), and you can't use Linux, tough tamales - you're stuck with whatever Ballmer says you have to use.
I would use Linux if I knew beans about programming
Give one of the friendlier Linuxes a try in Virtualbox or something. Granted, you can't just download Crysis for it, but at the same time, Ubuntu Software Center or Synaptic is distinctly easier to use than C++. Needing to know how to edit Xorg.conf went out of the window a looooong time ago.
Seriously?
I'm not going to sit here and preach that Linux is some kind of panacea (we have an Eadon for that....) but you absolutely, emphatically do not need to know programming to use Linux. If you can install Windows, you can install and use one of the consumer oriented distributions.
Give Linux Mint a try - it's specifically aimed at the casual user. You may or may not like it, but don't buy the myth that you have to be some kind of tech genius to use it.
yeah yeah, Linux is fine, BUT! what about in-house dedicated software, that Headoffice chooses, and we have to use even though its somewhat sh**** ??
and then there are the tax rules databases, using more in-house software that have to be updated every month or more often... currently it is a quick cd input job, due to the company not wanting to use web...
#and then these HAVE to interface directly to MS word, to make sure it is to the full gov. spec... more rules form H.O.!! ... :(
"I would use Linux if I knew beans about programming (which I don't - casual user here)."
I'm an end user and have been using Linux for five or six years now at home. No big issues.
What do you/your users use their computers for?
How many computer(s) do you need to look after?
How recent is your hardware?
Many here can suggest a distribution that will allow a more or less 'shove the cdrom in and have a coffee' approach given answers to the questions above.
I have no intention to shoot you down but there is nothing in a good Linux distro that is more difficult than Windows. You don't need to know anything about programming for neither Windows or Linux or OS X. You can drive a car without knowing anything about how your engine works (my wife gets along without knowing why there is a gearbox, she reacts to the sound ). Take some time, download a .iso and try it out on a CD or DVD. Speak about it, years ago I thought I was the only Linux freak in the neighbourhood and then I found out there where many who also thought the same.
MS's OSs go in rounds, one abysmal, one that's actually quite usable. Taking recent history - Win 2000 - pretty dire, Win XP (What 2000 should have been) pretty good, Vista - no words can express how truly awful it was, Win 7 - pretty good (everything Vista should have been). Win 8 - a good stab but falling well short of the mark. So bring on Windows 9!
It has been how many years since Windows 7 came out? Microsoft came out with the next version right on schedule.
IT administrators have been spoiled rotten by the decade-long reign of Windows XP. That was an anomaly, and a hindrance to progress. After Vista was released, Sinofsky got Microsoft back on track, releasing new versions of Windows on time.
Before Windows XP, Microsoft released new versions of Windows every couple years. After Windows XP, Microsoft is again releasing new versions every couple years. This is how it should be.
Except for a few key positions, I really don't see the need for a GUI at all. A lot of what our call center does could honestly be done in a text only console. They don't need MS Office, but yet they have it and the associated licensing.
I think Microsoft created an artificial need that everyone jumped on willy nilly and are afraid to tell MS to go F&^k themselves.
Compared to 35 percent for Windows 7. I presume the other 27 percent declined to answer the silly question because there were no tick-boxes for [ Windows XP, Macintosh, several flavours of Linux Desktop, Android, ...]
I.e. they asked would you prefer to be (a) boiled alive or (b) eaten by fire ants. Or didn't ask at all and just made up some numbers.
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