Windows 7: a trainwreck for businesses

While enthusiasts are giddy over the new look and features of Microsoft’s latest and “greatest”, the new operating system in an overall business and cost perspective looks quite a bit different.  The switch can be a much too costly one with many headaches attached.  The increased features are ample for some, yet not enough for most businesses.

Besides the appealing animated icons and transparent windows, there are new exciting features.  Out of fifty-two new published features, there were four that stood out as important: 

• Backup and Restore: A new feature which makes backups very simple and intuitive.
• BitLocker: A tool to encrypt your data, so that in case of a loss, your data cannot be accessed
• Improved Memory Use: Windows 7 uses memory more efficiently than its Vista predecessor
• Performance Improvements: Windows 7 responds much quicker than Vista

If you have purchased a PC running Vista, I highly recommend the upgrade to Windows 7, as long as your hardware in compatible.  Windows 7 is a vast improvement over the Vista litter. 

Windows 7 is no exception the rule of drawbacks of ’new’. 

• Potential problems with hardware compatibility
• Increased service costs for setup, deployment and fixes
• Software compatibility issues, particularly specialized business software
• Risk of downtime
• Costs of rollback if serious issues occur

Windows XP was released in 2001.  It only became a very serious and stable operating system after service pack 2 and the October 2006 update set.  It has since become a very serious system for business productivity and counted on my hundreds of millions of users worldwide. 

For years I have recommended that businesses stick it out with Windows XP because of the low maintenance costs and reliability for the production environment.  In this case I must stick with it.  Unlike Vista, Windows 7 has great potential.  In about a year and a service pack, I may start recommending it to clients.  Until then, XP is king for business.