How long before business ebrace 7?
- Thread starter PiKe
- Start date
700 Machines are going to be deployed/upgraded @ my work with Windows 7, part of an on-going infrastructure upgrade. Currently in a SCCM course, all deployment tests to virtual (and bare-metal physical) machines have gone well, all applications have been tested too...
Nerve wracking, but the more we test, the more confident we are that it will be a massive benefit to us. Current machines are a hodge-podge of Win2000/XP with office 2k/2k3...
Nerve wracking, but the more we test, the more confident we are that it will be a massive benefit to us. Current machines are a hodge-podge of Win2000/XP with office 2k/2k3...
Associate
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as windows 7 seems to be "vista completed" probably a lot quicker...
My council, as part of a large scale computer upgrade to help us with CAD 2010, will be upgrading to W7. They've stuck with XP now, while we move around and I think we'll be refreshed pretty much as soon as its released.
Businesses didn't adopt Vista because the benefits didn't outweigh the cost. Consider a company that has invested in a Server 2003/Win XP network which is working fine for their business needs and is still supported by Microsoft.
They would have to have money burning a hole in their pocket to pay for the upgrade, manage a migration to a new system, retrain IT staff and end users to use the new OS and replace older hardware that may not be up to spec etc. And this is without any downtime (scheduled or otherwise) as a result of the upgrade.
I've no doubt that the uptake of Windows 7 will be quicker as it isn't suffering the same problems as Vista and XP is a few years older, but with the recession et al people will not be looking to drop lots of cash at the moment. Businesses will embrace a new OS when Microsoft stop supporting XP.
They would have to have money burning a hole in their pocket to pay for the upgrade, manage a migration to a new system, retrain IT staff and end users to use the new OS and replace older hardware that may not be up to spec etc. And this is without any downtime (scheduled or otherwise) as a result of the upgrade.
I've no doubt that the uptake of Windows 7 will be quicker as it isn't suffering the same problems as Vista and XP is a few years older, but with the recession et al people will not be looking to drop lots of cash at the moment. Businesses will embrace a new OS when Microsoft stop supporting XP.
Soldato
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But surely the cost of upgrading the computer hardware will rule out it happening anytime soon.?
Could be, depends on what's already deployed hardware-wise, and if there are possibilties of upgrading current PC's.
We used SCCM and Microsoft deployment toolkits to ascertain which machines would take the W7 upgrades. Out of 700 odd machines, around 500 were pretty standard dual core/2gb machines, fine...around 100 were "high end" P4's or low end dual cores with 1gb - good enough, considering their win2000/XP installations were probably bloated and "slow" at this point, a clean W7 installation would not be any slower, give or take...
The rest, needed ram upgrades or simply machines bought to replace.
We used SCCM and Microsoft deployment toolkits to ascertain which machines would take the W7 upgrades. Out of 700 odd machines, around 500 were pretty standard dual core/2gb machines, fine...around 100 were "high end" P4's or low end dual cores with 1gb - good enough, considering their win2000/XP installations were probably bloated and "slow" at this point, a clean W7 installation would not be any slower, give or take...
The rest, needed ram upgrades or simply machines bought to replace.
How have you got on with permissions for CAD? Do you give the users Admin to the box or write to certain folders? Are you x64 or x86?
most businesses won't jump straight to 7, businesses want to know that it's fully stable and working, and that historically means that the delay is normally around 2 years.
I'd be expecting more businesses to make the jump to vista before they jump to 7, unless the XP compatibility mode is something their legacy apps have needed.
The thing many people forget is how long it took companies to upgrade to XP, and how many did so from NT4 rather than Win2K...
I'd be expecting more businesses to make the jump to vista before they jump to 7, unless the XP compatibility mode is something their legacy apps have needed.
The thing many people forget is how long it took companies to upgrade to XP, and how many did so from NT4 rather than Win2K...
My company have said that Windows 7 won't be implemented until there is a service pack out for it.. maybe that's too much thinking in the way of the vista era, personally I haven't found anything to complain about on my home pc.. it could be some time before there's a service pack..
I use RC pro at work and I've found no issue with it what-so-ever on a domain enviroment. I've got a few test pc's up and about to test obscure software the engineers here use, fingers crossed they'll all work.
I'll guess that Windows 7 will be rolled out into a business environment when the costs can be justified - when we're out of this recession, and investment into businesses is happening a lot more freely.
Obviously, the costs aren't just the initial costs of the licence keys, but the labour to format, and setup the machines, the appropriate domain environments. And any training that they may need.
Obviously, the costs aren't just the initial costs of the licence keys, but the labour to format, and setup the machines, the appropriate domain environments. And any training that they may need.
PiKe,
If you would like to read what other users have said about their positive experience with Windows 7, you may want to check out the following sites: http://www.winsupersite.com/ and http://www.edbott.com/weblog/
Jessica
Microsoft Windows Client Team
If you would like to read what other users have said about their positive experience with Windows 7, you may want to check out the following sites: http://www.winsupersite.com/ and http://www.edbott.com/weblog/
Jessica
Microsoft Windows Client Team
Soldato
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We've had a few problems come up in our W7 tests, notably the following:
1) SCOM (Systems Centre Operations Manager) Agent crashes with IE8 installed - same problem we get with Vista but in Vista you can downgrade to IE7 and get no crashes. Apparently this is fixed in R2 of SCOM. see this page: http://social.technet.microsoft.com...l/thread/0371e6b9-3885-4a17-a9b8-d47e102c4aa8
2) Sage 50 HR - though supported in Windows 7 according to http://ask.sage.co.uk/scripts/ask.cfg/php.exe/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=24437 (you may need to be logged in) says it can't find any operating HR server when installing via Windows 7 and entering a local server address. According to Sage this is being looked into by their product lead and hopefully we will get a workaround soon.
3) Immediacy doesn't work properly in IE 8 - perhaps another browser would work better, again IE 8 comes with Windows 7 so...
EDIT - most of these problems look to be IE8 related instead of Win 7 as such!
We will be rolling out Win 7 as and when, we have VLK's for Win XP and Vista as we are an MS gold partner, so it's no big deal for us to roll out whatever. Probably we will look to upgrade those on decent hardware first, and leave the older hardware running XP.
1) SCOM (Systems Centre Operations Manager) Agent crashes with IE8 installed - same problem we get with Vista but in Vista you can downgrade to IE7 and get no crashes. Apparently this is fixed in R2 of SCOM. see this page: http://social.technet.microsoft.com...l/thread/0371e6b9-3885-4a17-a9b8-d47e102c4aa8
2) Sage 50 HR - though supported in Windows 7 according to http://ask.sage.co.uk/scripts/ask.cfg/php.exe/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=24437 (you may need to be logged in) says it can't find any operating HR server when installing via Windows 7 and entering a local server address. According to Sage this is being looked into by their product lead and hopefully we will get a workaround soon.
3) Immediacy doesn't work properly in IE 8 - perhaps another browser would work better, again IE 8 comes with Windows 7 so...
EDIT - most of these problems look to be IE8 related instead of Win 7 as such!
We will be rolling out Win 7 as and when, we have VLK's for Win XP and Vista as we are an MS gold partner, so it's no big deal for us to roll out whatever. Probably we will look to upgrade those on decent hardware first, and leave the older hardware running XP.
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We've got a few machines out running Windows 7 Enterprise RTM x64. Only two issues seen so far:
1) Printers, we have lots of HP printers and deploy them via GPO Preferences but they seem to loop every time the GPO refreshes causing resetting of default printers, also sometimes at boot they are not mapped at all. Plus the XP drivers don't play well with Vista/7 so we are having to upgrade printer drivers, which people are very sensitive about!
2) We redirect My Documents to their users network personal folder on the server this still seems to cause a major delay at login, even though there is nothing to redirect. We had the same problem with XP (skipped Vista) and there doesn't seem to be anyway around it.
We just switched from Altiris to SCCM, no training so steep learning curve but Windows 7 install goes much smoother than the old XP installs I've battled with.
Performance wise all seem ok, nobody wants to swap back to XP, even with the slow login and resetting printers.
1) Printers, we have lots of HP printers and deploy them via GPO Preferences but they seem to loop every time the GPO refreshes causing resetting of default printers, also sometimes at boot they are not mapped at all. Plus the XP drivers don't play well with Vista/7 so we are having to upgrade printer drivers, which people are very sensitive about!
2) We redirect My Documents to their users network personal folder on the server this still seems to cause a major delay at login, even though there is nothing to redirect. We had the same problem with XP (skipped Vista) and there doesn't seem to be anyway around it.
We just switched from Altiris to SCCM, no training so steep learning curve but Windows 7 install goes much smoother than the old XP installs I've battled with.
Performance wise all seem ok, nobody wants to swap back to XP, even with the slow login and resetting printers.
Businesses are notoriously cautious with OS upgrades. Combination of not wanting to spend money until absolutely necessary (7 may be leagues ahead of XP, but try justifying the cost of 10,000 7 licences when the machines are just used for Office!) with needing to make sure that the OS is rock solid. Although 7 looks pretty solid, I wouldn't be surprised if businesses wait until there's an SP1. Nobody wants to be first to discover a nasty bug. A problem that may be easy to work around for a home user becomes a nightmare for support when you have thousands of users with different software and different levels of tech competence.
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