Why Windows 7 When XP "Won't Die"

[cookie_monster]

@ CyberNerd

 

From someone who made the xp -> Linux jump a few years back : what am I missing from Vista to W7? I don't care about the difference between XP - I found a better alternative to XP already. I never saw the advantage to vista - what is the advantage to W7?

 

Is that at home or on your production network?

[pete]

We avoided vista, but having used the 7 betas and RC, I actually like it (and my workstations run Linux). The prompts still need to be more sudo-like (IMO), but then 2008 suffers in that respect too (yes, I want to do something requiring admin credentials, yes that click a second later was also me, and yes, that one too -- gaah, surely it's not too bloody difficult to trace the request to me and maybe remember for a minute?). Exchange powershell makes up for that though.

 

That doesn't mean we'll jump straight on the 7 bandwagon. We might deploy it on the CAD boxes if Solidworks benefits from more ram though, since the alternative is XP 64bit or Vista.

[CyberNerd]

@ CyberNerd

 

 

 

Is that at home or on your production network?

 

@home. Most of the school system is Citrix - we have some XP laptops and some ubuntu ones.

[torledo]

We'll definitely moving to W2k8 R2 and Windows 7 sometime around the second quarter of next year.

Once i've got to grips with the deployment and management features, plus the all important user acceptance testing and ensuring compatibility

[PhilNeal]

It's about time Capita got real, after all they've had many months now to get drivers coded for W7, there's just no excuse, especially at the prices they charge! It would also be nice if writers of educational software also generally got their act together and realised that BBC micros are no longer used in schools!

 

It's Friday and I've had a drink or two so it's probably unwsie for me to continue but what the heck! Why should we devote time and energy to get compatible with an operating system that isn't released? All the reports on W7 are good, its something we will support but will it save a child? Will it improve a school's results? Will it make our software easier to use? etc. No!

 

The pre-releases had missing functions that we will need to emulate if they are not in the final release. We intend to be W7 compatible by October 09. (We never developed for the BBC )

Edited August 7, 2009 by PhilNeal

[Simcfc73]

I got rid of W7 on my test machine because it didn't play at all nicely with Sims and the Virtual XP mode wouldn't run as my motherboard didn't have the virtualization thingy needed to run it.

 

Also things like Nero needed updating to run (kerching) and I reckon the leap to the new menu layout will be hard for users to get used to.

 

I was really tempted to install it on some staff room computers I just bought but reckon I will leave it till Sims tell me for certain it plays nicely.

[featured_spectre]

It's Friday and I've had a drink or two so it's probably unwsie for me to continue but what the heck! Why should we devote time and energy to get compatible with an operating system that isn't released? All the reports on W7 are good, its something we will support but will it save a child? Will it improve a school's results? Will it make our software easier to use? etc. No!

 

The pre-releases had missing functions that we will need to emulate if they are not in the final release. We intend to be W7 compatible by October 09. (We never developed for the BBC )

 

nicely put, however if schools are upgrading to W7 because of pressure from the LEA (as like ours) shouldnt Capita atleast patch the vista version to run on W7 for the mean time. Unlike XP and Vista, people wont need to wait until SP1 for W7 is out because it just works.

 

I got sims working on the virtual PC, but doing so I couldnt use any functions of W7 at all. It was a rediculous hassle, so I gave up. When it is supported, I will install it and go, but until then the machines that run Sims stay on XP.

[cookie_monster]

Why should we devote time and energy to get compatible with an operating system that isn't released?

 

Well said I think Capita should at least be able to see the finished product before committing to supporting it (it seems to work ok on 7 though), but.... how about supporting an office product other than MS Office, Open Office??? Please

 

 

nicely put, however if schools are upgrading to W7 because of pressure from the LEA (as like ours) shouldnt Capita atleast patch the vista version to run on W7 for the mean time. Unlike XP and Vista, people wont need to wait until SP1 for W7 is out because it just works.

 

 

You're getting pressure from your LEA to upgrade from a supported OS to an unreleased OS, I'd ask them to send you in 'writing' a single reason why you should.

 

XP was actually ok when released but people still waited untill SP1, Windows 7 seems pretty stable at the moment (i've been using it for a while) but it's not untill it's really on general release that you can really say it 'just works'.

[ajbritton]

It looks like the SIMS dev guys are already onto it ...

[synaesthesia]

I just thought it was rather a good point raised - the OS is released in October to the public (may be earlier to some customers possibly including schools) but should schools be adopting it that early? So, aiming to get Sims 7 compatible for October seems very fair to me.

 

Being totally honest though, despite absolutely LOVING Windows 7 and having used it in various flavours since early Beta, I'm very surprised to see such a feverish early takeup on it in corp and educational establishment - it's unprecedented behaviour and was certainly not the case for any OS since - scratch that. Ever. It took a good couple of years before XP was taken up at a decent rate because 2000 was in it's "Just Working" state and NT4 still had a huge share at the backend of things.

[6Foot2]

Website: Link

 

Graphic from the same article:

 

http://images.betanews.com/media/3711.jpg

 

One comment after the article:

 

How can this even be a true speed test. 25% of the score has nothing to do with speed.

 

and another:

 

... all of these sensational benchmarks fail to to show performance for Windows 7 64-bit or Windows Vista 64-bit which on average perform better than their 32-bit counterparts due to the increased number of general purpose registers available on AMD64/EMT64 CPUs in 64-bit mode.

 

The debate rumbles on...

[cookie_monster]

Being totally honest though, despite absolutely LOVING Windows 7 and having used it in various flavours since early Beta, I'm very surprised to see such a feverish early takeup on it in corp and educational establishment - it's unprecedented behaviour and was certainly not the case for any OS since - scratch that. Ever. It took a good couple of years before XP was taken up at a decent rate because 2000 was in it's "Just Working" state and NT4 still had a huge share at the backend of things.

 

 

It's still a relatively small number of corps that will be upgrading early as they have to wait until their apps are supported. It's all well shifting your OS but if your apps aren't supported you're in trouble so even if the OS is stable people will still wait for SP1 simply as it's the time frame when most software houses will of got stable versions of their products out the door. MS have gone all out to make sure that apps that run on Vista will run on 7 but you've still go to be careful rolling it out straight away, I've seen some people rolling out the RC, most corp IT departments would laugh their socks off at that.

[SYNACK]

If anyone was wondering about the 'funny screen' in Vista that the teacher said was comming up regarding the hard drive failure I have attached a screenshot of it as an example of the progress from XP.

 

I plan on deploying in dual boot config to some of the more technical members of staff quite shortly so that they have the choice and can start getting acustomed to it. It is not a very large move from Vista so I expect that they will be able to switch between them easy enough and the deloyment is practicaly identical. As Vista is doing the job quite well at the moment though we will probably be looking to move either next year or the next batch of holidays for the most adventurous clients.

[ajbritton]

I'm very surprised to see such a feverish early takeup on it in corp and educational establishment - it's unprecedented behaviour and was certainly not the case for any OS since - scratch that.

 

Perhaps because so many have been holding back from using Vista coupled with the perception that 7 appears to be stable and quick. No evidence for this, just theorising...

[synaesthesia]

Could well be the case. Me did have a similar effect

[featured_spectre]

we go tthe pressure as we are the pilot school for our county for most IT based projects (thanks to my boss). We were told that as soon as it is released to schools in Sept, we are to get a suite up and running as soon as possible and have it ready for open evening. If it is a success, the LEA want to make other schools go ahead.

[ajbritton]

we go tthe pressure as we are the pilot school for our county for most IT based projects (thanks to my boss). We were told that as soon as it is released to schools in Sept, we are to get a suite up and running as soon as possible and have it ready for open evening. If it is a success, the LEA want to make other schools go ahead.

 

A couple of possibilities suggest themselves;

 

1 - The LA wants some good publicity about it's proactive approach to the latest tech.

 

2 - LA has some kind of relationship with MS whereby they get preferable licensing in return for showcasing MS products.

 

3 - The LA has a roadmap to get all schools off XP and wants to trial 7 to see if it's an option before committing to Vista.

 

What OS are you running at the moment? Being in the pilot should be a good thing as you usually ought to get better support or some other sweetener for taking the risk.

[mac_shinobi]

At home XP does everything that people need something looking pretty is a bonus (unless you're a Mac owner)

 

I know this is the windows 7 topic area and side tracking a bit here and not starting a flame war or nothing ( just to be perfectly clear !! )

 

Am very disappointed that apple dropped ZFS ( I was really looking forward to that as one of the features of snow leopard ).

 

Still looking forward to grand central dispatch and the other features but hopefully they either can add it via software updates or hopefully will still add it on the next OS release.

 

Saw blu ray mentioned in iTunes but still don't know what that is all about unless they are planning or getting ready to incorporate blu ray in an OS update or the next OS release ? ( with or after snow leopard - and yes I am aware of the hardware issues involved with the content protection etc )

 

\Rant

 

Back to this thread and windows 7

Edited August 9, 2009 by mac_shinobi

[featured_spectre]

A couple of possibilities suggest themselves;

 

1 - The LA wants some good publicity about it's proactive approach to the latest tech.

 

2 - LA has some kind of relationship with MS whereby they get preferable licensing in return for showcasing MS products.

 

3 - The LA has a roadmap to get all schools off XP and wants to trial 7 to see if it's an option before committing to Vista.

 

What OS are you running at the moment? Being in the pilot should be a good thing as you usually ought to get better support or some other sweetener for taking the risk.

 

Running XP and server 2003 for our admin side.. The curriculum side will be changing over to W7 and Server 2008R2.

[ajbritton]

Running XP and server 2003 for our admin side.. The curriculum side will be changing over to W7 and Server 2008R2.

 

How will you be deploying? Win 7 deployment tools? WDS? Ghost/imaging?

[featured_spectre]

going to do 1 image for the PC's (curriculum). Will add on MS Office 2007, stykz, pivot, synchroneyes etc, then blitz it across.

[srochford]

I just thought it was rather a good point raised - the OS is released in October to the public (may be earlier to some customers possibly including schools) but should schools be adopting it that early? So, aiming to get Sims 7 compatible for October seems very fair to me.

 

 

It is fair and I don't think you could sensibly ask for more.

 

I would expect a company the size of Capita with a product as important as Sims to be very involved in the Beta process and to be telling Microsoft about any problems that exist. If the problems are (say) that they need ordinary users to write to HKLM and Windows 7 doesn't allow it then I'd expect MS to tell them where to go :-) If it's a problem with the coding where MS appear to have got something wrong then I'd expect MS to fix it or at least advise Capita how they can work round it etc.

 

I can also see that big companies never want to commit themselves to definite time scales with beta products but it's reasonable to assume that some schools will move to Windows 7 (just as some moved to Vista) and you'd expect them to have plans to deal with it (eg "we aim to have support for Windows 7 within 3 months/1 year/whatever of public launch" would be reasonable)

[6Foot2]

Link: Microsoft backs long life for IE6

 

From the article:

 

"In the future they have to look out for Google with its Chrome browser," he said. "The main concern there for Microsoft is the rise in cloud computing and software as a service. Google is becoming very effective at delivering applications in the cloud and therefore poses a huge threat to Microsoft."

 

Article ends with:

 

"Clearly Google is a very strong technology company with a number of offerings across the internet space but beyond that, I don't have a comment on them as a browser vendor in particular," stated Ms Bardzukas.

 

I think this quote may come back to haunt them.....