Windows 7 Just Might Make Sense

Glenn Weadock, Global Knowledge instructor

Despite the urgings of Microsoft and various technology research firms, and the admittedly entertaining "Mojave Experiment," lots of companies have decided to take a pass on Windows Vista. We now have enough hindsight to speculate as to the possible reasons.

We have reached a point in the evolution of PC technology at which we no longer see the quantum leaps forward that we saw (for example) in DOS 3.1, Windows 95, and Windows 2000. In fact, it almost seems as though updating workstation operating systems has become a zero-sum game: you give up almost as much as you get.

This certainly appears to be true regarding Windows Vista. You get better security, but you have to put up with User Account Control prompts and application compatibility problems. You get some realtime search performance for objects that are in the index, but worse-than-XP search performance for objects that are outside of it. You get faster network performance, but slower file system performance. Et cetera, ad infinitum.

The performance issues have been particularly irksome. Vista seems unable to perform even simple operations without the occasional bizarre lengthy delay.

Many firms were also irked that they could not take full advantage of Vista's feature set without bellying up to the bar and ordering some stiff shots of graphics hardware. Organizations with a big investment in (or recent lease refresh of) laptops found themselves without a GPU upgrade path.

The bottom line for many organizations has been that the positives of Vista do not dramatically outweigh the negatives. Without a compelling story for upgrading operating systems, many firms see no good reason to endure the pain involved.

And that pain is quite real. It's a given that a certain number of applications will break. It's also a given that there will be certain hardware devices that won't work with the new OS, whether immediately or ever. A certain amount of retraining is going to be necessary, both for IT professionals and end users. There are deployment costs, of course: testing, scripting, image-building, all those good things. And troubleshooting the zillion little things that just seem to break whenever you upgrade an OS.

Some have commented that upgrading is a good idea simply because Microsoft eventually drops support for old products. Tell that to US Bank, which still runs Windows 2000 Professional in the branches I visit. For all intents and purposes, many organizations become self-sufficient in the tech support department, once they have amassed enough experience with an operating system.

So, will Windows 7 be different? My guess is that it will, and here's why. (Bear in mind that all of what follows could change - Windows 7 is a beta product as I write this.)

First of all, because Windows 7 will use Vista drivers, the universe of supported hardware will be very large right out of the starting gate. That's a huge issue for companies who don't want to have to wait around for the industry to catch up to a brand new OS.

Second, unlike Vista, it appears that Windows 7 will not require massive injections of hardware horsepower to take advantage of its features. It looks like Windows 7 should run just fine on today's typical corporate PC hardware.

Third, and on a related note, Windows 7 feels quick. Even though the product is still in beta, it performs better than Vista on my test system. Many observers felt that Microsoft really shot itself in the foot by releasing an OS that was so painfully slow when compared to XP. When you have legions of people voluntarily downgrading their shiny new PC's to yesterday's operating system in order to run their computers faster, you know you have a problem. Microsoft has never been known for fast software, but Vista was a rather large embarrassment in the speed department.

Fourth, Microsoft seems to be taking some steps to make User Account Control more palatable. Instead of providing a dozen cryptically-worded Group Policy settings that took most of us weeks to fully comprehend, Microsoft is offering fewer, and more understandable, choices to help us make our own compromises between security and usability.

Fifth, Windows 7 appears to have less baggage. Several applets will no longer be installed by default. Administrators will have more control over what binaries get installed. And the applets that do remain have, in some cases, been brought into the 21st century. (I never thought I'd say this, but Paint now looks like something I could use!)

Is there one new killer feature that will make companies look at Windows 7 and say "We've got to have that"? If there is, I haven't seen it. But Windows 7 appears to bring most of Vista's advantages without the worst of Vista's drawbacks. That might just be enough for Windows 7 to find the broad acceptance that Vista never inspired.