Windows 7 Is IT Bliss

[JMH]

To me, it’s hard to believe that this long after the release of Windows 7 there are customers shrugging off Windows Next.

And it is almost inconceivable to have exponents of the “wait for SP1 before upgrading” crowd not interested in the least in the first upgrade for Windows 7.

I had the chance to chat with a number of Microsoft customers that have made the jump to Windows Vista’s successor, or are far along into the migration process.

While Windows 7 adopters are bound to be quite common judging by the 240 million licenses Microsoft sold since October 22nd, 2009, according to a count did a few months ago, the customers I talked to are not your average users.

Windows 7 Is IT Bliss - Softpedia

 

[Stratos]

Part of that issue involves costs and contracts. I work with many of our gov't systems and they're still on Vista. This has to due with their ELA (enterprise license agreement) which is contracted to a certain month/day/year.

A lot of companies to include the gov't (this includes the military) involve people who are not qualified IT professionals, engineers and administrators that are making these decisions. In any large-scale managed system where productivity is vital, it's important to make a solid assessment of productivity improvements before deploying changes and upgrades throughout the entire system.

 

[pparks1]

Don't forget there is also training and updating of documentation involved in an operating system upgrade.

 

[Stratos]

When I coordinated training for our corporate clients, it wasn't that big of a deal, the key training involved mostly those on the support team than the end users.

For the typical end user:

• Win2k and XP was minor, other than some cosmetic changes the users had no issue learning XP quickly.
  
• XP to Vista was more involved, menu system changed and a simple 1 hour classroom instruction solved that nicely.
  
• Vista to 7 isn't even worth mentioning, Vista users will have almost no issue using 7

.


For the IT security and management team, the key part was updating your MCSE's. Again 2000 and XP wasn't that different, Vista was a big change, 7 added more but involved a lot more streamlining which addressed many of the headaches that involved Vista administration.

 

[pparks1]

Remember that a lot of businesses stuck with XP. The training is going from XP to Windows 7....that will take a bit of effort.

 

[Stratos]

You might think that but my experience shows different. Most users spend over 90% of the time learning the new menu system. In 1 hour, you can take care of over 75% of their concerns. The other 25% is about allowing them to simply interact and try the new OS themselves.

There's 2 areas of focus, the first is the end user portion which is the easy part, done it for over 500,000 clients, many of them not what you would consider computer-savvy. They were able to learn XP to 7 without much issue, most of the concerns I had to address was the new Control Panel icons, Personalization and new features unique to 7 (like how to put 2 windows side-by-side on the same monitor by using WIN + LEFT/RIGHT arrow hotkeys, etc.) As far as using IE/Firefox, the icons looks pretty much the same as before, using Outlook (on Exchange) is no different, they use the same apps as they did before (Excel, Word, Powerpoint, etc.).

Then there's the guys who support all the users, this is the big challenge. You can't simply print out a document and expect know all of the changes from XP to 7 in a timely manner. It's much more time-efficient to send a few of your staff to class and get them updated on the new changes, then send them to update their certs. End users don't need to know the changes made to the network stacks in Windows 7 from XP, but the support team does.

Businesses stay on XP for their own unique reasons, cost versus need to upgrade. Not all machines currently running XP will be able to take advantage of Windows7 without replacing their current with new computers. I don't expect a shop selling comic books and baseball cards to rush out to change out their XP system to 7 for example... but a bank, school institution, city and county/state systems on the other hand...

I hope that clarifies a few things.

 

[Zirro]

From XP to Windows 7

Remember that a lot of businesses stuck with XP. The training is going from XP to Windows 7....that will take a bit of effort.

For end users the move from XP to Windows 7 will be nowhere near as difficult as XP to Vista would have been. Win7 is so much more usable and stable than Vista.

The private uptake of Win 7 is huge and a good number of users will already have a PC at home running Windows 7 so it won't be particlularly daunting for them.

 

[Golden]

For end users the move from XP to Windows 7 will be nowhere near as difficult as XP to Vista would have been. Win7 is so much more usable and stable than Vista.

The private uptake of Win 7 is huge and a good number of users will already have a PC at home running Windows 7 so it won't be particlularly daunting for them.

Very true. The people I work for B are anally retentive about their IT systems - still stuck on 32 bit XP. Luckily I have a bit of leeway in my specialisation, so was able to move to Seven Professional x64 - now everyone around me "want to keep up with the Jones's".

Windows 7 is without a doubt the best thing since sliced bread.

 

[jimbo45]

You might think that but my experience shows different. Most users spend over 90% of the time learning the new menu system. In 1 hour, you can take care of over 75% of their concerns. The other 25% is about allowing them to simply interact and try the new OS themselves.

There's 2 areas of focus, the first is the end user portion which is the easy part, done it for over 500,000 clients, many of them not what you would consider computer-savvy. They were able to learn XP to 7 without much issue, most of the concerns I had to address was the new Control Panel icons, Personalization and new features unique to 7 (like how to put 2 windows side-by-side on the same monitor by using WIN + LEFT/RIGHT arrow hotkeys, etc.) As far as using IE/Firefox, the icons looks pretty much the same as before, using Outlook (on Exchange) is no different, they use the same apps as they did before (Excel, Word, Powerpoint, etc.).

Then there's the guys who support all the users, this is the big challenge. You can't simply print out a document and expect know all of the changes from XP to 7 in a timely manner. It's much more time-efficient to send a few of your staff to class and get them updated on the new changes, then send them to update their certs. End users don't need to know the changes made to the network stacks in Windows 7 from XP, but the support team does.

Businesses stay on XP for their own unique reasons, cost versus need to upgrade. Not all machines currently running XP will be able to take advantage of Windows7 without replacing their current with new computers. I don't expect a shop selling comic books and baseball cards to rush out to change out their XP system to 7 for example... but a bank, school institution, city and county/state systems on the other hand...

I hope that clarifies a few things.

Hi there
often there are SERIOUS reasons to stay with XP -- not so much for WINDOWS but some of the Back Office / Database systems that need to be accessed by Corporate users STILL need a Windows XP GUI.

For example some SAP (HUGE HUGE Software company) systems still need an XP front end.

It's often THESE types of applications that make the reason that a company delays upgrading the OS to W7.

Incidentally now a lot of companies are going down the road of allowing their OWN users to use their OWN computers on company networks.

Once the security issues can be handled this is not a bad idea -- people these days will tend to have much more up to date computers than a typical company has for all sorts of reasons. It's cheaper too as the employee buys his own computer - possibly with sole sort of subsidy from the company.

The main difficulty is in security and control but IF ( a big IF) this can be managed its very popular and will be cheaper for the company in the long run.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[Golden]

For example some SAP (HUGE HUGE Software company) systems still need an XP front end.

That's an interesting observation. I use GSAP under Windows 7 Professional x64 and it just works - I don't know how, but it does.

 

[pparks1]

Very true. The people I work for B are anally retentive about their IT systems - still stuck on 32 bit XP. Luckily I have a bit of leeway in my specialisation, so was able to move to Seven Professional x64 - now everyone around me "want to keep up with the Jones's".

I've been in two different places that were "stuck" on 32-bit as their VPN systems didn't support a 64-bit client without making a significant investment in the infrastructure. Since the workstations didn't need more than 4GB of RAM, and none of the client side applications were true 64-bit native applications...there was very little incentive to moving to a 64-bit system. They couldn't justify the cost of the VPN upgrade since the move to 64-bit didn't really provide them with any return on investment.

Many businesses also didn't see the return on investment with Vista. At first it had poor driver support, and the Aero interface while "super neato", didn't really provide any pratical business advantage. So, rather than invest the time and effort to upgrade machines, they simply stayed put.

With Windows 7, they are at the end of their computer life on their old XP machines and back dating brand new machines to a 10+ year old OS seems rather silly, so adoption rates are higher. Coupled with the fact that 7 is streamlined, efficient and runs very well, makes this a very appealing OS. It took some time at first with Vista to get to where we are, but a lot was learned over time and we now have a very stable and solid OS at the desktop. We still have a ways to go on security and such...but MS is working at it.

 

[Stratos]

You might think that but my experience shows different. Most users spend over 90% of the time learning the new menu system. In 1 hour, you can take care of over 75% of their concerns. The other 25% is about allowing them to simply interact and try the new OS themselves.

There's 2 areas of focus, the first is the end user portion which is the easy part, done it for over 500,000 clients, many of them not what you would consider computer-savvy. They were able to learn XP to 7 without much issue, most of the concerns I had to address was the new Control Panel icons, Personalization and new features unique to 7 (like how to put 2 windows side-by-side on the same monitor by using WIN + LEFT/RIGHT arrow hotkeys, etc.) As far as using IE/Firefox, the icons looks pretty much the same as before, using Outlook (on Exchange) is no different, they use the same apps as they did before (Excel, Word, Powerpoint, etc.).

Then there's the guys who support all the users, this is the big challenge. You can't simply print out a document and expect know all of the changes from XP to 7 in a timely manner. It's much more time-efficient to send a few of your staff to class and get them updated on the new changes, then send them to update their certs. End users don't need to know the changes made to the network stacks in Windows 7 from XP, but the support team does.

Businesses stay on XP for their own unique reasons, cost versus need to upgrade. Not all machines currently running XP will be able to take advantage of Windows7 without replacing their current with new computers. I don't expect a shop selling comic books and baseball cards to rush out to change out their XP system to 7 for example... but a bank, school institution, city and county/state systems on the other hand...

I hope that clarifies a few things.

Hi there
often there are SERIOUS reasons to stay with XP -- not so much for WINDOWS but some of the Back Office / Database systems that need to be accessed by Corporate users STILL need a Windows XP GUI.

For example some SAP (HUGE HUGE Software company) systems still need an XP front end.

It's often THESE types of applications that make the reason that a company delays upgrading the OS to W7.

Incidentally now a lot of companies are going down the road of allowing their OWN users to use their OWN computers on company networks.

Once the security issues can be handled this is not a bad idea -- people these days will tend to have much more up to date computers than a typical company has for all sorts of reasons. It's cheaper too as the employee buys his own computer - possibly with sole sort of subsidy from the company.

The main difficulty is in security and control but IF ( a big IF) this can be managed its very popular and will be cheaper for the company in the long run.

Cheers
jimbo

I've worked with Crystal Reports and it does work on our Win 7 systems, each of our workstations have remote access to Windows XP Pro on our VM servers. I'm not trying to discredit your comments as I know what you meant by your example as I only brought up a business model of cost versus need to upgrade. However the system (workstation OS) has to support the mission of the users, and I believe that's what you were aiming at, which I'm in complete agreement with.

On a managed system, it's all about the people supporting it, I won't go further into this as it's going to get long. What makes it difficult sometimes are things like "regulations" or "policies" that limit the kind of solutions we can implement. People ask me all the time "why can't I use my ____ on the network" and I'm left to recite the regulations and policies on that issue. Sucks but I don't make the rules.

 

[Darician]

This year and late last year, I started noticing a lot of users we support being upgraded to Windows 7 as a lot of the older PCs are being discarded slowly. For the most part, they seem to be adapting. Most of us in support suggested to management that they make it look more like Vista and XP by showing the icons in the taskbar and also keep Quick Launch but they didn't allow it.

Surprisingly though, people seem to be taking to the Windows 7 interface very nicely. As far as systems that require XP, there is still an Oracle system that needs to be accessed that's on an older version of Oracle and requires IE 6 to function properly but we ended up using Citrix to connect to a 2003 machine to access that. For a lot of business software like that, many companies are turning to Citrix and VMware to keep these systems accessible at least until they can upgrade them. Most of us in support however have been using Windows 7 since about March/April 2010 and we're really happy with it. And what's more interesting, unlike the reception of Vista where users asked us to keep them on XP, our end users have actually been asking us for Windows 7 so that's definitely a great sign.

 

[MacGyvr]

I will never understand the corporate mentality of "training" users when an operating system changes. I worked at one of the major banks based in Charlotte, NC for 7 years. They used that excuse to hold off going from Windows 2000 to Windows XP for literally years. Here's the kicker. They never did ANY formal training when they did roll out XP. They dropped a new computer on the user's desk with XP loaded and that was it. So what was the holdup? And to me, if the user needs formal training when all they do is click an icon to launch a program that they stay in for the majority of their workday, they need to fire the user.

 

[Stratos]

Win2k to XP wasn't that big a jump, mostly cosmetic changes for the typical end-user. The NT kernel of Win2k and XP are 5.0 and 5.1 respectively. Vista to Win7 are almost in the same category as both share similar NT 6.0 and 6.1 kernels.

However a major change would be from Win98SE/ME to Win2k (which exposed users to the NT environment), XP users to Vista (or Win7) as they're introduced to a major change to the desktop environment and significant menu changes, Aero amongst other things.

I do agree that companies make too much of a fuss about how some companies hold off upgrades due to their concerns over formally training their users. What matters most IMO are those who work behind the scenes with information management and security as they need to know what changes are significant to their application.

 

[Zirro]

One place I worked at just had a couple of simple computer based training modules that users could go through at their own pace.
This was necessary because small numbers of users were spread over a very large geographical area.
It worked very well, not just for Windows / MS Office, but for other corporate applications as well.

 

[DeaconFrost]

I'm in the process of migrating my company to Windows 7 from XP Pro. My users are far from tech savvy, but they've been picking up Windows 7 very well, and quickly. The transition from Office 2003 to Office 2007 was far more painful.

 

[Zirro]

Transition from XP to Win 7

I also found the transition from an older version of Office to Office 2007 caused far more confusion for the less tech-savvy users.

 

[jimbo45]

I will never understand the corporate mentality of "training" users when an operating system changes. I worked at one of the major banks based in Charlotte, NC for 7 years. They used that excuse to hold off going from Windows 2000 to Windows XP for literally years. Here's the kicker. They never did ANY formal training when they did roll out XP. They dropped a new computer on the user's desk with XP loaded and that was it. So what was the holdup? And to me, if the user needs formal training when all they do is click an icon to launch a program that they stay in for the majority of their workday, they need to fire the user.

Hi there

I don't think USER Training in general is given or even needed say in migrating from XP to W7 -- a few company wide Power Point presentations can address that issue and for a few days after the switch over one or two individuals can be on hand to address users questions.

What DOES require user training is that if the applications that these Workstations need to access change then this can have serious implications on their daily work.

However the back end applications rarely change at the same time as people change their workstations so even this can be managed sensibly and with tools like vmware the cutover can be managed gradually too.

As noted in previous posters comments my observation was that the product that caused the Biggest HEADACHE for almost all our users was the switch to Office 2007 -- even now there are a few copies of Office 2003 being surreptiously used.

Even I've been guilty of that one as there is stuff that's so easy to do in EXCEL 2003 which needs a bit of fiddling to find the correct menus etc in EXCEL 2007.

As for accessing a 32 bit VPN via a 64 bit system the software on the workstation for accessing the VPN should handle that without any problem.


Cheers
jimbo