Introduced nine years ago, Windows XP is ubiquitous in corporate environments but it’s creaky and showing its age. As hardware & networks have improved Windows XP has had new services “bolted on” to it over the years but it’s really time for a new client operating system.

The introduction of Windows Vista was a mess — Microsoft did a ham-handed job developing and marketing that operating system, which was supposed to universally replace Windows XP. It didn’t — many large organizations decided to hold off and sit tight on Windows XP for several more years.

Microsoft has tried to make good with these organizations by finally releasing Windows 7 in October, 2009.

I’m very happy to say that they did a very good job on this operating system, and it’s finally ready for business use.

Windows 7 is a streamlined, faster version of Microsoft Vista. It combines new interface improvements that will be instantly noticeable to the end-user with a lot of necessary back-end improvements designed to complement modern technologies & improve security and administration.

Microsoft received lots of negative feedback about Vista’s interface changes — there were too many places to find things in the OS; attempting to perform a simple task could take minutes of wading through menus. To address this they simplified the entire menu structure and cleaned up the Start Menu, the Desktop and the Control Panel. Out of the box, Windows 7 presents a cleaner, simpler interface that’s very reminiscent of Apple’s Mac OS X operating system. (Like Apple, Microsoft also decided to bundle in some very beautiful high-quality photographs as background images!)

Microsoft added some new taskbar functionality as well: multiple windows of the same program now show up as a single tab on the taskbar, reducing clutter. Hovering over running programs in the taskbar shows a thumbnailed image of the application. And as many people have seen in the commercials, dragging running programs to opposite sides of the screen will resize the windows automatically so that the programs can be quickly viewed side-by-side. There are numerous small improvements that when taken together can really speed up a person’s navigation of the operating system.

Things are even more interesting under-the-hood — Microsoft built a fault detection & repair system into the OS; it tracks (in great detail) every time a program fails or crashes, then attempts to locate information on how to repair the problem in a giant online database. The OS will even track how often this happens and give advice on how to stabilize things if it feels programs are crashing frequently. Part of the reason for this subsystem is designed to show that Microsoft is not the culprit in most crashes — it’s usually due to badly-written software or device drivers from a third party — but regardless of the reasons for it it’s a worthwhile system that has lots of potential. And for the record, no similar system exists in Mac OS X (and yes, programs crash in Mac OS X too, despite what you may have heard.)

In addition to this, they’ve improved all of the features that were added to Vista, such as better memory handling and cool geeky software technology such as SuperFetch and ReadyBoost — all of which can squeeze the most performance out of your hardware as is physically possible.

Microsoft has also improved the interface for their networking features which will be a great time saver for people who regularly switch from wired to wireless networks or move from office, to airport, to cafe, to home.

DEPLOYMENT

We are (finally!) specifying computers with Windows 7 installed as a default, instead of Windows XP – and this is a major change for us. While not every third-party Line of Business application is certified to be compatible with Windows 7, we haven’t encountered any major problems yet in our deployments. Still, you should check with your vendor (or ask us) before you purchase a computer with Windows 7 pre-installed. (There are many creative ways around compatibility issues as well–I can think of several very interesting workarounds Microsoft has built-in to Windows 7 itself to try to ensure very old software will still work correctly.)

We really think Windows 7 is a worthwhile upgrade for many businesses, but not necessarily across the board. If you are interested in upgrading (and there are many good reasons to do so) it’s a pretty clean and straightforward process on computers that are 1-2 years old. Hold on to anything older than that until the next PC refresh cycle and just replace it with a Windows 7 computer in a couple of years.

Incidentally, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 will interoperate without issue on the same network, and all three operating systems can connect to Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008.  (You’ll gain more network functionality with the newest versions of the client (Windows 7) and server (Windows Server 2008) operating systems.)

I’d like to specifically mention that HP has some really fantastic new desktop business computers (with shiny new Intel i-series processors) out right now with Windows 7 preloaded — if you are interested in those please let me know.  (We are an authorized HP Agent — this means we specify HP hardware & set up the quote so you can order directly from HP.)

Have you upgraded to Windows 7 or do you have questions about it?  Please leave feedback in the comments below.

-Brian

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