It was almost a year ago, two years into the lifecycle of Windows Vista, that Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer acknowledged at an industry conference that many enterprises were likely to skip the company’s latest operating system in anticipation of its successor, Windows 7. With the new OS shipping next month, what kind of reception will it get from IT shops? Will they flock to the new operating system after waiting out Vista? Or will they take a more cautious approach? We asked some of our readers about their plans for Windows 7.
Don’t fix what isn’t broken
Cris Gheorghiu works as a technical support analyst providing day-to-day IT support for the Kleinburg, Ont.-based McMichael Canadian Art Collection. The art gallery is a small shop, with about 60 to 70 desktops currently under Gheorghiu’s command.
While the recession was probably the biggest influence in preventing a Vista upgrade over the last year, the fact that XP has remained so stable and the art gallery isn’t a full-fledged Microsoft shop could be a strike against a Windows 7 upgrade in the near future.
“I know Microsoft is pushing collaborative applications with Exchange and if we were really dependant on that, we’d have no choice to upgrade,” he said. “But we’re using IBM Lotus Notes, so we’re still pretty happy with what we have. We don’t need more bells and whistles just to look nice.”
To underscore how happy the art gallery is with their current setup, Gheorghiu recalled how easily its offices handled power problems caused by a group of tornados that ripped through the Greater Toronto Area in August.
“If it was an Exchange server it probably would have been one day’s work to get it running,” he said. “But we only needed to restart our Domino server to get everything back in business.”
Another reason a Windows 7 upgrade in the near future is doubtful, Gheorghiu said, is the indirect costs it will have on the art gallery’s infrastructure. The museum has recently added an environment application that controls the temperature and a building automation system that controls the lights. Both of these applications are untested with Vista and Windows 7 and were developed for Windows Server 2003 and XP.
