Windows 7 was certainly one of the biggest tech stories of 2009, so why didn’t it make our Product of the Year list? Simply put, none of eWEEK Labs’ analysts – myself included – were enthusiastic enough about the new Microsoft OS to put it there.
While Windows 7 may prove to be the best overall operating system Microsoft has delivered, in our tests, it provided only incremental improvements over a highly unpopular predecessor – many of the critical improvements in Windows 7 were actually included first in Windows Vista.
Windows 7 also has a curious lack of continuity and logic across features that lead to a seemingly inexhaustible set of questions.
Do administrators really need the added complexity (security, management and licensing) of a second operating system to support legacy applications, as XP Mode requires? And, if XP Mode is so critical, why won’t it play nicely with Microsoft’s latest communications technologies, such as DirectAccess? And if we really still need to run a legacy OS in a virtual machine, do we really need Windows 7 at the base to run the hypervisor? Why not run all Windows-craving line-of-business applications in an XP VM on top of a lean, modern Linux distribution? Isn’t that alternative at least worth considering?
On a personal level, I was pretty disappointed with Microsoft’s stance on security with Windows 7. The OS could have been all about securing data and the user experience, but instead Microsoft sacrificed that objective on the altar of usability and profitability – toning down the protections afforded by UAC, limiting the availability of hard disk and removable drive encryption to the most expensive SKUs, and even replacing and limiting a security feature once available to all business SKUs (Software Restrictions Policies) with a similar one available only to the Enterprise and Ultimate SKUs (AppLocker).
Microsoft also could have done something to natively provide information about the patching levels of third-party applications (a la Secunia PSI) as well as of the OS itself but, alas, it did not.
Despite all this, I expect Windows 7 will likely gain significant traction with enterprise IT – not because of Windows 7’s greatness, but rather because Microsoft alternatives are not up to snuff and IT implementers need to do something soon. Windows XP, which still lives on the vast majority of enterprise client machines, is on its last legs of commercial viability – with creaky support for the latest hardware and 64-bit architectures, as well as Microsoft’s unsurprising lack of commitment to its ongoing security development. And Windows Vista had too many perceived problems and detractors to ever get off the ground as a viable alternative.
Indeed, Windows 7 betters its forebears in most of the ways a new Windows should, but is it really the right solution for the way people compute today, given the increasing viability of mobility and cloud-based services in the enterprise? Do enterprises even need a fat client on the desktop anymore?
I expect that most Windows shops will likely opt for Windows 7. And for many, that’s fine. It’s familiar, it’s solid, and it’s the path of least resistance.
Customers just need to ask themselves if it’s the right choice for today and tomorrow.
German foreign minister warns Russia will face consequences for “absolutely intolerable” cyberattack on ruling party,…
Google is reportedly laying off at least 200 staff from its “Core” organisation, including key…
Investor appeasement? Apple unveils huge $110 billion share buyback program, as sales of iPhone decline…
Tesla retreats from pioneering gigacasting manufacturing process, amid cost cutting and challenges at EV giant
No skynet please. After the US, UK and France pledge human only control of nuclear…
Microsoft's AI investments continue in south east Asia, after investments in Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, as…
View Comments
"Those suckers that bought Vista Ultimate, myself included, are screwed," said yet another commenter. "There isn't a chance in hell that I am paying $219 for what should really be Vista SP2. We were promised 'extras' which we never got, now we are being excluded from the pre-order special. Anyway even at $49, it is still too much to pay."
The extras that commenter mentioned refer to "Ultimate Extras," one of the main features Microsoft cited in the months leading up to the 2007 release of Vista Ultimate to distinguish the operating system from its lower-priced siblings. According to Microsoft's marketing, Extras were to be "cutting-edge programs, innovative services and unique publications" that would be regularly offered only to users of Vista's highest-priced edition.
But users soon began belittling the paltry number of add-ons Microsoft released and the company's leisurely pace at providing them. Just five months after Vista was launched, critics started to complain.
Earlier this year, Microsoft dumped the feature, saying that it would instead focus on existing features in Windows 7 rather than again promise extras.
The furor over Vista Ultimate has even reached analysts' ranks. In May, Michael Cherry of Directions on Microsoft urged Microsoft to give Vista Ultimate owners a free upgrade to Windows 7. "It would buy them a lot of good will, and I don't think it would cost them much," Cherry said at the time.
Some of the commenters in the latest Computerworld stories about Windows 7 echoed Cherry.
"I am running Vista Ultimate and feel ripped off by Microsoft because ... [we] never received the extras we paid good money to get," said "Hellfire" in a long comment. "The very least that they should do is offer a heavily-discounted upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate to those that have lost money by purchasing Vista Ultimate."
check google for source