W8 for IT!
Last week, I received and attempted to install Windows 8 Professional upgrade on my laptop, and having failed at that, on my desktop.
I had to get the Windows 8 Professional full to install Windows 8 on my laptop after doing a wipe and it took three times to do it. One of the things I found is that Windows Defender locked up and caused some problems for the 168MB upgrade to Windows 8 (and this was just after the immediate official release of Windows 8, mind you). I turned off Windows Defender, did a "repair" on Windows Update.
After trying it out for awhile with what should be considered a "pristine" system with absolutely no third party add ins, I found the interface annoying (but then, I don't have a touch screen). I also found that Internet Explorer 10 crashes exactly the same way Internet Explorer 9 crashes on a certain website I access regularly. I found email from the front page rather charmless as a functional but austere method of accessing email. Navigating the mess is an exercise in frustration, but I can see that for naive consumers with touch interface, it could be a superior system (at some point I will get Surface RT, which, as I understand it, has all the power of a tranquilized gnat).
I did finally manage to pretty much restore Windows 7 on my desktop over the past week. I'm certain I won't miss some of the third party products I didn't bother to buy again to get back up and going. Windows 8 upgrade had some problems and got locked up (probably a Windows Devender issue). It decided to drop back to Windows 7... except the boot was taking 24 hours without any improvement. So I lost my system and had to rebuild Windows 7.
All in all, it was not a satisfying experience.
Now then.
If corporate IT has any of the same sort of experience I did, I would think that they would simply not want to spend the money to take the risk and upgrade from a perfectly well working product (there would have to be some very compelling reasons, I would think). It is unimaginable to take my frustrating experience and multiply it 10,000 times.
Perhaps, some of you are a lot more sophisticated than I am and could easily overcome the challenge and triumph.
Good luck to you all.
