Windows Forum·65,705 discussions

worth upgrading to Win 7 10 months before tech refresh?

Locked

Hi,

I am the IT coordinator (but not a trained IT professional) for a SME (15 employees with laptops). >80% of our hardware is about 2 years old, so we have about 10 months before we refresh it. Is it worth the time and money to upgrade to windows 7 (we are a mix of XP and Vista) now or should we just wait and get W7 on the new hardware in 2010.

Please let me know your opinions. As far as I can tell it is pretty close to a toss-up (no clear winner), but I am not the most experienced guy around.

thanks for your time.
-b

Topic

Clarifications

In reply to worth upgrading to Win 7 10 months before tech refresh?

Clarifications

I would wait

In reply to worth upgrading to Win 7 10 months before tech refresh?

It would be easier to roll out new machines than upgrade old ones, then roll it out again.

Plus, by then, maybe W7 SP1 will be released

Get 1 or 2 copies to test with but wait for the rest…

In reply to worth upgrading to Win 7 10 months before tech refresh?

Consider that with the new hardware you will also get the latest (or close to it) hardware and new warranties (if that is an issue). I would recommend getting a copy or two of Win 7 in the mean time to have time to get to know Windows 7 and also perform early testing on your current software. If you have any apps that don’t play nice with Win 7, you want to know that now and not after you have ordered 80 new laptops.
I would also look at any impact Win 7 might have on your network policies (if you use them) or remote access. Good luck.

Personally I would be waiting

In reply to worth upgrading to Win 7 10 months before tech refresh?

As 7 is a new OS and it’s never a great idea to be on the [b]Bleeding Edge[/b] of new M$ Software.

If you jump in you get to pay M$ to use it and fault find on it as well. Inevitably it’s a time consuming and costly exercises that will adversely affect the bottom line of the business.

Windows 7 is not a rebadged version of Vista it’s a new OS based on Vista and it has been rushed out. When Vista was released M$ said that they would be producing a Service Pack at the 24 Month Mark and a new OS at the 48 Month Mark based on the existing OS Vista.

Well it’s not yet 4 years since Vista was released so 7 has not had the development time that M$ was planning on it having prior to it’s release so it can not be as developed as M$ where hoping to make it. 7 also is the first M$ product released before it’s Projected Release Date so I would treat it very carefully.

If you want to have a play with it there is a Trial Copy of the Enterprise Version available from M$ to download and use for 90 Days It may be worthwhile giving it a try.

http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/downloads/default.aspx

Though you will have to register with M$ to download this. 😉

Col

[Author]

Replies