Time to Upgrade to Windows 7?

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Bee

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#69322 6-Oct-2010 10:36

I just went to buy some new hardware for our company and am finding it hard to source Windows XP desktops.

How many companys out there are running Windows 7 now? I don't know of any so far but what else can we do if we cant get Windows XP computers ?

If I just buy a new computer with Win 7 do most drivers for Win XP exist out there somewhere?

Is this the beginning of a worldwide forced upgrade? or are we here already far behind the times?

Doing your best is much more important than being the best.

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#388682 6-Oct-2010 10:52

for me, i do not have any reason to use win xp as a daily os. win 7 is far more superior (do u realize that win xp has been superseded by 2 oses - win vista and win 7?). however, i do run win xp in my virtualbox occasionally.

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#388689 6-Oct-2010 11:16

You if you have stubborn application that can't run under Windows 7, you can set its compatibility to use Windows XP compatible, else if you have Home Premium/Pro/Ultimate/Enterprise, you can run Windows XP Mode??

So there isn't any excuse to hang on to XP. If you have hardware peripherals that might not work, perhaps it is time to upgrade those hardware peripherals as well..

Move on with the time, XP is dated, and you're not doing any good to yourself/company by hanging on a dying/dead horse.

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#388692 6-Oct-2010 11:20

It depends were you are getting your computers from. We purchase computers from Dell and are still having them supplied with the XP downgrade. The computers do come with Windows 7 OEM licenses.

As for are companies rolling out Windows 7. Most are working towards deploying Windows 7 but it is a LONG process. We have been working on it since last year and are pushing it to be ready before the end of this year.
Microsoft announced that XP will have continued extended support until 2014 to give companies time to prepare and switch.

Edit I should point out we have over 10,000 computers and have a global purchasing agreement with Dell.

Media centre PC - Case Silverstone LC16M with 2 X 80mm AcoustiFan DustPROOF, MOBO Gigabyte MA785GT-UD3H, CPU AMD X2 240 under volted, RAM 4 Gig DDR3 1033, HDD 120Gig System/512Gig data, Tuners 2 X Hauppauge HVR-3000, 1 X HVR-2200, Video Palit GT 220, Sound Realtek 886A HD (onboard), Optical LiteOn DH-401S Blue-ray using TotalMedia Theatre Power Corsair VX Series, 450W ATX PSU OS Windows 7 x64

chiefie

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#388695 6-Oct-2010 11:26

@Nety, I recently read that Dell is stopping the XP Downgrade.

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allan

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#388696 6-Oct-2010 11:37

If you are desparate to continue running XP, then purchasing a machine with Windows 7 Pro, or Ultimate does give you downgrade rights to XP Pro (Vista Business/Ultimate as well, but why would you).

http://www.microsoft.com/oem/en/licensing/sblicensing/pages/downgrade_rights.aspx

jaymz

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#388697 6-Oct-2010 11:39

chiefie: @Nety, I recently read that Dell is stopping the XP Downgrade.

.

HP have stopped supplying downgrade rights for their workstations as of 1st October.

I enjoy Windows 7, but there are issues with moving some clients to it from XP.
Examples:
- PC connects to a printer without Windows 7 drivers (not a standard desktop printer, say a rather expensive specilaized printer
- Company runs an old peice of software that has no upgrade path/support for Windows 7, but relies on above to run.

I know that this is a fairly unique case, but there are companies out there who would find moving to Windows 7 a rather expensive task.

I know for my clients that if a Windows XP machine fails, I will get them to get a Windows 7 PC. That way the transition is cheaper for them (depending on software support/printers of course)

My 2 cents anyway :)

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#388698 6-Oct-2010 11:40

They are trying ;-) I think it has been extended with the extension of the extended (damn that is a lot of extending..) XP support by MS.

From what I understand there was a conference of most of the largest corporate's and MS in the US and basically the corporate's said look we want to move to Windows 7 but we need more time. Only something like 33% of corporate's had started deploying any amount of Windows 7 at that time.

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#388704 6-Oct-2010 11:53

Have a read here.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9179109/Microsoft_extends_Windows_XP_downgrade_rights_until_2...

For us we put our own image on the PC's so we do not really care what image comes on the box from Dell.

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#388709 6-Oct-2010 12:02

Soon be all over as 2012 is near and none of this thing will matter! *lol*

2020 is far too long... I personally think that is just plain'ol stupid. The organisation I'm working at, ... *sigh* are suffering the same silly stance. The sooner we move on to Office 2010 and Windows 7 and IE8/9, the better off we'll be, but the team that have no ideas at all but making decision are somewhat plainly ignoring the benefits these combo will bring.

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#388726 6-Oct-2010 12:41

We are still running a large number of XP systems - now been given go ahead for Windows 7 so a WDS has been setup and were pushing out Win7 as fast as we can.

Those branches we have installed Win7 at, have not contacted us for any OS related matters whereas when they were XP based we'd hear from them at least once a week.

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Bee

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#388809 6-Oct-2010 16:45

My Supplier advises that as of Oct 1 this year they are not allowed to ship any XP downgrades...

Meanwhile Head office say no windows 7 on the network until Middle of next year...

Seems we are stuck between a rock and another rock..

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#388818 6-Oct-2010 16:52

Bee: My Supplier advises that as of Oct 1 this year they are not allowed to ship any XP downgrades...

Meanwhile Head office say no windows 7 on the network until Middle of next year...

Seems we are stuck between a rock and another rock..

Have you got an Enterprise WinXP Licence?

We are just upgrading all ours to Win7 starting in a week or so, after having the Pilot going since March.

There are still quite a few programs which can and will have issues:

Medical programs such as Medtech
Finance stuff Cognos, BankLink etc

For those we are trying to virtualise them, either in APP-V or MedV, depending on your organisation this might be a bit extreme if it's quite small. But still, setting up a Med-V virtual server on an existing server there might be an answer to the problems? That's only if you are forced to do Win7 on the newer hardware you purchase

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jaymz

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#388823 6-Oct-2010 17:00

vinnieg:
Have you got an Enterprise WinXP Licence?

We are just upgrading all ours to Win7 starting in a week or so, after having the Pilot going since March.

There are still quite a few programs which can and will have issues:

Medical programs such as Medtech
Finance stuff Cognos, BankLink etc

For those we are trying to virtualise them, either in APP-V or MedV, depending on your organisation this might be a bit extreme if it's quite small. But still, setting up a Med-V virtual server on an existing server there might be an answer to the problems? That's only if you are forced to do Win7 on the newer hardware you purchase

Just to clarify, MedTech32 is supported on Windows 7 now. Provided that the version of Medtech32 is v19 or above (current build is 19.3) and Interbase 2007 or above (2009 is now out)

I have moved my clients to the latest versions of above and Windows 7 works fine on it. There is a bit of customization in terms of UAC but no show stoppers.

muppet

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#388825 6-Oct-2010 17:04

I put Win7 on my laptop and it's great in every way.

But I went back to XP because there's problems with the NVIDIA driver, when it's changing clock speeds (as the Aero interface makes it do a lot more) the soundcard teeeenndds to dooo thhiiiiiiss.

Not a Win7 fault, obviously a driver fault. But I did find my DPC Latency goes up quite a lot as soon as I installed Win7. http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

You should use Win7 though. You'll be glad you did.

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allan

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#389118 7-Oct-2010 11:52

Bee: My Supplier advises that as of Oct 1 this year they are not allowed to ship any XP downgrades...

Meanwhile Head office say no windows 7 on the network until Middle of next year...

Seems we are stuck between a rock and another rock..

No you're not. read my post above with the http://www.microsoft.com/oem/en/licensing/sblicensing/pages/downgrade_rights.aspx link.

Just because the hardware vendor is no longer shipping a pre-built XP machine, does not prevent you from downgrading to XP, provided you purchase the right Windows 7 license.

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