By Mike King
Here we go again, next version of Windows and forced upgrades in sight no-doubt. So, Windows 7 is with us and available from retailers. Yawn; application and driver compatibility problems here we come.
Given that Windows Vista was only launched at the end of 2006 it hasn’t taken Microsoft long to move on the next version. Not surprising given that the previous version of Windows, XP was launched in late 2001 and still accounts for around 70% of the market.
Given the poor level of take up of Vista – less than 20% of XP users have apparently upgraded to Vista - Microsoft had to move quickly to release Windows 7. Vista was a flop and the idea is to get people who still have Windows XP to move to Windows 7.
Unfortunately, at Johnson King we’re on Vista. A couple of years ago we bought all new PCs and went for Vista over XP as a sensible longer term option. Don’t laugh. Most annoyingly, I remember feeling comfortable because we’d waited and avoided the supposed pain of early adoption. Vista had been on the market for a year before we made the switch and seemed like the right option.
Funnily enough, in spite of the widespread criticism, I find Vista to be a decent operating system. It works and supports what we want to do. It is irritating that we have to frequently save documents in XP compatible formats when sharing with people outside of Johnson King because so few of them have Vista but, apart from that, it does the job.
Obviously now that XP is pretty much obsolete, there is going to be a forced mass upgrade to Windows 7 (don’t you just love Microsoft) and we’re on borrowed time.
Of course, the probl em with upgrading an operating system, particularly in a business environment, is that you have all the pain, cost and hassle to be able to run essentially the same applications you were running before and do what you could do already. No one likes to feel forced into doing things, particularly not when they cost money. I’d like to think that we’ll get a low cost, painless and easy upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 but experience tells me that won’t be the case.
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