Microsoft promises that Windows 9 (which will be called regurgitate) will be better than previously released products. I jest, but Microsoft has been promising the next release or next service pack will be all things to all of God’s creatures.

Right now I am fighting Windows 7, on my wife’s brand new HP computer. All was well for the first three days, and now it has gone crazy. Have patience Thomas, for this too shall pass! :)




>>Those are interesting results, Craig.
>>They probably reflect the results I got when I made that upgrade, so they make sense to me.
>>However, since many Windows 7 adopters also got newer and much faster HW when they upgraded, (as I did) I'm wondering how IDC could say where the improvements came from.
>
>From our experience, I don't think we've had a single case where users weren't VERY happy with the performance, stability, or usability on machines that were upgraded from XP or Vista to Win7 (yeah - I'd rather have a manual desktop calculator than Vista).
>
>There is a small learning curve for standard users, and a larger one for administrators because Microsoft made a lot of menu and interface changes for no practical reason (Craig likes to try to argue that), but those are minor issues compared to speed, stability, and security gains in Win7.
>
>Win8 is a different story where interface issues and attempts to force Cloud use pretty much cause a break-even with performance gains. After using it since it became available I do not recommend Win7 users upgrading unless they really have some need for a Metro app.
>
>Once Microsoft releases a service pack that will bring back the start menu and toss Metro I think it may be a worthwhile upgrade (and I'm confident Microsoft will - one Vista per century is enough ).
>
>
>
>>
>>
>>
>>>And what she didn't take into account is productivity. Faster computers, less system crashes, fewer viruses to deal with. Then go on to things like discovering things in Office that were hidden in the menus. Things that the user didn't know were there that make their job easier, and hence they get more work done. They are doing the owners and their customers a disservice by not upgrading. In the mean time, their competitors are using newer technology and taking business away.
>>>
>>>Here's one report on ROI for SMALL business http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/business/archive/2010/06/29/research-study-reports-business-value-of-windows-7.aspx
>>>
>>>And another http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.com/news/article.php/3889796/Windows-7-Promises-Quick-ROI-for-SMBs.htm
>>>
>>>It's a good bet I can find more.
>>>
>>>>I am sure those ROI figures are correct for corporations and large businesses. The figures are very good for Microsoft's bottom line. but in my experience, small business often don't find that to be the case. Most of the apps I write are business solutions for companies with fewer than 25 employees (the vast majority are fewer than 10 employees.) Most of the apps employ office automation componenets. One client estimated that new hardware equipped with Windows 7 and Office 2007 reduced her business' productivity by half for at least 3 months. She singled out ribbon menus as being less logical/more arbitrary than their previous version of Office and features that were missing or worked differently in the OS as the major culprits. Larger businesses have IT departments and can offer employee training. Small businesses don't have those resources to help them with the steep learning curve.
>>>>
>>>>Even medium-sized businesses may not reap immediate gains in productivity. A simple upgrade from Office 2007 to 2010, declared by Microsoft to be "transparent" and "fully backward compatible", went very wrong for one client in August. The upgrade was done over a weekend and by 7:01 am Monday, the entire network was down and would remain so for a day and a half--until Office 2007 could be restored. The undocumented change in Office 2010 was eventually located and and a work-around for it was devised, but that took 2 months.
>>>>
>>>>In my experience new isn't always better and change for the sake of change rarely pays off :-) There are still a lot of XP workstations out there in my client base and I estimate they will be there for a while yet.