Has all the talk in the media about Windows 7 had you wondering what Windows 7 is and what happened to Windows Vista? Does the media buzz remind you that at one point ITS was talking about upgrading to Windows Vista from Windows XP across campus? Well, here is the latest information to satisfy those burning questions.
What happened to Windows Vista?
Windows Vista appears to have had a greater success in the home environment than it did in the corporate or educational environments. Vista requires more robust hardware and many older computers just could not utilize this operating system. Many older applications would not run on Vista and some software vendors did not anticipate the changes required to update their software. Microsoft has been struggling to prove or convince corporate/educational users that the upgrade to Vista would have greater benefits than Windows XP. Davidson was far from the only institution that had application/hardware concerns about wide scale distribution of Windows Vista.
What happened to the Windows Vista deployment on campus?
In the past, Davidson has had compelling reasons to upgrade to a newer operating system. Among those reasons were major increases in security or usability and the availability of new tools for learning/teaching. However, none of these reasons existed with Windows Vista. Over the last year, ITS worked with various departments on campus and with our application support vendors. Based on that work, it was determined that Windows Vista was not the best fit for our environment. ITS conducted a survey with our peer institutions and found that the majority decided not to deploy or stopped their deployment.
What is Windows 7?
Windows 7 is Microsoft's newest version of their operating system. It is scheduled for release to the general public on October 22, but ITS has been testing the early-release versions. The look and feel of Windows 7 is much like Vista but the features that delayed widespread deployment of Vista have been relaxed, fixed, or removed.
Where are we now and where are we going from here?
Testing on several different hardware platforms is on-going and we are communicating with our software vendors regarding support for Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 8, which is built into the new operating system. ITS will work quickly and responsibly to make this new operating system supported on the network and available to campus offices as soon as possible.
Watch the ITS News blog for an announcement about new operating systems from Microsoft (Windows 7) and Apple (Snow Leopard).
