Windows 7 Migration – Bad News For XP Users?
Now that the behemoth that is Windows 7 looms yet closer on the horizon, a lot of IT departments who are still clinging vehemently to XP (And who isn’t?) are left to wonder about just what their future holds as Microsoft is firmly throwing the good old Win32 out the window. No longer will Windows simply be backwards compatible to all applications. (Which, historically, is very arguable anyway as anyone who was in charge of the Win 9x migrations to Windows XP will recall. And let’s just not even mention Win ME, or Win ME 2 Vista.)
In theory at least, Windows 7 offers Windows XP users the best of both worlds. Windows 7, and a virtual Windows XP SP3. It’s a combination that should be hard to beat.
On paper.
In the practical application however one niggling (screaming) detail remains. Why VM a whole Win XP box?! It’s the question of the day. Microsoft could have used better technologies to VM per-app instead. Application virtualization would have been a much smoother ride for users. Again, in theory, Windows 7 has an option sort of like this. In practice however it really isn’t. It’s still running a whole VMed WinXP box in the background.
Will Windows 7’s virtualized Windows XP be enough for migrations to go well? It’s an interesting question.
And it’s a question that’s even more muddled by Microsoft’s licensing. Buy the right license of Windows Vista and you can happily “downgrade” to Windows XP. But for some odd reason, the same is not exactly true for Windows 7. Those downgrade rights disappear on April 23rd, 2010. After that, you can only downgrade to Windows Vista. (And who in their right mind would want that?) So if your solution to Windows 7 migration is to actually install Windows XP on the boxes, you have to buy your Windows 7 boxes right away!
But who is going to do it that way?
IT departments always take time evaluating the migration before they actually move everything over. (At least those who rightly worry.) This process can easily take more than six months!
So, thanks to Microsoft, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
What is the right answer? We just may see IT departments continuing to cling vehemently to Windows XP for a while yet, simply because thanks to Microsoft’s poor choice in downgrade rights they’ll have no choice.
How I Make $300 a Day Online:
Hey, great post, very well written. You should blog more about this.
June 17, 2009, 10:59 pmInsanIT.net » Blog Archive » Microsoft To Delay Loss Of Downgrade Rights On Windows 7?:
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June 19, 2009, 6:30 amDataCabbitKSW:
This is why Microsoft offers their Software Assurance package to businesses. It allows them to get pretty much any version of Microsoft OS (I hear DOS 6.2 runs wonderfully on modern hardware, albeit with no multiple CPU) and they can switch out later if they are still under contract. Yes, the changeover period is not extremely long, but they extended it beyond its original length. It now extends through 2011. This is over a year to decide. Even firms with long IT migration approval methods should be able to prepare and begin execution within a year and a half. I do agree that a VM per app would have been nice, but it also could have possibly had much more overhead, or required a whole new virtualization structure to be developed and implemented. The fact they are throwing in a full Windows XP install and license, just so it can be run in a VM so people can easily run legacy applications, speaks volumes of the commitment to trying to help out companies and their end users transition.
June 24, 2009, 3:49 pmMicrosoft realised that 6 months was a little slim, which is why they extended the stay of it.