Windows 7 woos Vista victims and XP stalwarts

Beverley Head
Wednesday, 09 September 2009 09:12

IT Industry - Development

“First there are a lot more tools to help with deployment,” said Rosenthal. He said IT departments essentially had to decide whether to opt for a 32- or 64-bit deployment and then should be able to get away with deployment across a series of platforms using just one image.

Windows 7 was also easier to maintain, with updates able to be injected into the image.

Security had also been improved in Windows 7 said Rosenthal The in-built bit-locker was an improvement on the version of the tool in Vista and there was in-built bit-locker-to-go in Windows 7, which allowed enterprises to encrypt, and control access to, data copied onto USB sticks.

Unlike Vista, which often demanded a hardware upgrade, Windows 7 was relatively undemanding on hardware said Rosenthal, and booted up relatively quickly.

“The big one for enterprises is deployability and manageability. Enterprises seriously need to consider Windows 7 as support for XP is going to end.

“Things that would have stopped you with Vista should not hold you back. Don’t think of this as a child of Vista,” concluded Rosenthal.

Disclosure: Beverley Head is attending TechEd as a guest of Microsoft.