Windows 7 migration process has a few holes

Sam Varghese
Friday, 27 January 2012 12:34

Opinion and Analysis

A company named Zinstall is attempting to plug a product by the same name which is used for PC migrations in businesses. But in the accompanying document, which provides details of the process, there are surprising lacunae.

The nine-page document (PDF) is titled PC Refresh and Windows 7 Migration Cost Analysis. Its scope is to "present a clearer picture of an enterprise migration process from the costs perspective, and suggest possible ways for cost reduction."

It discusses the migration process under the categories preparation and backup; role-based application install; application and system configuration; user re-training; self support/informal training; user downtime; post implementation support; domain settings and policies; and user data and personalisation loss.

Using tables, the document compares the costs for each one of these aspects for a traditional migration and one assisted by Zinstall; the time taken by the latter are lower and hence a cost savings is shown. Exactly how this is happening is unclear.

But when the document discusses hardware upgrades it omits some very vital aspects.

It talks of hardware upgrades and points out that in these days of tight budgets, upgrades, not replacements, are often resorted to, with a memory upgrade being the most common. But it does not mention the fact that a 32-bit version of Windows can only use up to 4GB of memory. This is a limitation in the Windows kernel.

Windows XP performs at an optimal level with 4GB of memory, even though it cannot use all of this memory due to the limitation cited above. Windows 7 requires 8GB of memory to perform at a similar level.

Upgrading the memory on a machine to anything over this, is useless if one is continuing to use 32-bit Windows - and to move to the 64-bit version would also require a processor and motherboard upgrade, given that there is no guarantee that the existing machine already has a 64-bit processor.  

The document does not even canvass this possibility.