Just thinking out loud - windows related

bigjnyc · Nov 19, 2009, 01:55 PM

So even though this is an apple forum I know alot of people here use windows at work, as most large corporations are using windows. I was just thinking all these large companies are still on windows XP, which is now 2 revisions old. l wonder when these big companies will/if ever upgrade to say windows 7. And i'm talking about really huge corporations not small businesses. I would imagine it would be an IT nightmare to migrate to a new OS plus you have all these users who would be completely lost with the slightly new interface. So anyways do you guys think large companies will upgrade their users any time soon? Any IT professionals here? what is keeping them on XP? (obviously vista was a trainwreck and 7 probably hasnt been fully tested) but is there anything else?

barr08 · Nov 19, 2009, 02:02 PM

I work IT at a major Insurance company, and the help desk says they have no plans of upgrading to 7 any time soon. I like XP and all, but without official MS support, I really think/hope they will be upgrading soon. I feel so antiquated here at work, and I can't upgrade my home PC to 7 until they upgrade it here (for working at home).

bigjnyc · Nov 19, 2009, 02:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by barr08

I work IT at a major Insurance company, and the help desk says they have no plans of upgrading to 7 any time soon. I like XP and all, but without official MS support, I really think/hope they will be upgrading soon. I feel so antiquated here at work, and I can't upgrade my home PC to 7 until they upgrade it here (for working at home).

would it be a huge headache to upgrade like with the networking, share drives, user accounts etc...

I wonder at what point MS stops supporting and distributing XP. what will these companies do then?

thejadedmonkey · Nov 19, 2009, 02:16 PM

I know some people who work for insurance companies, school IT, etc, and all I've heard is how easy it is to upgrade everything. One person I talked to was able to upgrade an entire computer lab in about 30 minutes by pushing a disk image onto the computers. Obviously this doesn't work if you use custom programs/hardware/etc, but I don't think it'll be any different from the 98->2k->xp transitions.

No1451 · Nov 19, 2009, 03:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thejadedmonkey

I know some people who work for insurance companies, school IT, etc, and all I've heard is how easy it is to upgrade everything. One person I talked to was able to upgrade an entire computer lab in about 30 minutes by pushing a disk image onto the computers. Obviously this doesn't work if you use custom programs/hardware/etc, but I don't think it'll be any different from the 98->2k->xp transitions.

Pretty much what this guy says, a rollout CAN be tough but usually the machines used by big business are all identical(or a few models) so they can prep 1 setup for each individual machine and roll it out.

As for why they haven't yet, there was a lot of kerfuffle over Vista that really had no basis in reality, it will likely take people a while to come to terms with the idea that the new Windows version is perfectly useable

maflynn · Nov 19, 2009, 03:52 PM

My company is moving to win7 professional next year. They plan on doing this probably in the summer.

barr08 · Nov 20, 2009, 11:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thejadedmonkey

I know some people who work for insurance companies, school IT, etc, and all I've heard is how easy it is to upgrade everything. One person I talked to was able to upgrade an entire computer lab in about 30 minutes by pushing a disk image onto the computers. Obviously this doesn't work if you use custom programs/hardware/etc, but I don't think it'll be any different from the 98->2k->xp transitions.

I guess it depends on scope. I worked in a computer lab at my Uni, and upgrading was as simple as inserting a disk into each of the computers, because they really were all just clones of one another that reset at every logoff.

Today, my company's campus has almost 40 floors just for IT alone, nevermind the tens of regional offices just in CT, totalling thousands of IT professionals with unique applications and data. The important thing to remember here is that you can't upgrade to 7 from XP without reformatting - I estimate this would set the company back for weeks, and set them back a ridiculous amount of money. So I can see it through their perspective as well.

garybUK · Nov 20, 2009, 12:11 PM

I work for a company with a Desktop Population of around 40k machines (mostly fujitsu siemens). We have been on XP (and still on XP SP2 / IE6) for about 2 years, before that it was NT 4.0 SP6 / IE 6

The problem with many large organisations such as ours is that a LOT of custom software and even versions of off-the-shelf software won't run on later versions.

Server Side its a huge Windows Server (2003) and Unix (Sun, HPUX, VMS)

It takes a lot of money and time to test everything, paying contractors to port up applications and deploy.

Nov 19, 2009, 01:55 PM	#1
bigjnyc macrumors 65816 Join Date: Apr 2008	Just thinking out loud - windows related So even though this is an apple forum I know alot of people here use windows at work, as most large corporations are using windows. I was just thinking all these large companies are still on windows XP, which is now 2 revisions old. l wonder when these big companies will/if ever upgrade to say windows 7. And i'm talking about really huge corporations not small businesses. I would imagine it would be an IT nightmare to migrate to a new OS plus you have all these users who would be completely lost with the slightly new interface. So anyways do you guys think large companies will upgrade their users any time soon? Any IT professionals here? what is keeping them on XP? (obviously vista was a trainwreck and 7 probably hasnt been fully tested) but is there anything else?

Nov 19, 2009, 02:02 PM	#2
barr08 macrumors 65816 Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Hartford, CT	I work IT at a major Insurance company, and the help desk says they have no plans of upgrading to 7 any time soon. I like XP and all, but without official MS support, I really think/hope they will be upgrading soon. I feel so antiquated here at work, and I can't upgrade my home PC to 7 until they upgrade it here (for working at home). __________________ Intel i7 920 2.66, ATI Radeon 4850, 6gb DDR3 \| Macbook C2D 2.0, 2gb DDR2 Vizio 42" 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR606 \| PS3, Xbox 360, Wii \| Blackberry Curve 8310

Nov 19, 2009, 02:16 PM	#4
thejadedmonkey macrumors 68040 Join Date: May 2005 Location: Pa	I know some people who work for insurance companies, school IT, etc, and all I've heard is how easy it is to upgrade everything. One person I talked to was able to upgrade an entire computer lab in about 30 minutes by pushing a disk image onto the computers. Obviously this doesn't work if you use custom programs/hardware/etc, but I don't think it'll be any different from the 98->2k->xp transitions. __________________ Mac Mini G4 • MacBook Pro • iPod Nano "Good judgement comes from experience, experience comes from bad judgement." - Mulla Nasrudin

Nov 19, 2009, 03:52 PM	#6
maflynn Contributor Join Date: May 2009	My company is moving to win7 professional next year. They plan on doing this probably in the summer. __________________ Unibody MacBook Pro 2.53 GHz, 4GB ram, 500GB HDD; iPhone 3Gs 32GB

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Nov 20, 2009, 12:11 PM	#8
garybUK macrumors 65816 Join Date: Jun 2002	I work for a company with a Desktop Population of around 40k machines (mostly fujitsu siemens). We have been on XP (and still on XP SP2 / IE6) for about 2 years, before that it was NT 4.0 SP6 / IE 6 The problem with many large organisations such as ours is that a LOT of custom software and even versions of off-the-shelf software won't run on later versions. Server Side its a huge Windows Server (2003) and Unix (Sun, HPUX, VMS) It takes a lot of money and time to test everything, paying contractors to port up applications and deploy.