If you’re a Windows XP diehard, you’re probably not making any quick moves to update your operating system to Windows 7. Windows 7 hits the market on October 22, 2009. You may or may not realize that Windows XP hit the market on October 25, 2001. Eight years ago. Eight years is a long time to run an operating system. A lot of things change in eight years. If you decide to celebrate Windows XP’s birthday by retiring it, you’ll be in for some changes yourself.

You Can Still Use XP Drivers Virtually

First, there is no direct upgrade path from Windows XP to Windows 7. You’ll need to do a complete install, which means that you’ll need to back up all of your files and re-add them to your drive once your upgrade is done. You may also need to find and install new drivers for your hardware. That may not be the most pleasant task, but it doesn’t have to be difficult, either. You can manage all of your drivers with a third-party driver manager like Driver Detective. Driver Detective will locate all of the appropriate drivers, download them and install them. You don’t need to do anything. It will even take care of the drivers that are installed, and replace them if they get corrupted or go missing.

If you have Windows XP software that you don’t want to (or can’t) upgrade, you can still run it using Windows 7’s virtual XP environment. (As I said, some things have changed.) You can also still use the XP drivers in the virtual XP environment. Under the new license for Windows 7, you can purchase downgrade rights to Windows XP for a short period of time (about six months), after which, you won’t be able to purchase computers that come with XP loaded. You’ll also have to pay for the privilege of downgrading. Only certain premium editions of Windows 7 come with downgrade rights.

Sooner or later, (and sooner, if Microsoft has anything to say about it), Microsoft is going to drop support altogether for Windows XP. Once you start using Windows 7, you may find that it changes the way you think about XP. Windows 7 is more stable than Windows Vista and Microsoft has addressed some of the issues Vista users were most critical about. In short, Windows 7 is what Windows Vista should have (and could have) been. To borrow a phrase from a very old TV commercial: “Try it! You’ll like it!”
Photo Credit: Randen Pederson

If you’ve been around computers for a long time, the prospect of an easy OS upgrade (or even an OS update) can seem grim. It’s a story heard ’round-the-world, so to speak, and it goes something like this: new OS doesn’t like old drivers. Another variation on the story is that an old piece of hardware that’s critical to the operation (or still in perfect working order or required for a legacy function) isn’t made anymore and there’s no driver support for the device beyond what the manufacturer abandoned, etc.

Missing Hardware Drivers Can Ruin Your Day
The lack of drivers could certainly ruin your day. Microsoft has received more than an earful of complaints regarding driver availability and driver quality and tried to build in an automated driver update process. The thinking was that whenever the OS updated, Windows would go out and find the right drivers and send them along to your OS.

Good thought. Bad execution. Many Windows users found that Windows was downloading the incorrect drivers, replacing drivers that didn’t need replacement, missing drivers that should have been passed along in the critical updates, and other driver mishaps. They also found out – often too late – that they didn’t know how to configure their computers correctly for the automatic updates to take place, and that the auto updates often slowed the computer down to a crawl at critical times, like shutdown. If that weren’t enough, many hardware vendors never released updated drivers after an OS update, leaving plenty of users sitting in the dust.

The result: users who were still unhappy about the driver situation in Windows on top of the same never-fully-addressed driver situation in Windows. Now, to be sure, the automatic updates work sometimes. Most computer users don’t want a computer that works sometimes, though. I know I don’t. Although computer techs don’t like to admit it, most computer users just want to sit down at their computers and work. They don’t want to worry about driver updates, or OS updates. They don’t even want to worry about their anti-virus updates!

For those users, one of the best solutions – at least in the foreseeable future – is a product like Driver Detective. It’s a top-selling driver manager that automatically finds, loads and checks the status of each driver each time the computer starts. Driver Detective will find missing and broken drivers, apply driver updates and generally keep things flowing smoothly. It’s ideal for the millions of users who just want their computers to work.

Photo Credit: Angie Lauw, via Flickr

For many Microsoft Windows users, Vista will fade into the obscurity reserved for other misbegotten products like Windows CE and ME. Good riddance to bad rubbish, right? Not so fast. The much-awaited Windows 7 is built on the Windows Vista chassis, and will likely be around for awhile. The biggest complaint that Microsoft heard regarding Vista was its lousy, mangled driver support for common hardware.

Microsoft Has Heard The Complaints About Drivers

Cynics may find this hard to believe, but Microsoft heard the complaints. As in, did something about them. Microsoft has toughened up its standards for hardware manufacturers. This stance should improve things not only for Windows 7 adopters, but also for Windows Vista users who won’t be upgrading right away. In order for manufacturers to keep their Vista-compatible logos, they’ll need to demonstrate that their drivers also work with Windows 7.

Microsoft is also spending its summer vacation cleaning up the drivers that will be released with Windows 7. Microsoft can’t afford two OS disasters in a row, and it’s going the extra mile to make sure Windows 7 doesn’t get clotheslined with the same issues that brought down Vista.

Microsoft thought enough of the development it put into Vista to rework it into Windows 7. Though few people have seen the actual product yet, the Windows 7 Release Candidate has been exceptionally stable – a considerable improvement over early Vista implementations. You won’t find a lot of new development in Windows 7, but you will find that many of the services Microsoft built into Vista have been improved.

The difference between Vista and Windows 7 reminds me of an adage an old teacher of mine used to drag out regularly. “If you can’t find the time to do a task correctly, how are you going to find the time to do it over?” Microsoft seems to have taken this to heart. Windows 7 is more than a “do-over” for Windows Vista. Provided that Windows 7 has learned to make nice in the networked environment, you can correctly think of it as a proper evolution of the operating system, though incrementally, it’s not a major shift from Windows Vista.

For its part, however, Microsoft must consider its user base and the costs they incur to upgrade to a new operating system. Many costly enterprise-level applications are at the center of a business. Expecting these businesses to chase after a half-baked OS at their own peril is asking too much. Hopefully, if a lesson has been learned in Redmond, it’s this: when you introduce a new OS, make sure it represents your “A-game.”

Photo Credit: Ernie Bello, via Flickr

Microsoft released the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) Beta 2 this week, in another sign that the company is ramping up for the release of Windows 7. Earlier this week, the company squashed rumors that the OS was being released to manufacturers. In a statement, the company said that while it is eager to get the OS to manufacturers, final development work on the new OS has not yet concluded. A spokesperson for the company hinted that the RTM ship date for the OS could fall within the next two weeks.

The MDT is designed to help enterprise-level users deploy the new operating system. The MDT contains tools that standardize installations, verify the availability of compatible drivers, and supports automated deployment. The MDT supports the deployment of Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP. The toolkit is available at the Microsoft Web site.

For most small organizations and single users, the MDT won’t be of much use. The kit is meant to support a mass rollout of a Windows operating system. Organizations that use a uniform disk image, or that wish to do a complete, simultaneous rollout will get the most use out of the MDT.

The appearance of the MDT is more confirmation that Microsoft will meet its October 22 general availability release date. Although the kit is listed as beta software, enterprise level users will have time to familiarize themselves with the kit as they prepare their rollout plans. Microsoft may be somewhat disappointed by the tepid response that Windows 7 is expected to receive from the enterprise user community.

Most IT directors had no immediate plans to incorporate Windows 7 into their operating environment. Many IT directors cited lack of a compelling reason to upgrade and internal upgrade cycle conflicts as the primary reason for not pursuing an immediate upgrade to Windows 7. Most enterprise level users are expected to migrate to Windows 7 within 18-24 months of the OS’s October release.

Microsoft’s volume licensing program allows those users to load any Microsoft operating sytem they choose, including those that are no longer supported. Microsoft has said that it will drop downgrade installation rights for Windows XP approximately six months after Windows 7 is released.

Most enterprise level IT departments say they prefer Windows XP because it supports a wide range of hardware drivers and is exceptionally stable in a networked environment. Since the introduction of Windows Vista, the company has encountered strong resistance from users to its plans to drop Windows XP.

Photo Credit: Microsoft