Windows 7 Migration Strategy and The Death of Windows XP

Microsoft recently has announced that Windows 7 code has been finalized.

The so-called, Release to Manufacturing, or RTM version of Windows 7 will be officially available to computer makers, TechNet subscribers and other partners on August 6th with a retail release date of October 22nd.

This is big news, but those aren’t the only important dates to be aware of.

Microsoft also released Windows Server 2008 R2 to manufacturing on July 22nd. It will be available to the public on, not coincidentally, October 22nd.

Microsoft is already touting the big strides it has made in making mass deployment and software migration that began with Vista and have continued to improve with Server 2008, and the upcoming Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 now in beta.

(Watch for our upcoming articles on Server 2008 R2, MDT 2010, and How To Migrate to Windows 7 The Easy Way, as well as creating a Windows 7 PXE image. Better yet, just grab the RSS Feed and stay updated automatically.)

When Microsoft released Windows Vista, it expected that, as it always had in the past, the world would slowly work its way over to the new operating system. It’s predecessor Windows XP would become a relic of the past, something that was only installed on "old" computers.

Of course, things did not pan out that way and Vista was never implemented on anything but a token scale at most major companies.  It made its way onto consumer computers only by forcing computer manufacturers to use the less desired operating system on new PCs.

Still, Microsoft pressed ahead, hoping that marketing initiatives such as the ill-fated Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld commercials (does anyone still respect whatever ad agency turned out those?) and the Mojave Experiment along with the release of Service Pack 2 for Vista would eventually win over converts to the new operating system.

That never happened either, but it didn’t stop Microsoft from officially ending support for Windows XP as a "current operating system" in April, 2009.

Although there was some hand wringing in the media regarding the end of Windows XP support, neither businesses nor customers worried much about it.  The reality was that with hundreds of millions of installed seats at powerful, large, corporations around the world, not even Microsoft would be brash enough to simply let the most commonly used operating system they made wither on the vine.

But, what about now?

Windows XP — The End Is Near

When Microsoft first announced the end of Windows XP support, it was still officially claiming that Windows Vista would be the next Microsoft OS. But, it was working, very noisily, on the Vista Eraser — Windows 7. With an announced shipping target of January 2010, no one was holding their breath.

However, Microsoft had a brave new world to work in.  With no competitive pressure to release its next OS – the official Microsoft marketing slogan since the release of Vista could have been, "What else are you going to use?" — and a technology industry that was not yet fully recovered from the Internet bubble, there were few people clamoring for anything other than letting them keep using the old OS Windows XP.

Microsoft took advantage of this scenario, it would seem, to manage expectations a bit.

By announcing a target date of January 2010, the company gave itself plenty of wiggle room if issues were to arise.  This way, Microsoft could avoid the mistakes it made by pushing Vista out without addressing the major concerns of many users.

However, Windows 7 was built atop the already more solid Windows Vista OS and its subsequent Service Pack.  Combine that with a public no longer hungry from Microsoft OS bashing, and Windows 7 received a much smoother entry even as a beta release in January.

By the time the Release Candidate or Windows 7 RC was released for public download, people were already singing Windows 7’s praises.  The chorus only grew louder as an even more stable and feature rich RC version was installed on more and more PCs.

As the RTM ship date, the consumer release date, and the all important Christmas shopping season approach, the verdict is already in before a single official copy of Windows 7 is installed on a computer – Windows 7 is good enough.

Unlike with Vista, there should be little push back from retailers or computer manufacturers about quickly changing over their mainstream production and sales to Windows 7 on new computers.  The technology industry is dying for a much needed boost in hardware sales and Windows 7 is their best hope for the holidays.

In fact, the biggest issue right now is not about new hardware coming with Windows 7 pre-installed after September, but rather how and when to give free upgrades to users who purchase computers between now and then to avoid choking off all summer PC sales.

All of this adds up to a quick death for the Windows XP operating system that managed to hang on long after its creator declared it officially dead.

No Waiting for Windows 7 SP1

Many IT professionals live by the motto, "Wait for SP 1."

Microsoft has a somewhat deserved reputation as a company that can’t quite get it exactly right the first time around.  Whether this is a company culture issue or simply the incredibly vast array of hardware and software that people and businesses depend on to function flawlessly is up for debate.  However, in this case, waiting for SP1 might not be an option.

Consider that, whether it was "for real" or not, Microsoft did officially end support for Windows XP on April 14, 2009.  Assuming Windows 7 is released smoothly, and things continue to go well for users, the media looks to be tamed, giving no ammunition to those who would like to drag their feet on an upgrade.

Furthermore, computer manufacturers are chomping at the bit to begin selling Windows 7 machines to boost sagging sales.  Software vendors who have seen numerous companies sit on older versions of their products during seemingly endless rounds of budget cuts and spending freezes are also eager to churn out Windows 7 versions in order to collect those upgrade license fees.  In other words, one can expect that within 6 months of the release of Windows 7, the major players will be targeting their focus on their current state-of-the-art products, all of which will run on Windows 7.

Which brings us to April 14, 2010, one year after support for Windows XP has officially ended.  April 14, 2010 will come seven months after Windows 7 is released.  For those instances where users or businesses rely on an XP version of software, the company can point to the brilliant inclusion of Windows XP Mode as a way to get a little extra time to catch up with 21st century computing.

With stable products available, and both consumers and businesses willingly, if slowly, moving to Windows 7, Microsoft will have little incentive to continue providing unofficial goodwill support of Windows XP.  Instead, the company will likely announce, with little fanfare, that with more and more of its customers demanding the kind of features, security, and speed that Windows 7 offers, it simply cannot afford to be distracted by continuing to provide patches and updates for a system it stopped supporting 12 months ago.

And, Windows XP will be dead.

And, if you aren’t ready, so will you.

 

 

Related Posts:

• Skipping Windows Vista — What’s the Best Strategy for IT Pros?
• Windows 7 Beta Download Is Which Windows 7 Edition?
• Windows Vista Small Business Assurance
• Windows 7 For Business — Features for Increased Manageability
• Is MDOP Windows 7’s Killer App?
• Upgrading from XP To Windows 7? Here’s How to Do it Right
• Hated Vista? Will You Love Windows 7?

 

2 Responses to “Windows 7 Migration Strategy and The Death of Windows XP”

• Tyler Says:

  August 5th, 2009 at 8:57 am

  Have companies given enough thought to virtualizing applications in order to avoid a lot of the compatibility / windows instability issues? (www.installfree.com) Its a viable solution that many companies are only beginning to explore.

• Aaron Says:

  September 8th, 2009 at 4:25 am

  I know this is an old post, but since I just subscribed to your RSS it’s new to me :)

  I thought I’d point out windows XP will be supported OFFICIALLY for XP PRO until 2014. That’s patches and all so I don’t see how your post is related to IT at all. Home users might not get support but a simple search of MS’s site for “end of life” or lifecycle (forgive me, I did it quite a while back) will pull up the fact that XP will be supported until 2014 for business (meaning, XP PRO). That’s a long time from now.

  Translation: All in favor of waiting for SP1 on Win7 say I… :)

  The I’s have it. The home market will go to win7 (as PC’s are sold), IT dept’s will wisely wait. It’s a minor upgrade to vista at best, and is no faster in anything but boot and shutdown which most business pc’s RARELY do. They should have been working on a FAST and LIGHT OS to REPLACE vista instead of trying to put lipstick on a pig so to speak. There’s a reason PCmag only benchmarked bootup and shutdown then claimed it was faster by X percent over vista and at least as fast as XP…UGH! Clearly they depend on MS marketing dollars. There were no app or game benchmarks other than synthetics which are useless. Lets face it, on the same hardware it’s still going to be 20-30% slower than XP PRO. I can’t believe they made vista2. I was quite angry when I installed it and found it was just vista again. I got more angry after running some ACTUAL benchmarks vs XP64 (same PC, 8GB, 8800GT, etc…just swapped boot drives with the different OS…both same TB seagates). If they could have just made it faster (for real, I don’t care about boot/shutdown times I do it so rarely even on XP) it would have been great. I hope MS sent you a promotional fee for this article. XP is far from dead.

  I’ll give them the fact that it has a few cool IT gadgets. The support rollup deal is cool but it’s not enough of a change to make IT save much money. Most of the time I have to troubleshoot I end up remoting the problem PC anyway, so an email pack of the problem doesn’t tell me much more than what I’ll learn 1 minute after remoting them anyway. But it’s cool. But so was Vista. Cool however, doesn’t make people work faster or save money (in most cases). For instance flipping through windows is slower for me than alt-tabbing or simply clicking in the taskbar to switch apps. Visually looking at the screen actually slows me down as my eyes have to take in what I’m looking to switch to. Cool, but slower. Virtual PC (xp mode?) solves incompatibility but it also slows you down. You can’t “virtual XP” any faster than you can just “XP” to begin with. Where is the motivation to upgrade hardware just to run a slower OS and have to virtualize the old OS? That’s a lot of trouble for a lot of nothing. I wish they would have just spent time putting lipstick (AERO, DX11) on XP instead. Much better help system in it also, but users just call IT first anyway. So again not much to gain.

  But I won’t complain, tons of people will be calling tech support to ask where everything went etc, so it’s job security when anyone does switch :) Even my dad [who loves cool stuff] only lasted a week and went back to xp64. He’d previously done the same with Vista (he tried that for a whole month and REALLY wanted to like it) so I wasn’t too surprised when he kicked Win7 saying it seemed quite a bit slower (than XP64) and reminded him of Vista way too much (well duh…It is Vista). He really hates the folder structure and (STILL) digging to find everything. I hate that too. To do anything useful seems to take 3 more clicks than XP. Instead of treating PC users as people that are getting more PC savvy (a lot of us have 2-3 in our houses now!), they continue to hide the OS and treat us like idiots. Now I can manage turning off most of what I hate but why should I have to do that? MS needs a “click here if you’re PC savvy” and it turns off all the bloat and garbage and exposes the OS in one fell swoop. It just takes too much time to undo what they did by default and on top I get a gaming performance hit at home. And it’s a BIG hit. OUCH.

  I’m not a fan of my HD running pretty constant either (just like Vista this OS will kill drives quicker). I have a pretty silent PC so the drives racking all day annoys me. Disabling instant search fixes it (and I don’t even find it useful anyway). But isn’t that a selling point supposedly? They say it quiets down but mine didn’t after weeks. It chatters on and off all day and constant the first week. I don’t think an active PC user will ever get it to shut up. If you don’t have fan noise, the drives are annoying (I have 4 internals – they drive me crazy in win7/vista). I believe it’s more the main drive, but I don’t care I hear racket (after working so hard to remove noise from my PC). Maybe it’s how I use the PC that causes Vista/Vista2 (heh) to DRIVE me crazy. Since I’m in IT I’ll learn it anyway, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be dual booting for years. You just can’t make Vista/Win7 as fast as XP (32 or 64). I’ll be 90% XP and 10% Win7 (just to troubleshoot others) on my PC for a while I think. Probably until 2014…LOL. Only dozens of top DX11 games could get me to switch (ones that don’t support DX9C) and I still see myself dual booting just for them to be honest. I haven’t seen a DX10 game that I wouldn’t rather run in DX9 to avoid the fps hit. Alex St. John (maker of DirectX) proved this at PCmag/extremepc. They even challenged you to see the difference in screenshots then blasted DX10 for being a pig (most games being 25%+ slower for nothing visually). But I digress…Don’t even get me started on DRM…

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