I was preparing for the worst based on past deployments from Microsoft. After experiencing the pain of Vista, I was very worried about the release of Windows 7. Even though there was good news (which I did not put much faith in any case) I knew there would be some serious bumps in the road to transition.
My first 4 or 5 install was painless. Many of my customers have been upgrading old machines that have Windows XP 6. New computers with Windows 7 have fast processors, more RAM and dedicated video cards, which helped a lot. The start and stop times have been reduced considerably and the most popular software seemed to work out of the box.
I do not recommend improvements to existing equipment and most people went with the board. Life was good and customers were happy. Like all new computers were installed and not updated Vista, no problems upgrading have been a problem. There were some problems found on Vista upgrades, especially those who downloaded Windows 7 install. The files do not unpack properly refused the keys to new products, and had some problems during restart. Then there were unspecified error and directory permissions problems. But all were confined to the process of upgrading Vista, many due to reformat the hard drive before installing new ones.
If you upgrade a Vista machine, do not bother to reformat the hard drive before upgrading. It seems that this is a problem. You must do a clean install and let Windows format the hard disk 7 in the process. This method seems to have some of the questions that improvements own hard drive and you still get a new clean system.
Then it happened, I found a problem with the ugly new computers with Windows 7. Bring a new Windows 7 into an existing network worked well as long as you stuck with the group name of the working group. But if you had a different name (which many customers have for many reasons), the Windows 7 was seen by others in the working group but could not connect or see one of them.
I did a little research and talked to some other technicians and have the same problem. Not good, most customers do not want to change their group name. There was a work around by making each computer also a member of the working group and the original name. But it was not a good solution and would come back to haunt the client and me a few days.
Another big problem with Windows 7 was the way it stored the files. They went to a library system, which is a common method on Mac and Linux. Once you get it, it's probably a better way to organize files. But when you present it to the user and a bunch of old Windows XP it can get confusing. When you change something as fundamental as the way you see and store files, and you have lots of shared files, users do not always adapt quickly.
Automatic backup systems must be changed in the modified files and tracking becomes a little more exciting, but with a bit of drive and automation that you can come on the differences. Most users are working these days and some are not all that willing to change. So it is both an operational and an attitude that you get to be addressed in providing computers Windows 7 into an existing environment.
And do not believe what you read about how Windows XP. Many old computers are not compatible with the methods used virtual machine. About one in three computers, I tried to set up the way XP could not do it for one reason or another. New machines often have all the necessary BIOS settings, chipsets and other requirements, but older computers can not. When it works, it's great. But do not depend on it until you have tested on the computer you want to run it.
Most other issues are the changes in base configuration by default on a fresh install of Windows 7. For example, the taskbar looks and acts different and many users complain they can not see what is open for a look. There is a way to change the toolbar back to what it was by right-clicking the toolbar and select Properties. And make changes to the look you want.
Overall the transition from Windows 7 Upgrades and the open questions are not close to where the Vista debacle was, and most are easily overcome. And if you do not like a particular characteristic or method of display, most of the time, you can return to what you want it to do or look like. Speed and faster boot times worth more than the hassle of rebuilding your desktop as you want
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