Says Microsoft

Sep 9, 2009 09:31 GMT  ·  By

Windows 7 RTM is sufficiently tested and mature that end users need not wait for the first major upgrade of the platform to make the jump. Back in early 2007, and in late 2006 with the business launch of Windows XP’s successor, the Redmond-based company said the same thing about Windows Vista. It took Service Pack 1 for Vista to prove the software giant wrong. But then again, Windows 7 is no Vista repeat, a status quo that easily extends to the necessity to wait for SP1, or lack thereof.

Conventional wisdom made it so that enterprise customers traditionally waited for the first Service Pack to ship before migrating IT infrastructures to a new client operating system from Microsoft. The SP1 landmark was a guarantee that issues inherently associated with the RTM milestones, including software incompatibilities, lack of hardware support, performance glitches, stability bugs, reliability problems, etc. were dealt with.

But the Redmond-based company is telling customers that Windows 7 is breaking the mold. Achim Berg, head of Microsoft Germany, noted that this time around, there’s no need to wait for Service Pack 1 (via WinFuture). And fact is that with Windows 7, Microsoft has hit the mother of all “upgrade-now-don’t-wait-for-SP1” jackpots. Testers that have been running the latest Windows client since Beta Build 7000 and through Release Candidate Build 7100 and the pre-RTM interim releases can confirm that Windows 7 is as stable as a rock, that reliability issues disappeared completely after RC, that hardware and software products simply work, that performance is through the roof compared to Vista.

On September 8th, 2009, Microsoft revealed that, according to IDC estimates, over 59% of all desktop PC users worldwide would upgrade to Windows 7 in the next three years. This means that by the time Windows 8 drops, Windows 7 will be the dominant operating system on the market, a position that Windows Vista failed miserably to achieve. IDC further revealed that in 2010 alone the business efforts built around Windows 7 would generate in excess of 70 billion Euros.

Back in March 2009, Gartner gave Windows 7 RTM enterprise migrations the green light, noting that SP1 was indeed unnecessary. Despite this, business customers are only expected to upgrade machines across their organizations starting from 12 to 18 months after October 22nd, 2009, at which time SP1 could already be released. Still, there are organizations that are jumping the gun, so to speak in terms of Windows 7 upgrades, including EON, T-Systems and BMW, which are already making the leap.

But by all means, don't take Microsoft's word for it. Just download a copy of Windows 7 RTM Enterprise and test drive it in your environment. It's free!

Windows 7 RTM Enterprise 90-Day Evaluation is available for download here.