Windows 7 is — by all accounts (except from the Microsoft honchos) — due out later this year<\/font><\/a> and is looking faster, smaller and more stable than any Windows release out there. Windows Vista is here, but not a user favorite (to put it mildly). And eight-year-old Windows XP is still the dominant version of Windows out there.<\/p>\n So what’s a Windows user to do? Follow Microsoft’s corporate guidance and upgrade to Vista now in preparation for 7<\/font><\/a>? Hang on a bit longer with XP? Try mixing and matching the three in your IT shop?<\/p>\n Microsoft’s Windows brass have been reticent to provide a detailed answer to the question “What should my desktop strategy be?” But Mike Fiorina, a Microsoft account tech specialist based in New England, grabbed the Windows-upgrade-confusion bull by the horns in a blog post this past weekend.<\/p>\n Fiorina explained that a perfect storm is brewing<\/font><\/a>: XP SP2 mainstream support is set to end in July, 2010<\/span> April 2009 (and all support for it by July 2010). XP SP3<\/span> extended support isn’t retiring until April 2014, which, Fiorina said, “gives XP environments some breathing room, but not necessarily as much as you might think.”<\/p>\n Even though Vista SP1 has been out for a year (and Vista SP2 is expected some time in the next few months<\/font><\/a>), Vista still is suffering from both real and imagined limitations, Fiorina admitted. From his January 30 post:<\/p>\n “The one recurring theme in discussions with corporate customers is that (Vista) application compatibility is a problem<\/font><\/a>. Applications may not run in Vista, or maybe they can, but it’s not supported by the vendor. Remediation will be costly and time consuming. We get it. Many of the acquisitions and investments we’ve made in the past few years are targeting that problem specifically (Application Virtualization – SoftGrid, Enterprise Desktop Virtualization – Kidaro, etc.)”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Fiorina noted that the generally positive beta reviews of Windows 7 has meant “we’re hearing from a lot of folks ‘Why should I upgrade to Vista when Windows 7 is right around the corner<\/font><\/a>?’” His answer:<\/p>\n “If we look at it from the perspective of an enterprise with fairly unaggressive adoption cycles, then you’ll see that you may be putting yourself in an untenable situation a few years down the road.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Untenable? Fiorina continued his line of reasoning with the caveat, “for the sake of argument, make these assumptions”:<\/p>\n\n
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