Windows 7 migration

TechNet on Windows 7 Upgrade and Migration

I stumbled across an interesting TechNet Step-by-Step piece this morning as I started researching the Vista to Windows 7 migration subject. I just upgraded two machines over the weekend, in the wake of the RTM release to MSDN at noon CDT on Thursday. Once the downloads were completed (that took until just past midnight Friday night, in my case to get 32- and 64-bit copies of Windows Professional and Ultimate), I started cranking away at installs for my 64-bit test machine (which also got an upgrade to 12 GB RAM at the same time) and for my 32-bit production PC as well.

The formal title of the TechNet piece is “Step-by Step: Windows 7 Upgrade and Migration.” Here’s a screen shot snippet that shows the lead-in and library entry info:

If you dig into this story, you’ll find useful instructions for the following topics covered:

• Upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7
• Migrate files and settings to a new computer
• Upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7

To those scenarios, I’d also recommend that organizations with some budget also look into the Laplink one-time upgrade/migration licenses. These retail for $65 each on a one-off basis, and can probably be purchased in bulk at some kind of discount (hopefully substantial), and permit applications to be migrated along with files and settings from most older Windows OSes (especially Vista and XP) to Windows 7. This can make the job of migrating machines must easier for admins who may need to do this pronto for some existing installs.

Let me also observe that my experiences in installing Windows 7 so far have been uniformly positive and mostly-problem free. If you want the gory details check out this morning’s ViztaView blog “No Joy on In-place Upgrade; Clean Install Succeeds,” wherein I provide a blow-by-blow recitation of my recent experience in moving my problem-plagued production PC from Vista to Windows 7, with 98% positive results and a solution for all my software problems along the way.

Migrating to Vista…or Windows 7?

I’m a long-time fan of Microsoft watcher Mary-Jo Foley’s blog on ZDnet entitled “All about Microsoft.” It’s usually informative, sometimes entertaining, and often thought-provoking, as with her recent July 23 (2009) blog The Scarlet V: What’s a Vista business user to do? The blog itself raises some interesting points, but it’s the Talkback discussion — where users share their comments, views, and rants — that really makes this particular posting so interesting.

Foley reminds us of Microsoft’s changing stance on enterprise migration to Vista, as follows (the points recounted are hers, the paraphrasing mine):

• Until recently, MS told enterprises to keep migrating to Vista if said migration was underway; otherwise enterprises should skip Vista and go straight to Windows 7
• In May (2009) MS pretty much clammed up about Vista and hasn’t said much new about migrating, pro, con, or indifferent

This led MJF to Mike Angiulo, General Manager for Microsoft’s Planning and PC Ecosystem team (man, wouldn’t you love a title like that? to whom she posed the question about whether or not MS is abandoning its Vista users. Short version of his response: 1. No we’re not. 2. Lots of good stuff for Windows 7 will also work for Vista. FWIW, Dell is also taking a similar line, and the USAF is continuing its Vista deployment, with 90,000 desktops and notebooks already deployed, but is also moving as quickly as possible to get on the Windows 7 bandwagon.

The talkback section includes 150 postings as I write this and they make for fascinating reading. The attitudes span everything from “Vista sucks” and “Microsoft is the spawn of the devil” to “Vista is rock solid, and poses no problems for my organization” with many conceivable intermediate points of view also represented. The fragmented state of the Vista user base is clearly represented, and among those actually interested in using MS operating systems, I see a trend for most enterprise users to favor a move to Windows 7 as soon as it makes sense to do so. Some enterprise users say they won’t move until SP1 comes out, while others say they’ll wait for SP2. Microsoft already knows the road to widespread adoption is long and full of potholes. Let’s just hope that Windows 7 helps to improve road conditions rather than making them worse, as was an all-too-common perception for Vista until SP1 came along.

But only time will tell. Stay tuned!