Quote:
Originally Posted by --BulletMagnet--
I was wondering about the business side of Windows 8. I think it's pretty safe to say that Windows 7 will live for a LONG while yet in business environments.
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I manage all the computers and make all the IT decisions for our company and we will not be moving to Windows 8, and probably not Windows 9 when it comes out next year. I'm not in the Windows 8 hate camp at all either. I'll probably skip 8 for my personal computers, but will move to 9 soon after release. They are bringing back the start menu, which is nice.
For a business, Windows 7 is perfect. It's stable and easy to maintain. I don't have to teach anyone how to use it. Windows 7 solved pretty much all of the administration headaches that Windows XP had. As long as it's supported by MS and secure, we'll probably stick with it until Windows 7 End of Life which is in 2020. Upgrading software and licensing is a big expense for a small business.
There is a big push towards the web these days which makes the OS almost irrelevant for business "users". Even accounting software packages are slowly starting to offer in-house (IIS) web hosted packages. I write a ton of custom tools with JavaScript/PHP that our office uses daily that are all hosted via our internal web server and I am quite busy with creating web programs for other companies in my spare time. The only actual "software" the people in my office use today are Microsoft Office and the accounting software. Our next accounting software package will be hosted by our internal IIS server and accessed via a browser also. But we'll probably always need Microsoft Office, unless I was able to host Office 365 via our own internal server. The "cloud" is just too slow and has the possibility of uncontrollable downtime as well as opening all our documents to the world with a few weak passwords.
What's the point of spending all the money for new desktop hardware and OS's when all we need is a single powerful virtualized server with a modern browser?