[citation][nom]thekurrgan[/nom]This whole transition from XP to Windows 7 is a complete pain in the ass for the business world. XP was fairly solid for closed networks that have tasks to perform in a business nature. It was frankly crap for home users as the growing amount of prowling malware and what not that the average dumb home user will get on XP. However with proprietary software makers not moving quickly to get their software functioning on Vista / 7 (Our main software still doesnt work on Windows 7 or vista and wont until 2013) moving to Windows 7 is a pain. Call me slow, but XP lasting as long as it did was part of the reason for Microsofts dominance over the last decade. Because it was a stable platform. Them changing it up frequently as they plan to, is going to make keeping them less attractive if they reinvent the wheel every 2 - 3 years. This opens the door for linux not to mention Apple. OS X is currently the best choice for a home user just because it will take them longer to break it, and there is less of a target for malware and what not. In my opinion, Windows 7 is the most solid windows yet, and I wish they'd sit on it for at least 5 years before conidering windows 8. OS X has not been drastically reinvented in over 3 years now, and given Apple's history we have at least another year before 10.7 will hit, and even then it probably wont be a total reinvention. Linux has been stable for many years. MS is over compensating for leaving XP alone for entirely too long. As to the service pack beta, screw doing their job for them.[/citation]
Some good points but... We needed to break away from 32 bit computing and an OS overall was indeed needed to do it right. Windows 98se, ME, 2K and XP all could run the same software (for the most part). They maintained dominance due to the mountains of software available for all of their OS's at that time, not just XP.
Now there has been a major overall to the OS and most likely anything written for Vista will work on Win7/Win8 (most even on XP). It's a new world of computing and MS is moving forward at a faster pace than anyone else but; they still maintain a very respectable backwards compatability. Everytime there is a major change in computing there will be headaches, but to think that you won't be able to run most software out of the box is wrong. To think that you will not be fine with win7 when win8 is released is just plain wrong as well.
Also, if your "main software" does not work and is not expected to until 2013 how is that MS fault? I think your software provider needs to move their ass. Maybe they should have thought about updating their ancient software before XP reached EOL.
On the SP beta, many companies like to run the beta in a closed enviorment to make sure everything will work as intended come rollout time. Your company could have avoided headaches by possibly testing the Win7 RC. That way the problem would have been recognized and you could have said "hey software provider, you got any updates so I am not forced to run an OS that was released on 2001?".