ANT seeking to roll out Windows 7

Windows 7 Beta Build 7000 has been since Jan 09. The much anticipated next release of Windows Client is generating a lot of hype, excitement and positive experiences. In my past few months talking to IT Pros about Windows 7, Samuel Tan, from ANT, is very positive about the next release.

This post should have been made about a month back. :-S The sheer amount of interest and enthusiasm simply took me off my feet that i now finally have time to write about the good work Samuel has been doing.

Samuel is a Business Development Manager for Advanetwork Technology (aka ANT). ANT is a leader in providing IT Maintenance Service. ANT provides Corporate IT Maintenance Management and Consultations on Infrastructure for customers.

One of the core services that ANT provides are planning, maintenance and providing advice to customers for their computing platforms. To enable themselves to provide professional, accurate and capable services, Samuel is trying out the capabilities of Windows 7 and learning about it.

In the process of learning, many positive experiences came out of the process. Following are his feedbacks;

A much better product

On first impression, Windows 7 is a much better product compared to Vista. Installation completed pretty well, except for a minor graphic drive issue. In general, most components are more responsive and faster then Samuel expected even when more devices and gadgets are introduced to the system.

Windows 7 also seems to have minor changes in getting work done faster with less clicks. Performing tasks are simpler, easier and more intuitive than Windows Vista.

Windows Explorer and Desktop Context Menu are simpler to manage.

Application Compatibility

Essential applications support and compatibility are in place. Flash, Acrobat Reader, Zinio Online Reader and Sun Java are running smoothly on Windows 7 despite being written for Vista. Web browsing experience works fine, except for one or two sites, for example, igoogle for Developer does not render properly.

Windows 7 looks promising. However, much has still to be done as Windows7 drivers for devices and equipments from HP, Dell, IBM, Canon and Epson don’t readily seem to have Windows 7 drivers available on their respective sites. Hardware partners of Microsoft will probably start releasing Windows 7 drivers nearer to launch date. For now, Vista drivers seems to work fine.

Breathing Life into older hardware

Since Windows 7 is more efficient, organizations are able to take advantage of Windows 7 without having to do a hardware refresh. In fact, Windows 7 can run on machines that Vista didn’t manage to run on. This allows companies to reuse majority of existing hardware when Windows 7 is available.

Looking forward to the release of Windows 7

Samuel is looking forward to the release of Windows 7. He is keen to roll out for ANT and most of his customers. He is also looking into the wide hardware ecosystem of Windows 7, with peripheral products and applications ready for it.

Bitlocker Encryption (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/enterprise/products/windows-7-bitlocker.aspx)

Windows 7 has further enhanced Bit Locker encryption. You can encrypt removable devices now. This allows an organization to encrypt contents and prevent unauthorized access. This feature, in the past, only protects hard disk. What even better is that the removable devices can be portable and used on other authorized machines. In addition, recovery information can be stored in Active Directory making it possible to recover information if user forgets the passphrase.

DirectAccess (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/enterprise/products/directaccess.aspx)

DirectAccess allows a user to connect back to his corporate resources, for example, an internal-office only accessible resource, without having to be in office, and without having to create a VPN tunnel. This allows a user to transparently and securely access an internal only resource, from anywhere in the world, without construction of a VPN connection.

/Dennis