As of today both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 are available to everyone and everywhere (with obvious international limitations where MS are not allowed to sell).\u00a0 For example, Harvey Norman is a chain of stores that sell furniture and electronics in Ireland.\u00a0 Yesterday I got an A3 sized glossy flyer through the door advertising Windows 7 and pre-loaded OEM PC\u2019s being on sale from today onwards.<\/p>\n
I think MS learned a lot from the Vista days.\u00a0 You even hear them publicly admitting that mistakes were made with Vista.\u00a0 Personally I think they communicated badly.\u00a0 It appeared to me back then that they were pitching Vista at the home user.\u00a0 All I heard for the most part was how pretty it was and how easy it was to burn photos to a DVD.\u00a0 Who cares!?!?! The business generally wants to disable DVD burning.\u00a0 MS failed to market the business functionality of Vista.\u00a0 I think they failed very badly at working with the OEM\u2019s.\u00a0 PC\u2019s were sold as \u201cVista Capable\u201d that barely ran the OS.\u00a0 Lots of existing hardware had no drivers.\u00a0 I\u2019d just bought a set of wifi cards before the Vista release that had no support.<\/p>\n
Windows 7 has been very different.<\/p>\n
Locally, we saw a huge effort by MS.\u00a0 In the Spring we had the TechDays tour which I spoke at.\u00a0 At night Wilbour Craddock did a session on IT at home.\u00a0 I worked with a number of other speakers in the day events to talk about Windows 7 working \u201cbetter together\u201d with Windows Server 2008 R2 and many of the new features.\u00a0 In the summer MS ran a series of Windows 7 only events around the island.\u00a0 We\u2019ve just wrapped up the community launch tour.\u00a0 Again Will did the IT at home session.\u00a0 In the day we ran a session featuring some of the developers.\u00a0 Myself, Will and Dave Northey talked about Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2.\u00a0 I focused on MAP (Assessment and Planning), application compatibility (ACT and XP Mode), and deployment (WDS but mainly MDT 2010).\u00a0 There was even a special all day deployment event in Ennis.<\/p>\n
Heck, MS Ireland are even going to have representatives in selected retail outlets today to talk about Windows 7.\u00a0 They are taking it very seriously.<\/p>\n
Corporate also did a better job communicating with home and professional customers starting back in November 2008.\u00a0 The beta and RC programs were HUGE.\u00a0 We saw the result of that at the launch events: over 75% of attendees were already using Windows 7.\u00a0 There\u2019s a genuine appetite for it and interest in it.<\/p>\n
On the driver side I\u2019ve experienced some happiness.\u00a0 Those wifi NIC\u2019s that sat unused have a driver supplied in the Windows 7 DVD.\u00a0 I\u2019ve heard similar stories from others.\u00a0 MS really did work with the OEM\u2019s.\u00a0 Certain rootkit spreading OEM\u2019s (you know who I mean) continue to be uncooperative, though, when it comes to XP Mode\/Windows Virtual PC support.<\/p>\n
The Windows User Group will continue this work.\u00a0 I\u2019m planning a deployment session that will be demo, demo, demo.\u00a0 I want to do everything from scratch so people see how to use WAIK, WDS and MDT for themselves.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m going into a retail outlet today.\u00a0 I\u2019m feeling evil and want to have some fun \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As of today both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 are available to everyone and everywhere (with obvious international limitations where MS are not allowed to sell).\u00a0 For example, Harvey Norman is a chain of stores that sell furniture and electronics in Ireland.\u00a0 Yesterday I got an A3 sized glossy flyer through the door … Continue reading “Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Generally Available”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-windows-desktop"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t