Windows 10 Vs. Windows 7: What Enterprise IT Needs To Know
Windows 7 organizations are starting to look at Windows 10. What are the major points of comparison? Read on to see what the changes could mean for your company.
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Windows 10 is in the field now, and enterprise IT departments will start getting serious questions from their users. When will Windows 10 be installed on enterprise systems? How soon will we be able to get rid of our old Windows 7 systems? How will Windows 10 make our systems better? These are all reasonable questions. Do you have the answers?
It's worth taking a careful look at the differences between Windows 7 and Windows 10. Why these two, rather than comparisons with all the other versions of Windows that are still in use? Let's take a moment to consider that question.
First, let's go with the obvious: If you're still deploying Windows XP, Windows Vista, or (heaven help you) something even older, then you're strongly advised to consider updating all your systems as soon as possible. There are many reasons for this, but we can use one word -- security -- to stand in for almost all of them. In fairness, if your computers aren't attached to the Internet in any way, and you're only using existing custom applications, you're welcome to use Windows XP, or even Windows 98, for as long as you can find the drivers to keep your hardware and software talking. But if the Internet is part of your communication infrastructure, then it's time to go modern.
[Read how Windows 10 will change IoT for good.]
What if you've already gone modern and have moved your systems to Windows 8 or 8.1? In that case, the move to Windows 10 is even easier to justify. There should be no issues with hardware compatibility, and the improvements in performance, features, security, and manageability make a strong case for moving up. Add to that the fact that your users will have already scaled the height of the learning curve for the new interface, and Windows 10 is the way to go.
So Windows 7 is the point of comparison. What are some of the key issues to explore as you're making the decision between Windows 7 and Windows 10? Here are eight of the most important ones, and the reasons they deserve your consideration.
Much has been made of Windows 10 updates and the "Windows-as-a-Service" philosophy that underlies the future of Microsoft's flagship operating system. The thing is, not everyone can tolerate a world of constantly changing features and functions. And that's where Windows 10 differs from Windows 7.
Windows 7 was built around the standard model of enterprise support models and updates. That will continue until its end of life. Windows 10 will push critical security updates but offers enterprise users on particular forks of support the knowledge that their features and standard apps will not change for five years -- or the length of the support contract. That certainty counts for a lot when your desktop and laptop are platforms for mission-critical applications that simply cannot fail.
One of the most consistent complaints of users, and most frequent limiters on mobile employee productivity, is battery life. It's hard to find a user who doesn't think her laptop battery should last longer, and I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone complain that his or her laptop goes too darned long between battery charges. Windows 10 has dramatically improved battery management and power consumption algorithms in order to make battery life dramatically better in computers running the OS than in machines running Windows 7.
Is there a downside to this, something that would give the advantage back to Windows 7? Not really, though it must be noted that there are some hardware combinations that don't run Windows 10, either because of specific CPU versions or because of particular graphics chip sets. OK, that's a downside, but it won't hit many people. Everyone else will be too busy enjoying the extended battery life to get upset about it.
Active Directory is as important for Windows 10 as for Windows 7, but there are changes for the better in Windows 10. One of them is that Windows 10 is blithely unconcerned about where it's running as it seeks to authenticate to an AD instance. Laptop OS, virtual client, or Surface tablet -- it doesn't really matter.
Another thing that doesn't matter is where the Active Directory instance is hosted. Whether on a local directory server or an Azure instance, AD will be available to a Windows 10 client.
Mobile Device Management (MDM) has been available for Windows devices since Windows 7, but Microsoft has embedded serious MDM in the operating system for the first time with Windows 10. From data partitioning (data is divided into personal and business buckets) to VPN, to TPM 2.0 support and audit controls, Windows 10 allows mobile devices to be managed without the necessity of third-party software. Windows 7 doesn't do all that -- so this seems like a comparison that works in Windows 10's favor.
If you're old enough to remember Star Trek in pretty much any of its incarnations, then you're familiar with the promise of a computer we can talk to -- and that talks back to us. Cool, huh? Between Siri and Cortana, "voice assistant" is rapidly becoming one of those features that people take for granted on their mobile devices. In Windows 10, though, Cortana comes off the road and takes up residence on the desktop.
Is that a good thing? It depends. In a mobile environment it can be very useful, but it's not hard to imagine a nightmare scenario with people in cubicles all shouting at their computers at the same time. It's easy to see Cortana as a huge win for most consumers. For the enterprise? The jury is still out in a big way on this one.
The Windows 7 desktop operating system and the OS for a mobile phone were two very different things. In Windows 10, there's one operating system and one basic user experience, though the OS is smart enough to know whether it's running on a desktop computer or a tablet. It's also smart enough to know that you're going to want to interact with the computer in different ways, depending on whether or not the device has a touch screen.
One of the big differences between Windows 8 and Windows 10 is that Windows 8 was optimized for touch screen devices. It didn't really matter whether the computer had a touch screen or not. There was a single set of assumptions about how the interaction would go. Windows 10 fixes that by combining many of the best user interface points of Windows 7 with the touch screen advances of Windows 8. You'll still need to train users on the new OS, but the training should be shorter than it was when organizations tried to leap from Windows 7 to Windows 8.
Computers running Windows 7 have a window of vulnerability to malware. When the computer is first started up, the time between the hardware starting to wake up and the operating system taking control is time when malware can be inserted without notice. Under Windows 10, that window of opportunity is slammed shut through Device Guard, a facility that uses capabilities built into the CPU to protect the system from attack. The result is that Windows 10 computers and mobile devices are much more secure than those running Windows 7. The time when no one is in control is reduced from a few seconds to absolutely nothing.
Part of Windows 10 Device Guard's protection comes in limiting applications to those that are signed by Microsoft or a recognized software publisher. For enterprise IT organizations, a mechanism is available to allow custom applications to join the team.
Sideloading is a process of signing an application through a Microsoft-provided tool -- a tool that is now free with a Windows 10 Enterprise license. By itself, this isn't enough to keep enterprise assets safe, but when combined with all the other security features in Windows 10, it shows a dramatic change for the better from the features that were available with Windows 7.
How has the comparison of Windows 10 and Windows 7 worked for your organization? Have you already made the change? Or are you planning to wait? Let us know -- we'd love to hear about how you're making the decision for your organization.
Part of Windows 10 Device Guard's protection comes in limiting applications to those that are signed by Microsoft or a recognized software publisher. For enterprise IT organizations, a mechanism is available to allow custom applications to join the team.
Sideloading is a process of signing an application through a Microsoft-provided tool -- a tool that is now free with a Windows 10 Enterprise license. By itself, this isn't enough to keep enterprise assets safe, but when combined with all the other security features in Windows 10, it shows a dramatic change for the better from the features that were available with Windows 7.
How has the comparison of Windows 10 and Windows 7 worked for your organization? Have you already made the change? Or are you planning to wait? Let us know -- we'd love to hear about how you're making the decision for your organization.
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