[David Strom's Web Informant] 11 May 2010: Making the move to Windows 7

[David Strom]

Web Informant 11 May 2010: Making the move to Windows 7

If you are still running XP on your desktop, like me, you may be
thinking about upgrading to Windows 7. XP is getting long in the
tooth, many newer programs (especially those from Microsoft) aren't
easy to run on it without a lot of effort, and you can't upgrade
Internet Explorer if you are interested in sticking with Microsoft for
your Web browsing.

Of course, you may just want to stick with XP until your aging PC
emits its last dying gasp and then just buy a new PC with Win7 already
on it. That can be fine for some people.

But if you do want to upgrade, Microsoft doesn't make it easy. The
only way you can install Windows 7 is to wipe your disk clean and
start with a fresh install. While this is appealing in a
spring-cleaning sort of way, it may not be what you want to do. What
they call an "in-place upgrade" – meaning that you can preserve your
files, your applications, and your other customized settings – will
only work if you are upgrading from Vista.

I have tested six different products that enable this migration
directly from XP to Win7, and each has its good and bad points. Which
product will work for you depend on a few different factors. Two of
them are ideal for single PCs, or maybe up to ten individual PCs, but
not for bulk migrations if you are planning on doing this across your
entire corporation. These are Zinstall ($89) and Laplink's PCmover
($20 to $60). I was initially attracted to Zinstall because it offers
a very elegant solution: you create an XP virtual machine that can be
summoned at the push of a button while running Win7 on your desktop.
Inside this VM, you can add new apps or do anything that you would do
with your regular XP PC. The only problem is that instead of running
two operating systems I ended up running a useless piece of metal with
no operating systems, because of something that was wrong with
Zinstall's install. Laplink's software converts things as you would
expect, so you can't go back to XP once you have done the upgrade.

The other four tools are Microsoft's Windows Automated Installation
Kit (free), the Dell/Kace Kbox 2100 hardware appliance ($4500 for 100
PCs), Viewfinity User Migration (free while in beta), and Prowess'
SmartDeploy ($2000 per enterprise-wide license). Each of them has
similar processes, because you aren't really keeping XP around, just
the hardware it is running on. The trick is preserving enough of your
user's footprints to make it feel like home. They work as follows:

•	The tools start out with a fresh copy of Windows 7 as a master image.
•	The entire machine is reimaged with Windows 7 -- just without you
having to sit in front of it while the bits are put on the machine
from a standard install DVD.
•	Next, they stir in the particular applications that you want to
deploy across your enterprise. This gives you the opportunity to clean
house and create a more managed environment, which may not be what
your end users want to hear, but gets back to that spring cleaning
sentiment mentioned earlier.
•	Each tool has ways to deal with the variety of hardware
configurations that you place the image onto, and some make it easier
to copy the user application settings and data files over to the new
world of Windows 7.
•	Finally, you send forth the image to your desktops and have them
reboot with the new copy of Windows 7.

Sounds complicated? Yes, it is harder than jamming a DVD into your
drive and letting it do its thing for an hour or so. But if you get
the tool working properly, you can do a massive upgrade in a matter of
a few hours, no matter how many PCs you need to touch.

What do I recommend if you have dozens of PCs to upgrade? I would
start with either SmartDeploy or the Kbox. Both handle things somewhat
differently, and you are going to want to read and watch my reviews to
understand some of the issues.

If you are in Chicago next Thursday evening May 20th, you are welcome
to come by the Chicago Windows User Group meeting where I will be
speaking about this topic and showing how to use each product in a
little more detail. Email me privately if you would like to meet up.

If you want to read more, go to a page where I have links to the
various articles and video reviews that I have done for sites such as
ITexpertVoice.com, SearchEnterpriseDesktop.com and CIOupdate.com. You
can go to links on each of the reviews on all six products here:
http://webinformant.wordpress.com/win7/

Don't worry, the videos are just a couple of minutes long. Good luck
with your own migration.