The Springboard Series of articles released a Technet post called “Ten Things IT Professionals Should Know About Windows 7” which I think is a worthwhile read.
Here’s an excerpt:
Ten Things IT Professionals Should Know About Windows 7
Every year, we get hit with a long drumbeat of “top 10 lists”—whether it’s the 10 worst-dressed celebrities at the Academy Awards, the 10 best ways to get in shape before spring, the 10 best ways to annoy the person in the office next to you.
At the Springboard Series, we pretty much have a one-track mind—what is in store for IT professionals responsible for desktop administration. While we might be tempted to share a couple of those weight-loss tips, it’s probably best we stick to what we know best—the top 10 things you need to know about the Windows 7 operating system.
With the Release Candidate of Windows 7 now available, we encourage you to download a version to your lab machine and begin testing your applications and devices to get to know what’s in it for you. As you begin testing, we offer this guide to the key features and capabilities in this new desktop operating system.
Here are the top 10 things to know about Windows 7:
1 – Application compatibility
The Windows Vista operating system introduced architectural changes down to the kernel level that made the OS inherently more secure than Windows XP. However, this came at a cost; many applications needed modification to function properly in a Windows Vista environment. While at this point in the lifecycle of Windows Vista (post Service Pack 1) most applications are now compatible, deploying Windows Vista into the desktop environment early on required some “heavy lifting” and creative shimming—not to mention a few late nights.
Windows 7 is built on the same basic architecture as Windows Vista, so most applications will retain their compatibility between these operating systems. This alone will make adopting Windows 7 much less challenging than migrating from Windows XP to Windows Vista. If your organization is like many that are still standardized on Windows XP, you will need to transition to updated versions of your key applications, but the availability of Windows Vista–compatible versions and well-proven shims will make this task more manageable.
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LINK: Ten Things IT Professionals Should Know About Windows 7
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd350196.aspx
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