Carefully Plan your Windows 10 Rollout
As you probably know, July 29, 2015 was the official release day for Microsoft’s new operating system, Windows 10. This is an exciting new operating system that takes the good pieces of Windows 7 and 8, and builds on them. Even better, Microsoft is making the upgrade to Windows 10 FREE for most computers running a genuine copy of Windows 7 or 8. This is great news, and we are very excited about what Windows 10 can bring to your organization… eventually.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows
Even though the operating system will technically be available to the general public today, we recommend careful planning before you upgrade. There are a number of reasons why:
- A brand new operating system (OS) can have compatibility issues with your Line-of-Business applications. It typically takes software companies a few weeks or months until they can push out an update of their software that is fully compatible with a new OS. If you upgrade your OS too soon, you can break your software and render it useless. We certainly don’t want that happening!
- Internet browser and “web app” compatibility is a concern as well. Even though Windows 10 is shipping with Microsoft’s new browser, Edge, it can still take some time for web apps and “cloud apps” to be 100% compatible.
- Probably one of the most important issues is driver compatibility. Every piece of hardware that connects to your computer (both internal and external) typically requires a piece of software called a Driver in order for that hardware to properly “talk” to your computer. Every printer, USB hub, graphics card, external hard drive, etc. needs a driver. Drivers are sometimes the last thing to get updated to a new OS. And sometimes hardware companies will simply not make a driver available to a new operating system, depending on the age of the hardware. So, if you have an older printer hooked up to your computer, there’s a chance it may not be 100% compatible with Windows 10 ever.
If you have questions about what Windows 10 has to offer your small business, or need guidance on how to do a smart upgrade, give the Gurus a call!
