Windows 7 – should we upgrade?

When Vista came we all heard the bad reviews and wanted to wait. With Windows 7 around the corner the reviews are mostly good and the question is in the air: should we upgrade?
Vista had many problems starting with PR but one of the main real set backs was it’s hardware requirements. For organizations who upgraded hardware during the previous 2 years it meant loosing the investment for a crappy OS. Not a deal management like.
Win7 is said to be an improved Vista (which to some extent I agree) but the same 2 disadvantages I mentioned before reversed: it has good PR and the hardware requirements are not so frightening anymore. Why? Well, it has been two and a half years since it came to the world and all those relatively shiny new PCs back then are now getting old and ready for retirement.
Big advantage. Huge!
During the first Vista days I bought one powerful machine with Vista Business Edition on top. It worked good as for hardware but every simple task took me too long, installations had to run few times before I managed to figure out all the security features that blocked them and it just didn’t appeal. The same box is now running Win7 RC, it does much better job installing software and managing the desktop and users who got to work on this box for few weeks had no complaints. This is the real test, isn’t it?
Now that our hardware is getting to the upgrade point being 4-5 years old and the new Operating System both supporting all our software and makes users as efficient as they are on XP we can start planning the upgrade
Our plan is for 3-4 new PCs in October, right as it comes out and distributes it to test users in different departments. After 3 month we’ll reassess and if everything is working as planned we’ll get the rest of the users upgraded, one department at a time