Is Windows 7 still a thing?

[jmshub]

I work in IT for a medium sized organization. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 500-700 desktop. Currently, 95% of our machines, including brand new ones being imaged today, are running Windows 7. We have a volume license, and push a Win7 image that we've been maintaining through every monthly update for years and years now.

Windows 7 ends support in 2020, and Intel 7th gen chips don't properly support Win7, so that is finally the impetus to migrate. In our case, it isn't our decision. We need the hardware and software that we use to be formally supported by Windows 10. That was our first major hurdle. Even the big vendors are very slow to support any new version of Windows. (Side note: I got to this company just after Windows XP EoL'ed, and they were in a serious rush to get migrated to 7, mostly because of the products not supporting 7 until the last minute).

Anywhoo, while our product mangers are watching vendors' whitesheets to see new versions finally fully support 10, in IT, we need to build test machines running 10, and then reconfigure our group policy objects to lock down the machines to fit the restrictions we have in place. And then we need to patch them with our patch mangement software, make sure that 10 behaves like 7, gets updated properly, and that we can keep them from automatically updating and downloading those huge feature updates in the middle of a workday.

Then, after we have the machines ready to go, we can build machines to give to the Training dept to allow them to write user guides, to cut down on all of the support calls that we are bound to get from part time sales associates who show up on Saturday morning, and now the "screens look different".

For the record, we have been using Win10 in IT for almost a year already, and we all like it, except for a little trickery to make sure they don't self-update and leave us with production machines rebooting and updating when we don't want them to...but this is probably a similar Win10 migration plan that a lot of organizations are doing.

 

[jmshub]

Honestly, no exaggeration, it takes this thing like 5 minutes to start up and about 2 minutes to open Outlook. Opening a PDF virtually drags it to a standstill.

I bet that is caused by Active Directory. Especially Windows 7, laptops are looking for a domain controller on startup to grab any new group policy. It will sit there for what I believe is 60 seconds, scanning for for DCs. It won't boot up to a log on screen until it's exhausted that search.

Even fast new machines with SSDs boot slowly in that circumstance.

 

[dkediger]

I bet that is caused by Active Directory. Especially Windows 7, laptops are looking for a domain controller on startup to grab any new group policy. It will sit there for what I believe is 60 seconds, scanning for for DCs. It won't boot up to a log on screen until it's exhausted that search.

Even fast new machines with SSDs boot slowly in that circumstance.

Partially....given the size of the org, its probably an unwieldly set of Group Policies to process. The number of policies, and any complexity of settings within them, can geometrically affect login time. Published resources like printers and shares add to that as well.

I work very hard to keep our policies lean and mean, and startup/login isn't any slower off-site than on prem. It's all in the GP depth and complexity, but at the given org size in the OP - 300k - it's going to be a nightmare with GP having to parse quite a few competing group memberships and policy settings.

And then there is also the previous mentioned Intel/Win7 support mismatch.

 

[Adventurer64]

My company has an initiative to get rid of all Windows 7 PC's over the next year. IT tried to refresh my Dell craptop running Windows 7 last year and I declined because the replacement was a low end Latitude without touch. I've actually compared my older Latitude running Win7 with the newer Latitudes running Win10, and mine is faster. Keep in mind I did replace the hard drive with a high end SSD and upgraded the memory, so that's a big part of it. Not many people are happy with the low end Latitudes running Win10. Since I use a Surface Pro 2017 and a smaller W10 tablet at home and for travel, I'm used to Windows 10 with touch. So, I can't handle a Win10 laptop without touch. The first thing I do is go for the screen. With Windows 7 I don't have the touch screen reflex. Anyway, I'm very happy with my older Dell craptop running Windows 7 and will fight tooth and nail with IT when the time comes to replace it with a Windows 10 non-touch Dell craptop. Why are IT departments so stuck on low end Latitudes for their employees? Drives me crazy.

 

[dkediger]

Inertia. It's the tried and true. Forva large IT department, might even be contracted purchasing over a time period given a model that was initially decent at the start of the term.

I'm an SMB IT department, so I have a lot more flexibility to not be a slave so much to a common standardized platform.

In my purchasing over the last, ohhh, 2 years, I've gone to excusively SSDs, NVM m.2 when available, and have found we can get better performance with a current gen I3 CPU versus the previous gen I5. For pretty much the same price.

We don't utilize touch, so can't comment there.

 

[fatclue_98]

Why are IT departments so stuck on low end Latitudes for their employees? Drives me crazy.

Because the bean counters step in and f**k it up for everybody. They're the ones who foisted Ford Tauruses (Taurii?) and Chevy Cavaliers on every fleet manager in the US. I'm willing to wager they don't have Latitudes in their offices or a Taurus in their parking space.

 

[L0n3N1nja]

I don't work IT or have a work issued computer of any kind, but I've yet to see Windows 8 or Windows 10 in the work place.

 

[Adventurer64]

Because the bean counters step in and f**k it up for everybody. They're the ones who foisted Ford Tauruses (Taurii?) and Chevy Cavaliers on every fleet manager in the US. I'm willing to wager they don't have Latitudes in their offices or a Taurus in their parking space.

The IT director has a Surface Pro! I offered to pay for one last year, no luck. Must be a status thing.

 

[dkediger]

I don't work IT or have a work issued computer of any kind, but I've yet to see Windows 8 or Windows 10 in the work place.

Out of 250+ devices, we're 80% Win 10, the rest Win 7, except for 3 MacBooks and an iMac. Handful of iPads, but they're not used for anything consequential.

 

[fatclue_98]

I don't work IT or have a work issued computer of any kind, but I've yet to see Windows 8 or Windows 10 in the work place.

Every single doctor's office I've been to in the past 10 years is either on Windows 2000 or XP. My Cardiologist in particular is tech-heavy and he's on 2000 Professional. His entire staff walk around with iPads, the office has Pandora streaming music in every room and there's gadgets everywhere. Yet his PCs are stuck in a time warp, go figure.

 

[tgp]

Every single doctor's office I've been to in the past 10 years is either on Windows 2000 or XP. My Cardiologist in particular is tech-heavy and he's on 2000 Professional. His entire staff walk around with iPads, the office has Pandora streaming music in every room and there's gadgets everywhere. Yet his PCs are stuck in a time warp, go figure.

I work in IT, and I see situations like this occasionally. Sometimes they are held back by their software vendors. It shouldn't be that way, but it is.

Or sometimes updated software is available, but there might not be much benefit to upgrading everything as far as functionality or reliability. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"

 

[MatthewR413]

I work in IT, and I see situations like this occasionally. Sometimes they are held back by their software vendors. It shouldn't be that way, but it is.

Or sometimes updated software is available, but there might not be much benefit to upgrading everything as far as functionality or reliability. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"

I noticed this at my dentists a while back but it makes sense. They have a very specific set of software tools they need to use and they KNOW it works on xp/2000/etc. They don't need the upgrade, re-training employees, etc. They have a job to do and they know everyday that that version of windows is going to work because they're not changing it.

Think of it like Latin. A dead language so it's never going to change. That's windows XP essentially.

 

[Akshay M]

Microsoft will soon gonna stop supporting Windows 7 from Jan 14, 2020. Windows 7 users won`t be able to receive any updates from Microsoft. Windows 7 end of life has arrived and it is very close almost for a week now it will be alive. If windows 7 users want to continue receiving update they can shift towards azure platform as Microsoft ha started offering windows virtual desktop which has features like extended support for windows 7, multi-session windows 10 and optimizations for Office 365 ProPlus.