After years of waiting, Windows 10 finally hit the shelves in late July this year and caused many to rethink their current operating system situation. Hard as it may be to turn down new and exciting improvements to the existing Windows platform, upgrading to a new operating system as soon as it’s available isn’t always the greatest idea. Windows 10 is a free upgrade for current Windows users but don’t let price become the only deciding factor.
First and foremost, Windows 7 and Windows 8 have been great operating systems and for many out there they currently still provide the best solution to their needs. From a business standpoint, if a product isn’t broken then there is no reason to replace it unless it provides a critical new feature that is necessary. Windows 7, similar to the long living Windows XP, is a business standard platform and is still the number one operating system across vast amounts companies and with Microsoft’s excellent support system, older operating systems allow for an even greater amount of users. In conjunction with Microsoft’s support, a majority of third party developers will always have drivers for Windows 7 or 8 systems whereas support for Windows 10 drivers may be limited.
The biggest reason for not upgrading to Windows 10 is that it is much more of task than people think. For example on the corporate level, the logistics of installing a new operating system across the entire network is an IT nightmare and can cause days or weeks of lost time because the install interfaces with so many different applications. Specific industries that rely completely on time based sales or operations can lose large amounts revenue because they spent a week installing a new operating system. For this reason alone, Windows 10 isn’t not worth the trouble until it starts to become more prevalent in business environments.
Resisting the urge to upgrade to newest, shiny software can be a hard decision but in the long run staying with older operating systems may prove to be a better decision. Windows 10 does have great features and for many is wonderful upgrade to the personal computers but for most in the business world upgrading to Windows 10 can potentially cause more harm than good.
So as