Many businesses who thankfully, it appears in retrospect, skipped Vista are now considering upgrading their aging XP desktops to Windows 7. And while there are some crude tools from Microsoft to help with this transition, there are better choices from third-party vendors that can mass migrate desktops while preserving some of the existing user information. There are at least six different products that I have looked at, and here are links to my video or textual reviews so you can get a feel for them yourself. These reviews began in the fall of 2009 and continued up until April 2010 and were published on ITexpertVoice.com, a Dell-sponsored but otherwise independent editorial site focused on Windows 7 related issues.
- Dell/Kace Kbox 2100 ($4500 for 100 PCs, keeps some apps, hardware appliance)
- Laplink PC Mover ($20-$60 per PC, single PC upgrade, keeps most apps)
- Microsoft automated installation tools (WAIK, free, keeps some apps)
- Prowess SmartDeploy ($2000 per enterprise, keeps most apps) and a written review published on eWeek here
- Viewfinity User Migration (free in beta, no apps retained)
- Zinstall ($89 per PC, single PC deployment, not recommended
In addition to these videos, I have done others directly for the vendors themselves on products that can be used to migrate desktops to Windows 7:
Here are a few different versions of various summary articles that I have written:
- CIOupdate.com (5/10)
- SearchEnterpriseDesktop (5/10)
- ITworld (6/10)
In addition to these reviews, I have also done a couple of podcasts/webinars on the topic. Here are links to these as well (and you can find copies of my slide decks here):
- Webinar with Adam Kuhn, IT manager for American Public Power Network and Dell and Prowess product managers (April 2010)
- Computer America podcast with Corey Holzman and Tim Taylor (April 2010)
- Chicago Windows User Group (May 2010) — Download the CWUG slide deck here
- Nashville AITP (July 2010)
- St. Louis AITP (August 2010)
[...] Posted by strom on May 20, 2010 If you’re looking at better ways to automate your Windows 7 deployment, you might want to consider Prowess’ SmartDeploy Enterprise. This is one of numerous tools that enable collections of PCs to migrate from Windows XP to Windows 7. You can see other articles that I have written about this and other tools on my Windows 7 page here. [...]
Pingback by eWeek: SmartDeploy Eases Windows 7 Migration « David Strom’s Web Informant — May 20, 2010 @ 10:01 am
well, i have troubles installing windows7 on my PC. maybe i need a bios update or something :”:
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