Windows 7 pre-orders start today. While the software itself will not ship until October, you can get a great deal if you order it now.
I wrote down my first impressions of Windows 7 earlier this year. Unlike Vista, I think Windows 7 is a necessary upgrade for every Windows user, especially those still using XP. 7 is fast, and adds a lot of great productivity features, like the awesome new taskbar.
Law firms and law offices should order Windows 7 Professional at least. Windows 7 Ultimate—on which you cannot get a deal right now, unfortunately—adds BitLocker encryption, a valuable option for anyone storing business files on a laptop. (You could always just use TrueCrypt, but BitLocker is a more elegant option.)
You can pre-order your upgrade to Windows 7 at Amazon now.
Sam Glover is a business and consumer rights lawyer and the creator of Lawyerist.
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Since I don’t have any servers to network with (or whatever the pro edition is for), I just got the Home Premium upgrade.
With the discount, it was under $50. That’s a sweet deal.
The 50% off is a sweet deal, and Windows 7 is certainly an upgrade from the abomination that is Vista; but I can’t agree that it is a necessary upgrade for XP users. It’s fundamentally not that different than Vista, and it’s still got Vista elements under the hood. XP is around, standardized, and relatively stable (for a Windows product). Nobody knows what kind of security holes 7 will have at release, or whether IT personnel will be adequately trained on it at release.
There’s really no justification for a firm to upgrade from XP to 7 until at least the first good service patch unless they were planning an equipment upgrade anyway.