Posted by The Blogging Desk on Tue, Nov 16, 2010
- by Chad, "The Machine", Weaver
Do you feel that?
That’s the winds of change coming? In the IT support world one of the “biggest” changes that are on the horizon is the switch to Windows 7. Windows XP has been reigning supreme but it has to come to an end sometime. XP, it’s been a good ride and I will miss you. Sadly, it’s time for you to retire. I agree with most people in the IT support world in that Vista just wasn’t meant to be in the professional world. There was just too much wrong with it. Windows 7 is here, with its upgraded features and security meant to take businesses in the next couple years.
So you may be asking what this spectacular blog is all about. I wanted to talk a bit about a tool that Microsoft offers that can make the task of inventorying and planning for an upgrade from XP to 7. That tool is the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit. I recently had the opportunity to give it a spin and I was impressed with the detail and results of the scan.
The setup: The install was your run of the mill install with a side install of a SQL express instance to store the results of the scan on the workstation or server it will be launched from. After this there are a few sets of scans that it can complete. The one I wanted to talk about was the Windows 7 readiness scan. After providing the credentials and access to the domain that I wanted information about, the scan took a few minutes. The information returned was impressive; it showed the RAM, CPU, presence of DVD drives and others. It found all the workstations and provided an impressive set of reports, including an excel document and a word document that outlined all off the results and items needed attention in wonderful detail. Another highlight is that it lists in easily readable format the number of workstations ready plus the ones requiring upgrades and what those upgrades would be.
So if you are thinking about taking that plunge in to the future with Windows 7, this could be a great place to start. There are a few other great assessment reports included with this tool, including Server 2008 and 2008 R2 readiness and Office 2010, just to name a few. What are a couple minutes of your time gathering information and planning that can save you headaches down the road? Being prepared is always something you can never have too much of, I say.
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