February 13, 2009 by James Oliver
Earlier in the week we reported that many companies who had chosen not to update to Windows Vista were finally prepared to update to Windows 7 when it came out. In response to this softening of attitude amongst the business community, Microsoft immediately began managing expectations warning that those users who skip Vista may experience compatibility issues from upgrading straight to Windows 7. Today they have made themselves clear about exactly what was meant by that.
Windows 7 is based largely on the major changes to the architecture that were made with Vista and so essentially all the compatibility issues that users experienced with Vista won’t have gone away in the intervening years. However, the compatibility between Vista and Windows 7 is very high, so Microsoft is recommending that anyone who is worried about compatibility issues test on Windows Vista before the release date of Windows 7 to pre-empt any issues.
Microsoft is not recommending that companies skip Vista entirely, though with as many as 15% of businesses planning to do exactly that, they know that they need to prepare people for the inevitable problems when it happens.
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