Windows 7
Essays

In today's world of technology, it is imperative that you stay current with what is new in the IT world. What makes this particularly challenging is the pace of change in IT systems, and the continual need to make sure they align to a department, division and in the case of the City of Elizabethtown, an entire city. Never before has it been more critical for government municipalities to get the most value possible out of their IT investments. With continual budget costs and an orientation to judge investments purely on short-term cost reduction, investments in IT must be seen as atypical and worthy of much greater focus and effort to integrate the into municipalities. This is to first increase the value delivered, second to ensure the hard-earned taxpayer funds used to buy and upgrade equipment, operating systems, networks and applications are put to the best possible use, and third, to make absolutely sure they deliver the greatest value necessary in order for the City of Elizabethtown to get the greatest value. Those are the foundational elements of this proposal and the values it is based on. As the migration of 250 workstations across 10 departments and 5 locations has a budget of $100,000 and the performance gains possible from transitioning their operating systems form Windows XP to Windows 7 is expected to be significant, the cornerstone of this proposal centers on delivering excellent public service ultimately to the citizens City of Elizabethtown. As Microsoft has also recently indicated they will be permanently discontinue Windows XP support on April 8, 2014 according to the Microsoft website, the urgency to get this upgrade completed accurately, completely, and with precision is clear. It seems like every six months something new is coming out. While it is true you do not need every new gadget out there to stay current in the IT world, you do need the most recent operating system to ensure the compatibility, security, scalability and long-term Return on Investment (ROI) of IT spending. I work for the City of Elizabethtown as the Network Administrator. While a Network Administrator's job is mostly configuring and maintaining servers, I also manage all the workstations and make sure they are getting the most recent updates that are on the WSUS (Windows Server Update Services) server. I am also in charge of preparing budgets for these workstations and purchasing them. I have been with the City now for 5 years and we have running Windows XP SP3 on all workstations. With all the new threats out there and with Microsoft ending their commitment to support Windows XP in 2014 I have decided to upgrade to Windows 7. The reason I have decided to go with Windows 7 instead on the upcoming release of Windows 8 is simply because Windows 7 was released 2 years ago and most of the bugs and kinks are gone and there is stability in the program. Microsoft has also been able to get much greater levels of software support for their 64-bit versions of the Windows 7 Application programmer Interface (API). The current Windows 32-bit based applications on the XP systems throughout the city will eventually become obsolete, some as early as twelve months from now in 2013. The message is clear from Microsoft however; they have made Win64 API-based development a strategic priority, investing heavily in Independent Software Vendor (ISV) relations efforts with their strategic partners. Microsoft has also modified and improved the device drivers for Win64-based systems so that the network security, speed and precision are also significantly enhanced. While Windows NT, XP and Windows 7 are all based on the Windows NT Kernel shown in Appendix 4, Microsoft has greatly expanded the Windows 7 kernel to support a more multiplatform-based strategy than ever before. The Windows 7 kernel can be seen in Appendix 3. Microsoft will make a major announcement later this year with Windows 8 support for the Windows Phone, and will also seek to bring the Win64 API to the Apple iPad via Apple iOS 6. This Apple operating system will most likely bring Microsoft Office to the Apple iPad. Current discussions with Microsoft indicate that any servers running Windows 7 components will be able to support non-Microsoft devices. As the City of Elizabethtown begins to adopt smartphones and tablet PCs including the Apple iPad with increasing regularity, the IT department will need to also consider the platform requirements for supporting these devices. This tend in IT is called Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). Departments in City Hall, the Elizabethtown Police Department, Fire Stations, Gas Department and Public Works all could significantly increase the effectiveness of their workflows by integrating smartphones and tablet PCs into their workflows in the future. While these are not core requirements of this transition from Windows XP to Windows 7, 64-bit edition, it is another consideration that needs to be kept in mind. The transition from XP to Windows 7 will enable our IT department to better serve the entire city in the future and set the foundation for eventual adoption of mobile devices. It is not a matter of whether this will happen, only a matter of when. Another aspect of the transition of the 250 workstations is the versioning of their applications and the significant potential speed increase they can attain when they are migrated form Win32 to Win64-based versions. This speed increase has, according to Microsoft and its ISVs (development partners) been as high as 60% on calculation-intensive applications including Microsoft Excel, SQL Server and other database applications. This speed increase is due to the result of applications using memory more efficiently and also having greater support for multithreading, which is literally the ability to have an application complete several concurrent, even potentially conflicting tasks, at once. The transition from Windows XP to Windows 7 will certainly require a hardware upgrade for workstations, and if the architecture of the workstation cannot support the minimum requirements of the operating system, another will need to be purchased. This is also the case with software licenses for all applications that are today running in Win16-based API Mode, by far the most prevalent and popular API that Microsoft has developers supporting. To see where the Win16 API fits into the architecture of these operating systems please see Appendix 4, Windows NT Kernel Architecture. An application written to support the Win16 API will also run in Windows XP, Windows 7 and 8. As the kernel architecture shows in Appendix 2, Win32 APIs dominate the XP framework. Fortunately Windows has designed in Win16 to Win32 API migration and compatibility, and is working to ensure applications written on both of these standards will work with Windows 7 and beyond. What all this means for the upgrade of systems is that the planning steps need to pay very close attention to standardizing on Win64-based applications to gain the full performance boost form upgrading the systems with hardware to make them capable of running Windows 7. The hardware upgrades and fine-tuning will only be as valuable as the operating system-level and most importantly, application-based upgrades completed. In conclusion the primary goal of upgrading the systems to avert obsolescence needs to be balanced with potential to significantly increase and improve speed over time.

Since the development of the first operating system in 1981, Windows has grown to become one of the leading mainstream modern operating systems. While the initial program was primarily a graphical user interface that enabled users to interact with MS-DOS easily, subsequent versions of this operating system were developed to accommodate changes brought by development of computers. This article provides an analysis of Windows Operating System and begins with a brief overview of its development. This following section of the paper provides an explanation of how Windows is designed to integrate all components of an operating system.

The differences between Microsoft Windows Vista operating system to Windows 7.0 is the intent of this paper, with a technical and features-based discussion and analysis forming the foundation of the analysis.

Refuting the Claims That Windows-based systems are not as Secure

¶ … leadership communication to strategy, or the role of "execution" to strategy or the role of "participation" in strategy) from our text and course embedded in the above. Feel free to structure them in any order that…

¶ … Windows 7 and Windows XP Professional

¶ … computer software falls into one of three categories: compilers and other translator programs, software applications, and system software. Describe and give examples of each.

The advanced show of the U.S. economy in the late 1990's has led a lot of experts to conjecture that a New Economy has materialized in which heavy investment in information technology (IT) has led to an period of…

A Local Area Network (LAN) and Wide-Area Network (WAN) are differentiated in how they rely on different media types, devices used in their configuration and use, networks and subnet topologies and communications protocols. All of these factors taken together differentiate these two approaches to enterprise-wide networking. A LAN is often used throughout a small geographic region and in companies, often used only in a single business or at most, a small office complex. A WAN is a much broader network in structure, covering metropolitan, regional, national and international boundaries. The speed of a LAN is significantly faster, with 1K MBps being typical while WANs average 150 MBps. LANs are also often created in Ethernet and Token Ring configurations while WANS are often designed to ensure X.25 connectivity and advanced ATM support across longer distances. From a components standpoint, LANs are often based on Layer 2 devices including switches and bridges, with additional support from Layer 1 devices including hubs and repeaters. WANs are often created on a foundation of Layer 3 routers, multi-layer switches and technology-specific devices including advanced frame-relay and ATM switching devices. Dominant communications protocols on LANs including CSMA/CA based protocols that seek to alleviate data packet collisions on a network. Collision Avoidance is the foundation of the IBM Token Ring protocol for example. Both LAN and WAN configurations also run the standard TCP/IP networking protocols based on the CSMA/CD standard approach to managing collision detection across networks.

¶ … CEO FOR or AGAINST investment in a new operating system.