CommBank peeks at Windows 7

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia this week said it had examined Microsoft's forthcoming Windows 7 operating system but was yet to formally test the beta version.

(Credit: Renai LeMay/ZDNet.com.au)

"We have reviewed it but not formally tested it in our production environment," a spokesperson said. "As it is still in beta and has not been properly tested it is too early to provide you with our impressions."

Windows 7 is widely expected to be released in the second half of 2009, although Microsoft has not yet set a launch date for it. On 9 January this year, the first official beta of Windows 7 was released to general praise from reviewers and the public.

CommBank, along with other Australian banking giants Westpac, National Australia Bank and ANZ, sidestepped Windows Vista. CommBank currently uses Windows XP Professional for its fleet of 38,000 desktops.

The spokesperson added that CommBank did not have any plans to migrate to the new operating system.

"We continually monitor the software marketplace and make decisions that support our business goals as opposed to when new packages are released," they said.

The bank's approach appears less enthusiastic than its comparably sized public sector counterpart, welfare agency Centrelink, which yesterday revealed to ZDNet.com.au its first impressions of Windows 7 revealed "significant improvement over [the] performance and quality of Vista".