Windows 7 impresses Woolworths, MYOB

Supermarket chain Woolworths is currently trialling Windows 7 and looking to upgrade its corporate desktops from Windows XP to the new operating system in 2010, while local software house MYOB has revealed internal migration plans.

"We tested the Release Candidate and were impressed with the performance and the management capabilities of Windows 7," said a Woolworths spokesperson.

"We'll need to do a lot more testing and find out if it works well with our business applications. Woolworths is a very conservative company, so we're naturally taking a cautious approach. We are unlikely to do anything until next year."

Accounting software maker MYOB was in the process of planning a roll-out for the new year across all 800 desktops in its fleet, a company spokesperson confirmed.

A large proportion of local companies decided against upgrading from Windows XP to Windows Vista and are prime candidates for skipping straight to the latest version.

"Many of our clients are still on Windows XP, so we're expecting to see a big take-up in 2010," said a spokesperson for systems integrator Dimension Data. "There's lots of activity, people are running pilots and doing tests, but just about everyone has parked a full-scale roll-out until 2010.

"A lot of the work we're seeing currently is readying their desktop management infrastructure before doing the upgrade. In many cases, that infrastructure hasn't been updated for some time."