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New Migration Tool Seeks To Spur Adoption Of Windows 7: Page 2 of 2

The Windows application Notepad, which creates simple text documents, appears three times in Windows XP, for example, but in a SmartDeploy image of XP,  Notepad would only be recorded once. However, when it's installed, it's copied three times. The Windows 7 image created by SmartDeploy also includes the drivers needed for the chosen configuration, and only those drivers, says Suzuki, for more efficient use of image disk space.

Prowess is also making migration easier with a unique pricing model, says Suzuki. SmartDeploy Enterprise pricing starts at $2,295 per technician, rather than the traditional per server node. Per technician pricing means that a company can buy one license, and then one technician on their IT staff can deploy it to an unlimited number of end users. Customer can  judge for themselves how many licenses they want to buy based on how may technicians they want on a deployment project and how much time they want to take to roll it out. A deployment of 1,000 seats could be done with one license;  a deployment to 5,000 seats could be done with three licenses; and a deployment of tens of thousands of seats could be done with, perhaps, 10 licenses.

Other drivers of wider Windows 7 adoption may include the growing popularity of new Web browsers, new office productivity suites like Office 2010 and improved security features, says Forrester.

An analysis by IDC shortly after Windows 7 came out stated that adoption could increase as IT managers realize the performance advantages of the new OS versus what they are running now. For most applications, Windows 7 has lower actual system resource requirements than its predecessor, Windows Vista, and comes close to matching the CPU and RAM consumption of XP, IDC reported. While new hardware being installed today will likely run Windows 7, the new OS could be installed in older hardware without a loss in performance.

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