Sean Wallbridge
We (itgroove) suggest that business users wait for 3 months from Windows 8 GA before they jump on the bandwagon. This allows for the dust to settle, for the techie types to have a solid “kick at the tires” and for all of the mainline LOB vendors to get their act together. I fully expect the anti-virus and tools vendors (like backup) to be on board but Simply, Quickbooks, and others will be late to this party, as they are ALWAYS late to the party.
And while Win8 might “look” like Win7 under the Metro covers there are enough differences between the two to indicate caution is warranted before jumping whole hog onto the Win8 train. Keep in mind that the jump here is going to be similar to the jump from XP into Vista/7 and there were LOTS of problems with software vendors with that move. It’s one thing to muck up your own machine with the latest shiny bits but quite another to muck up your business’ machines and then find out that critical LOB apps no longer function.
Microsoft is betting the farm on Windows 8 so I have no doubt they will get things sorted out rather quickly. It will be the LOB app vendors that have the bigger struggle on their hands and it will be those vendors that ultimately have to make things work for business users on Windows 8.