Windows 7: One Year Later, Through The Eyes of Lenovo

Windows 7 Turns 1

As you may recall, Lenovo worked closely with Microsoft to deliver a “Windows 7 Enhanced Experience.” Along the way, Lenovo and Microsoft tweaked drivers and software to obtain an optimal Windows 7 experience with sub-30 second startup times and 5 second shutdown times.

McBain laments about Vista woes and how low adoption rates caused much of the corporate world to stick with Windows XP — an operating system that was nearly 10 years old. McBain also believes that Windows 7 — in a small way — brought the “death of a PC” idea to rest, as finally the computer industry as a whole had something new to build and grow with even as virtualization and cloud computing threatened the traditional model.

McBain says that before Windows 7 was officially launched, 80-90% of Lenovo’s customer base was running Windows XP. (As a 10 year old operating system, put this in perspective: Mac OS X turned 10 years old earlier this September, and by the time Windows Vista was out, Apples Mac OS X was already was in it’s 5th incarnation.)

Windows 7 being released was almost like a day of reckoning for the PC industry, says McBain, and McBain also detailed how Microsoft got Windows 7 code out to peripheral makers nearly a year in advanced to ensure compatibility and usability. Combined with a plethora of security, stability, compatibility, and performance issues that Microsoft put time and effort into, nearly a year later McBain asserted that over 50% adoption rate of Windows 7 in the corporate environment was a groundbreaking figure, with nearly 98% in the consumer market. He noted that only Windows 7 has had this kind of adoption and success. Vista only saw a 10-15% adoption rate in the corporate environment.

As Windows 7 turns one year old, McBain says:

Lastly, I asked McBain to share with me his favorite features of Windows 7. He glossed over BitLocker, and a few other features that made Windows 7 a good contender for security conscious environments, along with glowing Lenovo partner feedback, but settled on one thing:

“My favorite feature is the [Lenovo] Enhanced Experience.”

No surprises here.

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