Welcome to Windows 7
As most of you know, Windows 7 was made broadly available to Windows enthusiasts during Steve’s CES Keynote. Interestingly, the number of downloads since Friday, January 8th, have far surpassed anyone’s expectations…to the point where the Windows team had to do heroic stuff to meet the demand. They did a great job. More importantly, this shows there is significant interest in Windows 7 by both consumers and enterprise customers. This has been echoed by many of our global customers and partners as well.
Windows 7 is designed with improved navigation and a streamlined UI (including the new enhanced Windows Taskbar) that put commonly used resources within easy reach. People using Windows 7 will find everyday tasks on their PC are easier and faster. That includes sharing data to all your PCs and devices whether you’re at home or in the office. Windows 7 also builds on the substantial investments we’ve made in the fundamentals in Windows Vista to improve security, reliability and performance.
In order to take advantage of the improvements, our partners will need to work closely with the Global ISV partner team and the Windows team. There is nothing more important to our team than our Global partners having a great experiencing with Windows 7. There are three great ways to take advantage of this Beta release: 1) Get the beta and use the Application Quality cookbook to test (and patch if necessary) your existing apps to ensure they are compatible with Windows 7. 2) Use the Windows 7 Developers Guide to modernize your Windows applications over time. And/or 3) Get the Windows 7 logo, so we can tell our customers about your applications that support the Windows 7 platform.
To maximize the opportunities around Windows 7, our partners should devote some attention to how they can fully leverage the new platform features. Please visit the Windows 7 blog at https://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/ and work closely with your Partner BDM and PAM’s to ensure application compatibility plans. We are here to support you and thank you for being great partners!
Dewey Forrester