Getting Ready for Vista with WinINSTALL
With careful planning and application of the right technology, the strategies implemented for a zero-touch operating system migration can be reused for every day PC lifecycle management tasks.
Implementing some of the most basic PC management processes in your environment today can help you prepare and plan for an effective Vista migration. And the re-use of these processes are not limited to only Microsoft Vista. During a phased OS migration, PC operating environments are rarely homogeneous, so the application of these tools should accommodate Microsoft Vista, and also Windows XP and Windows 2000.
One of the critical first steps in Vista readiness is to understand the new capabilities of Vista, Vista’s system requirements, user requirements, and ultimately how Vista will be configured. This is a research and analysis effort that IT staff must undertake, as it will serve as the foundation for many future decisions.
WinINSTALL Hardware Inventory
Using WinINSTALL’s hardware inventory capabilities, IT will gain a clear picture of the currently deployed PC hardware configurations, using inventory criteria resembling the hardware requirements your organization has defined for Vista. With this knowledge, IT will know which PCs need to be completely replaced, and where it may make sense to upgrade specific components, such as RAM or video capabilities.
In most cases, the PCs in production today will not effectively support Vista. Studies have found that about half of the business PCs deployed today will not support Vista’s minimum requirements, and that over 90% would not support Vista’s premium requirements. In addition, the costs of upgrading an existing PC should be carefully analyzed and compared to the costs of acquiring and deploying a completely new system. Upgrading existing hardware components is an expensive, hands-on endeavor that could quickly surpass the costs of acquiring a new PC.
WinINSTALL Software Inventory
WinINSTALL’s software inventory capabilities interrogates a PC environment down to the file level, and provides a clear view of the applications and versions deployed—and when they were last used. This information helps IT organizations plan for which applications need to be tested under Vista, which applications need to be upgraded to support Vista, and eventually create software packaging, deployment, and compatibility plans for your Vista test environment.
WinINSTALL PC Personality
WinINSTALL remotely captures the unique PC settings, such as bookmarks, shortcuts, desktop configurations, customized dictionaries, documents, VPN configurations, printer and drive mappings. By actively capturing this information, it can then be automatically migrated to a PC running Vista. This eliminates the time spent by end-users or IT staff trying to get the PC back to the way it was.
WinINSTALL Software Packaging
An application that is properly packaged with WinINSTALL can leverage automated distribution to Vista, will behave better once deployed, can be integrated into a patching process, and can be automatically uninstalled, or properly reinstalled during a PC restore or refresh.
For a more detailed look at Vista readiness and how WinINSTALL helps you get there, please download our White Paper entitled: “Achieving Vista Readiness: Strategic PC Lifecycle Management Gets You There”.