Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Not Necessary

Article by George Norman (Cybersecurity Editor)

on 26 Mar 2009

According to a report from Gartner, company that specializes in market analysis, the next iteration of the Windows-based operating system, mainly Windows 7, will not need to get a service pack in order to improve its stability and security. Gartner says that companies should not wait for Windows 7 SP1 to adopt and deploy the OS in their enterprise environment, since it is ready for deployment from a stability and security readiness point of view. Gartner also points out that by the time companies will implement the OS, Windows 7 Service Pack 1 will already be made available to the general public.

“The first Service Pack for Windows 7 is not necessary for the operating system's stability and security readiness. However, organizations likely won't be ready to deploy Windows 7 before SP1 ships, so they will include it in their initial deployments. Windows 7 is an incremental update to Windows Vista, but many independent software vendors (ISVs) will not support their applications running on it for six to 12 months or more. Service Pack 1 (SP1) should be released well before organizations are ready to deploy Windows 7, so they should plan to integrate SP1,” says Gartner.

The general opinion amongst Windows users is that the operating system will only truly become stable upon the release of SP1, and for good reason. This was the case with the previous OS version, windows Vista, and with the now outdated (but still popular) Windows XP. Gartner comes to contradict this general belief, arguing that the OS has plenty of time to shed its bugs during the Beta testing phase.

“Conventional wisdom has been that organizations need to wait for the first Service Pack to ship before they deploy a new client OS. This used to be a necessity. The availability of beta software to test the new product was not as broad as it is today, and people expected the initial release to be buggy and unstable. The first Service Pack usually would ship approximately nine to 12 months after the initial OS shipment, and would usually represent a marked improvement in stability. Today, SP1 does not represent the milestone it used to.”


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