According to The Register, Intel plans to deploy Windows 7 on its employee"s computers. When asked at a Technology Summit with reporters and analysts in San Francisco whether the company would wait until service pack 1 to deploy Windows 7, Intel"s EVP and chief sales and marketing officer Sean Maloney said, "This time I think we"ll go faster."
This is good news for Microsoft since Intel and many other companies skipped Vista. The company"s top salesman also sympathized with those who passed on Vista. "There was an excuse not to deploy Vista, because - rightly or wrongly - people said "wait for service pack X" or "we don"t like the compatibility issues."
But this time, things may be different. Maloney said, "There are really good reasons for the business client in terms of security, power management - lots of good reasons why you"d go for it."
Maloney also referred to Windows XP Mode saying, "It looks really robust. You"ve got compatibility mode, which takes away a bunch of those arguments, so I think it"s all positive." However, in order to run Windows 7"s XP Mode, its CPU must support Hardware Virtualization, and unfortunately, many Intel multicore chips don"t support this.
Regardless, Maloney wants companies to upgrade their PCs to run Windows 7. "Now the question is," he said, "can we get the argument to the CFOs and the CEOs that it makes more sense to spend a little bit on capital to reduce your operating costs?" He seems quite clear on the answer to that question, "We think it makes overwhelming sense if you have a three-year-old PC to replace the thing, for security violations, virus, power consumption, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera - and Windows 7 is just one big positive."