Anything about IT

Seeing is believing – watch this 20 minute recorded demonstration of the AppTitude application testing and application remediation platform to learn how to accelerate your Windows 7, Microsoft App-V, Citrix XenApp, 64x, Windows Server and IE8 projects. . Video here (one-time registration required).

Application Compatibility in these days is a hot topic. Watch this Demo and find out how AppTitude from AppDNA can help you to speed up your Application Compatibility analysis and remediation effort.

Watch the video here Source: BrianMadden.com

Source: ars technica

Microsoft currently has a placeholder page for the Windows 7 Compatibility Center, which will be launching at the same time as Windows 7. Read entire article here

Is your application vista compatible ? The Windows Vista Application Compatibility List for IT professionals might give you the answer. The list contains all applications that have the status “Certified for Windows Vista” or “Works with Windows Vista”.

This list might be helpful as well in planning for Windows7, since “most” applications that work for Windows Vista are supposed to work on Windows7 as well.

http://blogs.msdn.com/usisvde/archive/2009/04/25/walkthrough-to-get-your-applications-ready-for-windows-7.aspx

Microsoft has released ACT 5.5 (Application Compatibility Toolkit). ACT 5.5 provides support for pre-RTM version of Windows7.

To learn more about ACT 5.5 I recommend reading  “Windows 7 Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.5: Interview with Jeremy Chapman”.

ACT 5.5. can be downloaded here

Another great information source is the Application Compatibility and User Account Control site on Microsoft TechNet.

And finally I came across the blog from Chris Jackson -the App Compat Guy” that is worth a visit as well.

I’ve just spend an hour in gathering some additional information around Windows 7 Application Compatibility. Till now when we moved to a new operating system version a significant amount of effort was required with regard to application compatibility. So will companies that invested in Windows Vista Application compatibility have to do all that work again for Windows 7 ?

Unfortunately not, on almost any Microsoft source i found around Application Compatibility, the following statements are being made:

“The key is, if you are ready for Vista, you will be ready for Windows 7”

“if your application can run in Vista, it can run in Windows 7”

An updated version of the Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) for Windows 7 will be released in the coming months, but according to a comment of one of the Springboard Series participants, it would only have one additional check related to Windows 7.

Those who took a look at the Windows 7 internal version number might have noticed that this is 6.1. This is important for application compatibility as well, since many applications would check for the major operating system version number (as seen when moving from Windows XP version 5.1 to Windows Vista version 6.0.

So the conclusion is that those companies who want to accelerate their desktop migration from Windows XP to Windows 7, could actually start testing their applications against Windows Vista and / or the Windows 7 Beta version.

Additional Resources:

Be ready for Windows 7: Application Compatibility Jay Paloma, Deployment Technical Specialist from the Microsoft Singapore Office explaining Windows 7 application compatibility.

Windows 7 Application Quality Cookbook

Springboard Series

Application Compatibility and User Account Control