The Hindu Business Line : Happy to ‘resort’ to Win 7

“If the OS senses an error in the overall software, instead of identifying it and remaining inert while you fix it, the system itself fixes the software and tells you that you are ready to go.”

K. Bharat Kumar

I was pleasantly surprised,” were the first words from Mahesh Manchi, Chief Information Officer, Mahindra Holidays & Resorts, when we asked him his opinion of Windows 7, the latest operating system from Microsoft’s stable.

Mahindra Holidays has been a ‘release candidate’ for Windows 7. This means that it gets to test out the operating system for about three months before the release date of October 22.

Manchi says his company did not migrate from Windows XP to Vista. (Vista is 7’s predecessor, and did not impress many users.) “We have faced no major issues in using Windows 7. Its time to boot and to sleep is amazing.” Coming from a 20-year veteran user of Windows operating systems (OS), this is a true compliment.

Normally, technology enthusiasts tend to debunk operating systems quickly, especially if they find obvious holes. But, Manchi says, “Even my System Administrator has become a fan of the OS.”

About 70 people make up Manchi’s IT team. The roll-out for Windows 7 on their machines is currently on. “It’s early days yet and we wish to ensure that the IT team experiences Win 7 first. We have some legacy applications and client server applications that we would want to evaluate before bringing in Seven. Those would come later.” Mahindra Holidays has about 3,000 people on its rolls.

Favourite features

Manchi’s favourite among the features of the new OS is the ability to recognise hardware being installed. “If you plug in a phone, it is able to recognise the make and model number of the phone, be it Samsung, Nokia or any other. In an IT environment, this feature is useful in identifying printers. I could be connected to a network printer and a personal printer in my own office. The system recognising those saves me headache.”

Automatic error fixing is also welcome, he says. “If the OS senses an error in the overall software, instead of identifying it and remaining inert while you fix it, the system itself fixes the software and tells you that you are ready to go.”

But these are features that are interesting but not critical. Why is it really necessary to move from Windows XP to Seven? Several reasons, he says. But chief among them is office productivity. Manchi is eager to have Win 7 installed in machines of heavy-duty users such as the Finance department, for, with Win 7 comes the ability to use Office 2007. “Earlier versions of Office supported a maximum of 65,000 rows in Excel. But with Office 2007, we can now have up to 10 lakh rows.”

Using Office 2007 earlier would have meant migrating to Vista which also meant a hardware upgrade for which, “We were not ready, even though we had software licences.” So, Windows 7 is welcome.

Talking of hardware, he is able to use Windows 7 in his machine with a 1 GB RAM. “I hear that you can also use machines with 512 KB RAM, though I have not used it. With my machine, resolution of images is perfect. No complaints.”

Windows 7 also brings with it Free services on a virtual private network. Normally companies spend extra on such providers, but Windows 7 is configured to set up a VPN should a user want to log in from a remote location. Manchi says it is useful in an office environment, but in his business, users tend to be in far-flung places. “Our resorts exist in places where sometimes connectivity is an issue. In one place, even BSNL does not have connectivity. In another location, it is a nearly five-hour drive from the nearest railway station to the resort.”

As CIO, he is able to breathe a sigh of relief on the security front, with Windows 7. “Here I can delegate security to the end user.” Meaning, the user of a machine can decide how and when he wants to encrypt or decrypt data in a pen drive.

Even more important to Manchi is the user’s ability to retrieve data that has been deleted, going back several levels. He says about 15 per cent of the company’s help-desk time is spent in helping users get back data that has been inadvertently lost. Windows 7 on all machines could save the desk a lot of time.

From an end-user perspective, Manchi says using Seven does not require intense training. A lot of it is intuitive, he feels. For instance, the search function now searches body text and you are allowed to narrow down searches to only text found in mail, and from a particular user.

The touch-screen capability in Windows 7 interests Manchi. “At our locations, it would help our guests themselves to enter all their data in an easy fashion, when checking in at the reception counters.” But this would require screens that are touch-enabled. Mahindra Holidays isn’t planning on a hardware upgrade immediately.

Any downsides to Windows 7? Manchi feels it’s too early to comment on that. Though he had hardware memory-related issues with applications that ran only on XP, those were resolved. But as to anything bigger, “We would not know yet.”

He does not seem concerned by the need to back up data fully before migrating from XP to Seven. “That is typical of Windows. We always do that.”

bharatk@thehindu.co.in

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