If I’m not mistaken, Windows 7 was released back in mid-October. I saw a slew of TV ads leading up to a release date. There were banner ads on every website. There were banners hanging up in my local Best Buy. Every football broadcast on Sunday seemed to end with the “7 most important something-or-others of the game as brought to you by Windows 7″ – but something interesting happened. The release came and went, several weeks passed, and I barely even noticed.
Now I’m not saying that my perspective is all that significant, but I do talk to many computer users each week, discussing many aspects of computer usage. I can only recall one customer call where I was aware that the person was using Windows 7, and that really didn’t end up being all that relevant to the issue at hand. Back in the day, the release of a new operating system meant a lot of work for us in the Support Department, mostly a lot of studying and documentation of its networking components. We would order and install the new OS ASAP, but Indra’s Net does not own a copy of Windows 7 and thus far that has not been an issue. (yes, we will get a copy eventually)
How can this be? Well, I would argue that these days when it comes to internet connectivity the operating system just doesn’t matter that much. Today’s operating systems are about 90% plug-and-play when it comes to connectivity – when I think back to the days of hour-long phone calls trying to configure Trumpet Winsock in Windows 3.1 or Mac PPP the tears of joy begin to well up in my eyes.
The operating system gets you connected, but all important variables beyond that are controlled by software. So with the OS connectivity as reliable and easy to set up as it has become, the OS has really become transparent to us in support (and to a lot of users).
It used to be that almost every call for us included the question “are you on a Windows machine or a Mac,” but that question may soon be as obsolete as the aforementioned Trumpet Winsock.