use win7 as dev-machine operating system enough??

Question

so far i have winsrv 2003 as the operating system on my dev-machine. now my manager asks me if i can switch to win7 because of licencing costs.

anybody of you know any good reasons for doing/not doing this?

Answer 1

I've been using Windows XP on my dev-machine at work, without any problem -- Linux would have been just as fine (or more) too.

I don't see why Windows 7 wouldn't be OK for a development machine, as long as you have all the drivers you need -- you probably don't need a server environment to develop, do you ?

Of course, I wouldn't say the same for a testing/staging server, which has to be as close as possible to the production one.

Answer 2

We don't know what you're developing, but I don't recall ever being hampered by not developing on a server-grade OS, apart from debugging OS-specific issues (which will always happen whatever you pick).

Answer 3

I'd say the best reason for doing it is because your manager has asked you to.

Seriously, if the company has decided that's the way it want's to go, in my experience you don't usually have a lot of choice.

Answer 4

I've been running my dev environment on Windows 7 since the RTM hit. Developing with Visual Studio 2008, SQL 2008, Visual Basic 6, running VMWare--all with no problems.