Windows 7's pending release gives pause to some product reviews

Case in point: Blue Ridge Networks. The company has a product called the Pixie that I thought sounded really interesting. It’s a key drive designed to be inserted into any computer to create a VPN connection between that machine and your home servers. It’s really an extension to Blue Ridge's RemoteLink product , which lets users do basically the same thing with a smart card. We were all setup to do the review and even had the product submission form in hand. Yet at the last moment, Blue Ridge pulled out.

Now, people just don’t do that. I have at this very moment over a hundred products competing for very limited review space.For one of them to get to the final step and then be pulled out is a rare occurrence. As in, it never happens.

Because I’m so nice, I decided to look at another Blue Ridge product in that newly opened slot, the AppGuard anti-malware software suite. It was in the middle of this review that I saw that there was “limited availability for Windows 7.” It suddenly dawned on me why the Pixie suddenly flew the coop. It probably wasn’t ready for Windows 7, or at least the company didn’t know if it was.

A few other companies that have been asking me to look at their software suites have recently gone quiet, though none had gotten into the process as far as Pixie. Those products were all security related. My guess: Blame Windows 7. Microsoft says that apps that work under Vista will continue to do so under Windows 7, but companies probably aren’t completely sure, especially in areas such as security and authentication. And having an independent test lab point out flaws is not the best way to discover any problems. So until the big Windows 7 release, expect an unusually early frost in the new software market.

Posted by John Breeden II on Sep 30, 2009 at 2:05 PM