Wonderware Upgrade

I am planning on upgrading a number of Wonderware SCADA applications in our manufacturing area. These units currently run on InTouch v7.0 using the Windows NT operating system. The computers are old 233Mhz pentiums. Since they communicate to an oracle database over our IT network, they (IT) want us to go to Windows XP.
The issue is that our new corporate standard SCADA is iFix. I am starting to get pressure to switch to iFix. However, the InTouch applications are functioning well and I really see no benefit in changing. I would love to hear from people who have both developed applications in InTouch as well as iFix 4.0 and can answer any of the following questions:

What are the issues to watch going from v7.0 to v9.5?
How stable in InTouch 9.5 on XP?
Does anybody have experience with sending data from InTouch to iHistorian?
If we are forced to go to iFix:
Does anyone have experience converting InTouch scripts to VB for IFix?
Is iFix 4.0 stable on XP?

Thanks for all of your help!

It's been quite awhile since I've worked with any version of iFix, but I always hated it. And usually any plant people I have worked with hate it -- the dictate to standardize it always comes from way up the food chain by someone who really won't have to live with it. Those who truly have to live with iFix/DMACS have generally hated it.

Issues converting from WW v7.0 to 9.5... There was a major change in how they handled alarming and a few scripting-related things when they went from 7.0 to 7.1/7.11. Some of those weren't entirely pain-free. But after the conversion, they have worked flawlessly. Since that version, there haven't been any of those "painful" upgrades.

9.5 is very stable on XP. You'll actually have more instability with XP than with WW.

InTouch scripts will not nicely convert to iFix scripts. period... You're going to have to start over to convert them to iFix.

Yeah, the alarming scheme went from flat-file to requiring SQL. your IT guys might actually like that.

I did a conversion on a 7.11 (WFW 3.11!) to a 9.5 with no problems other than the alarms. I have an older system on Win95 that has a tag duplication problem, and I don't have an editor for the old versions.

Thanks for the info.

We have one application running in WW v8.0 so I am a bit familier with the new alarming scheme. Conversion of scripts is an issue with going to iFix. I hope with this upgrade to reduce the quantity of scripting. The integrator who created this system was script happy and performs many tasks in scripting that can be done in the PLC.

Our site will be the only one using Wonderware. However, I am not convinced that for existing systems there is any great benefit converting to iFix. My point is that if it works and is not obsolete, why mess with it. This assumes that the conversion to v9.5 is straightforward which it appears to be.

Thanks again for your help.