Most Companies Won't Deploy Windows 7 — Survey 429
angry tapir writes "Nearly six in 10 companies have no current plans to deploy Windows 7 by the end of next year, according to a new survey. Of 1,100 IT administrators who responded to the survey, 59.3 percent said they didn't have a plan to deploy Windows 7. (Full results, PDF.)"
I'll deploy Win7 (Score:5, Insightful)
When XP support ends in 2014. By then, Win7 will have been shaken out.
Re:I'll deploy Win7 (Score:5, Interesting)
If you say so. I'm at a military manufacturing facility, and there are no plans to move away from XP ever. In fact we're more likely to move onto Linux than go to Windows Vista or Windows 7.
Re:I'll deploy Win7 (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I'll deploy Win7 (Score:4, Interesting)
A millitary (manufacturing) facility, running XP?
Does nobody think that this is pretty scary in itself?
Imagine the displays there showing the infamous Playmobil design, and in front of it a big colorful set of buttons that honk when you hit/push them.
And you suddenly have to think of the movie Idiocracy. ^^
Re:I'll deploy Win7 (Score:5, Funny)
Promises?! Here in Kang's tiberium mine, we prefer to call them "obamas". Kodos 2012!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Nice to see you believe liberty includes the right to murder. You don't have the first clue what liberty is. Get a dictionary, then chastise. Not the other way around.
Re:I'll deploy Win7 (Score:5, Insightful)
I love that optimism man, I guess you one of the guys that still vote for politicians on the basis of the promises they give!
Excellent analogy, but for a slightly different reason.
By the time we recognise that the current elected official sucks, there's an election right around the corner. That election not only offer promises of the new, but also allows us to forget the failures of the past.
The trouble with Microsoft is that we end up electing the same guy every time.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Ummm....You're electing the same guy every time by picking XP over and over and over again. You know he has vulnerabilities with IE6 and other security issues, and now that 80% of new computers have 1GB of RAM or more, he's too barebones for you anymore. He's looking a bit dated. You can put bandages on him forever, but he's very prone to infection.
What this survey says is that 40% of companies surveyed have plans to deploy Windows 7 in the next 1.5 years (2009 is half over, iirc).
People: That's not a bad n
Re:I'll deploy Win7 (Score:5, Insightful)
we don't see any point in replacing the existing OS considering the time and costs involved.
The summary implies 59.3% not using Win7 by end 2010. But if 40.7% are using it by then, that would be a spectacular takeup.
The time and cost to replace existing installations with Win7 decrease over time. When total cost of deployment is less than the savings resulting from the use of Win7, a company will switch. The article is simply quantifying the date at which 40% estimate this will happen.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In this economy, our company considers a lot of things but then when real $$$ appear, they are inevitably pushed off.
We have an enterprise license from Microsoft so it isn't the cost of the software (about the same if we have XP on all machines or win 7).
The main issue would be new machines (I just got a new one last year before everything went to crap in the economy) which they have extended from a 3 year to a 4 year window.
Then it would be confirming all our old custom software works correctly.
I'm certain
Re:I'll deploy Win7 (Score:5, Insightful)
When total cost of deployment is less than the savings resulting from the use of Win7, a company will switch.
In other words: Not until Win XP is no longer a viable choice.
There are no savings resulting from the use of Win7. There are only migration and implementation costs.
Most enterprises have their apps certified on the XP platform. It takes hundreds if not thousands of man hours to update and verify functionality of each app. Not to mention that many enterprise applications such as SAP or Cisco does not support 64-bit Windows 7. 64-bit support for all enterprise apps is a dead-sure requirement for any enterprise considering a full upgrade to Win 7.
For a typical enterprise with 2000 deployed applications, this turns into a migration nightmare. The budget runs into the millions.
Note that migration cost for enterprises have nothing to do with windows 7 licensing. The software assurance means they're paying for windows 7 already, but prefer to stay on Windows XP just in order to avoid said migration costs.
I don't think we'll see wide-spread deployment of windows 7 until 2012-2013.
"Sales" in 2010 will probably look OK though due to software assurance.
Re:I'll deploy Win7 (Score:4, Informative)
We bumped most of our computers up to Vista this spring, and while, for the most part, it hasn't been too bad, there are still many little idiosyncrasies. Vista has stabilized, that's for sure, but I'd hardly call it as quality an OS as XP (despite the fact that it does have some nifty features). As to Windows 7, well there's just no way in hell we're going to be doing any upgrades to it in the foreseeable future. The next round of upgrades aren't reasonably scheduled for another three or four years, so I suppose then we might bump up, unless we decide to go open source (which we may, I'm certainly moving away from Microsoft on the server front to save the company a significant amount of money in license fees). I've got a few years to figure it all out,
Re:I'll deploy Win7 (Score:5, Informative)
I call BS on your BS. There ARE benefits to W7 however they fail to balance the large cost of upgrading in a corporate environment (which, mind you, is what this article is about).
Vista still has major bugs. They have NOT all been fixed - many have just been hacked around so they're less painful. I mean, seriously, who releases a new OS that is hideously slow just doing a basic file copy. Any PR flack MS got over vista they deserve 10x over. Only their complete refusal to admit to reality and millions of dollars spend on advertising kept it from being the biggest joke of the decade.
Our refusal to upgrade is NOT
a) based any way on 'shinyness'. In fact, the fewer things my staff have to tinker with, the better.
b) because of some unfounded fear of new ways of doing things. Instead consider having to re-train 1000's of employees (or 100x that even bigger companies) because MS decided to move icons, menus, labels, etc. around. It's not rocket science, but then again plenty of computer-using employees are far from computer guru's. Training cost and time lost figuring things out, getting lost in menus, and so on gets very expensive. Why change when the "old way" actually works quite well?
c) If a global company with global brand recognition, a WAN spanning a dozen+ countries, thousands of corporate clients is a limited world please do tell me what I'm missing. Granted we aren't hooked up to the ISS. But still. Security upgrades are handy but UAC is still not a substitute for proper rights management. Memory management ... is this DOS 6.x and Win 3.11? Improved network stacks...?! I know some ultra-high-demand, ultra-low-latency situations where this DOES matter but none of those computers are running Windows.
So other than misplaced belief in new security (the biggest security flaw exists between the chair and keyboard at any given desk) and some nifty CONSUMER-ORIENTED things there's direct little benefit to W7 as of yet.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course most of you refuse to upgrade because the new thing either:
A: Doesn't have enough shininess.
B: Doesn't work like the old thing.
I think it is quite likely that XP will hang around for quite some time because it works fine and because companies do use a lot of old software. So, just like intranets are probably keeping IE6 alive, old software will keep XP alive.
I think MS has learned a lesson from XP. Never build an OS that's too good otherwise you can't selling a new version to people as and when you feel like it.
Re:I'll deploy Win7 (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft has imposed limitations on Win 7 Starter Edition for netbooks. No more than 1GB of RAM, no screen sizes larger than 10.2-inches. At least the hard disk restriction has moved from a maximum of 160GB to a higher max of 250GB.
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/25218/1105/ [itwire.com]
On that sort of underpowered netbook, Windows XP is capable of running more than just the OS and say, Word, without thrashing the hard disk to death.
While Windows 7 does a much better job than Windows Vista of booting up AND running a single program like Word or Excel with only one Gig of RAM, Windows XP
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Bullshit.
Re:I'll deploy Win7 (Score:5, Insightful)
But 34 percent said they expected to deploy Windows 7 by the end of 2010, with 5.4 percent expected to install the OS by the end of the year.
Actually, if you ask me, the real news is that a full 34% is going to deploy Windows 7. That's a pretty big number for corporate deployments, see how slow transition was from 2K to XP.
I wouldnt make plans to deploy it either (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You must be new here :) When was the last time that MS delivered everything it promised?
Re:I wouldnt make plans to deploy it either (Score:5, Insightful)
You must be new here. When did MS delivering what it promises have anything to do whether management decides it's time for an "upgrade"?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Thinking 'bout it... (and sorry for the selfreply), when did anything MS say, promise, do or deliver have anything to do with the upgrade cycles your management decides for? It's more like "the computers are exactly 3 years, 2 months and 1 day old, time for change. BING! Now!"
No real rhyme or reason, other than that the beancounters said it would be a good idea to blow a few quid on new IT crap because the stars are aligned and the write off oracle agrees...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Promises they will keep (Score:5, Funny)
Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer promised me something a long time ago.
And this is one delivery they won't miss.
Affectionately yours,
Satan.
Re:I wouldnt make plans to deploy it either (Score:5, Funny)
I am still waiting for what Microsoft Promised me for Windows 95.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
> If 7 Manages everything it promises, im sure plenty will turn to 7 in the end
What does it promise that businesses need and don't have?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft's Open Licenses generally allow for downgrades to previous versions as part of Software Assurance, and for that matter, retail copies of current "Business" products can likewise be downgraded, and even more than that, any white box vendor can still obtain OEM XP Licenses for new systems. That means not buying Dell or HP desktops (though at the moment Dell and Lenovo at least are still offering XP on some configurations), or for a small organization, tempering the desire to buy a new box from Best
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
many companies are starting to realize that the 3-5 year cycle was based on the last 20 years of significant hardware advances even among common low-end desktop hardware, which has significantly tailed off over the last few years. We were tied into a 3-year lease plan for a while. Now, we're looking at machines from 3 years ago and realizing they run all we need just fine. Some people need new workstations for more capability, but that's by far the exception, not the rule.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Depends very much on the company.
Most places I've worked (large and small), 3-5 years "refresh" doesn't mean "everyone automatically gets a new machine after 3-5 years whether they need it or not". It means "If someone's PC packs up after 3-5 years for whatever reason, we won't dedicate any time to fixing it".
Re:I wouldnt make plans to deploy it either (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. This article and summary should both be tagged troll. The only actual news here is that 34% of the companies surveyed already have plans to have it deployed by the end of next year and it's not even released yet!
Now I'm no huge fan of Microsoft, but I'd guess this is about their best pre-release effort ever. They have definitely done some things right this time around.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
So in 3 months (Score:5, Informative)
Based on that, if MS wait nine months there will be people buying two copies.
Re:So in 3 months (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So in 3 months (Score:5, Insightful)
t's gone from 83% that won't to 59.3%.
Based on that, if MS wait nine months there will be people buying two copies.
We get stories like this every time MS releases a new OS. There are the occasional flops like Windows ME and Vista that don't see widespread enterprise deployment but despite the universal predictions of doom you get each time most of them actually do end up being widely used in businesses. Examples include: Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000 and Windows XP, I remember all sorts of columnists, bloggers and other speculators crawling out of the woodwork and predicting businesses wouldn't use them. Particularly Windows 2000 and Windows XP who turned out to be widely used regardless.
Re:So in 3 months (Score:4, Insightful)
And every time we get these stories, we also hear "we get these stories every time MS releases a new OS," along with predictions that the new OS will see just as high an adoption rate as the most successful of MS's OS releases. I recall the exact same predictions for Vista (which you yourself note was a flop). Honestly, I think success is a little less than certain at this point.
History lesson (Score:5, Insightful)
They've gone through the same thing with each version of Windows that's been released. In 2003, less than 10% of corporate PCs were carrying XP. In 2005, it had only gone up to 38%. [betanews.com] That's an OS that'd been out for more than three years, and was up against the incumbent Win2000. If Win7 can hit about 40% within a year against an incumbent XP, then that's actually incredible progress.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Let's be fair - it's not even out yet, and who knows what kind of reception that it will get. Why would they already start planning to deploy something that they haven't even seen yet? Would they base their decision-making off the RC? Sure....
It's too early for them to look at. While XP still has a long time to receive support, most IT dept's are just going to wait and see. Besides, no one wants to be the first to try it in a corporate environment. They'll want to see how it goes with other companies too, f
I almost pity Microsoft. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's got to be tough. You can't kill off XP like you want to, because people really really might leave. But it looks foolish to support that morass of code in spite of the NEW morass you've spent all that money on.
In the long run, they'll switch. Until everything becomes a webapp, the ecosystem almost demands it. Here's hoping people realize webapps are where it's at, for most things.
oh here we go with mainframe vs pc again.. (Score:5, Insightful)
In the long run, they'll switch. Until everything becomes a webapp, the ecosystem almost demands it. Here's hoping people realize webapps are where it's at, for most things.
It's interesting, in that, so many people of the current generation see webapps and centralized computing as the new best thing.
See, some of us old people got into the PC revolution when we were kids because we were rebelling against centralized computing. We hated the account quotas and slowness of shared system resources in college, the straightjackets around information, and we wanted to smash all of that. We saw that giving people power tools like spreadsheets and desktop databases empowered them over the static mainframe systems of old, that a computer was something that you owned, was, well, a personal thing.
Quite frankly, if it wasn't for ISPs being such a PITA about bandwidth for uploads and hosting, and if, honestly, there was more adoption of IPv6 so that everyone could have their own address, we would see a lot more desktop to the internet hosting. A quadcore PC could easily host a blog or a facebook account. Indeed, I would be the next killer application would be a desktop app that lets you do what facebook does, except that you own your data, and the core web service is really only a directory to enable peer to peer communications.
Re: (Score:2)
First paying computer gig was in 1981, so I'm with you on the whole centralized-vs-decentralized thing. (I'm probably of the generation before you.) Really. I was a little bit concise in my post; sorry. I was just excited because for the first time in YEARS I might actually be that dreaded person, the primary poster, I think. (Didn't happen.)
I should clarify: I see a lot of businesses that switched over from dumb terminals to winxp running frontend apps. The business obviously has some process where they wa
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Slow down cowboy. I make a good living writing webapps so if anyone should want everything to be delivered as a webapp it should be me but I just don't see it happening in the near future. On paper there is nothing stopping it from happening, we've been down the thin client road before and some of the new webapps are very feature rich. In reality though I think we will hit many of the same problems thin clients did. In fact in many respects I think we are starting from a worse position because network laten
Re: (Score:2)
I want *my* data locally, sure. But if I'm a business, I'd prefer my data locally, too, on a server serving a webapp.
However, I'm atypical, since I have a mac and 3 linux boxes at home.
You don't need a plan (Score:4, Funny)
6 in 10? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
SP2 Syndrome (Score:2)
IT grunts know not to deploy a Microsoft by-product until at least Service Pack 2 comes out -- somehow I don't see Windows 7 SP2 being out by the end of next year. Not to mention the real world concerns of budgets, hardware upgrade cycles, training, etc. In other words, no real surprise here.
Re:SP2 Syndrome (Score:4, Informative)
Except "Windows 7" is really just Vista SP3 :-)
(okay, Vista is NT 6.0, Win7 is NT 6.1)
Re:SP2 Syndrome (Score:4, Informative)
And XP is 5.1. It's just a number to deal with crappy program version number compatibility.
LOL. You don't get it, do you?
Windows 9x (DOS) ... Windows ME (DOS) ... Windows NT (NT3.5) ... XP (NT5.1) ... Windows 7 (NT6.1)
Windows NT (NT3.1)
Windows NT (NT4.0)
Windows 2000 (NT5.0)
Windows Vista (NT6.0)
If you can't recognise the incremental changes in the DOS line, or the similarly incremental changes in the different NT lines, than I'd suggest looking a bit more closely. By incremental, I'm referring to both version numbers and the OS itself.
Of course they won't (Score:2)
This is the MO of most companies when a new version of Windows comes along. Not only because businesses don't use a new version of Windows, nor do they upgrade their existing installations. Did anybody actually think it would be different this time?
Still using IE6 (Score:5, Interesting)
We still have IE6 installed by default at work. The reason we haven't upgraded is because it'd break some of the applications and they don't want the headache of having to retest the application (that's the excuse anyway), so we're stuck with it.
I expect we won't be moving to Windows 7 any time soon either, XP works fine and not only would they have to spend money on the upgrade, but they'd have to re-train everyone.
Re: (Score:2)
Plus, if companies didn't want to move to Vista, wouldn't many of the same arguments apply to staying on XP indefinitely, regardless of what new versions come out? If the version you have is working for what you need, why switch?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Our company is the same way. There are one or two legacy applications (nothing I wrote, mind you, third party stuff) that require IE6. They won't work with IE7, IE8, or FireFox. So we're waiting on the vendors before we can upgrade IE. I'm thinking of recommending that we upgrade to IE7 or IE8, however, and set up those people that need IE6 with Xenocode's IE6 sandbox ( http://www.xenocode.com/browsers/ [xenocode.com] ).
Re:Still using IE6 (Score:5, Insightful)
Chances are if someone's participating in a discussion on Slashdot, they're probably pretty technically savvy and don't require much training to adapt to a new but similar OS. Remember though, that most users are complete drooling, mouth breathing, knuckle dragging, blithering idiots, where if the task bar or splash screen looks different, they immediately switch off their brains because they can't handle the change. These are the people that will require "training", or else they'll refuse to do their jobs because they "don't know the new system."
Personally all the training I think they should require is "READ THE FUCKING SCREEN, IDIOT", but that's just me.
Talk about a misleading title (Score:5, Insightful)
"Have No current Plans" != "Won't Deploy"
Two years ago, my company had "No Current Plans" to move our MS Applications to their 2007 versions, but here we are, with Office/Exchange/Sharepoint all 2007.
"No Current Plans" may just mean just that... they don't have any plans. That's a far stretch from "we won't".
Re:Talk about a misleading title (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod parent up.
This survey means absolutely nothing. It was taken before Microsoft announced a release date, and that means it's no longer relevant.
Considering that, the number is quite strong.
Windows 7 has a lot of mindshare as "Microsoft [finally] gets it right."
I don't mind burning some karma here, but you gotta call it like you see it.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The other big problem is that whoever wrote the article obvious did not bother reading the source, because he's missing the historical context (XP's was 12-14%, the source states). Seeing as how the "article" is just something on some blog (and was submitted to /. by the owner of that blog... hmm), I guess sensationalizing is better than actually reporting what the source says.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
OS X? Ubuntu? FreeDOS? FreeBSD? MS Vista? Linspire? Xandros? Solaris?
So more than 4 out of 10 companies are switching? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm all for bashing ms but this sounds like a pretty big number to me.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I think that the point is that it is historically low.
Re: (Score:2)
It is. XP's first-year adoption was 12-14% (it looks like TFA did not read TFS; S == source).
Does it Run Linux? (Score:2)
Seriously, my department (1500 employees) has not made a move to either Vista (we now have about 30 Vista machines) or Win 7. I run it in VirtualBox under Ubuntu and so do about two others. However, the rest of the 1400 or so machines are running XP or even Win2K still. As it is, we've yet to find a compelling reason to "upgrade" from XP/2K. Most of the users have one or two apps running, some even run mainframe terminals still. The rest use office apps, which work just fine in XP.
For h
Re:Does it Run Linux? (Score:5, Funny)
Happens Every Time (Score:2)
Every time a new version of Windoze comes out, we see a survey saying most places won't install the new version. So either most places are still using Windows 3.11 or they switched to Linux right?
Ok ok I know most places dont' upgrade every year, so it takes 2-5 years before the newest version takes over. So really this survey is nothing new and I wonder if it is even newsworthy.
Right on point (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, this is routine stuff but still think it's news worthy. What Microsoft could pull is to warn of a "critical exploit" in all versions of Windows prior to Windows 7 and make money.
When combined with Software Assurance, [wikipedia.org] this can work to move most businesses to Windows 7.
Trust me, Microsoft knows how businesses think and I am sure personnel have been hired to handle "stubborn" business accounts.
And why should they? (Score:2)
We're in tight economic times. Companies are not going to upgrade unless they have a real need for a new feature. I have several clients who are still running on Windows XP and have absolutely no need to change that. Same goes for Vista. If their current systems are running smoothly and meeting requirements, there is no reason to change things.
The only reason I'm upgrading at least one of my machines is because my clients expect me to be informed about the latest versions, whether they themselves are ac
Re: (Score:2)
We're in tight economic times. Companies are not going to upgrade unless they have a real need for a new feature. I have several clients who are still running on Windows XP and have absolutely no need to change that. Same goes for Vista. If their current systems are running smoothly and meeting requirements, there is no reason to change things.
What this says is that Microsoft isn't doing a good job of marketing Windows 7.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Actually, they're doing a pretty GOOD job. If you can convince 4 out of 10 of your customers to pay for an unnecessary update that nets them no benefit, I'd say that yes, your marketing department certainly did something right.
No surprise there then (Score:2)
Everywhere I've ever worked has taken the approach "let's give the new version time for the bugs to be shaken out. Then we'll see how they get on and make a decision". This was the case in the days of Win2K, Windows XP and Vista.
Vista broke a lot of things while bringing nothing particularly beneficial (at least for a business) to the table. Anyone who hadn't already paid for it through something like Software Assurance was therefore very likely to say "No thanks".
18 months from now, however, USB3 will s
Dear Corporations, (Score:4, Funny)
Dear lovely Corporation,
Here's a new operating system for you. Awfully sorry about the whole Vista thing, won't happen again.
Love,
Bill and Steve.
Wait... just Steve now.
PS. The Windows 7 Corporate Mega Edition will come with a free chair.
It would be news if they DID (Score:2)
It's mid-July, and Windows 7 isn't even released yet. Even if companies started testing Windows 7 in their environments today, planning to deploy it before the end of the year would be pretty fast for any mid-to-large company.
Combine that with the general wisdom that you should wait for Microsoft's first (at least) service pack before purchasing any of their products, and there's an even stronger reason for companies to take their time.
So I really can't see why this article's statistics are considered news
Of course not.... (Score:2)
Misleading Title (Score:2)
Not having a plan to do something doesn't mean you're not going to do it; I don't have a plan to go on holiday next year, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to, it just means I'm not yet working on it.
no surprise (Score:4, Interesting)
This is not a bash at MS. It is just prudent IT policy, and good business not to use untested software in mission critical environments. No new OS, from anyone, is guaranteed to be mission critical in its first year of release.
Most business do not upgrade entire systems often. There's plenty that have only switched to XP from 200 in the past 5 years.
There's plenty of bespoke programs and macros that run on every enterprise system. It takes at least a year to figure out how a new OS will work with those. That's not even counting driver issues, hardware issues, and bugs.
Plus there's a productivity issue with switching OS. Do you really want to slow down your staff during a recession?
But specifically for Windows 7, why switch? What is the competitive advantage of doing so? There's no real performance gain. There's no real new features that aren't just bling. Sure, it's a bit more secure, but any IT dept has cobbled something together and locked down XP enough for it to work reasonably well.
No, sorry, I'd have to question the business decision of any company that is going to introduce a new OS that will cost them money, productivity, and still have kinks and bugs in it at this early stage in its release.
In 3-5 years, after much internal testing, sure it would make sense. But right now -- corporate suicide.
Re:no surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
If you say "I'm waiting until SP2" like a lot of people have already said... guess what, you have plans.
Really, this article is incredibly anti-newsworthy but let's face it, it's spun in a way that makes MS look bad and that's really all it takes to make it on Slashdot, right?
Not until at least the first Service Pack (Score:2)
Why would they? (Score:2)
makes sense to me (Score:2)
surprised? (Score:2)
Is anyone surprised?
IT Administrators are typically fairly conservative and cautious. Most folks will wait until SP1 is released. At the very least they'll wait until a few months after release so they can get real-world usage reports.
Tabloid (Score:2)
The tabloid title says "Most Companies Won't Deploy Windows 7". Whereas the article says they have [b]currently[/b] no such plans. That's quite a significant difference.
Of course. (Score:2)
We're in the middle of a recession. Budgets are being cut everywhere. Companies are dropping like flies.
Windows 7 is a great OS, but it's expensive to migrate your systems to a new OS, and if Windows XP is doing the trick right now, it's irresponsible to frivolously spend the time, money, and hardship switching just to be at the front of the pack. Every dollar you spend is another dollar you don't have in the bank just in case sales aren't where they should be.
To be honest, I think we're going to see the op
VERY misleading article (Score:2)
First, "no plans" does not mean "won't". It just means that they're not ready yet, or haven't thought about it, or haven't started making preparations for it, etc.
Second, 40% who are planning to deploy it is HUGE. As the survey points out, the first-year adoption rate for XP was 12-14%. The survey itself said "This is actually a strong adoption rate" and "a high acceptance of Windows 7".
This is a case where the TFA (Good Gear Guide, WTF is this?) clearly did not even bother to read the source that they a
How is this new? How does this article not fail? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is nothing new. This happened with windows NT, XP, 2003, Vista and it will continue to happen. Though most people who have tried windows 7 have stated they loved it. I've had it installed for months now and I have not experienced a single crash and my laptop is running faster with windows 7 then it did vista.
Wait until windows 7 is out for 6 months, has it's first patch and then come out with an verifiable/reliable article saying this information.
Where's the business case? (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.infoworld.com/d/windows/windows-microsofts-red-headed-stepchild-075?page=0,1&source=IFWNLE_nlt_blogs_2009-07-13 [infoworld.com]
From the article ...
"I recently spoke with an IT manager who was budgeting for an Office 2010 upgrade from Office 2003. I casually asked him what features he had deemed important enough to justify a $100,000 budget item. He thought for a minute and admitted that he couldn't think of a single one. So I asked the logical follow-up: Why are you buying it? He had no answer for that either. The $100,000 line item disappeared. He's also sticking with XP."
99.9% of businesses..... (Score:5, Funny)
In other news, 99.9% of businesses have no plans to install Linux clients.
And why upgrade? (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft has more or less contributed to the ultimate demise of the PC in the work place. Because of all the features, and the lack of reliability stemming from the complexity of all these features, MS has created a maintenance nightmare. Business critical applications are now all web based (at least at my company, everything from HR to shipping to version control etc.). Can't remember the last time I fired up MS Word (I have used Excel).
So why upgrade? What is the one feature that Windows 7 has that I _NEED_?
More secure? What is 'more'? How about rock solid secure to the point I can deploy without special virus protection? Right now XP seems good enough.
Better manageability? Management at this time seems to be locking out users from doing things that are stupid/dangerous and forcing upgrades to cover vulnerabilities. Please see 1st question.
The Missing Summary from TFA (Score:3, Informative)
By linking directly to the PDF, the submitter bypassed a summary from ScriptLogic's web page that directly contradicts the summary provided by angry tapir and kdawson:
Hat tip: Ed Bott [zdnet.com]
It's the economy! (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, the economic conditions are the #1 reason our company won't be deploying Windows 7 within the next year.
Our business is heavily tied to the housing market and new business construction (shopping centers, gas stations, dept. stores, etc.) We're still on Windows XP on our workstations and laptops (about 50 machines total). A migration to Windows 7 would basically involve buying all new hardware too, because other than maybe 3 or 4 of the desktops we bought most recently, the rest are SLOW with XP, much less Windows 7.
Right now, we have no interest in changing anything unless the economy improves (which is doubtful it will lead to a big increase in sales for us before the next year is out).
And honestly, like another person said who posted here - there's a very real possibility to moving to Macs if we had to do a wholesale purchase of new hardware.... A few years ago, that would have been unthinkable around here. But since then, several employees have purchased new iMacs for use at home, and all have very positive things to say about them. We have a few applications we use which are only available for the Windows platform, but honestly, we could serve these just fine over our Terminal Server. The Microsoft remote desktop client for OS X works pretty well. As the systems administrator, I'd like a Mac workstation environment here, because it would practically eliminate spyware/virus hassles and save thousands per year on anti-virus software subscriptions. From what I've seen with Windows 7 so far, it has a HUGE number of configurable options buried in it, for everything imaginable. It embodies the typical MS idea that "more is more!", and it's going to be a huge undertaking building a comprehensive group policy to enforce across a LAN/WAN to lock down all the settings the way you want them for your corporate deployment. OS X tends to present the OS to the user the way Apple intended it to be, and many things aren't even configurable without 3rd. party "hacks". That's not always something a home "power user" finds as a positive, but I think it's beneficial for a business setting.
Microsoft extends XP downgrade option to 2101 (Score:3, Funny)
REAL VIRTUALITY, Seattle, Thursday 2099 -- Microsoft Corporation has announced a limited one-off extension of availability of its Windows XP operating system to April 2101 [today.com] after criticism from large customers and analysts. This is the fifty-sixth extension of XP's availability since 2008.
Through successive releases of Microsoft's flagship Windows operating system, demand for XP has remained an important factor for businesses relying on stable XP-specific software and installations, who have pushed back strongly against the software company's attempts to move them to later versions. Windows administration skills have become rare in recent years and consultants have demanded high fees. Reviving Windows administrators from cryogenic freezing has proven insufficient to fill the market gap, as almost all begged to work on COBOL instead.
"Windows XP is currently in the extremely very prolonged super-extended support phase and Microsoft encourages customers to migrate to Windows for Neurons 2097 as soon as feasible," said William Gates V, CEO and great-grandson of the company founder. "Spare change?"
Microsoft Corporation, along with Monsanto Corporation and the RIAA, exists as a protected species in the Seattle Memorial Glass Crater Bad Ideas And Warnings To The Future National Park in north-west Washington on the radioactive remains of what was once the planet Earth, under the protection of our Linux-based superintelligent robot artificial intelligence overlords. Company revenues for 2098 were over $15.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Their loss (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Kind of sad that Microsoft peaked with XP SP2, no?
No MS peaked with Win 2k (Score:4, Insightful)
Kind of sad that Microsoft peaked with XP SP2, no?
Too funny. XP was not at all their peak. It was the start of the DECLINE. You want a great fast and lean OS that stayed out of the user's way, look at Win 2k.
Everyone on Slashdot harps on XP like it's this great OS, but it is NOT. I remember everyone here bitching about how about XP was compared to 2k (i.e. dog ass slow in comparison etc).
Frankly, if MS would have added decent USB support to Windows 2k, I would never have switched to XP.
Re:Their loss (Score:4, Insightful)
What does 7 have that they need and don't have with XP? Does your company replace all the furniture every time Herman Miller comes out with a new line?
Re:Their loss (Score:4, Funny)
Does your company replace all the furniture every time Herman Miller comes out with a new line?
Of coarse!
AIG,INC
Re:Why would they? (Score:5, Interesting)
I must be getting older.
It doesn't matter what they call it, it's still not as fast, and with a small a footprint as XP?
I remember saying the same thing about XP in regards to Windows 2000... "It's exactly the same, but with a lego-land interface, and a firewall that won't let you use the apps you want, but allows all the viruses in. It's bloated and slow. I want nothing to do with it if I can avoid it."
Then XP SP2 came out: "Well, it's still bloated, but with new hardware it's not bad... At least we can make exceptions to allow our apps to access the network finally. Too bad it has double the footprint of SP1."
Funny how Vista (and a few years) changed our perspective so much... Because it was such a resource hog, it made XP seem tiny.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Why would they? (Score:4, Insightful)
Employees are very happy with XP and cringe at change. So many complaints about the ribbon etc. when upgrading to Office 2007. Businesses will change to appease the management, not the employees.
Businesses will also change to appease Microsoft when suddenly they are found to not be abiding by the terms of the license, and the more cost-effective avenue is, interestingly enough, upgrade to [Office 2007|Win 7|Server 2008|etc].
In general, money talks. Businesses probably won't upgrade unless there is significant money to save, or there are feature or security enhancements they need.