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Less Than 2 Percent of UK Companies Have Upgraded Windows
Rob writes "Computer Business Review is reporting that less than 2% of UK-based firms have already upgraded all their desktops to Windows Vista. Just shy of 5% said that they have begun a Windows Vista desktop upgrade program. 6.5% said they will upgrade in the next 6 months; 12.6% in the next 12 months; 13% in the next 18 months; and 18% in the next two years. That means that within two years from now, only 56% of survey respondents say they will have upgraded their firm's desktops to Windows Vista. 'In terms of retail sales of Vista in a box, Ballmer said he believes most of that up-tick is concentrated in the first few months of the software going on sale. He doubted that this would carry over into Microsoft's fiscal 2008, which began in July 2007. Analyst estimates for fiscal 2008 growth in Microsoft's client business unit, which includes Vista, is around the 9% mark. Ballmer said that analysts should consider that rather than creating huge spurts of new growth "a new Windows release is primarily a chance to sustain the revenue we have".'"
Will downgrade new machines from Vista to XP or some alternative due to the overhead and application support? I know in my office, Vista has been vanishing, replaced by Linux running Wine for the few Windows apps we actually require.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
The operating system is getting a very bad reception in the press and from the influential types (us guys) in IT
:/
See my thoughts below.
(yes, this is a re-post, unreplied to though and obviously on topic)
When I tried Vista it forced my Dell 8600 laptop to run it's fan in stage 2 of 3 instead of 1/3 that XP does, somewhere CPU use was too high, no matter what I turned off (Aero etc) - on battery or powered.
The interface isn't for me, I couldn't possibly care less about a fluffy 3D interface, I've never used XP's Luna theme and I've been using XP since 6 months after release, I need a functional fast operating system with clever powerful features, I don't 'watch' my OS I use it to get stuff done.
Another reason why I don't want Aero is I do a hell of a lot of RDP'ing and you can't get Aero over RDP.
I would find switching from Vista classic (or XP classic) to Aero, to classic to Aero when switching in and out of my RDP sessions to be very disorientating.
ALSO Aero seemed to offer no real actual benefits to usability, sadly I have to admit after using Mac OSX that the whole expose thing is surprisingly awesome and convienient, that operating system truely makes a mouse user damn near as powerful as a good keyboarder (wow!)
Aero's flip 3D however was ridiculously bad at actually saving you time and effort.
The widget thing / bar on the right was stupid, it should be like Mac OS - it's there, when you need it, hidden and very easily accessable, NOT a bar stuck on the side (auto hide or not, Mac OS wins that)
The search functionality wasn't as good as locate32, I think in file names, not in contents, if I want my CV I search for *resume*.doc on all drives and I'll find it because I memorise the file name (admitedly locate32 isn't native to XP)
Therefore overall Vista didn't offer me anything that honestly helped me.
I used a full retail version of Ultimate and manage to re-produce a bug where connecting to a VPN would instantly blue screen it too (fully patched)
I dislike the smaller 'stylish' min / max / close buttons at the top right, I like them square and easy to find.
Did I mention Windows Explorer sucked? I spend 80% of my time in it, managing files, doing 'stuff' and it's hard to explain but there was a lack of 'lines' and dividers and bars, the data was hard to take in quickly because the interface looked,... weird I couldn't do things quicker with that, the line showing left pane / right pane sucked.
I think (don't quote me) it forced that silly task pane on as well, which is on in XP but disable-able - I don't think you can in Vista (don't quote)
I disliked the breadcrumb style address bar in folders at the top of explorer, admitedly just today someone found a home made patch to disable it but it's not a stock option in Vista and wasn't available when I tried it.
When all is said and done, I would STILL use the thing if someone just made a shell replacement that made it look absoloutely 100% identical to XP classic mode but with a Vista 'engine'. I don't hate DX10 nor do I detest the search, I can always use my own, I don't have to use flip 3d but I do CONSTANTLY use Windows explorer and I need it looking nice, simple and clean to do shit fast, - I felt hamstrung