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83% of Businesses Won't Bother With Windows 7
Olipro writes "Most enterprises stated they won't bother with Windows 7 for at least a year as they simply continue to distrust that compatibility issues won't occur with their mission-critical software ... The Million Dollar question will be whether the fact that XP upgrades to Windows 7 requires a clean install will prove to be Microsoft's undoing." I suspect that will change before they actually release the OS.
I don't blame them in the least.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
Mainstream support for XP ended last week. It's dead, Jim.
2003 to 2009 is longer than any version of Ubuntu is supported. It's had a nice life. Shoot it in the head, and move on :-)
It's almost funny. Linux can't beat microsoft. But why bother ?
In the department of "clobbering microsoft" the one organisation that's really doing some damage is microsoft.
Perhaps we just need to wait a few years.
So basically, yeah, why would they upgrade, especially when their profits aren't that good. What's bizarre here is what happens now? We have a huge entrenched monopoly operating system that nobody really wants to give up, do we just keep buying new computers and put old software on it? Do businesses end up like the aircraft traffic controllers with software 20 years and more out of date just because that's what works?
For myself, since I'm a dual rabid apple and linux fanboy, I certainly don't mind reading about how MS can't get people to buy their new product, but I don't see how this situation really helps apple or linux either. (I'm actually not an apple fanboy, I just think they make good hardware and software that isn't too annoying to use.) If they're worried about software compatibility migrating to vista, what makes anyone think they'll pick a non-windows OS? More likely they'll just keep putting band-aids on old systems.
Maybe what Microsoft really needs is an XP emulator, like the classic mode in OS X or rosetta for running PPC software on Intel, or an independent implementation of the XP API, like what's in wine. I haven't haven't heard anything about Microsoft designing such a thing though, has anyone else?
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Not news. Either they just upgraded to Vista, and see no need to move again, or they're still on XP, and have seen no need to move so far.
No business that's not Windows-centric (producing products for Windows) runs out and upgrades to the new Windows first thing. You wait, you see what the stupid early adopters have to say. You install a couple of desktops, see how the new os behaves in your environment.
Then, if you like it, you begin a phased roll out. That's the right way to do it. You minimize your problems, and you make fewer bad technology decisions.
Myself, I'll probably buy 7 for home use, and I think 7 is a much more serious effort than Vista (yea, it's just Vista with some of the annoyances pulled out, and a lot of driver issues fixed, so what?). Eventually I'll need to know it, so might as well get some experience on it.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
The company i work for (part of a large corporation with several tens of thousands of employees) plans to begin changing to 7 in the third quarter of 2010, depending on whether the first sp will be out by then.
Well, actually, they were planning to go ahead with Vista, but the IT guys (me and 2 other persons for the national division of the corporation (that is 5 companies)) advised against.
Going for another OS is alas not an option, a lot of official software (i mean software we need to be complaint with regulations in my country) only come in MS flavour.
The problem isn't dying support for XP, but just licensing issues, MS won't continue our licenses for XP forever, we already had it changed automatically to Vista, and had to ask to downgrade that back to XP.
Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice - Grey's Law
why upgrade when the current software provides everything you need
1. What you said.
2. Nobody has the money to upgrade anyway.
3. Nobody's coming up with anything new to justify throwing everything out.
4. Netbook phenomenon is finally putting emphasis back on getting more for your dollar rather than writing bloaty code and throwing horsepower at it.
5. Repeat point 2, nobody has the money to throw out perfectly good hardware just to get a new OS that does pretty much what the previous one did.
I know predicting the death of Microsoft is good fun and we've been doing it for years. I won't say this is the death knell but this is certainly a bit of a pickle. The plural of anecdote ain't data but a lot of people I know are going Mac out of frustration. Those who haven't are still adamant about keeping XP.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Updates for Win2000 went away ages ago, but there are still a *lot* of companies still using it for infrastructure. Most are on 2003.. even Win2008 is not seeing any significant rollout yet, and we don't expect it to do so for at least another 2-3 years.
Windows 7? That won't even *start* to enter the test cycles of most companies until next year.
Hardware manufacturers will make drivers as long as there is demand. They will continue to support XP until there's no significant use of it - so you're good for another 5 years at least.
First it's 84% of IT pros [zdnet.com] and now it's 83% of businesses? Might have something to do with these surveys being carried out on a submission basis, where the only people who respond are a minority that are either passionate "must-have-the-latest-version" fanatics or passionate "anything-other-than-XP-sucks" fanatics. The apathetic majority isn't taken into account.
Yup, this is why I prefer to base myself on real market statistics. People often don't know what they'll do until its time to buy.
My reasons for not wanting to move to Windows 7 is pretty much the same reason for not moving to Vista:
- Windows 7 feels like a Vista 2
- Windows XP works well enough
- I get the feeling that real people weren't taken into account with some of the UI changes
- I don't see the "must have" features (maybe someone can convince me otherwise?)
- I don't want to reward a company that needs 6 versions of the same release
I am probably expecting too much from the OS and maybe I'll have a change of heart in six months. I can't say I'm someone who doesn't want the latest and greatest since I tend to keep up to date with whatever the latest version of my Linux Distro or MacOS X, when then there hardware is covered. These latter two probably have their own issues, but apparently I am capable of overlooking them for whatever reason.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I believe this is why Microsoft wanted to move to a subscription model (and probably still does). If Microsoft can convince a company with 10,000 newish XP machines to upgrade -- that's 10,000 times the cost of an upgrade license. And any machines not upgradeable will be replaced with new machines and OEM licenses. And home users aren't a small market either as most will need to upgrade or buy new systems to support the software....
With a subscription model, like the one we use at the university, we pay X amount of dollars per year for OS and Office upgrades/installs, whether we buy new systems or not. Mostly it's to upgrade from XP Home to XP Pro. Anyway, if MS could have everyone move to a $30/computer/year model, they'd have a steady stream of cash and wouldn't need to create a new OS.
Though honestly, XP is ready for a refresh -- I'm not sure Windows 7 has enough useful features (the imaging is one though and UAC is not as annoying in 7) to warrant an upgrade. Perhaps as a platform to enable new features such as touch screens or Minority Report holographic interfaces (I swore that was in Windows 7 RC 4.52).
Well then what's the point of using MacOS at all then?
There should be enough of that almighty consistency over time such that this kind of nonsense doesn't happen.
Yes in a proper "we live and die by UI guidelines" sort of OS, you should
not have to worry about which version of the OS a particular bit of software
was designed for. This is just lame.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Oh yes they are different. And when you are "remote controlling" stuff over the phone, these differences are huge.
The last I checked, the "start menu" is rather different. Even the shutdown menu option is different. XP shutdown is Click the button on the bottom left called "Start", select "Turn Off Computer...", click on "Turn Off/Restart" etc, vista is "click the four coloured button on bottom left, click on the "triangle pointing right" select "Shut Down" (or Restart). Apparently the "power icon" by default does not cause Vista to shutdown, instead it causes it to Sleep.
There are also extremely big differences in lots of things that the normal users don't normally use but often need "tech support" for e.g. network configuration (maybe someone messed with their config over the weekend, so they call you and you have to fix it over the phone).
BTW WiFi network configuration is a mess too - Intel, Dell, Random Vendor, Windows, all have different ways of doing WiFi config... Very annoying.
Going to 98 to 2000 was a change, but you did get significant benefits from it (no longer have that "GDI resources" problem and other stupid flakiness - try pressing winkey on boot just as the windows 98 GUI is starting up ).
Some businesses moved to Vista and found that MSs plans to drop backwards compatibility (in favour of new .NET everything) meant lots of applications stopped working. I think this is a big reason why they're very cautious this time, and also why XP is the 'top of the pile' as generally it tried to keep that backward compatibility going as much as possible.
Allow me to play pundit here for a minute: This is going to turn out to be Microsoft's downfall. People expect their antiquated, crap software to run on Windows no matter how much newer it is. For the most part this has worked out for people because they have been forced into buying new hardware every so often and encouraged to make a break from the old -- on the rare occasion that something won't work (at least mostly work, heh heh) there's usually something new and cheap to free.
However, Microsoft has finally reached a point where they're stuck making major breaks in compatibility or being left very, very far behind. And since Microsoft has always been the compatible operating system, that's expectation number one. Everyone out there pretty much expects their old Windows software to run on new versions; Try running some old 16 bit stuff on Windows XP sometime, odds are it will work fine. Now try running some ~Windows 95 software on Vista. Fun times! While Microsoft has improved compatibility significantly with Vista SP1 it's hard to believe that they aren't taking a fundamentally wrong approach somehow.
If Microsoft has to break compatibility then it opens the door for competitors. I don't think too many businesses are seriously considering moving to an all-Macintosh environment any time soon, but there certainly has been some of that in the SMB space. More seriously, it opens the door for Linux on the corporate desktop, which is definitely the first step towards dominance of the home desktop. It worked for DOS, and it worked for Windows...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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Because like win 2k, win Xp and Vista all have slightly different API's.
Of course as a developer you knew that. With 10.6 apple is cutting out old Api's finally removing the last parts of OS9 compatibilty 9 years after the release of OSX.
If win 7 would only remove the win 32 Api entirely. And kill off that horehdous chapter in computing. If they did I just might start using windows again.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
"Software doesn't spontaneously develop vulnerabilities [...] there's only newly discovered vulnerabilities."
The practical difference being?
Welcome, Captain Obvious!
Actually, Windows XP will stop being supported TOMORROW!!!!
No windows XP will move from mainstream support to extended support tomorrow. That means that your free "support incidents" from your retail copies will no longer be valid and if you want non-security hotfixes released after XP goes into extended support (which I bet most people won't need) you will have to pay through the nose for them.
Keep that in mind, when you wonder why Dell won't give you AHCI or network drivers for your system to run XP with in a few months..
If dell stops providing XP drivers in the near future they will lose all the buisness from corps/institutions who are still on XP. That seems like a suicidal move to me.
I suspect eventually we will be forced to migrate but I don't see it happening in the near future.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register