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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.
why upgrade when the current software provides everything you need
...MS hasn't often demonstrated an ability to make major functioning software improvements at the last minute. I suppose we'll see, though.
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 :-)
First it's 84% of IT pros 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.
Microsoft now has to battle the recession as well as Linux. So now the PHB's finally have an argument they understand -- salaries vs. upgrades.
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...
First off, whoever edited that sentence needs to get a clue-by-four -- "distrust that issues won't occur" is just terrible English.
About the content, why would any IT person ever have to resort to "trust" anyone for their software compatibility? You'd almost think they can't grab a VM image of Windows7 and test their software to see if there are compatibility issues.
If I were a CIT and someone came up to me with this dribble, I would tell them to build a testbed and actually report on compatibility issues, possible savings, and so forth. Windows 7 probably won't be worth the money but deciding that before you actual evaluate it is madness.
I've been working in software development for 35 years. No company I've ever worked at jumps on new versions of Windows, they all have a policy of waiting at least until SP1 regardless of whether its an improvement or not.
The only news here is that the figure is that 17% might move straight away. From my own experiences I would have thought nearly all, if not all companies would wait at least a year.
Microsoft has announced the infrastructure for its cloud computing service Azure, formerly (and presently) Windows Vapor.
"We want to be more responsive to your needs," said Sam Ramji of Microsoft during a Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit panel this week as he wiped rotten tomatoes off his suit.
"We want all open source innovation to happen on Windows 7. In practice, Windows is too slow, and just putting Linux underneath the same software stack triples performance. So we're running the Windows versions of the software on Linux using Wine. We'll also be funding the Wine on Windows initiative."
The new Microsoft Amazingly Open And Genuine Public License allows you complete freedom to use, modify and redistribute the software provided that every copy comes with a DVD of Windows Vista Ultimate, you acknowledge that Microsoft's FAT patent protects a remarkable and valuable innovation in computer science and all accompanying documentation is in OOXML. Also, all your data belongs to Microsoft.
The overwhelming dominance of Microsoft was assured, he said, pointing to their success in paying netbook manufacturers to use Windows XP and paying US retailers not to stock the Linux versions of the computers. "We're also enforcing our patent on right-clicking. And on the number seven."
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Isn't this basically the exact same story Slashdot ran before Windows Vista was released? Guess what guys: Businesses tend to be conservative by nature, and aren't going to do a massive upgrade without a good plan. For any reasonably large business, it will take several months to certify all of their internal software with any new OS release, not to mention the actual time it takes to execute the switch. They would be saying the same thing if you asked them when they would be switching from RHEL 5 to RHEL 6.
Most enterprises stated they won't bother with Windows 7 for at least a year
Well, seriously, how often do business environments run a brand new version of Windows? I don't work in IT, but I'm going to go with almost never. This doesn't sound very special.
No kidding. I don't know how most businesses are run, but around these parts, XP works, and works well. We don't need any of the features of Vista or 7. Vista has a pretty undeserved bad reputation, and 7 looks like a really good OS, but we're not switching to either until our tools for Windows whatever is as robust and what we currently have for XP....
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.
The Million Dollar answer is "no". Because when you upgrade a corporate desktop, you don't upgrade in place. You create an image and you reimage your desktops en masse. Anyway, Microsoft will find a way to spur Windows 7 adoption, probably by making Windows XP slower with a required security update again.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I don't see anywhere that says upgrading to Windows 7 is going to require a clean install. The only thing that came close was the article last week where Microsoft said they wanted people to clean install the RC instead of trying to upgrade to the RC from the Windows 7 beta .
Also, don't most people want to do a clean install of a major OS version?
Most companies don't like spending money just for the sake of spending money, they have XP in the enterprise right now, and it works, and it doesnt require machine upgrades either. there is no compelling reason to make the switch.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Often, that clean install makes for a much faster system after years of cruft building up on a system.
Although there may be compatibility issues, MS making a clean install mandatory might be one of the most clever marketing tools they've had in a while. Then again, it could backfire.
Word of mouth from those who migrate and see how fast a clean build of Win7 is vs XP might breathe new life into the Windows brand.
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I know I am, I hear it's quite popular with test groups.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
This is nothing new, so why is this news? Most businesses are not early adopters of technology and usually wait until SP1 comes out. DUH! This has nothing to do with VISTA, and has nothing to do with ME. Even hardware companies get the same deal. Businesses that need to keep mission critical systems up will not want to buy the latest and greatest until it has gone through a bunch of patches. Also, let's not forget, that buying software (and hardware to run it) as an early adopter = bigger price tag. Wait a year and things will be about 50% cheaper - which in a business can mean LOTS of money.
I wonder if this questionnaire took into account businsses that got Vista. Most likely these companies will not upgrade at all since they just spent a ton of money on Vista. This article is flawed and fails to be news. Wait, it's anti-MS bashing so it is news here.
If software/hardware companies want more early adopters they need to offer substantial discounts. For example "Be the first 25,000 to order our stuff within the first three months and get 50% off software, and 15% off hardware". That will get you more early adopters.
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
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.
Most PEOPLE stated they won't TRY A NEW OPERATING SYSTEM for A year BECAUSE THEY THINK IT won't WORK with their software...
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.
I have to respectfully disagree. Once you install SP1 and disable UAC, the OS is quite usable. It actually performs better than XP in some areas.
Thats the thing though, its not usable by default. Anyone who buys a new computer at Best Buy and gets Vista ends up with UAC and a nearly unusable computer. Being mostly computer illiterate save for surfing the web and checking e-mail, they don't really know how to fix it. So they know its Vista, know that its a new computer so it should be faster then their aging Pentium 4 with XP, but when its not they know who to blame: MS and Vista. Sure, Vista can be made usable, but the fact that it isn't by default shows a lack of planning by MS.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
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
Sure my main computer is on XP. I am running OSX Tiger at home and I won't be upgrading to Leopard any time soon. My other computer runs Mandriva 2007. No upgrades either for me. It works. At work I use Vista. What I'm saying is: MS or not: the time where people used to literally stay in line to upgrade an OS are over. Nobody (but a few nerds) cares about that anymore. Ans even some nerds like me have more important things with their lifes to do.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
Another reason is training and support. Vista and Windows 7 are so much more different from Windows XP. If someone calls "Tech Support", tech support will have to have a completely different script/list for Windows 7.
:).
In comparison Windows XP is more similar to Windows 2000 (and Windows XP in "classic mode" is vey similar).
Actually now would be a great time for a Windows XP compatible operating system.
If someone could come up with a decent Windows XP compatible O/S, Microsoft could lose significant market share. Might get even more interesting if it supports DirectX 10
Once you install SP1 and disable UAC
Surely, once you disable UAC, much of the reason for upgrading from XP has vanished.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
This is, of course, precisely the reason so many big companies still use COBOL, right?
Legacy is a powerful force in industry. It is often perceived that the cost of maintaining the old systems is less than the cost of replacing it, especially when you consider compatibility, debugging, reliability, down time, retraining, infrastructure upgrades, policy changes, etc. etc.
Here's your choice: Stick with what you have. Although it can be a real pain in the ass, at least you're used to it after all these years and can handle the quirks to keep things running. OR you can spend a whole lot of money to scrap everything and start over with a totally new setup that's one big question mark all around, especially when the vendor's reputation is losing ground.
Questionable surveying methods aside, it is not difficult to imagine companies aren't too keen to jump on board.
XP is old. And MS would love to retire it, but the industry is getting fed up with their shenanigans. The individual homeowner might not have the purchasing power to hurt them, but big companies with thousands of licenses do - MS will either give them what they want (which is, apparently, XP) or they will lose the customers.
=Smidge=
As an IT Manager for a small company, I have no reason to move off of XP. Until I am forced, I will not migrate to Vista or 7. There just is no compelling reason to do so. More and more I seek to take functionality AWAY from the desktop. There are applications we use that require us to use Windows on the workstation, but more and more we look to web apps to meet our core business needs.
The fact is there is nothing in Vista that makes me want to move to it. There are no problems with XP that are making me look for solutions. We are in the process of locking down workstations to the point that even the security concerns become irrelevant. If you asked me what killer feature would make me switch... I couldn't think of it. Certainly not in what I have seen so far.
The only thing that will make me switch is the unavailability of the OS. And even that would take a while. We order standard model PCs, and do disk imaging. If I found out about Dell not being able to offer XP to us any longer, I'd make one last order for 20 PCs of that model, image and be set for two years.
Bottom line is that XP (heck even 2000) meets the needs of most businesses. Microsoft would (and likely will) have to force us to switch. Why screw with what works?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Only idiots and consumers do actual upgrades. Any self-respecting enterprise makes their own images and deploys them, complete with apps.
There is a difference between what is good for the IT market and what is good for business in general. Us IT crowd want to push the latest new thing, for some this means mark up on s/ware, others it is more consultancy. What a business wants is a stable IT system that does what the business needs in a stable way -- boring, not sexy. Once applications are written they stay written; the will be changed when the business requirements change, not because the computer systems change.
MS is also caught up in the sales/upgrades treadmill - to not do so would badly damage its bottom line. What is in the best interests of MS is not in the best interests of its customers.
Linux is based on 35+ years old Unix, I regularly use programs that are essentially unchanged since I wrote them for System V Unix 25 years ago. How old a system is is not an issue unless you need to make money by flogging your customers new versions. In this regard Unix/Linux is a better platform for companies than MS Windows systems.
I do Windows support for work so one of the things I do when a new version is coming out is test various apps and services and find out what works, what doesn't and so on. Sometimes things don't work and you have to find a workaround, or wait for the vendor to update things. There is NO reason to jump right in and cause problems. You wait and test instead, and then when it is ready, start deployment.
Also many systems you don't really want to upgrade. They are too old to run a new OS well. So you leave them with what they have for their lifetime. The OS upgrade happens when new hardware is purchased, though that isn't seen as an 'upgrade' by normal metrics.
So I'm not surprised that businesses aren't jumping on board. Why would they? In our case (a university department, not a business) my desktop will start running Windows 7 when the RC comes out. Maybe one or two other tech people will do likewise. When the release comes out, only new systems will be purchased with it, and depending on what they are doing they might get XP or Vista put on them if there are 7 issues. We won't start offering it as an upgrade for probably 6 months after release, since I'm guessing it'll take that long to make sure everything is thoroughly tested and there's been time for vendors to issue updates. At that point we'll likely move anyone who wants to over, and try and have all new systems running it, but won't make a big deal if people want to stick with XP. We probably won't start pushing it hard for another year or two. It will have to be gone by 2014, of course, because that's when security patches stop.
There's just no sense in rushing in to a new upgrade. That doesn't mean you are opposed to it, just that you want to do it right.
Gene Ray?
Just another "DOJ fascist authoritarian totalitarian bootlicker" -- Zeio
It's called ReactOS.
Just don't expect it to be 'finished' for some time.
Yes, this is new. This is companies holding out on two releases of Windows for a significant time and in larger and larger numbers. Of course a small number of companies still run Windows 2000 or even older, it's a very small percentage compared to the data in this survey. Windows 7 really adds nothing significantly new to Vista, it's basically Vista SP2, but MS is rushing it out in order to get a new name on it to try to sweep all the bad PR from Vista under the rug. What this data is showing is that the strategy may not work as intended. While the article didn't specifically give the numbers of respondents that are planning to wait on 7 that had skipped Vista, based on how high the numbers are for those that are planning to wait for a significant amount of time on Vista, and how low the adoption rates of Vista have been, it is clear there are more companies than ever that are holding off on MS's products and more of them than before are skipping one of MS's releases and holding off on the next one. This survey with a large number of responses and thus more validity than your average junk survey is the first to confirm what many people had been suspecting.
Oh by the way, here's a single page link
As an IT Manager for a small company, I have no reason to move off of XP. Until I am forced, I will not migrate to Vista or 7. There just is no compelling reason to do so. More and more I seek to take functionality AWAY from the desktop.
I suspect that I am going to get karmically beaten up for this, but here goes...
People keep trying to move applications from the desktop to the web. In many cases, the web is the right medium for those apps. In most though, its not. My general rule of thumb is this: When trying to develop something as a web app, if you find that you are trying to reproduce desktop app behavior, you are doing the wrong thing.
Eventually, we are going to have to pay the piper (in terms of maintenance cost) for web apps with all the convoluted hacks necessary to make them look and feel like desktop apps. Let's start collectively applying some common sense - the web when its the right thing, and the desktop where it fits best.
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).
What I'm saying is: MS or not: the time where people used to literally stay in line to upgrade an OS are over.
Never underestimate the power of new, innovative, hyped and well marketed products. Just look at iPhone for example. Have you ever seen people standing in line to buy a (mobile) phone? Have any of us seen a line in front of a Nokia store?
I know that OS-es are much more complex, but it may not happen in 2 years, 5 or even 10. But as the time goes by as computer geek I sincerely hope that day will eventually come. Hey, I like for my computer to just work most of the time, but at the same time I do like new way of doing things, something new to learn and master and new challenges (even if those are the same things done simpler).
Trolls are like broken clocks. They show the truth two times a day. The rest of the day they talk nonsense.
Entirely incorrect.
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Time machine is awesome. So are the multiple desktop. Leopard is pretty good, although the folders look terrible.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Isn't this basically the exact same story Slashdot ran before Windows Vista was released?
IIRC, the previous story only contained lies and damn lies.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Unless you're talking about data intensive apps like video editing, DTP and the like, most business software is incredibly mundane. The vast majority of cubicle dwellers do not need anything more than a well designed web app. Data entry hardly requires a fat client.
Actually now would be a great time for a Windows XP compatible operating system.
Indeed. There's loads of projects that try and make linux look like XP, for example:
http://www.instantfundas.com/2008/03/make-linux-look-like-windows-xp.html
Still waiting for an 'official' (K)Ubuntu remix, tho...
If not even Microsoft can stop the Windows XP monster, what hope does Linux have?
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 ).
I dunno about how different the GUI in general for Vista is over XP, but, I gotta say if it is at all like the major changes they did to the menu system on the MS office products (word and excel for instance), then there IS a big difference and I could see where retraining would be needed.
Man...when I got to this new gig, and opened up the latest versions of Word and excel for the first time, I was totally lost. I swear I was embarrassed that I could not find the Save As option. Clicking that 'button' on the top left of the screen (I didn't originally think it was a button from first looking at it) was not intuitive. I've not had to look up on the web or use MS Help in years for anything office related, but, I just could not find shit on that application. The ribbon thing is just such a new paradigm, a huge break from anything I'd seen in the past with MS office tools.
I'm sure with time, like anything, one can pick up on this stuff pretty quick, but, if the interface to Vista or Win 7 is as a drastic change at the Office tool set was, I can see how it would confuse and piss off a lot of people...and require a good bit of retraining from the less tech people at a company.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
From a user perspective, going from 98 to 2000 wasn't much of a difference. From an administrative or support perspective, they were almost completely different.
The difference between XP and Vista are not nearly as vast, but still different enough to require different approaches. I was Windows 2000 certified, and I couldn't find half the configuration panels I looked for the first time I tried to troubleshoot a Vista install.
http://www.mhall119.com
Isn't this basically the exact same story Slashdot ran before Windows Vista was released?
Your point being that Vista was a rousing success?
The real issue is money. There's no real business case for upgrading business PCs. Really, any machine built in the last ten years has enough CPU power to run most business applications. Even big spreadsheets. At most, a RAM upgrade might be useful. Face it, Windows 7 is a minor improvement over Windows XP. The last major upgrade was from Windows 9x to Windows 2000, a decade ago. Most business apps run just fine on Windows 2000, which still has significant usage in the business community. (You run Windows 2000; it's not a slave to Redmond's remote updates like XP and later. Some businesses like that.)
We're in a major recession. Business activity is down. Nobody is expanding, adding employees or customers at a high rate. So where's the need for more compute power?
A real upgrade would be a transition to an all 64-bit world, or IPv6 by default, or an OS with security good enough that "zombies" never happened. But Microsoft isn't delivering anything like that. Windows 7 is a yawner. It doesn't even have many of the features originally promised for Vista, like the relational file system. So why upgrade?
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Actually the comparison is rather apt. You have a system that they are reluctant to replace. A good deal of those COBOL systems still run on 70's era hardware, although advances in virtualization are helping there a lot.
The industry has no choice since they cannot force MS to supply XP. What if MS doesn't?
How many times has MS buckled under industry pressure to keep offering XP already? At least twice, but I haven't really been counting. They might do it in an indirect manner ("downgrades") but they only do that to obscure how many people are actually buying their latest product.
If they don't? There might be a lawsuit in there somewhere. Moving to *nix is one possible alternative: If a company will be FORCED to change their *anything*, why would they so readily go with the vendor that just screwed them over? The hurdle is getting them to change at all - once you're past that there is no guarantee they'll change to what you want.
Especially if their applications aren't compatible. If Win7 isn't backwards compatible with applications and drivers written for XP, they'll have to rewrite everything... and at that point they could pretty easily rewrite it for any other platform.
The industry can't force MS to supply XP, but MS can't force the industry to use Win7 either. MS can give their biggest customers what they want or lose them as customers, just like they have been doing. MS will offer XP until there are so few XP users left they can afford to flip them off entirely. NT 4 was supported until three years ago. 2000 is going to be supported until at least the end of 2010. Windows 3.1 was supported up until last November - lasted over 16 years.
Also, one key problem here is the phrase "better tech" - is Vista really better than XP? In ways that businesses really care about? "Newer" is not a synonym for "better."
=Smidge=
One could also say, " don't know how most businesses are run, but around these parts, XP works, and works well." followed by, "we don't need the features of Linux [or Mac OS X or insert your favorite OS here])". This is part of the problem with getting alternative OS adoption.
There are a lot of threads about corporate users not upgrading until SP1 is out - an agreed good thing.
However - and please correct me if I'm wrong - I believe that Windows 7 is the name of the great big fix to Vista and that furthermore, the name was changed from Vista to Windows 7 to avoid the bad taste, as "proven" by Mojave.
Now, if I have my history and nomenclature correct, Win7 is really some flavor of VistaX and if so named would have by-passed the SP1 adoption rule. The catch is that the Vista name was sullied by bad performance (or defects, whatever).
So, the real problem in my opinion isn't that Win7 is new - it's that it's the waited-for corrected Vista, but because of their own shenanigans, they can't win: the Vista name is poison, a "brand new" Win7.
FWIW, they could just take a page from Apple's playbook when their time comes: scrap their OS, use some *nix variant as a core - say.... Linux? - and then layer their own GUI on top of it. This was a highly successful strategy resulting in a market-acceptable product for Apple, and I am being NEITHER a fanboy nor catcalling when I suggest surprise that MS is NOT copying this approach yet.
(Just to save us all some time - I'm well-documented hereabouts as being a supporter and critic of both MS and Apple, so props in advance for not putting me in some narrow category when reading this post or replying to it. A few days ago, I praised MS, today I'm dising them.)
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
It looks like people in charge of the office 2007 look all loved lotus 123. Excel 2007 looks a lot like lotus 123. Many old 123 fans love excel now. Since word, excel, and power point are supposed to be used together (I personally do not use them together but some may), the look of those apps are similar.
And office 2007 (word, excel, power point, and the rest of the apps) look the same on vista and XP. The argument of vista sucks since word looks different is wrong. Office is not vista. And switching the start menu to the classic start menu makes the start look like the win 2000 start menu. The one that most people liked. However, it will keep the programs in alphabetical order on vista. Some people may not like that.
Vista has a pretty undeserved bad reputation
I wouldn't go as far as to say it's undeserved. I understand that a lot of the more flagrant bugs have now been squished, but when it first came out it was a godawful piece of shit, and everybody knew it. That kind of dirt tends to stick, and no-one should be surprised if people are reluctant to get bitten again.
Windows 7 may well be a great product (I don't care one way or another, I'm not in their market) but most people will view it with suspicion for a while. Its acceptance will probably be driven by the OEM market, as was Vista's.
I went to a US Bank branch recently to open a new checking account and I was surprised to see that all their desktops are still running windows 2000. That's a 10+ year old OS. Kind of impressive when you think about it.
It really makes you wonder what the future of OS's will bring. We are starting to see signs that what we have is good enough and there will need to be very innovative features implemented in order to make people jump on the latest and greatest.
Our bugs are smarter than your test scripts.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It is not news. First off companies held out on Vista because Vista didn't work properly. So far reports show that Win7 is doing well and will be well received....but it won't happen overnight. Issues companies take into consideration: .Net Studio, etc) - this shit adds up FAST until a single PC is looking like a $2,000 upgrade...not a $500 upgrade
1) Hardware costs (servers/pcs)
2) Migration Costs
3) Down time for upgrades
4) Application Testing costs (did Adobe make sure they are 100% compliant with Win7? This includes older versions)
5) Software costs (Will they have to buy Office 2007, or a new version or cant they stick with Office 2003. Will they have to buy a new version of Adobe, Norton AntiVirus, MS
6) Tech Support availability - Does MS have lots of staff well-versed in handling potential issues. Does your vendor offer tech support? Does your own staff offer it?
So far I just named you six potential, and major, issues right off the top of my head. None of these are "trust" related (as far as MS products are concerned).
Other issue, that is more MS concerned, patches. 300,000 testers in limited environments is not as good as 3MM investors in enterprise environments. Now you have malicious hackers you need to concern yourself with who are looking for vulnerabilities and implementing them.
Just because companies held off on Vista does not mean they will not upgrade to 7. It isn't a lack of trust with MS it is a lack of trust in a new product and most companies avoid getting the latest and greatest of ANY product until it has the equivelant of an SP1
I do not support "The Man". I also do not support your irrational stupidity
GP is educated stupid. GP does not recognize Universal Truth of 4-bullet point simultaneous APK posting.
Another reason is training and support. Vista and Windows 7 are so much more different from Windows XP. If someone calls "Tech Support", tech support will have to have a completely different script/list for Windows 7.
No, they are not. Even my wife was able to sit down and continue working as usual.. she required no new training to use Vista after we left XP. It's not identical, but it's no different than going from 95 to 98, or 98 to 2000.
Sure, an intelligent user such as your wife can get around just fine. That's very different from what the original poster was saying, which is that tech support staff will need new training and materials.
If tech support people are telling users to open the "Add/Remove Programs" or "Display" control panels, or open the "Documents & Settings" folder, or right-click the "My Computer" icon, go to Properties, click the Hardware tab, then click the Device Manager button, there will be confusion. In Vista, these have all moved to "Programs and Features" and "Personalization", "Users", and although there is a link in the sidebar from System Properties to Device Manager, Device Manager is now a stand-alone control panel.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I feel like I'm downshifting into 2nd from 3rd gear.
so you're getting more acceleration? sweet!
(car analogies don't really work with computers)
I also have to set the start menu to show ALL my programs...I hate the 'personalized' menus. I like to see everything I have on there.
I've heard it is difficult to get this 'look' in Vista and I'm guessing on Win7....how about those items?
I like to see the tree view of my file system, I work from that to find my files, etc. I try to organize my files on that tree, so if I have that view, I can easily find what I'm needing at any given time.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
As mentioned in the gp, I am in the process of limiting rights on the desktop. When I can into this environment, everyone was admin to the box, and half the company had some flavor of network admin rights. Over time, I have removed those rights and found saner ways to give folks the rights they need.
When users are not administrators to their box, that solves most of the problems right there. No workstation has direct access to the internet. Frankly, if it weren't for the COO and his laptop, our anti-virus software wouldn't be doing a damn thing.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
ya, give Microsoft a chance since they haven't been at this OS release business for very long.
If you really want to go with someone who's had lots of OS release experience, go with Linux and specifically Ubuntu. They have had 10 OS releases already under their belt and their first release was just 5 years ago. Not only that, when they release, they release not only the OS and desktop but also include thousands of applications and drivers with each release. Microsoft only releases their OS and a much smaller set of drivers and applications with their releases so they're no so experienced at it. In about 5 or 10 years they might have the process down but until then, go with someone with more experience. ;-)
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Linux required them to rush Vista out the door so Windows 7 gives them the two more years they needed to really get the upgrade for XP right.
It should make people wonder if Microsoft really is the right company to based their IT on. Before Microsoft, businesses relied on UNIX and only moved to Microsoft because of cost. So, how cost effective is Microsoft really? Considering Linux is really the cheap UNIX, isn't there something there worth jumping too considering how many attempts Microsoft has had producing an OS which was as secure and reliable as UNIX was before the 1990s?
If money moved companies in the past, money should do it again but this time, the jump is to something more reliable and it seems to have a much more consistent development cycle. And you move when you have to, not when one company signs secret NDA's requiring companies to ship one OS to customers when those customers want another OS or version.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
True enough, but you also need to look at how it's deployed. If you have an internal-only web app, then maintenance is simply keeping your servers running. In the long run it can be cheaper because it becomes possible to replace fat clients with thin ones, or simply not having to upgrade existing hardware. But the main advantage isn't really cost, it's really about easier management (backups, archiving, updates, etc ...)
And people said Vista added nothing significantly new to XP, and people said XP added nothing significantly new to Win2k.
So why the hell is Windows 7 so different from Win2k? By Slashdot logic, they should be practically indistinguishable.
As you say, it's not finished. ReactOS is a very decent attempt and a very interesting project from a hobbyist/programmer standpoint, but it's not really to the point where any company would consider it usable yet. If ReactOS could bring itself up to par as a production ready Windows-compatible OS (sort of like Linux compared to a "real" Unix), then I think it would start to pick up in popularity quite a bit.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
The thing is, software does not really get old. Windows XP SP2 works as well today as it did when SP2 was first released, and there if it is working for businesses, then those businesses would be well advised to just stick with what works. A lot of Windows installations are on systems that are only used to run a few specific software applications, and not for composing documents or interacting with files on the hard drive.
I guess the real problem is that Microsoft keeps trying to make one-size-fits-all operating systems, when the market seems to be diverging a bit. A lot of businesses really do not need most of the features in Vista or Win7, or in OS X or KDE4, and would rather be able to just hang on to a more bare-metal OS that runs the applications they need and nothing else. This is perhaps a growing window of opportunity for Linux, since it is trivial to strip out "advanced" features of a Linux distro and get a plain vanilla desktop; if Wine becomes capable enough to run these business critical applications, we might start to see migration away from Windows, unless Microsoft extends XP support or creates a special "Windows 7 Bare Metal edition" (Windows BM?). Of course, that is assuming that those businesses are even planning a migration. There are still places where DOS is being used for critical applications...
Palm trees and 8
How many of your employees did you teach to use Microsoft stuff before they stepped in to the office? I'm guessing that number is near on zero. If someone writes "computer literate" on their resume, then I assume they mean they have at least the most perfunctory understanding of "File -> Save" - if they can grasp that, then the operating system really doesn't matter these days. If they can't, they are not computer literate and get the boot. Anyone that whines, and yes, lots of people do when confronted with change, you say suck it up, you want your pay check, teach yourself how to learn the same trivially easy stuff in a slightly (probably better) rearranged menu structure. Your "Excel" icon is now called "Calc", it's right there on the desktop too, if you don't know what something is, click on it and do some of that learning thing. It's not hard.
Yup, I understand some people actually do need a proprietary operating system and software layout, they get what they need to do the job. If anyone can figure out better, faster, and cheaper ways to do the same job, they get promoted.
Agreed.
At my company we used to switch between computers once a month to confirm if there was an emergency we could do so quickly. It always went so smoothly that they finally decided it was a waste of time and they would do it annually.
So about after about a 11 month break, they tried it again and the experience went so badly that they said they would not switch again unless it was a real emergency.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.