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Majority of Enterprise Customers Finally 'Migrating Away From Windows XP'

Posted by Soulskill on from the except-those-who-can't-stand-to-give-up-IE6 dept.

New submitter TinTops writes "Speaking in a keynote at Intel's Developer Forum, Microsoft's vice president of marketing, Tami Reller, said the firm has 'now seen about three quarters of Windows enterprises moving to modern desktops' from Windows XP, with the last leg of Windows XP migrations being spurred by the imminent availability of Windows 8.1. However, Reller did not offer a breakdown of the enterprise uptake of Windows 8 compared to Windows 7, both of which are counted by Microsoft as modern desktops."

13 of 246 comments (clear)

  1. How close to 100% is the Windows 7 percentage? by rumpledoll · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I suspect well north of 90%. Anyone know a real number for this?

    1. Re:How close to 100% is the Windows 7 percentage? by vux984 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      AND at least one service pack has been released to address outstanding issues since its public release,

      Wouldn't you consider 8.1 as a service pack to 8.0 ?

      AND we discover a way to disable the "Tiles" start screen

      The 3rd party add-ons do that well enough today. If you haven't "discovered" them yet, you haven't been looking. But honestly, by the time your company is likely to move to consider moving past 7, maybe you'll want to reconsider that.

      2-3 years from now, I figure the new start screen will have largely been adopted as mainstream (at least if Microsoft doesn't abandon it in favor of a whole new UI next year...) and by then using it at work might be acceptable for the vast majority of employees, with minimal training.

      Sure you'll have a few luddites who still get angry if the desktop doesn't look like what they used in 1998 but they can either adapt or be replaced.

      Not that I'm suggesting rolling out the start screen now... I'm just saying make that decision a few years out. When XP launched everybody in business always set the classic theme to make it look more like Windows 2000. by 2005 that practice was long dead... people all had XP at home, and had acclimatized to the new start menu.

      I think we'll see that repeat again with the start screen, although it may take a bit longer. since its a lot more different and computers last longer now.

      And again... it all depends on what microsoft does... sitcks with it and further improves it... or if they throw it under the bus with Zune and Silverlight... :)

  2. We're Skipping Windows 8 and 8.1 by ScottCooperDotNet · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I don't know why any sane company would be "spurred by the imminent availability of Windows 8.1" to drop XP. It's much more about XP's end of support on April 8, 2014. We can't have soon-to-be-unpatched boxes and laptops on our network, although I'm sure some will be in hiding past that date (VMs, second systems, etc).

    1. Re:We're Skipping Windows 8 and 8.1 by DogDude · · Score: 1, Interesting

      The worst part is that I've had our infrastructure people tell us the cost of deploying Linux is too high, for several of those same negative reasons above. Well, we would have had to do it exactly ONE time, and then we'd have been done.

      Oh, that's cute. Where do I get a copy of a Linux that came out in 2001 and is still supported by the manufacturer?

      --
      I don't respond to AC's.
  3. Correlation does not imply causality by UnknowingFool · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Reller said the firm has "now seen about three quarters of Windows enterprises moving to modern desktops" from Windows XP, with the last leg of Windows XP migrations being spurred by the imminent availability of Windows 8.1.

    Um, no. Even though firms are buying Win 8, it doesn't mean that they are installing Win 8. Many of them are using a Win 8 license to install Win 7. If MS believes enterprises and consumers want Win 8 by choice, they are deluded.

    --
    Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
  4. Linux Mint by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    is the best Windows XP still on the market.

    If you get sick of your desktop or laptop pretending that it's a tablet (due to modern Ubuntu, Microsoft, or Apple operating systems), give Linux Mint a whirl.

  5. Our experience with XP to Win8 by QuasiSteve · · Score: 4, Interesting

    We're finally getting around to having a bunch of XP boxes replaced with new ones, simply because they're old and a hardware failure in one of them triggered the decision to do pretty much all.

    We looked at getting Win7 machines - or at least getting Win7 installed onto the machines as part of an agreement - but in the end, it just wasn't worth it. More than half our staff already has Win8 at home and are perfectly comfortable with it, and once you get past the start screen, Win8 is, for our purposes, practically the same as Win7.
    I do say 'once you get past the start screen', but we're actually seeing uptake in using it. We tried a few 3rd party start menu offerings (most of them are crap, from not letting you modify it through not even listing all of the installed software that you would see listed if it were a proper start menu), eventually settling on one.. only to realize that most of the staff felt perfectly comfortable with either A. going to the pinned items on the task bar, or B. typing the name of the program from the start screen (we haven't bothered with tiles for most things, and removed almost all of the defaults... if they want to know the weather, they can listen to the forecast every half an hour on the radio, or hunt down the app in 'all apps').

    While the future direction of Win8 may be something to worry about (more and more store-centric, marginalizing the desktop, etc.), the future of Win7 isn't all roses either. Given that Win8 at least will enjoy support far past Win7, well, the choice was a lot easier than we anticipated.

    Our biggest struggle has actually been with outdated software. 16bit software just won't run on Win8 (64bit - can be enabled on 32bit, but that's just another wall waiting to be hit), and while our admin would be comfortable with installing a VM to keep these going, we're just biting the bullet and converting legacy files to formats used by more modern software, finding alternatives for those applications that we do still actively use, and keeping two machines around for everything else; one running with a VNC, and the other in storage 'just in case'.

  6. Re:Yeah, that's what XP holdouts were waiting for by BitwiseX · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Windows 8.1. *eyeroll* They're going to 7 you morons, and they're going to stay there for another 15 years. Doesn't matter what you do to the Start Menu.

    Yeah, I read that, and thought BS as well. They're looking the wrong direction I think. Looking backwards at the curmudgeon that was Vista, that was (at least in my enterprise environment) completely skipped over. It was really a matter of earning back some trust.
    I understand that 8.1 is to 8 what SP2 was to XP (in theory) but I just can't see any advantage to using 8 in an enterprise environment.

    Not to mention, enterprise adoption is a SLOW process in a lot of cases. It's the same reason certain cars sell better on the used market than others. PROVEN reliability.

    (oh shit, did I just make a car anology... I really need to get off this site)

  7. Will that make NSA Happy ? by Fantasio · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I would not be surprised if for Microsoft, "Modern Desktop" means "with NSA compliant backdoors". I have been obliged to switch from XP to 7 and frankly I gained nothing in terms of functionalities or ease of access.

  8. Re:Yeah, that's what XP holdouts were waiting for by girlintraining · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The end of Windows 7 extended support is January 14, 2020. Microsoft is not going to make the same mistake of indefinitely extending this date by continuing sales indefinitely.

    They tried to kill XP. Repeatedly. They extended the deadline many times. They're going to do it again with Windows 7, because 8 is a steaming three coiled turd. Nobody asks when corporations are upgrading to Vista... because nobody is. How many corporations are looking at Windows 8? Next to none. Go ahead... find a job for a "Windows 7 to Windows 8 migration expert" on a job site for a Fortune 500 company. We'd all love to see the three positions in the entire world that are available for that job. -_-

    Please. Microsoft can try shoving stuff down their customer's throats... but all they'll do is get another XBone out of the deal. How's that working out for you, by the way, Ballmer? Polishing up the old resume I hear.

    --
    #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
  9. Migrated my company from XP in 2008 by EmagGeek · · Score: 3, Interesting

    To Linux. We have been 100% Linux since then - not a single Microsoft machine in the entire operation. And yes, we do get threatening letters from the BSA every year...

  10. Re:Windows XP?? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I meant updating the entire x ray diffraction machine to a new one, not just the computer.

    I always find this alarming about lab equipment. You have something costing $500,000 but is entirely dependent on a $2000 computer. Not only that the "cheap" computer is both likely to break before anything else and be very difficult to replace.

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  11. Re:Migration by kilodelta · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Indeed - I've watched with amusement how Microsoft completely blew it regarding OS upgrades. From XP to Vista to 7 to 8. Vista was vomit inducing, 7 better but still the regroup of system options and control panels really made no sense. And 8 is a flaming piece of shit no matter how you dice it.

    There was a time I was probably what you'd call a Windows lapdog. Now I'd much prefer Unix/Linux. Try doing pattern matching on your windows box it's weak at best. And the file system on Windows, egad! I also recall a few years back how the Win FS was supposed to solve the issues with NTFS etc. But Microsoft could never get it to work.