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Majority of Enterprise Customers Finally 'Migrating Away From Windows XP'
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."
Maybe they are migrating to Canada. I hear that it is a nice country.
I suspect well north of 90%. Anyone know a real number for this?
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).
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.
It's a really bad sign when you have to obfuscate product uptake percentages with amorphous terms like "modern desktops" to cover up the fact that your latest flagship software release was an unmitigated disaster. Maybe instead of blaming Microsoft's horrible missteps on Balmer we can blame them on the "Modern Microsoft execute".
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.
...is actually nice desktop OS for functional productivity. It's like having XP but upgraded under the hood for modern hardware. Mine is tastefully retrograded to the XP UI theme, plus some deeper settings to get rid of some of the annoying defaults regarding the task bar.
Had no issues with it for a number of years now and plan to continue using it for the time being.
In fairness, everything Windows PC since XP is NT 6.x, so moving from 5.x to 6.x isn't a completely silly thing to track.
Windows XP is a great OS. I'm still using it here and boy, my system is very stable and fast.
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'.
people still use Windows XP? It is 2013! Don't tell me they are still running Pentium 3 computers at 900 MHz. My university uses Windows 8 and Dual Core processers at 2.6 GHz. Just saying.
You should try running XP on a recent system sometime; it's very zippy, and with all the patches applied, quite stable.
Plus, it virtualizes well with a low memory footprint.
Yeah. The company I worked for started migrating to Windows 7 earlier this year. We're maybe 30% there. We're going to skip 8.whatever and see what's available when 7 nears end of life.
Corporations that are not themselves in the computer business tend to be a bit conservative about OS upgrades.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
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.
And?
The attitude you are showing is that of a toy fan, not a professional.
There are still large numbers of XP boxes out there doing tasks every day.
They might not be what you'd want for your own workstation, but for running the mass spectrometer or x ray diffraction machines that would take 200K+ each to replace with the modern ones, they work just fine.
I'll guarantee that a lot of the workhorse computers in the laboratories at your university run XP (or maybe even Win 2K, or NT 4).
I maintain those systems for the chemistry department at a major university. Most researchers aren't flush with so much cash they can replace machines that are only a few years old. And, the manufacturers tend not to update their systems without good reason (if it ain't broke, don't break it by trying to fix it).
Just yesterday, I was working on a system with a VESA local bus 486 DX2 running it. Yeah, it's old, but it does certain specialized x-ray diffraction work just fine. We'll be happy to update it as soon as our broke state (or the NSF that's under sequester) coughs up a quarter to a half a million for something that can replace it. i.e. no time soon.
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...
> It is never easy changing OS versions. But if you are reluctant to the point of fear, nothing would ever change.
It's not a matter of fear. I have one machine running Windows 8 for testing purposes. After a reasonable amount of testing, I don't intend to ever have another machine running Windows 8. This is not fear. This is practicality.
There's no reason to switch. Win7 will be around for a long time, and the longer I use it the longer Microsoft has to fix the next version of their OS.
At work, the company buys PCs and reimages them with whatever the company has standardized on. So the fact that the machines come in with Win8 is moot.
And seriously, the OS is just a program loader and a resource manager. It is *not* the application. I don't need it to change. I most especially don't need the GUI to change from square opaque to rounded translucent and back to square opaque for no damned reason whatsoever.
We're up on the shallow end of the curve on OS development. There is no overriding reason to buy the next version.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
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.
I find it very interesting to read so many people here defending XP in light of its security weaknesses. We're talking about an OS that has a horrible security model out of the box and encourages applications to be designed to run with full admin privileges. If you are a developer stuck on XP and you haven't updated your software to work properly with the newer security model introduced in Vista, well shame on you. You've had way more than enough time... 7 years to be exact.
XP is the "odd one out" now, with regards to how you design a good, secure Windows application. There are 3 newer versions of Windows and the 4th is coming next week, all with a similar, much more robust security model. XP is now the bastard child, different from the rest. Sickly.
And don't forget the 64-bit question. While 32-bit XP was very widely used and adopted, the 64-bit "edition" was an instant bastard child, born out of the unholy union of XP and Server 2003 64-bit. Very few applications support 64-bit XP and with good reason. While it was the first 64-bit Windows on the desktop, its compatibility with existing and even new applications was never a strong point. It was a niche product and never gained widespread support. If you need 64-bit support, XP doesn't cut it. We work with very large datasets, and 64-bit is basically a requirement for much of what we do.
We are about to release the last versions of our software that support XP and I can't wait for the day we drop support completely. It's an additional testing burden when we already need to test all newer versions. Plus, it behaves differently than the rest. Continuing to support XP today drives up costs and limits adoption of newer and better technologies. It had a good run, but now it's time to let it die. There are newer and better Windows versions.
Part of the reason is habit and once you never do something in a very long long time your brain thinks it is wrong to do it because that means change.
In the case of upgrading after being told for 12 years to never ever update that is bad IT then feels it is unprofessional to upgrade. Why? It is something you never do. That is why etc! ... on a more practical note the reason XP is used is many places the accountants and MBAs have taken over the IT departments and this thing called "The Great Recession" changed the mindset of these beancounters.
Many IT loved Windows 7 back in 2009!. 90% of these corps invested in labs to test Windows 7 images but guess what happened that year in 2009? Stock market whent down 14,000 to 5,000! Corporations had massive layoffs totaling over 10 million.
When you need to make a choice to keep the lights on and feeding employees in these dark years the case of upgrading perfectly working computers goes out the Windows. Now mix in IT workers who have been told change is bad for 12 years and you have a recipe of resistance where the can is kicked. MBA folks get their raises by cutting costs and firing people and will lose their bonus next year if IT invests in technology that they do not really need (in their opinion).
IT needs to sell themselves better as these MBA guys think XP is just as secure. They are not computer geeks. They are money geeks. They do not understand these issues and in their eyes systems magically still work with what they have so why change?
If they can be told another code red can take the company down you can BET YOUR ASS THEY WILL UPGRADE infact they are just starting to do that now. The real quesiton in 2020 is what will compell them to leave Windows 7? I can't think of anything now besides HTML 6 and CSS 4 support from a non sucky version of IE (in that time's standard.) The PC is mature and turning into the mainframe now they gets updated every few decades because they work.
http://saveie6.com/
you must really hate him.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
are going to be very disappointed.
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I've had the distinct lack of pleasure working with the Windows 8.1 RTM for the past two days. Virtually none of our apps installed correctly the first time, including Visual studio 2010. At one point, a large "help" dialog appeared telling me to swipe in from the left hand side. I couldn't get rid of this thing for love or money. Did I mention it covers about 1/4 of the screen and that you basically have to reboot to get rid of it?
To state the blindingly obvious, interface changes without any significant feature changes are not a value add, they're a value subtract. It doesn't matter if it's the Windows GUI, ASP.net or Powershell.
Got Microsoft stock? Sell.
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