More than half of IT professionals eyeing Windows 8 for deployment

[Shawn Knight]

IT professionals are already eyeing Windows 8 to replace existing operating systems in the corporate world when it becomes available. 52 percent of those polled said they plan to upgrade to Microsoft’s latest operating system, according to a survey of 973 tech professionals conducted by InformationWeek.

Of those 52 percent that said they would upgrade their business computers, 5 percent claimed they would deploy as soon as Windows 8 becomes available. 13 percent decided to play it safe and said they would make the switch within a year’s time while 19 percent would do the deed within two years of the OS launching.

Digging deeper into the report, 10 percent of planned upgraders said they would do so on an as-needed basis. 24 percent said that all of their PCs would eventually get the upgrade while 34 percent said that at least three quarters of their machines would see Windows 8 at some point.

IT professionals typically aren’t as gung-ho to deploy an untested operating system, so why are more than half of those questioned willing to do so? The main reason is because Microsoft will stop supporting Windows XP in April 2014.

Although XP was initially released way back in 2001, it continues to hold a strong market share among Windows-based machines. The operating system only fell below 50 percent market share in July. Windows 7 is quickly gaining ground on the aging OS, however. As of July, Windows 7 held 27.87 percent of the worldwide OS market share compared to XP's 49.94 percent.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/46114-more-than-half-of-it-professionals-eyeing-windows-8-for-deployment.html

 

[mattfrompa]

I will be glad to upgrade to Windows 8 at work and home. It's really just a question of time and to what extent.

With that said it will still have to pass a feasibility analysis (I won't upgrade until it makes sense to do so)

 

[Guest]

Windows 7 is so much superior to XP in usability, multi-core CPU resource allocation, Plug&Play/driver support and stability, it's amazing that some people are still running Windows XP. I am sure Windows 8 will be even better than Windows XP. W7 is a huge improvement over XP though. I used XP for many many years and will never go back. W7 is just that good. Can't wait to see new innovations in W8.

 

[Guest]

every time I use Widows 7, I still love more XP!

 

[Mindwraith]

i imagine that most of the people who still us XP don't know enough about computers to be able to upgrade to Windows 7.

 

[Guest]

I agree most Windows are to stupid to upgrade their computers. They are still using what ever came on the computer they bought.

 

[aj_the_kidd]

Mindwraith said:
i imagine that most of the people who still us XP don't know enough about computers to be able to upgrade to Windows 7.

XP still works fine, great actually. Whilst most have not upgraded, its not because they don't know how to, which i agree is one aspect, but because they simply don't need to. A statement like yours, only shows that you don't know enough about the real world and that not everyone needs the latest and greatest

 

[cliffordcooley]

XP still works fine, great actually. Whilst most have not upgraded, its not because they don't know how to, which i agree is one aspect, but because they simply don't need to. A statement like yours, only shows that you don't know enough about the real world and that not everyone needs the latest and greatest

There ya go folks!

And with outdated hardware that doesn't have proper Windows 7 drivers, I will still recommend Windows XP. Upgrading to Windows 7 is only recommended when current hardware supports Windows 7. Even then its as aj suggested, does the user really need Windows 7 or can they even afford it?

 

[aj_the_kidd]

One thing to also remember is that for most people upgrading means a new computer rather then an upgrade or clean install

 

[NTAPRO]

I always thought that if it look a lot to run Windows 7 and Vista then XP should run fine. .

 

[spydercanopus]

Don't fix unbroken stuff. Unless you're canny to work longer hours

 

[Guest]

I currently work in IT and can tell you that if I cannot disable that ridiculous metro UI from active directory it will not be deployed in my organization because I do not want to deal with the user training nightmare. I have to wonder how many of those surveyed have seen what windows 8 is since the majority of "IT pros" I have dealt with are not as up to date on what is coming down the pike as the average enthusiast.

 

[Guest]

What about those using vista - lol

 

[Guest]

Was this article written by Microsoft marketing as a press release or something?

5% of the people surveyed said they would install it immediately ... and you seem to think that means IT people want it? Thats the way it always is, you don't even CONSIDER installing a Microsoft OS until AT LEAST service pack 1, and then you only start to consider it.

Unless you want all of your users upset that they have to learn a bunch of new things that MS changed just for the sake of change, and you want to have to deal with a large portion of your apps not functioning properly if at all, then you wait until the OS has been out and the kinks are worked out by someone else, like home users who get it forced on them with a new PC.

Implying that IT professionals want Windows 8 is misleading to the point of being a lie. An IT professional is concerned with keeping the other workers in the company doing their job, not upgrading because MS released a shiny new object. They upgrade when it makes business sense to do so.

 

[Cota]

I finally got the rite comment for this post!

More than half of IT professionals are morons!

 

[Arris]

Guest said:
Was this article written by Microsoft marketing as a press release or something?

5% of the people surveyed said they would install it immediately ... and you seem to think that means IT people want it? Thats the way it always is, you don't even CONSIDER installing a Microsoft OS until AT LEAST service pack 1, and then you only start to consider it.

Unless you want all of your users upset that they have to learn a bunch of new things that MS changed just for the sake of change, and you want to have to deal with a large portion of your apps not functioning properly if at all, then you wait until the OS has been out and the kinks are worked out by someone else, like home users who get it forced on them with a new PC.

Implying that IT professionals want Windows 8 is misleading to the point of being a lie. An IT professional is concerned with keeping the other workers in the company doing their job, not upgrading because MS released a shiny new object. They upgrade when it makes business sense to do so.

Exactly Mr/Ms Guest. In a controlled environment with strict company wide (and inter-company when dealing with secure systems from clients) security audits before they allow a browser update or the slightest change to any of the machines running on the companies network upgrading to Windows 8 is the last thing they will be concerned with. The cost of testing, security audits, implementation and licensing alone is prohibitive. Hell, my work machine still uses XP as many of our clients still run it so we have to have similar environments so we can provide client support and test before releasing updates to our applications. If anything by the time Windows 8 comes out corporations will be considering upgrading to the tried and tested Windows 7.

 

[Arris]

cota said:
I finally got the rite comment for this post!

More than half of IT professionals are morons!

It's not limited to IT Cota. I'd refine it to "More than half of professionals are morons".

 

[Guest]

Lol! Half of professionals might be morons but that's better than 90 of non-professionals are morons. Now if only we can reduce the amount of morons...

 

[Guest]

Microsoft NEEDS to integrate and make a windows 8 style point of sale system. Their "metro" UI will work great with concepts for the point of sale industry. They could really innovate in this cross section of the IT market.

ALL point of sale systems currently are still running on windows xp computers. How do you feel about that? The fact that your credit card is processed daily on the least secure available operating system that's out right now?

 

[caravel]

Windows 7 is so much superior to XP in usability, multi-core CPU resource allocation, Plug&Play/driver support and stability, it's amazing that some people are still running Windows XP. I am sure Windows 8 will be even better than Windows XP. W7 is a huge improvement over XP though. I used XP for many many years and will never go back. W7 is just that good. Can't wait to see new innovations in W8.

People stick with their existing operating system if it works - it's usually only the fanboys who upgrade fanatically and regularly (that's true for any OS by the way). Also if you're running older hardware which won't benefit from the newer kernel and will stretch the requirements, it's simply a bad move.

Another reason why people don't switch is that Vista/7 are a narcissistic train wreck of UI redesign. Back in the day, I thought XP was bad enough but at least that could be made "2000-like" quite easily. With vista and 7 however the "fisher price" style UI is there to stay and many convenient configuration controls and options have been inexplicably hidden away behind layers of needless cruft.

 

[MilwaukeeMike]

Spydercanopus said:
Don't fix unbroken stuff. Unless you're canny to work longer hours

This.

For any large IT firm, Mo' Upgrades = Mo' Problems. And for an OS upgrade, you pay millions for that hassle.

I work for a company with a large IT area (>1000 employees). We went from Win 95 to Win XP, and from XP to 7. No Win 98 or Vista. We'll probably wait for Windows 9, we're not even done with our Win 7 rollout yet.

 

[3DCGMODELER]

Hell i am still running Windows 95 ...

and runs great why upgrade..????????

 

[Guest]

I work as IT Support for a school and we only Rolled out onto Win7 last year, I seriously doubt we're gonna switch to Win8, also Win7 licencing has dropped a lot in the last year, well for education businesses.

If any home users are on Vista or XP I recommend WIn7 as it is probably the easiest and qucikest OS by M$ in years. No doubt Win8 will be but tbh Win7 does everything I need it too, the way I see it is M$ wants to loop all it's products together and Win8 will do that for them.

 

[mattfrompa]

Actually I've found that for machines with 1GB of ram or more, it runs 7 more smoothly than XP. But that's just with the hardware I've used. Quality and configurations range too much to make a blanket statement like 7 or XP ALWAYS being a a better choice.

It's also important to remember that none of us know exactly what every user wants/needs. There are proper implementations for XP still as well as 7, and I think to blindly bash someone for their choice is just a reflection of ones perceived knowledge being much higher than what they actually know. But hey, if calling me a *****(not saying anyone did yet) makes you feel better about your choice, feel free because I won't lose sleep. I just won't listen to you either.

 

[amstech]

The switch from XP to Windows7 took years, and we are still in a transiton period.
The switch from Windows7 to Windows8 won't be any different.