Windows 7 powers 10% of business PCs, growth to explode

Agree, well said!

This estimate are so unrealistic and fake in nature. First u remove the support from XP and push Win7 forcebly onto users and then come out that Win7 is selling better. It has to do better because there is no alternative left with users like us who still wants to do with XP OS. Do we have choice ?

First remove XP support?? Buddy, they just officially stopped supporting XP on Oct. 22nd 2010. That's NINE YEARS of support for ONE OS. Simply because they don't "support" it doesn't mean that you can't still use it. Windows 7 wasn't pushed. People skipped the Vista train and hopped on 7, which is why so many copies have been sold. You have no alternative? How about keep using XP? Yep, pretty sure you can keep on using it.

I have 2 pc with windows xp (one with x64), a i do run virtual pc, virtualbox and vmware server to test some virtual machines,... Actually i run 3 or 4 virtual machines at same time, one for openfiler and 2 or 3 for oracle clusterware on a rac config. I did select XP over 7 because works fine on all my tests.

Xp is powerfull yet!

and you know this how?

What Wagan8r said, and
A decade of support for a piece of software is absurd

I will assume you meant forcibly. Being a little dramatic...don't you think? Or were there actually armed Microsoftians who dragged you off and put you on the rack until you purchased a Win7 license?

Again, what Wanan8r said.
How about use your XP?
How about Linux?

yeah uha

i have a question... Actually Windows 7 is the same thing that Windows Vista 6.1 ???

Vista is only 7%! Vista was pretty good, i've never understood the bias and hate directed against it.

Vista SP1 was good, prior to that it could be a mess. Win 7 is still very Vista like so I don't see the need for that OS anymore, especially with all the bad press it received. Doesn't seem that MS wants the name to linger either. I really liked Vista but 7 is even better.

Here's the important statistics: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp

It is important because it is based on PC-s that go into the internet. Offline stations don't need any upgrade much.

It goes like this ignoring 1xx-3xx and 9x

NT3.1
NT3.5/3.51
NT4
Windows 2000 = NT5.0
Windows XP = NT5.1
Windows Server 2003 = NT5.2
Windows Vista / Server 2008 = NT6.0
Windows 7 / Server 2008R2 = NT6.1

In addition to red's comments, I'd say if it weren't for businesses, I don't think it would make sense to support any OS for say more then 5 years at best. Technological aspects alone would make it necessary to refresh the OS along with user's requirement (feedback) for improvements in e.g. interface / ease of use / security + stability. Anyway, despite the fact that full economic recovery won't be coming any time soon (I've seen some projections which say that things will be like this till 2014) I am noticing businesses 'reducing their headcount, and improving their processes with improvements in technological aspects of their work' so it perfectly make sense to roll out new OS. In fact, I think due vista's monumental failure to impress earlier on, Win7 is being adopted at bit faster rate when you compare it to what happened with earlier OS upgrades.

I don't understand this. The release cycles of Windows are far too frequent. So, by the time the majority of companies upgrade to Windows 7, it'll be close to the release of Windows 8. So, there is no feasible way of large companies to keep in sync with the release cycle of Windows.

I think this is an issue that is going to come to the fore in future.

Also, some people raised a valid point saying that there are alternatives available to the OS such as Linux ( variants of it). These are far cheaper and more versatile. Yes, you are going to have to let your employees get accustomed to it, but at the end of the day its a better overall investment.

Also, think about the inherent security in Linux and you start to get a very favorable picture.

You are probably only taking into account that 'productivity software like office are being used in business environment' for which your argument make some sense; but factually, that isn't the case, most larger businesses either develop or deploy (3rd party) solutions to run their processes, and these are generally windows based; hence Linux is just not the option; they do however, can choose to use it in their server mix.

A good example which I can quote is, we use AutoCAD extensively in our organization, along with several other engineering software, and NONE of them have Linux/Unix version. So how do you justify jumping the ship and adopting something which is pretty much useless for you? I am sure you can find many examples like this around you as well.

I'll need to get my work to update me to Win7 so I can do testing with IIS6+7 on my local machine, as XP (currently running on this 3 year old machine) only comes with IIS5. Annoying things like no PowerShell scripting snapins for WMI to deploy and configure IIS. Few other advancements would be nice. If they really wanted to force upgrades they should stop rolling out .net updates for XP

I do somewhat agree with klepto12. The top level menu of my "All Programs" in my windows start menu is

Development
Office
Admin tools
Accessories
Startup

I know where everything I need is. Although the old XP list of "recently used" programs is something I've come to like now, but the text based lookup of stuff in the WIn7 menu is still a little messy. I'm starting to think that we'll be forced to use these "quick" methods rather than having a structured menu. It's like instead of storing a phone number in your memory where you can retrieve it as you know where to find it, having to start thinking of it digit by digit. Urm... 5... Urm... 4.

If you are in some sort of service capacity you also end up keeping the majority of your systems on the same tech that your clients are running so you can troubleshoot and test things to make sure they will work correctly on your clients systems. Your hands are tied by the business environment in general. My company uses an IBM software suite that is years behind the latest version purely because that is what our clients were using. When working with large companies it takes them a long time to roll out any sort of updates. I still remember the delays from client IT departments in getting clients to update to IE7/8 from 5/6...

Exactly, something similar is being done in our Finance/Accounts department as well, despite that their new system is windows based, they still use DOS based database developed in late 1980s, which can't be ported to new systems without breaking it down obviously (ironically they can only print its output on those damned dotmatrix printers). I may be wrong, but I've noticed generally people here tend to base their comments on the fact 'what may or may not be good, today' hence, ignoring the fact which you have pointed out. :rolleyes:

I am waiting for an offer for Poland. All the countries have promotions like Win7 Family Pack or students version, but Poland is excluded from that.

There are lots of countries which are not in that list dlen, which is pretty stupid thing on part of MS.

I'm curious to see how companies even consumers will react if Windows 8 starts being pushed in a couple years considering we've kind of grown accustom to a long development time.