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

Emil

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Windows XP is still powering 75 percent of business computers in North America and Europe, according to Forrester Research. Compared to the world at large, where Windows XP just fell under 60 percent, this number is quite high.

Windows 7, meanwhile, is running on 10 percent of business PCs in North America and Europe. As businesses refresh their hardware by replacing old PCs and adding new ones, that percentage will grow considerably in the coming year. "Last year when we fielded a similar survey, only 7 percent of firms said they planned to deploy Windows 7 within the next 12 months or that they had already begun," according to the report. "This number has skyrocketed to 46 percent of firms now reporting that they have already begun or will begin deploying Windows 7 within the next 12 months." On top of that, 90 percent of the businesses contacted expect to migrate to Windows 7 eventually.

The data comes from 2,321 IT executives surveyed between June and August in the US, Canada, France, German, and the UK. These individuals represented all sizes of companies: from two employee tag-teams to enterprise juggernauts.

In related Windows 7 news, but on the complete other side of the customer spectrum, Microsoft announced that it is extending its student discount on the upgrade edition of Windows 7 Professional (32-bit or 64-bit) to 11 additional countries: Spain, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Belgium, New Zealand, and Taiwan. Some are available this week but students from all these countries will definitely be accepted by end of next week. Students qualify for the limited-time offer if they have a valid e-mail address through a qualifying education institution and a PC that is currently running a genuine copy of Windows XP or Windows Vista.

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Xp still holding 75% of the market share? that must mean it keeps being the most stable, and less resource hungry OS..
 
Most companies dont want to have to buy all new pc's to use windows 7 since most of them probably have 5 year old computers in there offices that would mean a huge amount of money spent on windows 7 machines.
 
Wow, and here I thought Linux was vastly used in IT and in large companies (was I the only one who got this impression?). But in reality, it seems its just as irrelevant as its distros are in the desktop market.

Heck, even Windows 2000 is more used. What's going on here...! :O
 
Cueto_99
Windows 7 is by far a more stable operating system compared to XP. When XP was released it had taken some companies over 3-4 years to migrate due to legacy applications etc.. It's a major process in the IT industry to roll out a new operating system without the required training/testing it's not a matter of people saying "Windows 7 is out lets roll it out to all desktops and laptops...."
 
There are two primary reasons I think W7 isn't getting adopted as quickly as MS would like. 1, most businesses are poor right now and are trying to save money. Why upgrade something that is for the most part working fine right now (WinXP). And 2, companies are worried about application compatibility and ease of transition for its users.

I for one am upset at the removal of some functions/features in Windows 7. Take the classic start menu for example... personally I got onboard with Win7 since the first public beta, and have switched to Win7 since. I tried for about 8 months to get used to the new Start Menu... and I STILL dislike it, find it clumsy and inefficient. I know several people who feel the same way, and several others who refuse to even try it. I gave it a very, very fair chance with 8 months of use on my work computer, which I use probably 36 hours a week. WHY did MS remove the option to go back to classic start menu??? I KNOW it is still there. It was in Win 2008 server... and you can get it enabled in Win7 with some 3rd party utilities, so i'm betting the data/files/registry or where ever it is still exists, they just removed the option to select it.

Other than the start menu and the removal of free disk space from the Windows Explorer status bar (again, WHY!??!?!)... I absolutely love Windows 7. It is faster and handles resources a lot better than XP, pretty much runs all my applications and games (even ones I thought it wouldn't run or didn't work in Vista), and the default color schemes are not incredibly annoying that I have to change them.

I would be pushing Windows 7 out to my some 150 computers at my work, but i'm afraid a lot of people are going to have a fit over the start menu. I know maybe 25% of my users already have WIndows 7 or Vista machines at home and will adapt fine, but the rest still have XP at home and are not used to the new menu style. But.... MS got their money anyway for our volume licensing so we can go full Win7 anytime we want with the TrueUp method. But everyone is just so used to XP, and it still works fine with the small exception of being a little more susceptible to catching malware.

Anyway... yeah... I do like Windows 7 and I'm confident a lot of businesses will be fully upgrading to it within a year or two.
 
At my workplace, we have a majority of XP machines, some 2000 machines, and a small handful of Vista machines, though the last dozen or so machines (replacing hardware with XP systems) have been Windows 7. Guest has it right; companies generally do not buy new hardware or new software just because it is out; they get it when they have to replace it unless it is mission critical that they have the absolute latest versions of everything (which is rare). Heck, a programming friend of mine upgraded his "work computers" from 2000/XP to Win7 because his programming environment changed and he needed to deal with Sharepoint/Exchange server 2010.

And everyone being Smug about XP: Considering that every Microsoft based computer system comes with Windows 7 as the default operating system (with many OEMs no longer offering XP for new machines) it will happen much faster than you think, if the reported numbers are anywhere near accurate.
 
IAMTHESTIG said:
There are two primary reasons I think W7 isn't getting adopted as quickly as MS would like. 1, most businesses are poor right now and are trying to save money. Why upgrade something that is for the most part working fine right now (WinXP). And 2, companies are worried about application compatibility and ease of transition for its users.

I for one am upset at the removal of some functions/features in Windows 7. Take the classic start menu for example... personally I got onboard with Win7 since the first public beta, and have switched to Win7 since. I tried for about 8 months to get used to the new Start Menu... and I STILL dislike it, find it clumsy and inefficient. I know several people who feel the same way, and several others who refuse to even try it. I gave it a very, very fair chance with 8 months of use on my work computer, which I use probably 36 hours a week. WHY did MS remove the option to go back to classic start menu??? I KNOW it is still there. It was in Win 2008 server... and you can get it enabled in Win7 with some 3rd party utilities, so i'm betting the data/files/registry or where ever it is still exists, they just removed the option to select it.

Other than the start menu and the removal of free disk space from the Windows Explorer status bar (again, WHY!??!?!)... I absolutely love Windows 7. It is faster and handles resources a lot better than XP, pretty much runs all my applications and games (even ones I thought it wouldn't run or didn't work in Vista), and the default color schemes are not incredibly annoying that I have to change them.

I would be pushing Windows 7 out to my some 150 computers at my work, but i'm afraid a lot of people are going to have a fit over the start menu. I know maybe 25% of my users already have WIndows 7 or Vista machines at home and will adapt fine, but the rest still have XP at home and are not used to the new menu style. But.... MS got their money anyway for our volume licensing so we can go full Win7 anytime we want with the TrueUp method. But everyone is just so used to XP, and it still works fine with the small exception of being a little more susceptible to catching malware.

Anyway... yeah... I do like Windows 7 and I'm confident a lot of businesses will be fully upgrading to it within a year or two.
Are you kiding me how freaking hard is it to use the start menu do you need to read that it says start? Its a round windows logo it looks 50 times better than windows XP i don't understand what your problem is you have to adapt to new things or get left in the dust of the ever expanding computer industry. it took me all of 20 seconds to understand windows 7.
 
I was also going to mention something similar about the start menu comment. Possibly because I actually organize my program folders in the start menu, turning 50-60 folders at top level to something like 7, I have no problems using the new start menu. Hell, I use the search/run box as much if not moreso. Being able to type "photo" and in about a second and a half being able to choose Adobe Photoshop CS2 is far superior than than going through an exhaustive list of programs, even if they are organized like I have them.

Even some of the older users at said workplace from my previous post have no issues with the new start menu, some coming from said 2000 systems.
 
Hmmmm personally i think W7 is better than XP ... more stable all around ... plus for people that whine about resource hungry W7 ... just try to remember the transition from win98 to winXP ... same things being told back then ... its just that technology changes :)
 
klepto12 said:
Are you kiding me how freaking hard is it to use the start menu do you need to read that it says start? Its a round windows logo it looks 50 times better than windows XP i don't understand what your problem is you have to adapt to new things or get left in the dust of the ever expanding computer industry. it took me all of 20 seconds to understand windows 7.

I apologize, you are clearly far my intelligent that I am. A shiny and pretty Start button is far more important than the ease of use. After 8 months of trying to adapt to the new Start menu means I am a failure at adopting the "ever expanding computer industry". The fact that I am fully utilizing and am happy with using the newest operating system from Microsoft does not indicate ones computer savvy-ness. </sarcasm>

My problem is the organization method, the requirement at using text based searches to quickly find what your looking for can be annoying at times, sometimes you just want to browse the menus with your mouse. The fact you have to click each folder when your looking for something visually. You must expand that folder, then click it again to collapse it. If you don't collapse it you end up with multiple folders opened up and the start menu doesn't get any larger, so you end up scrolling in a tiny window. There is far too much clicking and typing required, these are considered extra steps to most, not ease of use. The whole system is just clumsy and annoying as far as I am concerned. I gave it over 8 months to try and get used to it... that is PLENTY of time, and I still utterly dislike it. The question isn't understanding it, it is the question of ease of use; and I do not find it easy to use.
 
XP does what i need it to do, my usage is pretty simple, internet, movies, office and dvd burning, all of which XP does greatly.
 
I prefer 7 over XP on any machine with a P4 and 1 GB of RAM and above...and I also prefer not to work with a machine that has lower specs.
I am all for Win 7 as a client OS, but you really have to advance your Servers as well. If you roll out Win 7 in a Server 03 environment, you aren't getting a lot of Win 7s benefits. I know it's expensive, time consuming, etc, but when possible I think it would be best to get Server 08 R2 first and then Win 7.
 
shortie said:
Hmmmm personally i think W7 is better than XP ... more stable all around ... plus for people that whine about resource hungry W7 ... just try to remember the transition from win98 to winXP ... same things being told back then ... its just that technology changes
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 ?
 
ruzveh 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.
 
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