jcarver

July 14, 2010 at 6:28pm

I am the IT for an insurance agency.  All the companies we do business have yet to upgrade their software.  When I upgraded to IE 7 I had to use the compatibility mode just so my office could login to websites to do quotes on policies.  The software that is used to store all of our clients is not supported to run with Win7 and within the last year Vista Business is being supported.  The companies higher up the food chain are going to be slow upgrading especially when there are empty workstations with all the layed of people.  There is no killer app for Win7, unless you think a new UI is.

RtDK

July 14, 2010 at 2:00pm

I wonder if I'm the only one who thinks that it would be an extremely cool thing of MS to make XP open-source once it expires.... I guarantee you, lots of Linux fanboys would be dual-booting it if they had the chance to work with one of the most successful OSes in history. And since it's a couple generations old, Redmond really wouldn't be giving away any "secrets" either.

More, they could actually come back every few months and see what the geek herd did to it, and if the changes applied to their newer OSes--since the code would be open-source, they could apply any more efficient or missing coding to their own operating systems, and kind of follow their "child" as it continues to grow independent of them.

Again--probably just me.

 

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"Keep the peace."

Thiazolium

July 14, 2010 at 11:51am

Quote: "This really is no surprise. I mean if something works then use it."

To most businesses, it usually goes without saying "if it ain't broke" don't fix it. If the computers are being used primarily for document the benefits of upgrading (from XP to 7) aren't as tangible.  Microsoft is touting 3D virtualization experiences for businesses using Win7 and Server 2008R2, but I can't see this being a strong sell (yet) for those still generating reports, invoices and spreadsheets. So I'm guessing XP may stick around longer than we might think.

The Addictor

July 14, 2010 at 8:47am

Home Depot about a year ago, did a massive upgrade. I took all of their stores computers that were running Win XP PRO on an old Dell almost as old as XP itself. All the new upgraded HP PC's came with AMD Athlon 64 X2, 2gb RAM, and Windows Vista. Now, the poblem with all that was the fact that they ghosted Win XP PRO back on to all the PC's. SO, is that factored into the number above? Remember, Home Depot has almost 2300 stores. In each store, there are approximately somewhere between 25-40 computers. Thats between 57.5k - 92k PC's, and thats only the ones in the stores, not including their Call Centers and Satellite Offices, or the Laptops floating around. How many other companies are doing the same thing. I mean for gods sake, they're still using IE6 and refuse to budge from using Flash 9 and will absolutely not upgrade to Flash 10.1. I thought they were wanting to ahead on the technological curve, but I don't see that when they refuse to move with the rest of the world. More than have the websites that Home Depot need to visit to help their customers are all using Flash 10 and therefore unable to access.

 

29twed9nhell

someuid

July 14, 2010 at 8:14am

These two comments speak volumes of what is wrong with Microsoft:

"According to Reller, this statistic just means that Microsoft is in a great position to capitalize on would-be converts to Windows 7."

"On a side note, Reller says that the average PC is 4.4 years old, the highest average age in a decade. And that, of course, means more upgrade potential too, Reller said. "

This person and the many other business-degree-having managers that run Microsoft have no care or concern for the technology.  They are only interested in ads, sales, upgrades, moar moneeeey.  They don't care if the new OS is faster, or more secure, or helpful to the new computer user, or gives power users easier access to the guts of OS, or anything else other than how many copies they can sell as fast as possible and as for as much money as possible, and how soon they can repeat the process.

This is why Google is tarring and feathering Microsoft.  Google develops new technology and gets it out there, knowing the money will follow.  Microsoft is left playing catchup.

This is also why Apple has become so successful.  Microsoft has left themselves to pushing minor revisions of products for the same price, decade after decade.  This gave Apple the chance to jump in with some great products that had no competition at all (iPod, iPhone, iPad all nicely supported by iTunes and the App Store) that justified their higher price.

The proof?  I have one Microsoft product in my house: their OS.  Everything else is from some other company that focused on the product they were offering rather than how much they could bilk from my wallet.

Blues22475

July 14, 2010 at 7:55am

This really is no surprise. I mean if something works then use it. People are reluctant to switch to another OS cause it's, more or less, a new OS they have to get used to. Problem is if these people continue to stick with XP for too long, Microsoft is going to throw them to the curb in terms of supposed (if MS even has supposed xD).

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Ignorance is man's greatest enemy.

Zallomallo

July 14, 2010 at 6:54am

Well Windows Vista was too "Vista" for business usage, and Windows 7 is relatively new.  I bet it'l be down to 50% by 2011 and than a minority by 2012.