Six out of ten firms will skip Windows 7

I swear this same survey gets trotted out before every Win OS release with the same dire message.

Yawn. Like the 50% who said they wouldn't upgrade to XP are still on Windows 2000?

Win7 uptake is going to be relatively fast, survey or no survey, as it is generally understood to be a mature OS (Vista SP3?) right out of the gate.

They will only update when they update the hardware and since there is no money for new hardware no one is changing.

Anyway, most wait until they have some decent reviews and experiences even if they have the needed hardware.

I expect that most companies will wait for Windows 7 SP1 before migrating (i.e., late 2010), but the presence of Windows 7 will make XP based companies delay their upgrades until this time. They'll do an analysis when it is released if they have the money, including how much it would cost for retraining (XP to W7 could be quite a change for many users) and new hardware for those that don't meet the minimum specs.

At least Windows 7 allegedly will run on lower-end hardware than Vista, so it is actually a viable upgrade for many businesses who don't run the latest and greatest.

I expect W7 will have a higher business uptake within 3 years than Vista did. I don't think many businesses are going to switch to Macs or Linux given the state of Office on the Mac.

anyone in business who upgrades immediately on release of a new o/s is a big fool.

if o/s's were secure from the day of release then there would not be any service packs. it is in the interest of the o/s manufacturer to release an incomplete o/s so that followup service and products can be sold for profit.

Considering so many firms didn't bother with Vista I think Windows 7 will be taken up by them

Companies won't update.
Sure small ones will, but not the big ones.
As it will only cost them and brings nothing in return.
They don't want to change from XP if the return on investment is negative.

well..600 of those, who is already on vista? I bet these results are nicely skewed. How was it looked at.

OF COURSE companies already running vista wont upgrade, why the hell would they after the fiasco that was vista launch. its just not worth the trouble.

however companies on the aging xp I bet have a much higher representation thats handily being kept out of the news.

Like someone already said, this survey is trumpeted out every release and its meaning stays the same - null.

Personally I look forwards to running 7, it looks to be pretty compatible with bootcamp and initial trials show it to about the same speed if not perhaps a little faster than XP under a MBP, and the drivers arnt really complete yet - there should be more performance boosts to come :)

Ofcourse they won't update. If it (XP) works - why change it? Companies have bigger concerns right now. Like (not) firing half the staff, closing offices, etc. Why should they bother updating something proven effective enough?
Those stuck with XP won't migrate to 7 as this means upgrading hardware too, but those with Vista (if M$ upgrade program does not rip them off) - they might consider it. However in both cases it is not justified.

So, they get a 5% response rate, and then extraolote that is reporesentative of the 95% who didn't respond ?

I would be suspicious that the respondants have an agenda in reposonding to a time-sucking survey in the first place.

Proof, puddings and eating... we'll all see who is kidding who, soon enough.

Windows 8 should go beta any time now. It will have a monthly subscription that is based on your usage, and monthly activation. It is awesome.

There needs to be some real reason before upgrading can be considered reasonable.

We (small company) use still XP SP3 32-bit, but would need more available RAM. Some rather expensive printing systems we still use can not be used in Vista, but can be used in Windows 7 64-bit in XP-mode (with 32-bit Win WP drivers that are the only solution available for those devices). Replacing those devices would cost 2-3 times the cost of replacing all of our (quad-core) workstations with new i7 systems.

I believe myself that since most companies never upgraded to Vista there is a certain demand and need there to upgrade to W7, but first there needs to be data how much it will cost, what are the benefits and if those are bigger than those for sticking with XP (there is cost in that decision too, at least in the long run).

Not all current systems will function in XP-mode (luckily our Q6600 and T9300 do), but for those systems that it is possible to use the XP-mode it will likely make the switch cheaper and easier than it has never been before. To be able to use old devices with old drivers that are mature and stable without the need to upgrade because there are no W7 drivers for "old" scanners and printers is going to make the W7 look like a reasonable and relatively cheap update. At least it looks like that for us.

The survey indicated that 60% HAVE NO PLANS to upgrade to Win7 while the other 40% are this year and next...

Just thinking out loud - perhaps the 60% don't have concrete plans 2 years out and maybe 'no plans' SHOULD NOT be taken to mean "don't intend to"...

I realize it is required to hate MS and Apple and Nvidia here... but could we stop with the mis-reporting?

I agree this is a meaninless argument designed to suggest 'the end is nigh' for Microsoft. Sadly this is not the case. It will take years for (some) companies to move their current infrastructures away from MS dependancies and these companies are many.
I do however think that we are seeing the beginning of the end for MS, and that can only be a good thing for business and non-business pc users alike.

1. Because new PCs will ship with Windoze 7, consumers will drive majority of first two years' sales.

2. Unless there is a compelling BUSINESS reason, companies will not expend resources to upgrade existing PCs, but will use hardware update cycles to gradually move towards Windoze 7.

3. AFA Windoze 8, depending on tax laws, companies may prefer to go to a monthly subscription fee rather than purchase. At this point, I don't have data to indicate what consumers will do, but I suspect that most will go along with whatever scheme Microsoft develops. Again, adoption will be with new PC sales or hardware upgrade cycles, not with upgrading existing hardware.

Bottom line, most people, consumers and companies alike, view OS as part of hardware and not worth additional resources for upgrade on existing hardware.

Hope that is not your bussines plan, XP mode will be a virtual environment and it will not support drivers for devices which are not virtualized, if you haven't tested it to work don't count on it

You are all VOLES and you all live in holes! Why upgrade to Win 7 if XP is all good? Ahh ... Ohh yeah, because of DX 11.2 maybe? lol

I'm very happy with my XP computer here @ work and is doing what is suppose to do.

I'm guessing that uptake for windows 7 will be pretty good. Of course, existing systems will not be upgraded because nobody does that sort of thing anymore but new systems will be preloaded with 7. What else are companies going to do? Stick with XP forever? It's getting pretty long in the tooth. Vista uptake was horrible so there's a lot of old XP systems out there that need to get replaced.

I read it was more like 3 out 5. Which is it now?

Actually your wrong, I have my Win 7 64 bit OS setup which doesn’t work with some older 32 bit hardware, including printers and IR devices, all of which work in the Win XP VM.

It’s actually a very clever idea.

On a side note I still know many large networks running with NT4, the saying, if it isn’t broke don’t fix it applies to offices PCs. yes yes, Server 2008 and Win7 are easier to setup use and more secure, but will it make me any more money, and the answer is no, Win7 will however boom in the home market, its a win win situation and the consumer has nothing to lose.

Hardware support is fantastic, anything running XP will run this, I’m sure I read somewhere that some bloke got it working on an Old P2 or something!

And finally, my spelling is rubbish, but for the uneducated out there Windows is spelt with a S at the end not a Z, please crawl back to your command line and recompile your Kernel

I am Canadian. We receive ATSC Digital TV broadcasts like our American neighbors. However ATSC has never worked in any version of MCE officially for Canadians. At least with MCE 2005 there is a working hack that bypass this limitation. With Windows 7, the hack only works partially. So I for one will stay with my MCE 2005 until there is no replacement hardware available that can run MCE 2005.

These so called firms must've never upgraded to Vista either. No wonder they plan to skip 7.

But I do think 7 will rope in business customers sooner than Vista did.

I just happen to wonder what will MS do with Vista now? Still sell it? Support it too?

Will Vista get DX11 & Windows Media Player 12 etc.? It got IE 8.

Or will MS just stop with Vista & offer like a half-cost upgrade to those running Vista to 7.

7 is just a re-hashed Vista basically, a couple of visual enhancements, a bit snappier. RC of 7 uses around 50-100 MB less memory than Vista SP2 on my machine both with a clean install + all the software installed.

Granted 7 does indeed run quicker than Vista SP2 though.

But it's not a drastic difference that YOU MUST upgrade Vista asap.

I'm just impatient to know as to what happens with Vista